From Shari, that meant something. The woman had the best survival radar of anyone Cally had ever met, Granpa included. She’d had to have.

She was also everybody’s mama. If she had decided these people were her baby chicks, as well try to move Mount Everest as sway her. Now that Cally had the job on her own shoulders, the wonder of it was that Granpa had grumbled so little over the years. She remembered the old rule about officers not bitching in front of the troops, hauled on her game face and tried to think of something to say. Ah.

“I shall endeavor to satisfy,” Cally said, then winked. “Got it covered.”

“Thanks,” Shari said, getting up. “Want some tea?”

“Love some,” Cally said as the woman walked from the room. “Now, how do I have it covered?” she asked herself.

It was after seven, dark and cold with a harsh wind blowing in off the Atlantic, when Cally finally got a moment to go see Jake Mosovich and David Mueller. She remembered them well, she thought, from their brief visit to Rabun Gap when she was thirteen and a cocky, savage warrior — albeit one eager to learn the mysteries of make-up and men. She had had to think in terms of men. Billy and the other kids with Shari and Wendy were the only actual boys she’d seen in a coon’s age, and they didn’t count.

Anyway, Jake and Mueller had made an impression. Mueller, despite his pretty gruesome facial scars, because of the way he looked at her. Oh, he hadn’t leered much, but when nobody was looking, and he was preoccupied, it had leaked through. It had made her feel… powerful. Not at all like that creep whose knee she’d had to shoot out. And she had to admit that one of the times she’d bent over to pick something up while David was around, she’d dropped it on purpose.

Therefore, she had no idea who she was looking at when a juved guy, no relative or Sunday as far as she remembered, with “seen action” eyes answered Ashley Privett’s door. “I was looking for Jake Mosovich and David Mueller?” she asked politely.