“It can’t be easy,” Free said overhead. “Looking and looking for something you know you’ll never find.”
Something about her tone made me wonder if there was more to that statement than I could hear. I glanced toward Jude and he elaborated.
“Things you know you’ll never find,” he translated, “like the identity of one’s father, a way to be normal, or a family who cares when you hang-glide off the neighbor’s roof.”
Free held a hand to her heart. “Ouch. In case you didn’t pick up on it, K, the bit about being normal was for you.”
Jude was right. We were all looking for something. I’d been too focused on myself—and on the files and on Gabriel—to have thought about sharing what I’d learned about Ash. Now that I was thinking about it, I wasn’t sure if it was my place to tell him that Cady had been pregnant when Ash had disappeared.
Jude leapt abruptly to a standing position and bounded back and forth on the balls of his feet until he’d captured NATO’s full and undivided attention.
Play.
“We should give you something that you actually can find, boy.” Jude turned back to Free and me, like he’d never uttered the word father at all. “What say you, ladies? Up for a little Extreme Hide-and-Seek?”
Free hid first. We ordered Duchess and Saskia to stay by the tree and let NATO loose. Sass and Her Ladyship were not always the best of friends, but I was fairly certain they wouldn’t get into it with each other today.
“Find her,” Jude told NATO.
Our boy practically shook with glee. This time, when he followed the trail, he’d find something. We’d make sure of it. As the K9 worked, nose to the ground, Jude and I fell into silence.
“So,” Jude said finally, drumming his fingertips absentmindedly against the side of his leg. “Gabriel Cortez. Intriguing fellow.” When I didn’t reply, he elaborated. “Might I be sensing some sexual tension?”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Just tension, then,” Jude said quickly. “Right-o.”
NATO took a sharp right and began picking up speed. Jude and I hung back but picked up our pace as well.
“You have to be wondering,” I said, turning the tables on Jude and stealing a look at him out of the corner of my eye. “About Cady’s past. About what it means for you.”
Jude gave me a long, considering look. “I asked Mom about my father once.” He paused. “Just once. It was right before you came to live with us. I had formed theories, you see, mostly involving astronauts, but also the occasional space alien taking on humanoid form.”
I could see a teeny tiny Jude saying exactly that.
“She told me that she’d loved my father, and that he’d loved her, and that she knew for a fact that he would have loved me. And that was it. She neither confirmed nor denied his astronaut status, but that night, when I went to get a glass of water from the kitchen, I saw her. She was crying—not sobbing, exactly. It was more like her eyes were malfunctioning—leaking. I remember thinking that the leak might never stop.”
Even as a child, Jude would have eaten his own hand to keep from seeing Cady like that again. He never asked for more than you could give.
“I’ve been keeping secrets from you.” The admission slipped across my lips.
“I know,” Jude replied airily.
That was all it took for the secrets to come pouring out. I told him about Gabriel’s maps and notes, about kidnapping and assault. I almost told him about the conversation I’d had with Cady the night before, but I hesitated. That might not be my secret to tell.
“I think Cady would answer your question now,” I said instead. “If you asked her who your father was.”
“And that,” Jude said, “is exactly why I won’t ask. She’d answer, but it would cost her. And for what?” He tweaked the end of my ponytail. “I have all the family I need.”
Up ahead, NATO dropped to his belly, pushing his head under an old log and letting out a joyful bark.
“Methinks he doth found something,” Jude said, wiggling his eyebrows. “Or rather, someone.”
“Get off of me,” Free said, shoving NATO gently as she pulled herself out from her hiding place. “You big, slobbery mess,” she crooned, pouncing on him as she made it to her feet. “You clever, clever boy.”
Unlike Saskia, NATO wasn’t trained to loop back. He worked primarily on a lead, and Jude was never far behind, so he just kept barking until Jude and I caught up.
“Well done, my good man!” Jude said, adopting a very poor British accent. NATO leapt up to press his front paws to Jude’s thighs, to which Jude replied, almost immediately, “Shall we waltz?”
The sight of Jude taking NATO’s paws in hand and beginning the world’s most awkward ballroom dance jarred a laugh out of me. Eventually, Jude let go of NATO’s paws and whirled gracefully back to Free and me. “Who’s next?”
“For dancing?” I asked, wrinkling my nose. “Or Extreme Hide-and-Seek?”
Jude kept right on waltzing. “Dealer’s choice!”
“I’ll double back for Duchess.” Free brushed the dirt off her jeans, very deliberately not mentioning dancing at all. “She could use some cheering up, too. You up for hiding this round, K?”
We’d played this game a million times before. At one point, Cady had banned it, because Extreme Hide-and-Seek had gotten a little too extreme. Duct tape, rappelling equipment, and paintball guns were now permanently outlawed from game play.
“Cut Saskia loose if she’s getting antsy,” I told the others. “And let Duchess know she can bring it on.” I hesitated, then nudged Jude in the side. “You can tell Free what I told you,” I said softly. “About Gabriel.”
He nudged me back, and a split second later, I took off running. The three of us needed this as much as the dogs did. The longer and faster I ran, the easier it was to push the events of the past couple of days out of my mind. I didn’t have to think about what I’d seen in Gabriel’s cabin. I didn’t have to think about missing persons reports, or hold the image of that flyer with Bella Anthony’s picture in my mind.
I didn’t have to think about the blanket.
I didn’t have to think about Girl.
I just ran. I dodged through the trees. I pulled myself up into one, allowing the branches to hide my body from the naked eye. I sat there, and I waited, freer than I’d felt in days.
And then I caught sight of another figure moving through the forest—lean and lithe.
So much for not thinking about Gabriel Cortez.
I willed myself to stay where I was. Gabriel passed under my tree, and I realized that he was wearing a pack and carrying a flashlight.
It’s still light outside. Without even thinking about it, I dropped down from the tree, landing silently in a crouch. I watched Gabriel hop the fence at the back of the property.
I watched him hang a right.
Toward the mountain.
I followed Gabriel, hanging back far enough that he couldn’t sense my presence. I should have been thinking about Jude and Free and the game I’d left behind. But promises and worry and logic—those were just words. They were abstract. Tracking, trailing, stalking, waiting—those were now. I might have started off curious about where Gabriel was going and why, but the act of following him pushed all conscious thought to the back of my head. There was nothing but the hum of anticipation and my own silent, liquid movement through the brush—until we hit the base of the mountain.
I stopped. Gabriel started to climb.
I watched, camouflaged. We were on the near side of Bear Mountain, opposite the place where the copter had dropped us the day before. Soon, Gabriel stopped climbing. He contorted his body, and in the space between one blink and the next, he’d disappeared from sight.
The tracker in me said that no one ever really disappeared, and as I climbed, following the path he’d laid, I knew exactly what I was looking for.
An opening.
A cave.
Cady had said there was a w
hole system of underground caverns. Multiple entrances—or depending on your intention, multiple exits. My foster mother had estimated that it could take the rangers weeks to map them all. My first thought, when I started thinking again, was that it could take one person—one single-minded, driven person—years.
I almost missed the gap between one rock and the next, where Gabriel had vanished. The opening was small—smaller than the one I’d entered the day before.
Fortunately, this time, there wasn’t a drop.
I squeezed through. What little light followed me told me that it was going to get very dark very quickly, and unlike Gabriel, I hadn’t brought a flashlight. I was far enough behind that I couldn’t even tell, for certain, which way he’d gone.
What are you doing, Gabriel? The question kept me from turning back. Just how well do you know these caves?
I braced my right hand against the wall, steadying myself as I crossed slowly into darkness.
This was probably a bad idea. I was following someone who’d been accused of kidnapping and assault, someone who’d lied to me the day before and was behaving suspiciously now. I was perfectly aware of those facts, but I also knew that Gabriel had been at the Bennett house when we’d arrived. I knew that he’d made another appearance there that night, that he’d been on the property when I’d woken up the next morning, that he’d spent hours that day searching alongside me.
If he’d been the one to stash Bella in the cave, he wouldn’t have had time to move her.
Would he? That thought batted at me as my surroundings went from dark to pitch-black to eerie, velvety nothingness. Up ahead, I heard something. As I inched along the wall and slowly made my way around the bend, the uncompromising darkness began to recede.
Within minutes, I saw it. Light.
I’d found Gabriel. He’d left his flashlight on the cave floor, pointed upward, illuminating his climb. By the time I spotted the outline of his form, he was already ten or fifteen feet overhead.
I had no idea how Gabriel was creeping his way up the cave wall—or why—but as I watched, he reached some kind of landing and pulled himself onto it, stomach first. He inched forward, then disappeared.
Again.
This time, I didn’t follow. Despite what Cady thought, I did know my own limitations. Specifically, I knew that I couldn’t make that climb. I hadn’t grown up on a mountain.
I hadn’t had to fight for survival here.
Listening for any indication that Gabriel was on the verge of returning, I heard nothing but a hollow echo and the distant sound of running water. I cocked my head to the side, closing my eyes and absorbing the sound.
When I opened my eyes again, they landed on the flashlight. The human part of my brain said that taking it would be wrong. Girl—buried deep in the recesses of my mind—said that Gabriel had left it.
You had to protect what was yours.
Kneeling down, I closed my fingers around the flashlight. I hesitated only a moment before I stood and did a 360, taking in my surroundings. I could feel the otherness of this place. Even with the light from the flashlight illuminating the space around me, my senses stayed on high alert. Unsure what I was doing—or why—I found myself moving toward the sound of the running water.
Drink. Girl thirsty—
I shook off the memory. I wasn’t dying of thirst. I just needed to know where I was, what this place was. The farther I went toward the sound of the water, the colder it got. I rounded another bend, the din of rushing water building. I’d expected a stream or possibly a continuation of the river we’d seen before. What I found wasn’t just water.
It was a waterfall.
The river rushed over the edge into a straight drop, crashing into razor-sharp rocks twenty feet below. I lost track of how long I stood there, watching the water descend into darkness, listening to its deafening roar.
Rumbling. Shaking. At first, I thought the jolt to my bones was nothing more than the power of the falls taking hold, but as my balance gave way, I realized that something was wrong.
The mountain was moving.
The tremor only lasted for a moment, but this close to the waterfall’s edge, I had to scramble for purchase. I backed away from the roar of the water, from the drop. A hand closed over my bicep.
Gabriel. I sensed him—smelled him—before I turned to face him head-on. His hold steadied me. A fraction of a second later, he dropped my arm, pulling his hand back like the act of touching me had burned him.
I wondered if he was thinking about the way I’d reacted the last time he’d grabbed me.
“Earthquake,” Gabriel commented casually. “You know, that thing where the ground shakes for a brief period of time, during which it is typically considered not good to be inside a mountain.”
I tried to get a read on his posture, his expression. My fight-or-flight instincts hadn’t kicked in when he’d touched me. Because he’d reached out to steady me?
“Far be it from me to state the obvious, but you took my flashlight.” Gabriel gave me an indecipherable look.
“I did.”
Gabriel arched an eyebrow. “Is this the part where I ask why you followed me here and committed petty larceny against my person?”
I got the distinct feeling that he wasn’t amused, even though he smiled like he was. I should have been on guard. When he asked me why I’d followed him, I shouldn’t have wanted to reply.
“Your brother disappeared four years ago,” I said. Facts were easier than answers. “You’ve been mapping out this mountain ever since. Yesterday, you told me that you’d spent a summer looking for these caves. You said you’d never found them.” My heart gave no signs of thundering in my chest. My breath didn’t come quickly. “You lied. Why?”
I braced myself for him to lash out, to go on the defensive, to demand to know how I knew about his brother.
Instead, he reached forward—and plucked the flashlight from my fingertips.
“I told you I wasn’t the trustworthy type.” He stared at me for a moment longer, then turned. “Come on.”
As we approached the entrance, I became acutely aware of the fact that the only light in the cave came from the flashlight in Gabriel’s hand. It wasn’t until we came face-to-face with a wall of rock that I processed the implication of that darkness.
“Rockslide.” I beat Gabriel to the observation. He placed his hand flat on the rocks blocking our exit, testing their stability. I assumed he was trying to calculate the odds that we could dig our way out.
“You know those movies where two people get caught in an elevator together at the worst possible time?” he asked.
It took me a moment to understand what he was saying: We were trapped. The earthquake must have triggered the slide. The opening hadn’t been that big to begin with.
I could feel an old, familiar sense of dread rising up inside me, like a whisper of smoke slithering its way up my spine. Trapped. Dark. Let me out. I’ll be good—
“If it’s any consolation, I have it on good authority that being trapped in a confined space with me is a fate at least marginally better than death.”
“I don’t need you to distract me,” I gritted out. I’d seen Jude and Free doing it often enough to recognize the technique.
“Of course you don’t. But for the record, if you find yourself needing to hit something, hit me.” He smiled. Or smirked. Or both. “After all, I lied to you, and if it weren’t for my sheer animal magnetism, you probably wouldn’t have followed me into the depths.”
“Shut up,” I said, but now I wanted to throw something at him, which was significantly more comfortable than allowing in the lurking memories.
“Shut up,” Gabriel countered, “or get you out of here?”
I didn’t waste any time with my reply. “Both.”
* * *
I couldn’t stop expecting my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but even with the flashlight, we couldn’t see more than three or four feet ahead. The air down here was damp, and my
heart beat a little harder and a little faster with every turn. The longer the two of us trekked toward what Gabriel insisted was an alternate way out of the mountain, the harder it was to stop from going over everything I knew—about Bella’s disappearance, about Gabriel’s brother and the other missing persons reports, about the research I’d seen on Gabriel’s wall.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Gabriel said, pausing to remove a canteen from his pack. “This would be an excellent place to ax-murder someone.” He took a swig of water before passing the canteen to me. “It occurs to me,” he continued, “that it’s also a horrible place to talk about ax-murdering.”
Given the circumstances, I suspected Gabriel was employing what Jude would have referred to as dark humor. I took a drink of the water. “Why would you need an ax?”
There was a long pause. “What I love about you is your ability to make a rhetorical question sound disturbingly not rhetorical at all.”
He handed me the flashlight. I took it, unsure why he was giving it to me.
“You’re not going to like this part.”
I processed that statement a moment before I steadied the flashlight and saw the opening. It was two feet in diameter, if that.
“This is the only other way out of the mountain,” Gabriel told me. “Or at least, the only one I’ve found.”
This. As in a tunnel so small that the only way through was on your stomach. The muscles in my throat clenched a moment before the wave of nausea hit me.
Trapped. Dark.
“You take the flashlight and go in first. I’ll follow.”
Bad things happen to bad little girls.
“Kira?”
The wisp of control I’d been holding on to snapped. “If I go first,” I said, the words forming in the back of my throat, “you’ll be behind me.”
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