The Lovely and the Lost

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  “The Andrés I knew wouldn’t have hurt anyone. He wouldn’t have taken that girl.” Gabriel gave me the answer I’d asked for earlier. I barely even heard it now. “But when we found Bella’s jacket in the cave…when we knew she wasn’t alone…”

  “Do you know where he’d take her?” I asked dully. “If he was the one, do you—”

  “I’d tell the FBI myself if I did.” Gabriel left it at that. He held my gaze for just a moment. I had the sense that if I’d been a normal person—if he had—he might have made physical contact. Instead, he inclined his head slightly.

  And then he was gone.

  Maybe he thought I wanted to be alone. Maybe this was what being given space felt like—space to mourn, to grieve.

  I couldn’t stay here. Silver was in the ground. I’d pushed Jude and Free away. I needed out.

  As I stared at the fresh dirt of Silver’s grave, I thought of the Circle for the Lost—halfway, the sheriff had said, between a grave marker and a prayer.

  I could go back to Alden, back to the clearing where we’d found the bodies, and try to pick up the search for Bella. But what good could I possibly do there? The place was still crawling with law enforcement. It was their job to identify the victims, to follow up on any physical evidence. Whatever scent path Bella and her kidnapper had laid, the police had almost certainly disturbed it.

  There’s nothing I can do.

  Cady had made a difference for me. Silver had made a difference for me. I’d spent years throwing everything I had into learning search and rescue, because if I could someday do the same for someone else, then maybe I could prove, even just to myself, that I was worth it.

  That I’d deserved to be saved.

  That I was good.

  My eyes stung as I turned and walked back toward the house, forcing myself to focus on the search, on Bella, on anything but Silver lying in a hole she’d never climb out of.

  This is what I knew: Bella’s kidnapper had taken her to a mass grave site. Was Bella meant to join those bodies? Had something gone wrong with the kidnapper’s plan? Or was the person who’d taken Bella just leading us all on a merry chase? If the sheriff had been telling the truth, the FBI believed that the kidnapper and the person who’d put those five bodies in the ground were one and the same. That meant that he or she had also probably erected the stone circle we’d found near the clearing. I had no idea what the hash marks on the tree stood for, what any of it meant to the kidnapper, but the sheriff had said that the Circle for the Lost was a Hunter’s Point tradition, dating back to the town’s founding.

  As it so happened, I had a copy of the town history.

  I flipped through page after page of A History of Hunter’s Point, looking for any trace of the Circle for the Lost. I found it in a set of pictures from 1922. Winter had come early that year. A group of a dozen young people—including a Ferris, a Turner, and a Rawlins—had left on what was supposed to be a months-long journey into the wilderness. It was doubtful they’d made it beyond Sorrow’s Pass.

  I hadn’t thought before about the pass’s name—or where it had come from—but as the pictures told the story of the explorers’ disappearance, the word sorrow stuck with me, right up until I saw a photograph of the adjacent valley.

  There, butting up against the riverbed, was a stone circle. Halfway between a grave marker and a prayer.

  “Sorrow’s Pass.” I looked from one picture to the next. “The valley. The river.”

  Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it meant nothing that I could see parallels—no matter how thin—between these pictures and the path our kidnapper had taken. There was nothing in the History about the caves, nothing about Alden or the clearing.

  But we’d lost—and found—Bella’s trail multiple times in the first forty-eight hours. At the river. At Sorrow’s Pass. In the valley.

  Tracking Bella and her abductor from one location to the next had proven futile, again and again. Whoever had taken her was too savvy, knew the park too well. The only thing I could think to do—had to do—was to stop following, stop tracking, and start figuring out where that person might be headed next.

  Andrés? I wondered. Someone else? Whoever it was, the person who’d taken Bella had a reason. The Circle, the hash marks on the tree, the disappearing and reappearing trail…

  I stood. Cady and the other searchers would have attempted to pick up Bella’s scent where they’d had it last. They’d be searching downriver. That made sense. It was the right call.

  But I wasn’t in a place to make the right call.

  I left a note for Jude and Free. I wasn’t sure where either one of them had gone, only that I’d chased them away. A note wasn’t much, but it was something.

  I wanted to leave them something.

  I borrowed the keys to the truck. And Saskia and I set off for the park—for the campsite where Bella’s family had been staying.

  Back to the start.

  Sass and I retraced our steps: along the river, through the woods, up into the base of the mountain. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Maybe, like some of the hikers who’d passed through Hunter’s Point over the years, I was looking to get lost.

  I hadn’t had a fresh scent to give Saskia, but my K9 pushed forward with uncompromising determination, as if knowing that I was looking for something was, in and of itself, enough.

  Instead of attempting to make our way up to the pass, sans helicopter, I doubled back to the river, the photograph from the History still fresh in my mind. Running water was useful if you were looking to evade trackers. It wasn’t foolproof, but if I had to venture a guess about how Bella’s abductor had managed zigzagging back and forth across the park, it was a good bet the river had played some role.

  Sorrow’s Pass is downriver from the campsite. Alden is downriver from Sorrow’s Pass.

  As Saskia and I made our way along the riverbank, the terrain grew rougher and the water picked up steam. If we wanted to cross to the other side, we’d need to do it soon.

  Why? a voice inside me insisted. What are you looking for, Kira? What could you possibly hope to find?

  I thought back to my dream, to the claustrophobic panic of being pinned to the ground and watching the dark-haired woman bury rock after rock, feeling like she was burying me.

  I don’t know.

  The only thing that I knew was that I couldn’t turn back. I’d brought a map with me, but even when I twisted away from the rushing river, unfolding the map and shielding it from the wind, it couldn’t tell me what I wanted to know.

  What happened to those people in 1922? Where did they disappear to? Where did they go?

  Maybe Gabriel—or Bales or the librarian who’d given me the book in the first place—could have told me if local legend held the answer. Maybe it didn’t matter—maybe none of this mattered. But there was nothing left to do but push on.

  Saskia darted in and out of the forest. The longer we forged on—the farther from civilization we went—the faster my K9 ran, her movements liquid-smooth and wild, like the day’s events had unleashed in her the opposite of what they’d loosed in me.

  No doubt. No hesitation. No pain.

  As if summoned by my thoughts, Sass barreled back out of the forest. I willed her to bark. I willed her to signal that she’d found something.

  But there was nothing to find.

  I’m not going to find Bella or her kidnapper. I was never going to find them. I tried to fight that admission, but lost. I’d wanted so badly to do something, to believe that I could do something, to make it so that doing something would somehow fix everything I’d broken.

  I was so caught up in wanting that—mourning even the possibility of it—that I almost missed the small stone circle. The landscape of the riverbank had changed since 1922. Time and nature had worn away at the rocks. Only the very edges stuck out of the dirt. I stepped into the Circle and turned, 360 degrees. Nearly a century before, someone in Hunter’s Point had erected this memorial.

  I�
��d expected that to mean something.

  I’d expected that to matter.

  But the Circle I’d found was barely a Circle at all.

  A wave of emotion rising up inside me, I squatted down, my fingernails digging at the dirt around the nearest stone. It’s not fair, I thought. Pain shot up through my hands as I dug faster and harder, one nail snapping and then another.

  Saskia barked. She didn’t like seeing me like this.

  I couldn’t stop.

  When the rock came free, I lifted it with two hands and stared at it, then hurled it into the river with everything I had.

  Saskia barked again, and I turned to her, as shredded inside as the skin on my battered hands. And then I took in her posture and she let out a third bark, sharp and crisp. Unmistakable.

  I whirled, scanning our surroundings, trying to figure out what she’d found. My gaze stopped on a tree, older and thicker around the base than any of the others. Etched into the trunk of that tree was a series of hash marks.

  Hundreds of them.

  Thousands.

  I made my way toward the tree, let my bleeding fingers trail over the hash marks before I could bring myself to believe that this was real. Bella’s kidnapper had been here.

  Sound. To my left. I turned on my heels. Willing my heart to hush in my chest, I prepared to bolt, but when the sound made its way to my ears a second time, I recognized it as human, young.

  Alive.

  Saskia lay down on her stomach and poked her nose under the brush. I knelt, blood rushing in my ears, and a pair of muddy brown eyes stared back at me.

  There, beneath a makeshift canopy made of dirt and wood, lying on her stomach, was the missing girl.

  “Bella?” I kept my voice soft and made no move to touch her.

  The little girl stared at me, her face smudged with dirt, her expression eerie and calm. “The angel said someone would come for me.”

  Her voice was high-pitched but coarse. Moving slowly and keeping my hands where she could see them, I withdrew a bottle of water from my pack. I opened it and set it on the ground in front of her.

  Seconds passed before she sat up, still hunched beneath the canopy’s branches. First one hand closed around the bottle, then the other. Her eyes never left mine as she lifted it to her mouth.

  “Slowly,” I told her, unsure how dehydrated she was.

  After a moment, she lowered the bottle, her hands still wrapped tightly around it.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked. So far, Bella had been calmer than I would have expected. I didn’t want to spook her, but I needed to know what I was dealing with.

  Her expression impossible to read, the child answered my question by sticking out her right leg. She pulled up the mud-caked pajama bottoms she was wearing and showed me a long scratch that ran the length of her shin. The wound looked clean, all things considered.

  It had already started to heal.

  “Anyplace else?” I asked her.

  Bella shook her head.

  I heard movement to my right a second before Saskia took up position in front of Bella. The combination of movement and sound reminded me that we had no way of knowing if Bella was alone out here.

  No way of knowing when the person who’d taken her would be back.

  “Bella,” I said carefully, when she didn’t shrink back from Saskia’s presence, “the person who took you—”

  “Took me?” Bella held the water bottle closer. “No one took me.” For the first time since we’d found her, she smiled. “My angel saved me.”

  “Saved you,” I repeated. Someone had hauled Bella all over this mountain. Someone had built the rudimentary shelter she was sitting under now.

  “Mommy and Daddy said I wasn’t supposed to wander off.” Bella looked down, pulling her legs tight to her chest. “I wasn’t supposed to, but I did.”

  She shivered. I knew the chilling shadow of memory when I saw it. Without much thought, I pulled closer to her.

  “I wanted to see the river.” Bella squeezed her eyes shut. “The side was slick. It didn’t look slick.…”

  “You’re okay,” I murmured. “You got out.” I found myself thinking back to her earlier claim. “The person who took you—”

  “My angel.”

  “Your angel…saved you.” I brought my hand very close to Bella’s but left it to her to close the distance. “You fell in the river, and this…angel…pulled you out.”

  “I was so cold.” Bella opened her eyes, but I knew instinctively that she couldn’t see me. She was seeing something else. “The angel wrapped me in a blanket. The angel built a fire.”

  I had no doubts that Bella’s “angel” was a person—just like I had no doubts that the person in question had been dodging the authorities for days.

  “This angel,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. “Why didn’t they bring you back to camp?”

  “Mommy and Daddy left.” Bella’s voice was matter-of-fact. “I was bad, and they left, and the angel promised to take care of me until they got back.”

  Whoever had pulled Bella from the river had told her that her parents were gone. They’d let her believe it was her fault. A spark of rage caught fire inside me, but I smothered it, lest Bella see even a hint of anger on my face.

  “The angel promised to take care of me,” Bella repeated softly. “And I promised to help the angel.”

  Those words sent a chill down my spine. “Help?” I repeated. “Help with what?”

  Bella didn’t answer.

  “Your angel,” I said, suddenly on high alert. “Are they close by? Are they coming back?”

  Still no answer from Bella.

  “Can you tell me what the angel looks like?” I knew, even before I asked the question, that Bella wouldn’t answer this, either. The tiny hand that had been creeping toward mine pulled back, her fingers curling inward.

  Don’t push. Don’t scare her. Don’t force her to talk.

  I shifted backward, giving her space, even as my mind began to race. I had to get her out of here. I had to get her home.

  I wished—desperately—that Cady were here in my place. I had enough trouble dealing with my own emotions. Dealing with a child’s felt like juggling glass. “Guess what?” I said, hoping that I hadn’t spooked her past the point of reply.

  After a long moment, Bella whispered, “What?”

  I let out a breath. “Mommy and Daddy are back now,” I said softly. “They’re waiting for you, and, Bella?” My voice caught in my throat. “They’re going to be so happy to see you.”

  Bella had a family. She had people who loved her. She had something to go home to. Concentrating on that—and ignoring the lump in my throat—I took my cell phone out of my pack. No service. I hadn’t really expected that there would be. I went for the radio next and dialed it in to the station the rangers used.

  “Can anyone hear me?” I put the words out into the ether but got nothing but static in response. “Come in.” I heard the faintest hint of something on the other end of the line. “Come in. This is Kira Bennett. I found Bella. I repeat, I found Bella. Our coordinates are…” As I gave them our coordinates, I stood, appraising our surroundings, all too aware of the fact that Bella’s kidnapper could—and probably would—return.

  “Did you get those coordinates?” I waited for a response and got none. “Do you read me? Come in.” I repeated myself several times, then took my fingers off the call button but didn’t stop speaking. “Please…” I found myself saying, “Cady…come in.”

  Find me. Bring me home.

  I ground my teeth together and swallowed. I hadn’t cried when I’d buried Silver. I couldn’t afford to lose it now. If I couldn’t be certain that help was coming, I’d have to break protocol and bring Bella in myself. I was fairly certain that she wasn’t injured—at least not the type of injury that would prevent me from moving her—and the longer we stayed here, the greater the chances that Bella’s angel would be back.

  “Is Cady coming?”
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br />   I looked down to see Bella at my side, Saskia standing guard between us.

  Smiling, Bella reached a hand out to mine. I took it, marveling at the change in her demeanor.

  “The angel said that Cady saves people,” Bella whispered. “And the angel doesn’t lie.”

  The trip back was slower with a child in tow, but Bella didn’t show any signs of hunger or dehydration—or fear. If anything, from the moment she’d heard me say Cady’s name, she’d been ready and willing to follow wherever Saskia and I led.

  As much easier as that made things for me, I couldn’t keep from turning the last thing Bella had said over and over in my mind. Bella’s kidnapper had told her about Cady. That was disconcerting enough, but the way Bella had phrased it—the angel said that Cady saves people—made me think that the kidnapper hadn’t just expected the girl to be found.

  He wanted Cady to find her.

  Somehow, I doubted the he in question was Andrés Cortez. Andrés had never met Cady. He’d have no way of knowing what she did for a living. The person who’d taken Bella had led us on an elaborate chase. Every time we’d lost the trail, we’d found it again, farther on. The strip of cloth telling us that Bella made it out of the river. The smear of blood at Sorrow’s Point. The windbreaker the kidnapper left in the cave. The spotting in Alden.

  And now I’d found Bella, less than two miles from where she’d been taken.

  Why?

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up a second before I heard a twig break in the distance. The sound of footsteps followed, and I immediately put my body in front of Bella’s. My senses alive, every muscle on high alert, I tracked the footfalls coming closer.

  Why leave Bella so close to where she was taken? The question morphed in my mind. Why set her out like bait in a trap?

  I bent and picked up a rock. As weapons went, it was unimpressive, but if I’d been caught in a hunter’s snare, I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  A flash of motion was the only warning I got before an animal barreled out of the forest. Canine. Dog. My brain cycled through a start-stop chain of recognition before focusing on the animal’s familiar lines. Pad.