The Lovely and the Lost

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  Cady’s Look intensified. “Did you know the person who drove you here?”

  Free shrugged. As protective as she was of us, she’d never had any particular talent for taking care of herself.

  I could practically see Cady counting back from a hundred. “You and I are going to be having words, Free.” Cady let that single sentence hang ominously in the air for a moment before she turned to Ness. “Where’s my father?”

  Gabriel took it upon himself to answer the question. “Exactly where you should be,” he said. “At the rangers’ station, joining the search for that girl.”

  By the time we arrived, there were easily sixty people at the rangers’ station, awaiting instructions. Jude, Free, and I weren’t the only ones under the age of eighteen. With this much area to cover and a child’s life at stake, the authorities needed every warm body they could get.

  Beside me, Saskia strained slightly on her lead. She didn’t like crowds. Neither did I, but search and rescue was a cooperative effort.

  I forced my attention from the mass of people to my training. If I settled down, Saskia would follow suit. A first-response team would have been deployed as soon as the child’s family reported her missing, I thought, willing the muscles in my neck to relax. This will be the second wave, or the third—civilians, useful primarily for their numbers.

  I didn’t need to get a good look at the local authorities to know that they would keep volunteers on a short leash. The last thing anyone needed was another missing person, and though I suspected most people in Hunter’s Point knew a little something about wilderness survival, that wasn’t a risk any reasonable leader would take.

  Not even for a child.

  “Thank you all for coming.”

  Those words were meant to silence the crowd, and they did. The lack of noise put my senses on high alert. The sound of the man behind me breathing. The snap of a twig beneath a woman’s feet, up and to the right—I forced myself to look at Saskia, who was sitting as close to me as she could get without touching.

  “Good girl,” I said softly. The muscles in my chest loosened slightly, and I focused on the man whose voice had sent a hush through the crowd. Based on his uniform, he wasn’t a park ranger.

  He was the local sheriff.

  “Bella Anthony disappeared from her family’s campsite at the base of Bear Mountain sometime between ten p.m. on Thursday and six a.m. Friday morning.” The sheriff had a visible sidearm and a voice that carried. “Bella is nine years old, four foot two inches tall, and has shoulder-length medium-brown hair. When last seen, she was wearing pale pink pajamas and a red windbreaker.”

  The sheriff nodded to one of his men, who began passing out flyers with the child’s picture on them. When the stack came to me, my fingers locked around it with surprising force. I stared at the picture. There was nothing remarkable about the little girl in the black-and-white photo. She could have been any other child.

  But she wasn’t.

  I knew better than anyone that if Bella Anthony was out there much longer, she wouldn’t ever be any other child again.

  A hand brushed the edge of mine. My head whipped up. A man—the heavy breather who’d been standing behind me—gestured to the flyers I was holding. “Take one and pass it on.”

  Breathe in. Breathe out. I managed not to recoil from the man’s touch. I took a flyer and passed the stack on. No claws, no fangs, no fight, no flight. I was in control—and I was here for a reason.

  “The park rangers are already out there, looking for Bella.” The sheriff picked back up where he had left off, once the flyers had made the rounds. “Our job is to help comb the forest within the radius that Bella could have traveled. You will work in teams of two, walking straight lines no more than thirty feet apart. Call Bella’s name. Look for any evidence of her presence—tracks, food wrappers, disturbed foliage. Once we’ve covered one section of the grid, we’ll move to the next.”

  The strategy made sense—for civilians. But Bales Bennett hadn’t brought Cady here to walk the woods.

  As the sheriff dismissed us and the crowd began to disperse, snatches of conversation hit me like shrapnel. The quiet had sent my senses into overdrive, and now that quiet was gone.

  Jude leaned toward me. “On a scale of yea to nay, how are we doing?”

  I fixed my gaze at a point in the crowd—a child, maybe two or three years old. He had dark hair and chubby, sun-kissed cheeks, and he was staring, wide-eyed, at Saskia.

  “Sass and I are fine,” I said, keeping my eyes focused on the child and tuning everything else out. As if to prove my point, Saskia docilely observed a butterfly flutter by. The child watched, delighted.

  And then Saskia snapped her teeth and swallowed the butterfly in a single gulp.

  The toddler threw back his head and howled.

  Jude glanced at Free, then cleared his throat. “We shall speak of this no more.”

  Quite pleased with herself, Saskia cast triumphant looks at Duchess and NATO and settled back by my side. I watched as a woman about Cady’s age bent to pick up the screaming toddler. Her arms curved around his sturdy little body, and he laid his chubby cheek against her chest. I ached, watching them. Not because I couldn’t remember my own mother. Not even for little Bella, lost in the woods.

  I ached because I didn’t want to be held. Most of the time, I didn’t want to be touched at all.

  It was a minute or more before Bales Bennett made his way through the crowd toward us, a youngish woman I didn’t recognize by his side. He introduced her as Angela Anthony, Bella’s mother. Dark smudges marred the skin under her gray eyes. She looked like a breeze could have blown her away, but the animal part of my brain said that Bella’s mother could kill every person here—every single one—if it meant bringing Bella home.

  “Mrs. Anthony.” The sheriff intervened before she could say anything to us. “What are you doing here? You should be at the hotel. You need sleep.”

  The reply was immediate and guttural. “I need my baby.”

  I had no word for the shuddering emotion in her tone. Like gnawing hunger. Like a jagged cut. I couldn’t label the feeling, but I knew it, viscerally.

  “Cadence Bennett.” The sheriff shifted his attention to Cady. “It’s been a while.”

  “Brad.” My foster mother returned his greeting. “Or should I say Sheriff?”

  “I appreciate your coming all this way.” The sheriff showed too much teeth for my liking as he spoke. “But the rangers have already been over the campsite.”

  “Not with these dogs,” Bales interjected. “My daughter’s the best in the world at training rescue animals. The rangers have already indicated that they’ll welcome her help.”

  Subtext wasn’t my forte, but I knew, in my gut, the importance of hierarchy and competition and strength.

  Cady was joining this search—whether the sheriff liked it or not.

  “We might find something.” Cady addressed those words equally to the sheriff and Bella’s mother. “We might not. But I’d like to try.”

  After a long, tense moment, the sheriff gave a curt nod. His gaze traveled to Free and Jude and their K9 partners before landing on Saskia and me.

  “Husky,” I said, answering the question in his eyes. Not a wolf.

  “Your children are welcome to join the other searchers,” the sheriff told Cady, “but—”

  “My children are less than a year away from being FEMA-certified in search and rescue.” Cady let that sink in. “With all due respect, Brad, the three of them can cover more ground than the rest of your search party combined.”

  When it came to wilderness searches, the first step was to locate and secure the PLS—point last seen. In this case, the rangers had set up a perimeter around the campsite where little Bella had last been seen snuggled down in her sleeping bag. Her family had gone to sleep that night. When they’d woken up the next morning, she was gone.

  “It’s different,” Free said, coming up behind me, “when it’s real.
”

  I didn’t tell her that it was always real for me—every training exercise, every scenario we’d worked our way through back home. For me, searching was always—always—about survival.

  “Are we using the sleeping bag to get the girl’s scent?” I asked Cady. “Or is there clothing?”

  I needed to move. I needed to do something. I needed to stop standing here, doing nothing.

  Cady lifted her hand to get the attention of the closest park ranger, but the ranger’s attention was already occupied. He was talking to a stranger. Tall and broad through the shoulders, the newcomer had long blond hair tied into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. The dog by his side was indeterminate in breed, as large for its species as the man was for his.

  “Mackinnon Wade.” The sheriff cut across the campsite, his stride bigger with each step. “This is a crime scene, and as familiar as you are with all things criminal, Wade, I’m sorry to inform you that this particular scene is closed.”

  All missing-persons cases were treated as criminal, so the sheriff’s use of the phrase crime scene was less concerning than the way he pushed back his shoulders and took a deliberate step into the other man’s space. Aggressive. Male.

  I couldn’t have so much as inched forward or backward if I’d tried.

  “Mr. Wade is here to help with the search,” one of the rangers informed the sheriff. “He’s military-trained search and rescue, the best in the world.”

  “Second best,” Mackinnon Wade corrected the ranger, his eyes locked onto Cady’s.

  Jude leaned forward to whisper in my ear. “I believe the implication our very large new friend has just made is that Mom is number one. He’s pleased to see her.” Jude paused. “She is…err…less pleased to see him.”

  Cady crossed the campsite to stand toe to toe with Mackinnon Wade. “My father called you?” she demanded.

  “Your father called me,” Wade confirmed. He seemed…calm. Steady. Like he could walk through a war zone without batting an eye. “Cady.” He inclined his head in greeting.

  “Mac,” she returned, echoing the calm in his voice with steel in her own.

  “And the plot thickens,” Jude whispered.

  “By my count we have five K9s and five handlers here,” the sheriff said loudly. I’d been so intent on watching Cady and the man she’d called Mac that I’d stopped tracking the sheriff’s movements. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s about four teams too many.” The sheriff stared directly at Mac. “You all have ten minutes to get what you need and get yourselves out of my crime scene.”

  “I think he likes us,” Jude told Free and me. “Deep down.”

  We got to work. Within ninety seconds, a plastic bag was being passed around so the dogs could get the girl’s scent. I assumed it contained clothing, until it came to me.

  Not clothing—a blanket, I realized, my stomach inexplicably heavy. A baby blanket.

  The fabric might have been lavender once, but it was faded nearly to white now. It was threadbare and tattered, and the moment I saw it, I wondered if the little girl slept with it at night. When she was lonely, when she was scared, did she hold on to it? Did she press her face into it?

  Did it help?

  I will find you. The promise unfurled inside me, unexpected and with the strength of a creature with a life and will of its own. I will bring you home.

  “Kira?” Cady’s voice broke through the din in my mind.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been standing there, holding the bag. I went to offer the scent to Saskia, but Cady stopped me. “Hang back for now,” she directed. “Let the bloodhounds find the trail, then we’ll be able to let you and Saskia loose in the right direction.”

  I told myself that Cady didn’t want us searching with the group because the bloodhounds were more suited to this task—not because of the way I’d reacted to Bella’s blanket. Not because she didn’t trust Saskia around strangers.

  Less than sixty seconds later, Cady, Jude, and Free had cleared out. I could hear them plowing through brush, following the trail Bella had laid when she’d left the safety of her family’s campsite in the middle of the night. I pictured Bella’s face, drew it in my mind—each strand of hair, each happy crinkle at the corners of her eyes. I pictured her sleeping, the blanket tangled in her arms.

  Why had she woken up? Why had she left the campsite? I wanted to stop there, but couldn’t. I could see it happening in my mind. I could see small feet—bare feet—dirt-smeared and disappearing into the brush.

  Bella’s feet weren’t bare, I reminded myself. Her shoes are missing, too. They’d told us that when they’d briefed us on the scene. But for some reason, the image of bare feet lingered in my mind. Somewhere, deep in my subconscious, another question reared its head. Not Where did she go? or Why did she leave? but How long?

  How long before anyone bothered to look for her? I knew that question wasn’t about Bella. Bella had been gone for less than forty-eight hours, and park rangers, law enforcement, and dozens of volunteers were already combing the woods for her.

  By the time anyone had come looking for me, I’d been on my own for weeks.

  Forest. Dirt. Water. Blood. Threat—

  My grip on Saskia’s lead tightened as the images flashed through my head. I wanted to let go of the lead, to cut Saskia free.

  I needed to run.

  “Beautiful animal.”

  My eyes whipped toward Mackinnon Wade, who knelt next to his own K9 and held a hand out to mine.

  “Careful,” I started to warn him, but Saskia considered the out-held appendage with a calm she’d never before exhibited around an adult male, let alone one of his size. Her vigilant blue eyes on his, she stepped forward to get the man’s scent.

  She’s not usually this friendly. I recognized that as the benign thing to say, the normal thing to say.

  “Why are you still here?” I asked instead. “Don’t you want to find Bella?”

  Mac withdrew his hand from Saskia and ran it over his own K9’s head and down the back of her neck. “I want that little girl found,” he said quietly. “But I pray to God that I’m not the one to find her.”

  I heard something in his voice that Jude probably wouldn’t have recognized, or even heard. But part of me would never leave the forest. Part of me would always be wild and half-dying in that ravine.

  “You never offered your dog the scent,” I noted, my voice as soft as his. There was only one type of search dog that wouldn’t need Bella’s scent. The kind of dog that wasn’t trained to search for Bella.

  The kind that was trained to search for Bella’s body.

  “She’s a cadaver dog?” I asked, my gaze on Mac’s K9 partner.

  “We work mostly overseas.” Mac took his time with his reply. “Disaster relief.”

  A well-trained cadaver dog could scent human remains beneath a mudslide, buried in rubble, or under running water. That was useful in criminal investigations, but also played a key role in bringing closure to the families of those killed in natural disasters.

  “We find the bodies.” Mac spoke in simple sentences. “Give the ones who remain something to bury. Help them say good-bye.”

  I appreciated someone who said exactly what he meant and didn’t dress the truth up with frilly and unnecessary words. “The sheriff doesn’t like you,” I commented. Without Jude here, there was no one to tell Mac that this was my version of being friendly.

  “I’m a Wade,” Mac replied, unruffled. “There are a lot of people hereabouts who don’t care too much for my kind.”

  I held my hand out to Mac’s dog, the way he’d held his out to mine. Saskia allowed the massive animal to delicately sniff my fingers before flashing her teeth. The mutt returned to Mac’s side.

  Abruptly, Mac stood and turned toward the brush. His dog reoriented her body to match his, like they were a single unit, and I followed suit. The wind lifted my hair. The smell of the forest invaded my nostrils, damp and fresh and alive. In the distance, a K9 barked three
times.

  One of the dogs found something. Bittersweet hope and heavy dread battled it out in the pit of my stomach. Muscles clenching, I thought of the faded blanket in the plastic bag. I pictured a little girl in a bright red windbreaker. I let myself imagine a happy ending.

  What I got was a phone call from Cady, informing me that Bella’s scent had intensified, then dead-ended—in the river.

  The rangers’ probable search area for Bella had been calculated assuming the little girl had been traveling on foot. The river changed things. When we found Bella—if we found her—we’d find her downstream.

  We might not be looking for a little girl. We might be looking for a body. No one said those words, but Mac quietly joined the search, his dog running the riverbank, wading in and out as he followed her with surprising swiftness for a man his size.

  I pray to God that I’m not the one to find her. Mac’s prayer echoed in my mind as I was given my own assignment. Saskia and I would take the west side of the river. Cady and Pad would take the east. If Bella had made it out of the water—if she’d survived—she could have ended up on either shore, and that meant the forest was fair game on both sides of the water.

  Now that I had something to focus on, the tightness in my stomach slowly unwound. Saskia was a flash of white in the wilderness, running from the riverbank to the tree line, weaving in and out, over rocky ground. She looped back to me often enough to make sure that I was keeping up.

  Nightfall drew closer.

  Cady would never let me search on my own past dark—not in unfamiliar territory. Not in a 750,000-acre wilderness that could swallow an adult nearly as easily as it had devoured Bella.

  As the countdown clock ticked down, Saskia and I pressed on. I made sure she stopped for water breaks and did my best to stay hydrated as well. Thirst was an old acquaintance—dry lips, head pounding, each breath hot in my throat. Pushing back against the memories, I let myself crouch down on the forest floor. Cady had said that Sierra Glades had some of the tallest trees on the continent, but this part of the forest wasn’t filled with those giants. As I looked up into the branches, the dying sun caught the leaves just so. My fingers sank into the dirt, and I closed my eyes.