She was kneeling down, holding her sister in her arms, while trying to stop her own shivering. Never had Jesse felt so protective of her as she did now. ‘I’m scared,’ said Casey, looking up at her with big frightened eyes. ‘What’s going on?’ It was a hard question to answer, but Jess tried. ‘Some bad men want to hurt us.’ ‘Is Auntie Jean okay?’ The hesitation in Casey’s voice suggested she already knew the answer, but desperately wanted to be told she was wrong. Jess swallowed. ‘No. I don’t think she is.’ ‘We don’t know that,’ snapped Tim, his voice a potent combination of anger and despair. He was standing a few feet away, soaked to the core like the rest of them as he looked out through the undergrowth to where the two canoes had come to rest on the sand spit sticking out into the river, barely ten yards away. The top half of Auntie Jean was just about visible slumped over one of the canoe’s sides. She wasn’t moving. ‘I’m going to go and bring her in here,’ he continued.
