Page 343 of Nobody's Girl

He wipes the tears from my eyes. “I have received some news that will take your mind off this for a while.”

“What?”

“We have to go back home in the morning,” he says.

“Eden, no, we can’t leave. Not right now when Laura will need me so much.”

“I have been shown what our next mission is. We have no choice,” he tells me.

“How bad is it?” I ask him.

“It’s a little hairy and pretty far away. We have to go get our passports.”

“How hairy?” I ask, feeling nervous.

“Where we are going, the weather can get rough pretty quickly. A small boy is going to get lost in the forest near his home. If we don’t intervene, he will die in a storm which comes up suddenly,” Eden tells me.

“This boy must be pretty important.”

“I guess he will be, but right now he’s an orphan and I’m afraid no one gets very upset at his disappearance. In fact, no one looks for him at all,” he says.

“Eden, that’s so sad. What are we supposed to do?”

“We have to go to him and bring him to safety.”

“So where are we going?” I ask.

“Korea,” he tells me, like it’s nothing.

“South Korea?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “The other one—the one where they hate Americans.”

“We have to do most of the mission as birds, don’t we?”

He nods. “It isn’t going to be easy, Alyssa. We’ll have help from some people in South Korea. A family there will take him in and raise him. We just have to get in, get him, and then get him over to them without being spotted by anyone,” he tells me, like it’s not a big deal.

“Eden, how old is this kid?” I ask.

“Three years old. He’ll be afraid of us, Alyssa. He’ll have no idea what we’re doing to him,” he tells me.

“I doubt there will be many times when we’re helping people and they realize we’re not there to eat them,” I say.

“Alyssa, you certainly have a unique way of looking at things,” Eden tells me.

The back door opens and Laura walks out. “Ally, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Eden tells me and then walks back into the house.

Laura walks up to me, holding her hand out for me to see the engagement ring Kyle gave her. “It’s so beautiful. Thank you for helping him pick it out for me.”

I smile at her. “I’m happy you decided to accept his proposal. You two will be happy together and you’ll have a beautiful family.”

“Thank you, Al. Thanks for everything. You have no idea how much I appreciate it. Kyle and I have decided to go back to Cloudcroft to get some of our personal possessions and to tell our parents everything. There is so much to tell them,” she says.

“That’s good. You can get that out of the way and begin to move forward. Eden and I have to take off for home and then head off to North Korea to save a little orphan boy,” I say.

“Okay, just like that, huh?”