The Lovely and the Lost

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  What could Gabriel possibly know about Bella’s kidnapper? I thought about the maps on his walls, the police scanner. I thought about the way he’d left the crime scene yesterday before the sheriff had arrived.

  “What do you say?” the sheriff asked me flatly. “Would you care to join us down at the station?”

  That was a threat, an attempt to control me. I could feel Girl inside me, the pressure in my head building as I kept a rein on the desire to let her out.

  Jude shot me a look that I clearly interpreted to mean For the love of all things good and holy, do not go down to the station.

  I tamped down my instincts and shot Jude a look that I hoped communicated something along the lines of Find Ness or Bales. I wanted to be out there, searching for Bella, but I also knew, deep in the pit of my stomach, that I couldn’t leave Gabriel with Sheriff Rawlins.

  Gabriel’s stepfather didn’t get to control me. He didn’t get to haul Gabriel off alone. Pushing down the roar of the forest, I responded the way I thought Cady would have, if someone had tried to strong-arm her.

  I held out my wrists and met the sheriff’s gaze head-on. “Do you want to cuff me, too?”

  When we arrived at the station, they separated us. I’d expected that. I hadn’t expected the room they put me in to be so small. The longer I sat there, waiting for the sheriff, the closer the walls on all sides seemed.

  I can do this. I’d come with Gabriel because there was strength in numbers. Confined space. Stale air. Awareness of the lack of windows pulsated through me. I set my jaw and stared straight ahead. Free and Jude wouldn’t leave me—or Gabriel—here for long.

  The door to the interrogation room opened. I tracked the sound of footsteps coming toward the table. The sheriff sat down across from me.

  Confined space. Stale air. Predator. I thought of my encounter with the mountain lion the day before. If I could handle that, I could handle this.

  “I’ll be straight with you, Kira.” The sheriff paused, waiting for a response—not a verbal one, but a shift in my position, a blink of my eyes. “We know that the person who took Bella has a high degree of familiarity with Sierra Glades National Park, particularly, though not exclusively, the mountains. Your foster mother and Mackinnon Wade were tracking Bella and her kidnapper when the trail brought them to that clearing—and those bodies. At a minimum, Bella and her kidnapper stopped there. The FBI’s profilers believe it’s more than that—they believe the person who took Bella is also the person responsible for the grave site. That person is almost certainly local, and yesterday’s discovery suggests that he or she may have been using the park as their own personal hunting grounds for four to five years.” The sheriff tilted his head to the right, his eyes sharp. “What has Gabriel told you about his brother?”

  I hadn’t seen that question coming. I tried not to let that matter. “I know that Gabriel’s brother went missing four years ago.”

  The sheriff laid his hands flat on the table between us. It was a casual gesture that didn’t feel casual at all. “We’re still waiting on forensic analysis and full autopsies,” he said, his knuckles rising slightly off the table, “but I suspect they’ll date the oldest body to the summer of Andrés Cortez’s disappearance.”

  My brain latched onto certain words. Body first, then Andrés.

  “Now, maybe one of those bodies belongs to Andrés Cortez,” the sheriff allowed, “but between you and me, I doubt it. More important, Gabriel doubts it.”

  I found the will and ability to reply. “What are you talking about?”

  “Andrés Cortez was an incredible tracker.” The sheriff shifted his weight back in his chair, but somehow, the space between us seemed to shrink. “Gabriel’s brother was downright gifted at wilderness survival, and he worked as a guide on that mountain from the time he was a boy. Do you understand what I’m telling you?” He rapped the table, then spread his fingers flat again. “Somebody took Bella. Somebody killed the people we found yesterday, and I think that person has been living off the grid in the Sierra Glades for years.”

  The sheriff shifted his weight again—forward, this time. “When you first joined the search, did Gabriel ask you about your progress? Did he pump you for information? Do you have any reason to believe that he knew of the cave’s existence? Does he think Andrés is alive?”

  Each question made it a little harder for me to breathe. The table separating my body from the sheriff’s wasn’t big enough. The room was getting smaller.

  “Before Andrés disappeared, he purchased a great deal of wilderness equipment.” The intensity in the sheriff’s voice didn’t match the odd almost-smile on his face. “Enough to spend at least a year out there, trekking the glades.”

  A year. I knew that at a certain point, a person stopped needing store-bought supplies to survive. If what Sheriff Rawlins was saying was true, Gabriel’s brother could still be out there, and if he had spent that long in the wilderness, alone, by choice—he might not be in his right mind.

  “You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this, Kira. You’re just a kid. You’re not even a local, but for some reason, you seem to want to protect Gabriel. That’s interesting to me. Gabriel doesn’t have many friends. He’s too volatile. You might even say he’s aggressive.”

  The sheriff was a hypocrite. He wanted me to believe that Gabriel was the one who was out of control.

  “Loyalty can be a wonderful trait, until it’s misplaced.” The sheriff stared at me. “Misplaced loyalty can be very dangerous.”

  The emphasis he placed on the word dangerous triggered something inside me. My adrenaline surged. I tried to tell myself that there was no real threat. Confined space. Stale air. Man wants to hurt Girl. I cut that thought off at the knees. It was all I could do not to lunge at him.

  “All I need you to do is tell me what Gabriel has been up to for the past twenty-four hours.” The sheriff smiled, like he’d already won.

  Breathe in. Breathe out. Gabriel hadn’t said anything about suspecting his brother. He’d gone back out to the caves, but he’d just been looking for the pathway through the mountain.

  Hadn’t he?

  Even if he had been looking for his brother, that was because he’d spent years looking for Andrés. Not because he believed Andrés was the one who had taken Bella.

  Right? I kept breathing. In and out.

  The sheriff lifted his hand. I almost flinched, almost lunged, but he wasn’t reaching for me. He pulled a photograph out of a thick manila envelope.

  The stone formation, half-buried in front of the hash-marked tree.

  “Why are you showing me this?” I asked.

  The sheriff’s teeth flashed—almost, but not quite a smile. “I’m showing you what I need to show you to remind you that I am not the enemy here, Kira.” He paused. “Do you recognize this?” The sheriff tapped the photograph. He waited until he saw a spark of recognition in my eyes before continuing. “Gabriel did.” He pulled out a second picture—smaller stones, buried in a similar formation near some kind of fort. “The Circle for the Lost.”

  The sheriff’s voice was soft now. He wants me to lean forward to hear him, I thought. He wants me to let my guard down. Maybe that was paranoia, and maybe I was right. Either way, I didn’t move.

  “The Circle is an old Hunter’s Point tradition, dating back to the town’s founding when winters were long and some of the people who went off to explore the surrounding terrain were never seen or heard from again.” The sheriff let his index finger trail the two nearly identical stone circles. “Think of it as halfway between a grave marker and a prayer.”

  Think. As long as I was thinking, I was in control. Gabriel knelt next to the stone circle, I thought. He’d said it wasn’t a natural formation, but that was all.

  “Gabriel and Andrés built this Circle,” the sheriff said, tapping two fingers against the picture with the fort. “Their mother was a Turner before she married Daniel Cortez, and the Turners are one of five founding families, t
he very people most likely to remember—and keep—a tradition as archaic as this one.”

  Founding families. I thought about the book the librarian had given me. I tried to keep thinking, but an unsettled feeling slithered through my gut. Why didn’t Gabriel say something? Why pretend he had no idea what the Circle was?

  The sheriff slammed the folder shut, hard enough to shake the table. I flinched. Was he trying to scare me? Maybe he’d expected me to say something. Maybe I’d waited too long to reply.

  This room was too small.

  The door was shut.

  I felt a change in his demeanor, like the rattle on a snake, sending warning vibrations in the air. An instant later, all trace of tension on the sheriff’s face was gone, like I’d imagined it, like he’d never lost his temper.

  “What were you doing in Alden yesterday?” The question was reasonable, and so, his manner implied, was the man.

  Answer. Answer, and he won’t hurt you. Answer, and he’ll leave you alone.

  “We heard there was a development in the search for Bella.”

  “Who heard?” the sheriff prodded. “You?”

  No. Gabriel was the one with the police scanner. He was the one who’d decided to go—the rest of us had tagged along for the ride.

  “I am not your enemy here,” the sheriff told me.

  The muscles in the back of my neck tightened, one by one. He’d scared me. He’d tried to scare me. “You’re not my friend.”

  The sheriff flipped open a second folder. There was a photograph on top: a filthy child crouched in the corner of a hospital room, her hair in knots, her skin caked with mud and blood.

  If I’d been capable of moving, I would have squeezed my eyes shut.

  “You’ve had a difficult life.” The sheriff turned the picture around so that I was staring straight into the eyes of my younger self. “I understand that, Kira. I understand how you could look at someone like Gabriel and feel like you were looking at some dark, twisted version of yourself.”

  I couldn’t look away from the photo. If the sheriff had thought this would jar me into talking, he’d miscalculated.

  He’d shown me Girl.

  “How strong you must have been,” the sheriff murmured, “to survive.”

  Jaw hurts. I was grinding my teeth. Inside I was shaking. Outside, I was frozen. Everything hurts.

  “How naïve of Cady,” the sheriff continued gently, “to think that you could ever be anything but an animal.”

  No.

  “A dirty little animal. That’s what you are, isn’t it? If you weren’t, you’d want to help Bella. You’d want to help me.” He was standing. He was walking around to my side of the table. “I’m sure Gabriel has been filling your head with lies. He likes to talk, and he’s perceptive enough to use your…history to try for common ground.”

  “I’m not an animal.” My chair clattered to the floor. If I’d been in my right mind, I would have stood my ground. Instead, I skittered backward.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” The sheriff took one step toward me, then another. “I’ve given you no reason to be afraid of me.”

  Control. I had to stay in control. Breathe in. Breathe out. “I want to leave now. You can’t keep me here.”

  “I can if I’m concerned that you’re a threat to yourself or others.” He was within a few feet of me now. “It would be a shame to have to tell Cady that, despite all her work, you’re still what your mother made you.”

  “Cady. Is. My. Mother.” If I could form words, I could think them, think: He can’t hurt me. It’s just talk. He can’t do anything but talk.

  My back was up against the wall. The tangled mess of thoughts and images in my brain flashed in pace with my heart, racing, pounding.

  The sheriff turned and reached for the folder on the table—my file. The space that put between us let me breathe. A single breath—just one, then he pulled out a photograph of a woman with dark hair and blue eyes and features that looked altogether too much like my own.

  “Your real mother,” the sheriff clarified needlessly. He studied me. “You don’t recognize her. You don’t remember.”

  He was moving toward me again. There was nowhere left for me to go.

  “Haven’t you ever wondered? Why you survived? How a child could live like an animal, lost in the wild for weeks?” He lowered his voice to a bone-shuddering hum. “Your biological mother was some kind of conspiracy nut. She lived off the grid. No one even knew she had a child, and that meant that she could do whatever she wanted to you.” He was too close to me—and coming closer.

  Can’t think. Can’t breathe. There was a roar in my ears, and a rush of emotion—not mine.

  Girl’s.

  “The police described the abuse as intermittent but severe. They think you used to take refuge in the forest to escape.”

  No. He wouldn’t stop advancing. My body was a live wire, every nerve ending screaming. Man wants to hurt Girl.

  “With trauma like that in your background, you must see the world as such a hostile place.”

  Man is right on top of Girl. Man reaches—

  The motion flipped a switch inside of me. Like a rubber band stretched past its limit, something inside me snapped. I stopped fighting. I stopped trying.

  I lunged.

  No control, no thoughts, no words.

  My hands swiped air. Strong arms clamped around me. My eyes darted to the door—it was open. I was so far gone that I almost didn’t recognize Bales as he pulled me away from the sheriff. I fought the old man, bucking against his hold, arching my back, twisting my neck, my teeth going for his—

  “You’ll be wanting to take a step back, Sheriff.”

  Even with my mind a twisted mess of images and feelings and hurt, I could hear the lethal note in Bales Bennett’s tone.

  The sheriff’s voice broke through the red haze next. “I was just talking to her, and she went feral. I should arrest her for assaulting an officer.”

  He was lying. He was a threat, and he was lying, and I would…

  Bales tightened his hold, forcing me to still. “Kira didn’t assault anyone.” He kept his tone low. “She’s going to breathe and calm down, and the two of us are going to walk out of here.”

  Breathe. Calm down. Breathe.

  Bales whispered into the back of my head, “Jude said that I should offer you confetti. He also said that if the confetti didn’t work, I should up my game and bribe you with glitter.”

  Jude. I recognized the name and clung on for dear life. Jude. Free. Cady. Me.

  Kira. I’m Kira.

  “Your granddaughter is a very disturbed child.” The sheriff shook his head sadly. “What Cady’s tried to do for her is admirable, really, but—”

  One second, Bales was restraining me, and the next, he’d let loose of me and had the sheriff by the throat. Bales slammed him against the wall, like the sheriff weighed no more than a rag doll.

  “I’ll have you arrested,” the sheriff wheezed.

  “I’m dying.” Bales offered the sheriff a glittering smile, his knuckles whitening as his hand tightened around his target’s neck. “I’ve got weeks, maybe months to live.”

  On one level, I was surprised Bales had volunteered that information in my presence. But on another, more immediate level, I was entranced by the superhuman control with which Bales held his prey in place. Long seconds ticked by as the sheriff’s fingers scraped futilely against the vise on his neck. With no warning, Bales dropped his hold. The sheriff wheezed, and Bales took a single step backward.

  “Funny thing about dying,” Bales said, his voice contemplative. “You don’t have much to lose.” He let his hands fall to his sides, his palms facing outward. “Go ahead and arrest me. I’d love to hear you telling a judge that you were brutalized by a frail, dying old man.”

  I thought of the sheriff, puffing himself up to seem bigger—and then I realized that I could think again. Bales had attacked, so I didn’t have to. But thinking was a double-ed
ged sword.

  My eyes went to the folder still lying open on the table. My picture was still visible. So was hers. Long dark hair. Eyes like mine.

  “Gabriel’s outside,” Bales told me. “It was everything I could do to keep him from coming after you. I’d take it as a kindness if you could go tell him you’re in one piece.”

  A kindness? I thought incredulously. If Bales hadn’t come into this room, there was no telling what I would have done. I’d lost control, and I knew from experience that for weeks—maybe even months—I’d be standing right on the verge of losing it again.

  An animal. A dirty little animal. I swallowed. I reached and closed my hand around the file folder. I picked it up, and step-by-step, I made my way toward the door.

  “The next time you come after my family?” I heard Bales tell the sheriff behind me, his voice low. “I’ll take advantage of the fact that I’m dying and make it a point to take you with me when I go.”

  Bales led the way out of the sheriff’s office. Gabriel was standing on the street outside. He wasn’t alone.

  The librarian who’d caught Jude’s fancy was standing beside him. When she saw Bales and me, she laid a hand lightly on Gabriel’s shoulder, then took her leave.

  “Checking up on you?” Bales asked.

  Gabriel shrugged. “Apparently, I need checking up on.” As if to prove the point, he brandished his wrists in my direction. “Look,” he said. “No cuffs.”

  Was he really joking around right now?

  “I’ll get the truck.” Bales raised an eyebrow at the two of us. “Try not to kill each other before I get back.”

  Moments later, Gabriel and I were alone. His smirk wavered ever so slightly. “I didn’t ask you to come with me.”