Page 21 of The Lovely and the Lost
“I mean this in the least confrontational way possible, Gabriel, my well-muscled, puppy-feeding friend, but if this devolves into a wrestling match, I do not like your odds.” Jude knew how to make an entrance. He also knew how to take the attention unerringly off of me. “So let’s keep this civilized,” Jude continued. He gestured toward the puppies. “Think of the children!”
I managed a smile, and that let me refocus my thoughts. We were here for Bella. Everything else was noise.
“Grab breakfast and the bloodhounds—and Free, if you can find her,” I told Jude, channeling the restless energy inside me toward a purpose. “We need to get back out there.”
As long as I was doing something, I was in control.
“Technically,” Free hollered in our general direction as she carried a plate piled high with bacon out of the house, “we need to getupthere. Sheriff called. They found Bella’s trail again, farther up the mountain. He’s on his way here to personally deliver us to our new ground zero.”
The moment Free mentioned the sheriff, Gabriel went very still. If I wasn’t already on high alert, I might not have noticed, but there was something in that stillness that hit me like the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, like a dog whistle, too high in pitch for normal people to hear.
A moment later, Gabriel, who claimed to be incapable of keeping his mouth shut, walked away without a word.
When the sheriff arrived, Gabriel was nowhere to be seen. Bales beat us to answering the door. He looked the sheriff up and down. “Mind if I ask how you’re planning to get the kids to Sorrow’s Pass?”
“Airlift.” The sheriff kept his reply brief. “The rangers will fly them out.”
I didn’t like the sheriff’s tone—and I really didn’t like the fact that it was at odds with the small, sharp-edged smile on his face.
Bales said something else. The sheriff replied. I lost track of what was being said. We didn’t have time for this.
“Bella’s out there.” I looked past the sheriff—and past Bales—as I spoke. “Talk won’t bring her home.”
The sheriff shifted his gaze from Bales to me. “Then let’s get you kids in the car.”
His stare coated me like oil. The muscles in my stomach clenched, and before I knew what was happening, the sheriff was reaching for Saskia’s collar. In a flash of motion, Bales stepped in between them to push the sheriff back. Saskia’s teeth snapped together a fraction of a second later. A growl vibrated through her entire body, and she snapped again.
The sheriff shook off the old man’s grip. He rounded on me. “You need to control that animal.”
The way he saidanimalslithered under my skin. I stood there, nostrils flaring, caught between lunging forward and skittering back. My girl had come to us with scars—visible, human-inflicted scars. Saskia didn’t like men, and she didn’t like being touched.
Ishould have been the one to protect her.
“She doesn’t know you,” I told the sheriff, shifting my weight forward. “You can’t just try to grab her like that.”
“As a general rule,” Free added, drawing the sheriff’s attention away from me, “most dogs aren’t terribly fond of being manhandled by total strangers.”
There was a single beat of silence.
I didn’t realize that I’d stopped breathing until the sheriff took a half step back, and my lungs started functioning again.
“It’s a beautiful day to rescue lost children,” Jude offered brightly. “Wouldn’t you say, Sheriff?”
“Thinking this through a little,” the sheriff said, turning back to Bales, “we really only need two of them.” Something about his posture and the tone in his voice made me think of a house cat, batting a mouse between its paws. “Sorrow’s Pass is dangerous terrain. I want all our searchers working in pairs, and since there are three of them…” He paused and glanced back at Saskia—and at me. “Why don’t we give Kira and her…partner…a little break. Seems like they could use some time to decompress.”
I felt like he’d kicked me straight in the teeth.
“You need as many hands on deck as you can get,” Bales replied before either Jude or Free could.
“Bringing any of them into this goes against my better judgment,” the sheriff retorted. “I’m not opening this up for discussion, Bales. They search in pairs, or they don’t search at all.”
“Fair enough.” Bales turned his attention from the sheriff to the three of us. “Jude, you’re with Free. I have another partner for Kira. He knows the mountain better than anyone.”
That got a response out of the sheriff, the way that a match gets aresponsefrom gunpowder. “You can’t seriously think—”
“I think,” Bales said, his voice quiet and low, “that I know things that you would prefer I not know.” He gave the sheriff a moment to process that statement. “And I think Kira’s right. Talk isn’t going to bring that child home.”
The sheriff didn’t drive us to the rangers’ station. Bales did, and theusin question included Gabriel.He knows the mountain better than anyone.