Cady followed a moment later, and on her heels, there were others—Mac and his dog, a handful of rangers.
I forced my fingers to loose the rock in my hand. As it thudded to the ground, I met Cady’s eyes. “You got my message?”
“Message?” Cady stared at me for a moment before shifting her gaze to Bella. “Oh.” That sound was gut-wrenching, like Cady hadn’t let herself believe that this story could have a happy ending—like she’d needed one, even more than I had. She dropped to her knees in front of Bella. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Are you hurt?”
Bella didn’t answer the questions. Instead, she stared intently at my foster mother. “Are you Cady?”
With a glance at me, Cady nodded. I expected Bella to leave me and go to my foster mother, but she didn’t. Instead, the little girl pushed close to my side.
Too many people, I thought, staring up at the rangers. Too much noise.
Somehow, my arm found its way around Bella, like human contact was my native language instead of one I’d struggled with for years. “She’s fine,” I said. “A scratch on her leg, but no other noticeable injuries. I found her farther upriver—a mile or two. I think she was waiting.”
For you. I couldn’t say those words to Cady—not in front of an audience.
“Any sign of her kidnapper?” Mac drew my attention from Cady.
I shook my head. “I tried to radio for help. I thought it went through, but I couldn’t get a clear response, so I decided to bring Bella in myself.”
One of the rangers took out a first aid kit. Another had a blanket to wrap around Bella’s shoulders, but when they stepped forward, the little girl stepped back.
“She just wants to go home,” I said, wishing I couldn’t hear an echo of that desire, an ache in my own tone. “She wants her family.”
Cady stood, bringing her face from Bella’s eye level to mine. “Are you okay?”
Finding Bella was supposed to fix whatever had broken inside me. It was supposed to give me the magical ability to step back and see that Cady and Jude had only ever tried to protect me. It was supposed to tell me how to fix things with Free.
It was supposed to make me worthy and good and whole.
“I’m fine,” I said, but what I was thinking was, You lied to me my whole life. Worse than that, I was thinking that the reason Cady had lied was that she thought I couldn’t handle the truth—and she was right.
Cady knew I wasn’t strong enough. She knew the only way I could ever be normal was to pretend.
Cady tucked a strand of stray hair gently behind my right ear, and then she looked down at Bella. “Let’s get you girls home.”
Bella sat next to me on the ride to the sheriff’s office. She didn’t say a word. Even once we’d arrived, and a pair of FBI agents came in with a child advocate, she refused to answer their questions—about where she’d been, about the person who’d taken her.
They thought she was traumatized. They let me stay because Bella had attached herself firmly to my side, and they let Cady stay because she was my guardian. What no one but me realized was that Bella wasn’t keeping quiet because of trauma. I’d tried to tell the FBI what Bella had told me, I’d tried to make them listen, but each time someone spoke over me, the words got a little harder to find.
“You’re not asking the right questions.” I hadn’t meant to raise my voice, but at least this time, they heard me. Every adult in the room turned my way. “You keep asking about the person who took Bella. You should be asking about her angel.” I met Bella’s eyes and softened my tone. “Bella’s angel pulled her from the river, wrapped her in a blanket—saved her.” I swallowed. “Bella’s parents were gone, so the angel promised to take care of Bella until they got back. And in return…” I glanced down at the little girl. “Bella promised to help.”
“Help with what?” The sheriff inserted himself into the conversation. Even the sound of his voice put me on edge, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of showing it.
“I don’t know,” I said, turning to the little girl sitting beside me. “Bella? Why did the angel need your help?”
Bella caught her lip between her teeth. Seconds ticked by in silence, but eventually, she answered, “The angel needed to save someone else.”
“This angel…” The sheriff took a step toward Bella, but a glare from the child advocate cut him off midsentence and froze him in his tracks.
“Who did the angel need to save?” the woman asked quietly.
Before Bella could answer, the door opened, and the little girl’s entire face lit up. “Mommy!” She was on her feet in an instant. “Daddy!” She started forward, then paused, and I remembered that Bella’s angel had told her they’d left because they were mad.
“Baby.” Bella’s mom fell to her knees, her arms opening. The expression on her face was halfway between torture and exaltation. I thought of the way she’d refused to go back to the hotel, the way she’d fought for Bella, the only way she could. “You’re okay. You’re okay, Belly. Baby, you’re okay.”
Bella’s father showed no visible emotion until Bella launched herself into her mother’s grasp, and then without warning, he let out a sob and collapsed, his arms encircling them both.
It felt wrong to watch—too intimate, too private—but I couldn’t drag my eyes away. I heard every catch of Bella’s mother’s breath, saw every frantic kiss they pressed to her head.
I promised I’d find her, I thought. My eyes stung. I promised I’d bring her home.
I fought the tsunami of emotion welling up inside me. I turned my back on the reunion. A pair of familiar arms wrapped around me. I didn’t fight Cady’s embrace, but I couldn’t make my own arms move. I couldn’t hug her back.
“Perhaps Kira could enlighten us on how she found Bella?” The sheriff managed to make the question sound reasonable, almost comforting, as if he was asking to give me something to focus on, rather than launching a veiled attack.
Something snapped inside me. Finding Bella hadn’t changed anything. It hadn’t changed me, but I didn’t have to pretend that this was okay, that I was okay.
“You need to leave,” I said, my voice low, my body remembering what it had felt like to lunge for his throat. I forced my gaze to Cady’s. “He called me an animal.” The words cost me. They hurt me. “A dirty little animal.”
“What are you talking about?” Cady rounded on the sheriff. “What is she talking about?”
“He had my file,” I said quietly. “I have it now.”
The FBI chose—wisely—to escort the sheriff elsewhere and give Cady a moment alone with me.
“Kira.” My name caught in Cady’s throat. “Baby, I am so sorry.”
“Sorry that he told me?” I asked, the question physically painful. “Or sorry that you didn’t?”
I never got an answer to that question.
“Excuse me?” Bella’s mother interrupted the two of us. “You’re the one who found her?” she asked me.
I nodded, and a moment later, the woman’s arms were wrapped around me. I breathed through the bone-crushing hug. She touched me, and I let her.
After a small eternity, Mrs. Anthony gathered herself together and pulled back. She pressed something into my hand. “Bella asked me to give this to you. I have no idea where she got it, but…” The woman bowed her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. “If you ever need anything…”
I didn’t reply. One hundred percent of my attention was focused on the item that Bella’s mother had placed in my hand. It was a medallion, silver and tarnished, with two figures engraved on its surface. There was writing etched around the edge, but I couldn’t read it.
It’s a saint, I thought, a chill crawling down my spine. A pendant, like the one Mac gave me. I knew, in the pit of my stomach, where Bella had gotten it. Her angel had given it to her.
The same angel that had erected the Circle for the Lost. The one who’d told Bella that Cady would come.
There are five founding families,
I thought, my racing mind going back to the town history. Turner. Ferris. Ashby. Rawlins. Wade.
“What do you have there?” Mac’s voice was as low and soothing as ever when he leaned over to see the medallion I held in my hand. My fingers closed over it. I surged forward, catching Bella and her family as the FBI was guiding them toward a private room.
“Bella,” I called.
The little girl turned to look at me. I knelt down to her level and held out the medallion. “Who did the angel need to save?” I repeated the question that the child advocate had asked Bella.
Bella crooked a finger at me, indicating that I should bend down. And then she finally gave me an answer. “Someone she loves.”
The word she fell over the room with the force of military-grade explosives. Bella’s angel was a woman.
A woman. From one of the founding families. Wants to save someone—someone she loves. My mind racing, I looked down at my hand, my fingers unfurling to reveal the pendant.
“May I?” Mac asked me. This time, I allowed him to take it from my grasp.
“Mac?” Cady fit a thousand questions into a single word.
Mac swallowed. “Saint Anne,” he said finally, his blue eyes intent on Cady’s. “She’s the patron saint of mothers and grandmothers.”
Images flashed through my head. Hash marks on trees. The Circle for the Lost. Five founding families.
In 1922, three children of founding families had gone off into the wilderness and never returned. More than three-quarters of a century later, Cady, Mac, and John Ashby had taken a job in South America—and only two of them had come back.
Ash was my son. The words Ness had said to Cady the day before echoed in my mind. I’d say that gives me a stake in this.
“No,” Cady said. “I know what you’re thinking, Mac—
but no.”
“She taught us every bit as much about survival as your father did,” Mac countered. “And she’s been down with the flu for days.”
Ness had been at the house when we’d arrived, but by that point, Bella had already been missing for more than a day. Enough time for Ness to get her settled in the cave. Enough time for her to come home and convince Bales to bring Cady in on the search.
“Bales is dying.” I knew, somehow, that Cady couldn’t ignore the words if I was the one who said them. “Ness said that he’d been trying to get in touch with you, but you wouldn’t reply.”
Cady weathered that statement like a blow. “My father wouldn’t have asked me to come back for himself. I wouldn’t have come back for him.”
Mac wove a hand through Cady’s, as if he could somehow channel strength from his body into hers. “Ness knows you. She knows Bales. She knows me. It makes sense, Cady. If she wanted to bring us back here…”
“It doesn’t make sense.” Cady took a step away from him, releasing his hand. “There were five bodies in that clearing, Mac. Five.”
Some things cut all the way to the bone.
“The autopsies came back.” The male FBI agent took that moment to remind us of his presence. “We’re still waiting on DNA and some other higher-level tests, but the ME has tentative rulings on cause of death.” He paused. “At least two died of exposure, one appears to have been attacked by some kind of animal, a fourth has the kind of blunt-force trauma we would associate with a fall.”
“And the fifth?” Cady asked, her voice hoarse.
“Drowned,” the female agent replied. “Most likely in the river.” She stopped dancing around the point and laid it out for us. “We’ve found no evidence of foul play. In at least two cases, we believe the bodies were buried a month or more after the victims died.”
It was hard for me to imagine Ness killing someone, but it was strikingly easy to imagine her laying a stranger to rest.
The day before, Mac had told me that he didn’t find bodies. I find lost ones, he’d said, and I bring them home.
Ness Ashby was nowhere to be found. The FBI searched the Bennett property. They went through her cabin with a fine-tooth comb, and they didn’t find a trace of the old woman.
Not so old that she can’t still take to the mountain, I thought. Not too old to pull Bella out of the river or take advantage of the kind of search that people will mount for a missing little girl.
“I’m mad at you.” Free came to stand right beside me. “But for the next ten seconds, I’m going to pretend that I’m not.”
I felt like I’d swallowed a tennis ball, but I managed to respond. “You want me to tell you what’s going on?”
“Eight seconds.”
Luckily, I was an expert at keeping things short. “I found Bella. The person who took her wanted us to find her.”
“Three seconds,” Free said lazily.
“The person who took her was Ness.”
“Ness?” Free repeated, forgetting all about her countdown. “Older woman about yea tall? Tough as nails and makes corn bread even better than Cady’s?”
When I’d gone out to search, I should have taken her with me. Free and Jude should have been there when we’d found out the truth. Gabriel, too.
“Ness did it for Cady,” I told Free. “And for Bales.”
Free was quiet for long enough that I wondered if she was trying to make sense of what I’d said or if my temporary pardon had run out.
“Finding Bella was supposed to fix me.” I didn’t know what else to say or how to explain what I was talking about or why it mattered.
Fortunately, Free didn’t believe in segues between one subject and the next. “We’re unconventional,” she told me. “Not broken.”
We. I took a hesitant step toward her. “New part of the Creed?”
Free folded her arms over her chest. “Maybe.” She paused. “I care about you, Kira,” she told me, in a tone that would have been more appropriate for cursing. “And Jude cares, and you don’t get to hold that against us. You don’t get to lick your wounds in a corner and snarl when one of us gets too close, and you don’t ever get to stand there bleeding and tell me that it’s none of my business if you bleed out.”
I meant to say okay, but what came out was “You packed my blanket.”
“Of course I did!” Free exploded. “I thought you might need it.”
“Not to interrupt what appears to be an extremely emotionally laden conversation about blankets…” Gabriel announced his presence and waited for the two of us to turn toward him before continuing, “but your dog is giving every appearance of having lost her freaking mind.”
I started scanning the area for Saskia, but Gabriel stopped me. “Not your dog,” he told me. “Hers.” He nodded his head toward Free. “The female bloodhound is attacking the barn door like her family honor depends on it.”
“Her Ladyship does have very strong feelings about doors,” Free allowed. “You could say she doesn’t like being shut out.”
I had a feeling that pointed comment was aimed at me, but something about what Gabriel had said crept under my skin and lingered. “Was NATO with her?” I asked.
Gabriel turned to look at me.
“The male bloodhound,” I clarified. “Jude’s dog. Was he with Duchess?”
“No.” Gabriel stared at me. “Why?”
“Speaking of Jude,” Free put in, “given recent revelations, we could all use some unrelenting, reality-defying optimism right about now. Where is he?”
It took me a moment to realize that she was asking me. “I haven’t seen Jude since the two of us fought,” I said, suddenly able to feel my heartbeat in my stomach.
“He didn’t go with you?” Free asked.
I scanned the property, half expecting Jude to pop out of nowhere. Cady and Mac were moving from Ness’s cabin toward the main house. A pair of FBI agents had cornered Bales, who looked like he’d aged a decade in a day.
No Jude.
That was when I heard the howling. I broke into a run without any conscious awareness of where I was going or why, but the moment the barn came into view, I re
alized that Duchess wasn’t the only one pawing madly at the door. Saskia was right beside her, howling the way she had at Silver’s graveside.
Wrong. Something is wrong. I made it to the barn door first. Gabriel and Free were right behind me. Free ducked down to the dogs’ level, but all I could think about was the way that Silver’s body had looked, wrapped in a blanket.
I pried the door open. Somehow, Gabriel made it inside first. I felt Duchess flying by us, but visually, the only thing I could see was the outline of NATO’s form on the ground.
“No,” I said. “Not after Silver. I can’t—”
“Kira.” I heard Free, but it took me a moment to realize that she’d somehow made her way past me and was kneeling next to NATO. “He’s got a pulse.”
Alive. I made my way toward them. He’s alive. I went to the ground and laid a hand on NATO’s neck. Beside me, Duchess whined. Saskia was still howling. My hands searched NATO for an injury but found nothing. He stirred beneath my touch. He tried to climb to his feet but stumbled.
“Ketamine.” Gabriel’s voice was tight. “The vet uses it to knock animals out. He’ll be groggy.…”
Whatever else Gabriel was saying, I didn’t hear it. The world slowed down around me, because Saskia was still howling, and NATO was trying to drag himself toward the back of the barn, and all I could think was that no one had seen Jude.
Ness had disappeared, and no one had seen Jude.
I took off in the direction that NATO was trying to go. There, at the back of the barn, a dozen rocks lay in a neat circle. In the middle of the circle, there was a large envelope. Behind it, a single white candle burned, the flame flickering before my eyes.
Unable to hear anything but the sound of my own ragged breathing, I bent to pick up the envelope. Before I could think better of it, I slid my finger beneath the flap, tearing it open. The sting of a paper cut barely registered as I removed the contents.
Three items.
The first was a map. A quick glance told me that someone had marked a spot, deep in the depths of the park, with a thick red X. The next two items were photographs. The first was one I’d never seen: Cady and Mac and Ash, older than they’d been in the last picture I’d seen—early twenties. Mac’s expression was still serious. Ash’s devil-may-care grin had taken on an edge. And Cady looked…
The Lovely and the Lost Page 19