Cameron took the lead while Lila stayed back a few steps with Piper and her father, keeping a respectable distance from her husband’s emotional balancing act. They were in a strange place, in someone else’s home, in the middle of the night. They didn’t know where anything was, or where people stayed or slept. Yet they were on the trail of something that a panicky voice inside Lila — more a knowing than the usual kind of meaningless worry — insisted more and more convincingly was worthy of panic. Cameron made sense, logically speaking: Clara liked to explore, and the girl, from a young age, had always shown a healthy disrespect for the rules. Of course she’d gone wandering, and of course it was no big deal. But Lila could tell it somehow was. And worse, she knew Cameron and the others could feel it, too. But Cameron was keeping his face straight and his steps reasonably paced. He wasn’t raising an alarm in deference to the hour and their status as guests. Still, tension hovered above their little troop like a storm cloud.
