The dark-haired girl with pigtails was the only one sitting quietly, the book the librarian had given her hugged tight to her chest. The rest of the children appeared to be planning a coup.
“When might we expect these ‘notes’?” Jude asked, making liberal use of air quotes.
“Bright and early tomorrow morning,” the librarian replied. “Promise. In the meantime…” She walked to a nearby shelf and fluttered her fingers along the spines of book after book until she found the one she was looking for and pulled it from the shelf.
“A History of Hunter’s Point?” I read the book’s title as she held it out to me.
“Written by yours truly,” the librarian said. “Nonfiction. You should give it a try.”
I closed my fingertips around the book an instant before one of the kids at story time threw up on the brightly colored carpet.
“Don’t look now,” Jude whispered as the librarian bolted toward the puking child, “but the cavalry has arrived.” There was a slight pause. “The cavalry is Gabriel.”
I turned my head, but kept my body still. Gabriel had entered through a side door. I expected him to be looking for us.
He wasn’t.
Kidnapping, the sheriff had taunted me. Assault.
Gabriel walked with his head down and disappeared behind one of the shelves.
“That’s not suspicious,” Jude declared. “That’s not suspicious at all!”
Jude and Free only knew that the sheriff had mentioned Gabriel having a criminal record. They didn’t know what that record entailed. I wasn’t used to keeping secrets from them, and I wasn’t entirely sure why I had kept this one.
The sheriff might have been lying.
He might have been telling the truth. I reached out and laid a hand on Jude’s arm before he could start strolling in Gabriel’s direction.
“We should go,” I said.
“Should we?” Free was clearly on the verge of whipping out the Creed. I knew that if I had told her what the sheriff had accused Gabriel of, dragging her away from a chance for answers would have been every bit as impossible as coercing Duchess into the bath. I wanted answers, too, but I doubted that Gabriel would respond any better than I did to being cornered. When I faced him down, when I asked my questions—I’d do it one-on-one.
I started for the exit, knowing that Jude would follow me and that, eventually, Free would follow Jude. But I couldn’t help looking back over my shoulder. Gabriel was no longer hidden from view. He was doing a good job of acting like the contents of a nearby bookshelf had commanded his attention, but from this angle, I could see the way his dark eyes stared through a gap in the shelf.
At story time.
At the kids.
After the library, we headed back to the house. Dinnertime came and went, and there was still no word from Cady. Jude and Free had uncovered a treasure trove of old board games and were currently trying to play three at once, but I didn’t feel like playing.
Restlessness clawed at me. I’d never been the biggest or the strongest or smart in the way that tests captured, but I had a finely developed sense of when to fight and when to turn tail and run, and this time, I’d given up too soon.
I should have been out there looking for Bella.
When staying inside became impossible, I roamed. Pacing the Bennett land, I found two other houses inside the property line: one a cottage, the other closer to a shack. Burying myself in the woods near the latter, I sat with my legs stretched out along the base of a fallen tree. My right hand made its way to my ankle, feeling the coarse, scarred skin on my legs.
The monster almost had Girl.
The sky overhead might have looked clear, but a dull ache beneath the scars told me that there was weather headed in. If they don’t find Bella before the storm hits…
Trying to ignore the constant, gnawing churn inside me, I turned my attention to the book in my lap. A History of Hunter’s Point was, it turned out, less of a written history than a town scrapbook. It traced the town’s development from its founding in the 1850s through modern-day. By the time I made it to the 1920s, when Sierra Glades was established as a national park, I’d noticed that the same names appeared over and over again in Hunter’s Point history, across the generations. Rawlins. Turner. Ferris. Ashby. Wade. These were the founding families.
It wasn’t until I made it to the last few chapters that I started seeing people I recognized. Cady Bennett and John Ashby. Bales Bennett on horseback. Sheriff Bradley Rawlins, his first day on the job.
“You’re smarter than this.” A sharp voice broke my concentration, and I looked up. There, through the trees, I could make out two figures. Gabriel and Bales.
“No one saw me.” Gabriel stopped on the shack’s makeshift porch. He was avoiding eye contact with Bales.
“The librarian did.”
The sound of gentle padding alerted me to the fact that Silver had followed them out here. It was only a matter of time before she scented me, if she hadn’t already.
I willed her to stay right where she was.
“Penelope’s on my side,” Gabriel was saying, his voice low.
Bales gave Gabriel a hard look. “Which is exactly why she called me to tell me where you’d been.”
“She would have married my brother, if things had turned out differently. I doubt she’s going to go opening her mouth to the sheriff.”
I froze, all too aware of the sound of my own breathing. What won’t she open her mouth about? What don’t you want the sheriff to know?
Silver stayed by Cady’s father’s side for a moment longer, then began making her way to me. There was enough brush between the shack and my position that I wouldn’t be easy to spot, but Bales and Gabriel were as familiar with the outdoors as I was.
I considered retreating, but my body refused to move.
“You’re eighteen, Gabriel. Not a juvenile—not anymore.”
Gabriel’s head was bowed, but I knew, even from a distance, that it wasn’t a gesture of submission.
“It won’t happen again,” he said.
“Are you lying to me, or to yourself?”
Silver butted my hand with her head. I curled my fingers silently into her fur, warm and steady beneath my touch.
“You’re one to talk about lying,” Gabriel muttered. “Have you told her yet? Your daughter?”
Silver chose that moment to lie down beside me. A twig snapped beneath her. Bales turned toward the forest. I pressed my body to the ground. Bales Bennett’s eyes never found mine, but I couldn’t shake the feeling, as he turned back to Gabriel, that the old man knew I was there.
That feeling was confirmed when Gabriel took refuge inside the shack, and Bales let out a low whistle. Silver padded toward him, and he bent down to her level. “Care to show me what you found?” he murmured.
I could have run, could have melted into the forest, but I didn’t.
“I ought to say a thing or two about eavesdroppers.” Bales came to stand in front of me, as Silver resumed her position at my side. His boots were flecked with mud. “But I’m guessing you were out here first, so maybe I should apologize for intruding on your quiet instead.”
I wondered how different his tone would be if he knew that this wasn’t the first time I’d listened in on one of his conversations.
“I saw Gabriel today. At the library.” My mouth went dry around those words.
Bales settled down beside me, his back up against the tree trunk, same as mine. “And what were you doing at the library?”
He’d left space between us—enough that I could breathe and enough that not a single muscle in my neck tightened at the question.
Asking the librarian to give us copies of police reports. I wasn’t about to offer up that explanation, so instead, I held out the book.
Bales raised an eyebrow. “And the supply store?” he asked. I must have looked surprised, because he elaborated. “Small town.”
“Cady never said we couldn’t explore.”
The edges of the old man’s lips curved ever so slightly. “Did I say you couldn’t?”
He hadn’t. Nothing he’d said to me so far had sounded even remotely like an order.
“If you take after my daughter as much as I think you do, I’d be a fool to try to tell you what you can and cannot do.”
If anyone else had said those words, I would have sat there in silence, but I could see Cady in her father as easily as he could see her in me.
“Are you?” I asked him. “A fool?”
Bales chuckled and studied the backs of his hands, the skin worn by age and exposure. “I can be, when it’s worth the cost.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.
“What you overheard, with Gabriel—it’s nothing you need to concern yourself with.” Bales managed to sound like he hadn’t just changed the subject. “And it’s not something he’d thank you for overhearing.”
I know. I didn’t say that out loud. Instead, I opted for a different truth. “Jude, Free, and I ran into the sheriff at the supply store.” I addressed the words to the back of my hands. “He said some things. About Gabriel.”
The silence Bales offered in return didn’t feel pointed. It felt like breathing room.
“The sheriff,” I continued after a long pause, “told me to ask you about how you and Gabriel met.”
If that statement took Bales off guard, he gave no sign of it that I could see. “That a question?” he asked.
Was it?
The night before, Gabriel had said that he wasn’t the trustworthy type. But today, he’d knelt next to me in the cave. He hadn’t tried to pry the radio from my hand. He’d fed me the words to say, until I could speak on my own.
“No,” I found myself telling Bales. “That wasn’t a question.”
I wanted answers, but not from him.
“I would have liked to have known you,” Bales commented, his eyes fixed on the horizon. “When you were young.”
As seconds stretched into minutes, I expected Bales to get up and leave, but he didn’t. As the sun set, and the wind began to whip, Cady’s father kept his eyes locked on the Glades.
“You going to ask me what Gabriel meant when he said I was lying to Cady?”
I wasn’t sure how long we’d sat in silence when that question finally broke it. “Would you tell me?”
Bales didn’t answer.
“Why bring Cady back here?” I asked, climbing to my feet. “Why this search?”
I wasn’t sure I’d get an answer. I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d asked.
“Because,” Bales replied gruffly, closing his eyes, “it’s not the things you can’t find that haunt you. It’s when you choose not to look.”
What Bales had said nipped, needle-sharp, at the edges of my mind. The last thing I wanted to do was surround myself with walls, but when night fell and the storm rolled in off the mountain, I forced myself to take refuge inside.
It’s not the things you can’t find that haunt you. Bales hadn’t been talking about me. I knew that, but as the hours wore on, it became harder and harder for me to think of anything else. It’s when you choose not to look.
I’d stopped searching for Bella. I’d pulled back. And, a voice deep inside me whispered, I’d never looked for answers about my own past—the nightmares, the woods, how I’d survived, why there had been no family to claim me.…
The front door creaked open, snapping me out of it. The world came instantly into focus. There was a mug of hot chocolate sitting on the floor beside me, ringed in a confetti heart—clearly, a present from Jude. He wasn’t the one who’d opened the front door, though.
Cady was.
“You got somewhere to stay?” I heard her ask gruffly.
“I imagine I can rustle something up.”
I couldn’t see Mac, but I recognized his voice. For a moment, I was back in the cave, lying flat on my stomach opposite Saskia, trusting him to do no harm—to her, to me.
“You are not sleeping in your car.” There was no give whatsoever in Cady’s voice. “Or the barn.” She stalked into the house, banged open a linen closet, and unceremoniously shoved a bundle of blankets in Mac’s general direction. He stepped into the house, and a moment later, his gaze fell on me.
I’d been sitting with my feet flat on the ground and my knees in the air, my weight braced against my palms in what Cady referred to as my “ready position.”
Ready to jump to my feet.
Ready to skitter backward.
Ready to fight.
“Waiting up to see if I made it home by curfew?” Cady asked me.
I shrugged. “Something like that.”
She squatted down opposite me and nodded toward the mug of hot chocolate. “I’m guessing the confetti wasn’t your idea.”
I snorted and shifted my weight, lowering my knees. She held out a hand, and when I took it, she stood and pulled me to my feet. The motion was utterly familiar.
It wasn’t as comforting as usual.
It’s not the things you can’t find that haunt you. It’s when you choose not to look. I hadn’t chosen to step back from this search.
Cady bent to pick up the hot chocolate Jude had left me. “It’s cold,” she commented.
“It’s late,” I shot back. “Bella?”
I’d stopped looking because Cady had made me stop looking. The least she could do was give me an update.
“We’ll regroup once the storm passes.” Cady paused, but she seemed to sense that stopping there wasn’t an option. “We traced Bella’s scent out of the cave system and into the valley before we lost the trail again. Whoever took her knows the mountain better than I do.”
The implication of that was clear. “The person who took Bella is local,” I said.
Mac saved Cady from having to reply. “The rangers are coordinating with the FBI and talking to the family to figure out who might have had access and motive.”
Bella’s kidnapper knows the mountain. The storm is washing away trace evidence as we speak.
“Saskia and I could go back out tomorrow.” I took a step toward Cady. “We’re fresh, and you need the numbers. When the storm passes—”
“When the storm passes, I’ll be rested.” Cady didn’t let me finish. “So will Mac. So will our K9s. I know you want to help, Kira, but the answer is no.”
It’s not the things you can’t find that haunt you. I didn’t want to feel like I’d been backed into a corner, but what Cady was asking of me wasn’t fair. Leaving me here, tying my hands, treating me like a child—
“It was my life and my choice,” I said softly. “That’s what you told Bales.” I should have stopped there. “You told him that Ash was worth it to you. This is my life, and my choice, Cady, and Bella—”
“Kira,” Mac cut in. “You do not want to go there.”
Cady whirled on him. “Don’t tell my daughter what to do.”
I heard the pain in her voice—worse than a yelp or a whine or a mewl. I knew that Mac wasn’t the one who’d hurt her. He wasn’t the one who’d lashed out.
“Cady,” I started to say, my mouth dry.
“Upstairs.” Cady stared at and into me. “We’ll finish this discussion upstairs.”
* * *
I waited for Cady in her room. When she came in, she was still holding the mug of hot chocolate. After a moment, she sat down on the end of the bed and held the mug out to me. “I heated it up.”
She wasn’t angry. I wasn’t sure why I’d expected her to be. Even when I was young, even when I’d lashed out physically, even when I’d drawn blood—all she’d ever done was be there.
I’d hurt her. She wouldn’t hurt me.
“Cady, I shouldn’t have—”
“You hate inaction.” Cady reached out and ran her free hand over my hair, no muss, no fuss, no frills in her tone. “You look at Bella, and you see yourself. You want to help. Taking a step back is killing you. I get that, Kira. But the answer is still no.”
She held out the hot chocolate again, and I took it. I wasn’t in the mood for something sweet, but I needed the warmth. I needed to take what she was giving me.
“I shouldn’t have brought up…” I stared down into the dark liquid, unable to say the name Ash. “I’m supposed to be on your side. I’m supposed to protect you.”
“No,” Cady countered. “I’m supposed to protect you. You’re supposed to rebel and think I’m a totally lame adult who just doesn’t understand and might also be the densest person on the planet.”
I snorted into my hot chocolate.
Cady measured her next words. “Coming back here hasn’t been easy for me.” She paused. “You and Jude haven’t asked about why I left. About why I don’t speak to my father.”
I’d brought up Ash. I’d made her think she had to do this. “We don’t have to talk about—” I started to say, but Cady spoke over me.
“His name was John Ashby.” She managed a slight smile. “Though I suspect the three of you have probably sorted that out.”
Cady didn’t owe me this. If anyone had a right to ask her about Ash, it was Jude.
“We grew up together. Like you and Jude and Free. We were a team.”
Given what I already knew, I suspected that team wasn’t just another word for family.
“Military search and rescue?” I asked.
My knowledge took Cady momentarily off guard. “Small town,” she muttered. Then she corrected me, “Not military. More like military-adjacent.” She pressed her lips together for several seconds. They were chapped, pale. The search had taken a physical toll.
I was the reason she wasn’t resting.
“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me, Cady. I don’t need to know what happened.”
“You wouldn’t have brought it up if you didn’t.” She rubbed the thumb on her left hand over the fingers on her right. “The team was called down to South America.” The story came in pieces and spurts. “The job was in cartel territory. Four of us went into the jungle. Only three of us came out.”
The Lovely and the Lost Page 10