Saskia went to the ground. I went with her. I pressed my belly to the cave floor, nose to nose with my K9 partner. It went against every instinct I had to stay there, with Gabriel and Mac standing over us, but I wouldn’t ask Saskia to do something I couldn’t.
“Stay,” I said softly. I could do this. She could do this.
Mac slowly knelt and got into position beside her.
“Stay,” I repeated, my eyes on Saskia’s and hers on mine. The cave floor was damp. My heart was racing. Saskia didn’t so much as look at Mac. She looked at me. She trusted me. I lay there, vulnerable with no line of defense. With liquid grace, Mac made his move. One second, Saskia was on the ground, and the next, he had the husky in his arms, over his head, and out.
Even once she was back on solid ground, Saskia held the down position. For me. I was on my own feet in an instant. Mac boosted me up. I barely even felt the contact.
The second I was on solid ground, I dropped the stay signal, and Saskia came barreling into my body.
“Are you hurt?” Cady asked me. “Is Saskia?”
I let her run her hands over me, assure herself I was okay—and then I shook off both her worry and her touch. “We’re fine.”
“You’re better than fine.” Cady looked down at Saskia. “I can’t believe she let him do that.”
“I can.” I allowed myself one moment of victory, and then I got down to business. “Gabriel and I aren’t sure how big the cave system is, but it wasn’t on any of the maps. There could be other entrances, other exits. I’m fairly certain there’s running water down there.”
“And how exactly did you find this place?” The sheriff announced his presence. A half dozen deputies and rangers began making their way down into the cave as Mac boosted Gabriel out.
“I didn’t find the cave,” I said, unsure what exactly it was about the way the sheriff had spoken that set my teeth on edge. “Saskia did.”
I prepared myself to recount the search, step-by-step, but the sheriff looked past me, toward Gabriel. “And I suppose,” he said, drawing out the words in a way that made my stomach lurch, “that Gabriel will tell me that he had no idea this cave was here, either.”
I shifted my weight forward without knowing why.
“I could confirm your assumptions,” Gabriel replied contemplatively. “Or I could tell you that you have a tiny piece of kale caught in your teeth.”
The space between the sheriff and Gabriel shrank to nothing so quickly that I wasn’t even sure which one of them had closed the gap. Saskia moved lightning-quick to Gabriel’s side.
I realized a moment later that I had done the same.
“Kira.” Cady had to repeat my name once more before my eyes flickered from the sheriff’s to hers. “You and Gabriel have done your part here. I’m sure one of the rangers would be glad to see you two home.”
“I can’t go,” I said fiercely. Can’t, not won’t. I knew on some level that Cady was probably trying to defuse the situation. I just didn’t know why—or what exactly this situation between Gabriel and the man opposite us entailed.
“I’m sure the sheriff will agree.” Cady threw him a bone. “It was one thing letting you kids search when this was a missing persons case, but this isn’t a missing persons case anymore. This is a kidnapping, Kira. And you—and Gabriel—are going home.”
“Tell me again about the part where Broody McSmirkpants called you ‘princess’ and you didn’t rip out his throat.”
The minute we’d been dropped off, Gabriel had pulled a disappearing act, and Free and Jude had descended on me. Now the three of us were sequestered in the room Free and I were sharing. Jude was lying upside down on the bed. In typical Jude style, he’d immediately zeroed in on the one thing—out of everything I’d caught them up on—that didn’t have weighty implications.
“I’m guessing Kira would prefer to tell us again about the teeth-gnashing injustice of being kicked off this search.” Free assumed her perch in the open window.
Being with the two of them should have loosened the knot in my stomach. It should have made me feel more like myself and less like the Girl in the Woods. But all I could think was that I’d shown Cady that I wasn’t a liability, and she’d still sent me away.
Silver nudged the back of my knees, herding me toward Jude.
“I should be out there,” I said. Cady might as well have tied me up. I felt like she had. “I should be looking for Bella and hunting this predator down.”
Backing away from a challenge was never easy for me, but backing away when some sicko was out there dragging a child through the wilderness? When that child was bleeding and running and forced into the dark?
“Heads up!” That was only warning I got before a pillow hit me straight in the face. I narrowed my eyes at Jude.
“Miscreants’ Creed, line twelve,” he cited quickly, his sense of self-preservation clicking on. “Mild to moderate pillow violence is a sign of affection.”
“Not an actual part of the Creed,” Free commented. “But I’ll take it under advisement.”
An obstinate Silver nudged my legs again, then circled in front of me and gave me the canine version of Cady’s Look. She wanted me to sit. She wanted me to breathe.
“The person who took Bella has seven hundred and fifty thousand acres of wilderness to hide in.” I let that statement hang in the air, then forced myself to sit. It wasn’t Silver’s fault I’d been thrown off the search, any more than it was Jude’s fault or Free’s. With a self-satisfied bob of her head, Silver curled by my side, and the moment I felt the German shepherd’s body next to mine, something inside me gave.
“I can’t just sit here,” I said, my voice threatening to break. “Bella Anthony sleeps with a blanket.” I swallowed. “Or at least, she did. Now she’s out there, sleeping who knows where, and she’s scared and in danger, and she doesn’t even have that pathetic scrap of fabric for comfort.”
Free leaned back, her palms flat against the windowsill. “I’d suggest sneaking out and starting a search of our own, but barring extreme circumstances, even I don’t think pushing Cady that far would be wise.”
When I was a child, I’d learned to trust Cady the way that Jude had learned to read—slowly, painstakingly, painfully. That trust couldn’t be undone overnight. Cady was protecting me the only way she knew how.
Girl doesn’t need protection. My hand throbbed, and when I looked down, I saw that I’d dug my fingers into the carpet underneath me. I forced them loose, and Silver licked my palm.
Silver is here, I imagined her saying. I’m here, Kira. I’m here. I’m here.
Wasn’t that what Jude and Free had been saying in their own ways since I got back?
“Distract me.” My body physically shook with the effort of trying to take a mental step back from this case—from Bella. I bowed my head and let it rest against Silver’s. Her fur was coarse, but it didn’t feel rough against my skin. “Tell me something that has nothing to do with kidnapping or missing children or what might be happening to that little girl right now.”
My fellow Miscreants obliged.
“Bales has officially banned the use of confetti,” Jude said at the exact same time that Free opted for, “I might have made another trip to town. And I might have asked around about Ash. And Cady. And Mac.”
Now that was a worthy distraction. Jude and I hadn’t really talked about the argument we’d overheard between Cady and Bales. We hadn’t discussed Ash—or what the fact that Cady had “loved” Ash might mean for Jude. I couldn’t remember Cady ever dating. She’d had Jude young.
She’d known Ash when she was young.
Jude sat straight up on the bed and twirled toward the window. “And what, pray tell, might you have learned on this trip to town, Free Morrow?”
Free took her time responding. “Cady ever mention anything to either of you about spending her early twenties as part of an elite search and rescue team?”
I felt my eyebrows skyrocket.
�
��Traveling the world?” Free continued. “Partaking of death-defying adventures in some of the worst and scariest places this planet has to offer?”
“I would like to say that this sounds vaguely familiar,” Jude replied. “However…”
However. That wasn’t the beginning of a sentence. It was the end of one. Cady hadn’t told us anything—not about her past, not about this SAR team, and not about Ash. For once, Jude did not offer up a maniacally optimistic view of the situation.
A protective instinct stirred inside me. If there was one thing that could distract me from the predator who had Bella, it was a threat to my family. Whatever secrets Cady had been keeping, whatever answers she’d withheld—they meant something to Jude.
“Did you find out anything else?” I asked Free, talking for Jude the way he’d always spoken for me. “Who Ash was? What happened to him?”
“Ash’s full name,” Free said after an appropriately dramatic pause, “was John Ashby.”
“Ashby.” Jude was the one who made the connection. “Isn’t that Ness’s last name?”
“I’m guessing Ash was either her nephew or her son.” Free wound her blond hair around her fist. Even when it came to absentminded hair twirling, she did nothing halfway. “There’s more of a story there,” Free declared, “but dragging those particular skeletons out of the family closet might require venturing back to town and finding some chattier locals.”
I didn’t know what was going on inside Jude’s head. I wasn’t even sure if he thought that Ash was his father, or if Free and I were the only ones who’d gone there. But I had enough question marks in my own past to know how they could eat at you, tearing chunks out bit by bit.
Cady had leashed me for the remainder of the search. There was nothing more I could do for Bella right now. But Free and I? We could make another trip to town. We could find some chatty locals—for Jude.
Jude wasn’t about to sit out this particular adventure—and neither was Silver. Given the German shepherd’s history of keeping an eye on us in Cady’s absence, that was hardly surprising.
Also unsurprising: the fact that it didn’t take long for Jude to recover his voice. “It’s a lovely day for being inexcusably nosy, is it not, ladies?”
“I believe the phrase you’re looking for,” Free put in as we hugged the side of the winding road that led into town, “is that it’s a lovely day for mischief.”
“Miscreants’ Creed,” I said, a small smile creeping over my lips. “Line one.”
As we hit the outskirts of town, we drew a few looks from locals.
“I was thinking we’d head for the wilderness-supply store.” Free chose that moment to saunter across the street, well aware that people were watching and completely unbothered by the attention. “It was closed earlier, but my little sojourn by the local pool hall last night led me to believe that Hunter’s Point is the kind of place where people nickname their guns and keep their wilderness supplies well stocked. Ten-to-one odds say the place is a family business that’s been here for years.”
“Phoebe Eloise,” Jude said fondly. “Have I ever told you that you’re terrifyingly perceptive?”
Free lightly kicked a rock and watched it skid across the concrete. “Call me by my full name again, Saint Jude, and play Russian roulette with your chances of waking up tomorrow morning with only one eyebrow intact.”
Jude meditated on that threat as we made our way to the supply store. The bell over the door alerted the shopkeeper to our arrival. Free went in first, and I went in last. The place seemed to be about one part hardware store, one part camping outlet, and one part armory.
“Can I help you kids with something?”
The man behind the counter was about seventy-five, dressed in flannel with a beard he kept shaved close to his face. There was nothing unwelcoming about his expression, but I wasn’t sure it was welcoming, either.
“Jackpot,” Free murmured to me. “I bet he’s worked here for forty years. The older they are, the more they like to gossip.”
“I am hopeful that you can help us, fine sir.” Jude offered the old man his most charming smile. “Do you have any thoughts on the kind of supplies one might need if one were hoping to spend some time in beautiful Sierra Glades National Park?”
“You’re Cady Bennett’s kids, aren’t you?” The old man met Jude’s question with a question. “Your mother was one of my best customers when she was growing up. If you asked her about supplies, I imagine she’d tell you that it depends on where you plan on heading. The Glades has nearly as many ecosystems as it has trees.”
Near the door, Silver watched the old man for a moment, then settled down, laying her head on her front paws. I took that to mean that she’d decided that if push came to shove, we could take him.
“Some folks head out to the mountains,” the shopkeeper continued, leaning forward, his elbows on the counter. “Others prefer the canyons or the foothills or making their way along one of the purest, cleanest rivers in the country.”
I edged farther into the store, keeping half an ear on the shopkeeper and waiting for Jude to cut to the chase. A glass display case caught my attention. Inside, I counted a dozen knives. As the old man rattled off something about ancient forests and three-hundred-foot-tall trees, I couldn’t help thinking that the blades in the case looked lifeless.
No matter how sharp its edges, no knife could hold a candle to fang and claw.
“Have you lived here long?” Jude fed the shopkeeper another easy question, and I continued my circuit through the shop. The next case over held guns. Rifle. Hunting rifle. A tinny taste rose in the back of my mouth. By the door, Silver lifted her head slightly, knowing brown eyes meeting mine.
I’m fine, I told her silently. It’s nothing. It’s just a gun.
So why were the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up?
“It’s a beauty, isn’t it?” The shopkeeper came out from behind the counter, and the muscles in my legs and torso instinctively tightened. “I probably don’t need to tell you kids that Bales Bennett is the best shot on this side of the mountain.”
“Tell,” Jude encouraged him. “Tell like the wind.”
I tried to push down the rush of red-tinged anger rising up inside me, the one that said that guns were cheating.
They were death.
“Word is that Bales is former military—either intelligence or special forces, depending on which set of rumors you believe.” The old man winked at me. “He retired when his wife died and moved up here when Cady was a bitty thing.”
I couldn’t make myself turn my back on the gun case. But I did make myself speak. “You knew Cady when she was a kid?”
“I can assure you,” Jude chimed in, “that any embarrassing stories you might feel compelled to share about Mom’s misspent youth would be put to good and not at all self-serving use.”
The old man smiled. “If such stories do exist—and I’m not saying they do—you’d have to hear them from a braver man than me.”
Free strolled to my other side. “You wouldn’t happen to know if Cady had a friend named Ash, would you?”
“John Ashby,” the shop owner said immediately. “Ness Ashby’s boy. I never could decide whether that kid was
the second coming of Dennis the Menace or James Dean. He and your mother and one of the Wades—the quiet one, the one who made good—they got up to all kinds of mischief in these parts growing up.”
Cady. Ash. Mac. I pictured them, the way they’d looked in the photograph—barely any older than Free, Jude,
and me.
“What happened when they left Hunter’s Point?” I tried—and failed—to sound casual.
Before the old man could reply—if he was going to reply—the door to the shop opened again. I registered the size and build of the person who stood there before I recognized her features. Bella’s mother had pulled her hair back. I doubted she’d washed it recently. The day before, she’d looked exhausted. Today, she looked like eve
rything inside her had been hollowed out.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr. Ferris.” Angela Anthony didn’t sound sorry. As quiet as her voice was, she sounded the way Saskia looked when you tried to put her in a crate. “I wanted to check to see if you needed any more flyers.”
Everything in me had fought the idea of stepping back from the search. What was it like for Bella’s mother to be here when Bella was out there? My mind went to the threadbare, well-loved blanket—and then to the red windbreaker, abandoned on the cave floor.
For the first time in years, I tried—really tried—to remember my own mother’s face.
No. Girl can’t. The memory came down on me, like a window being slammed shut. Can’t go home. My stomach threatened to empty itself on the shop floor. I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth and gritted my teeth.
I’m in control, I thought. I’m fine.
Silver climbed to her feet. She came to check on me, then surprised me by padding across the shop toward Bella’s mother. Sad, I could almost hear the dog say as she lay down at the woman’s feet. I wanted to tell my canine guardian that she was right and that I could see it, too.
“I’ll take more flyers if you’ve got them.” The shopkeeper’s voice was gruff but not unkind. “I’ll keep handing them out to folks as they come through.”
Bella’s mother nodded, but she didn’t move to take the flyers to him. “Do you get a lot of people through here?” There was something deep and cutting about the set of her features. “Families? Hikers? Survivalist types?” She pressed her lips together into a firm line. After a moment, that line wavered. “Drifters?”
Jude came to stand beside me. “She knows,” he whispered in my left ear. “She knows that Bella was kidnapped.”
I searched Angela Anthony’s features for whatever clues Jude had seen. Had the sheriff been the one to break the news to her? If she knew, how could she possibly stomach being here, instead of out there?
“I’ve been talking to folks around town.” Mrs. Anthony’s voice quivered, but she thrust her chin out. “A couple of fellows in the bar said that Bella’s not the first person around here to go missing.”
The Lovely and the Lost Page 8