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you mean?”
    “Has he ever broken a leg or an arm?”
    “Why would that make the difference?”
    “Could alter his tracks.”
    Oh. “Nothing.”
    Sabriel knew how to look, what to look for. They would find Scotty. She knew it. “After a day? How hard will it be to pick up their trail?”
    “If it doesn’t rain, the tracks should hold.”
    She looked outside at the stygian night, so dark, so cold. No moon. No stars. That meant clouds. And clouds could mean rain. Her tongue turned to cotton and sweat prickled her armpits. How could she be sweating and yet feel so cold?
    “What kind of kid is Scotty?” Sabriel asked.
    There he was again, saving her from her dire thoughts with his question and part of her turmoil quieted. “He’s a great kid. Sweet, smart. Smarter than the Colonel gives him credit for.”
    “What does he look like?”
    “He’s small for his age.” Which somehow seemed like a failure on her part when the Colonel looked at her son with disappointment in his eyes. “He has Tommy’s wild blond curls.” Blond curls he twirled around a finger when he slept—just as he’d done with her hair while he’d nursed. “Brown eyes like mine.” They sparkled when he recounted his adventures with his father.
    She couldn’t help the small smile that formed at the familiar tug on her heart when she thought about her son. “Only one of his cheeks dimples when he smiles. His feet look too big for his small body, and he bounces in place when he’s excited and can’t contain himself.”
Not helpful, Nora
.
    She pressed her temple against the cool window glass and noticed that Sabriel listened to her babble with studious intent, as if what she left out was as important as what she said.
    At her pause, he glanced in her direction. “Go on.”
    But she didn’t want to lean on him too much, to lose herself again because it was easier not to rock the boat than to swim on her own. “Didn’t Tommy ever send you pictures?”
    Sabriel gave a quick shake of his head. “What about hobbies and interests?”
    “What happened between the two of you?”
    The tendons along Sabriel’s jaw became taut wires.
    “Hobbies?”
    “Tommy says you’re the only person he can trust, yet you two never talk.”
    “Not related to the situation.”
    “What if it is?”
    “Hobbies?” Sabriel insisted with a quiet, yet unmistakable authority.
    “You’re asking me to pour my guts out, but you can’t give me a single speck of something in return?”
    His jaw slid from side to side. “You came to me for my skill, not my history.”
    “But they’re related. By the Colonel.”
    “Because of the Colonel, I’ll help Tommy.”
    Cringing at the sting of his words, Nora went back to peeling away the pink nail polish. Still, something had happened to turn a treasured friendship into a net of guilt and regret. What had happened at Ranger School? Was there more? Was it because of Anna? Nora shook the thoughts of Tommy and Anna and Sabriel and their complicated relationship out of her mind. She had to concentrate on Scotty. He was her priority—finding him, getting him home safely was all that mattered.
    “Scotty loves to read,” she said, hoping to defuse the tension she’d caused. She still needed Sabriel’s help. “Which the Colonel doesn’t consider a manly endeavor.” She snorted. “As if generals were born knowing everything there was to know about strategy without ever cracking open a book.”
    A montage of Scotty moments flashed into her memory like a photo album and not thinking about all the blank pages she’d hoped to fill in the years to come took all of her effort. “Everything about the outdoors interests him. Plants. Animals. Bugs.”
    “Like Tommy.”
    She nodded.
    “Right- or left-handed?”
    “Left. Like Tommy. Why?” She turned in her seat to take a better look at the man who knew so much about the man who’d fathered her child, about how to find him and rescue her son. She gave a prayer of thanks