Page 30 of The Lovely and the Lost

I’m fine,I told her silently.It’s nothing. It’s just a gun.

So why were the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up?

“It’s a beauty, isn’t it?” The shopkeeper came out from behind the counter, and the muscles in my legs and torso instinctively tightened. “I probably don’t need to tell you kids that Bales Bennett is the best shot on this side of the mountain.”

“Tell,” Jude encouraged him. “Tell like the wind.”

I tried to push down the rush of red-tinged anger rising up inside me, the one that said that guns werecheating.

They weredeath.

“Word is that Bales is former military—either intelligence or special forces, depending on which set of rumors you believe.” The old man winked at me. “He retired when his wife died and moved up here when Cady was a bitty thing.”

I couldn’t make myself turn my back on the gun case. But Ididmake myself speak. “You knew Cady when she was a kid?”

“I can assure you,” Jude chimed in, “that any embarrassing stories you might feel compelled to share about Mom’s misspent youth would be put to good and not at all self-serving use.”

The old man smiled. “If such stories do exist—and I’m not saying they do—you’d have to hear them from a braver man than me.”

Free strolled to my other side. “You wouldn’t happen to know if Cady had a friend named Ash, would you?”

“John Ashby,” the shop owner said immediately. “Ness Ashby’s boy. I never could decide whether that kid was

the second coming of Dennis the Menace or James Dean. He and your mother and one of the Wades—the quiet one, the one who made good—they got up to all kinds of mischief in these parts growing up.”

Cady. Ash. Mac.I pictured them, the way they’d looked in the photograph—barely any older than Free, Jude,

and me.

“What happened when they left Hunter’s Point?” I tried—and failed—to sound casual.

Before the old man could reply—ifhe was going to reply—the door to the shop opened again. I registered the size and build of the person who stood there before I recognized her features. Bella’s mother had pulled her hair back. I doubted she’d washed it recently. The day before, she’d looked exhausted. Today, she looked like everything inside her had been hollowed out.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr. Ferris.” Angela Anthony didn’t sound sorry. As quiet as her voice was, she sounded the way Saskia looked when you tried to put her in a crate. “I wanted to check to see if you needed any more flyers.”

Everything in me had fought the idea of stepping back from the search. What was it like for Bella’s mother to be here when Bella was out there? My mind went to the threadbare, well-loved blanket—and then to the red windbreaker, abandoned on the cave floor.

For the first time in years, I tried—really tried—to remember my own mother’s face.

No. Girl can’t.The memory came down on me, like a window being slammed shut.Can’t go home.My stomach threatened to empty itself on the shop floor. I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth and gritted my teeth.

I’m in control,I thought.I’m fine.

Silver climbed to her feet. She came to check on me, then surprised me by padding across the shop toward Bella’s mother.Sad, I could almost hear the dog say as she lay down at the woman’s feet. I wanted to tell my canine guardian that she was right and that I could see it, too.

“I’ll take more flyers if you’ve got them.” The shopkeeper’s voice was gruff but not unkind. “I’ll keep handing them out to folks as they come through.”

Bella’s mother nodded, but she didn’t move to take the flyers to him. “Do you get a lot of people through here?” There was something deep and cutting about the set of her features. “Families? Hikers? Survivalist types?” She pressed her lips together into a firm line. After a moment, that line wavered. “Drifters?”

Jude came to stand beside me. “She knows,” he whispered in my left ear. “She knows that Bella was kidnapped.”

I searched Angela Anthony’s features for whatever clues Jude had seen. Had the sheriff been the one to break the news to her? If she knew, how could she possibly stomach being here, instead of out there?

“I’ve been talking to folks around town.” Mrs. Anthony’s voice quivered, but she thrust her chin out. “A couple of fellows in the bar said that Bella’s not the first person around here to go missing.”

“These fellows,” the shopkeeper said, leaning forward as his eyebrows knit together. “They wouldn’t happen to have the last name Wade, would they?”

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