Page 35 of The Lovely and the Lost

“A History of Hunter’s Point?” I read the book’s title as she held it out to me.

“Written by yours truly,” the librarian said. “Nonfiction. You should give it a try.”

I closed my fingertips around the book an instant before one of the kids at story time threw up on the brightly colored carpet.

“Don’t look now,” Jude whispered as the librarian bolted toward the puking child, “but the cavalry has arrived.” There was a slight pause. “The cavalry is Gabriel.”

I turned my head, but kept my body still. Gabriel had entered through a side door. I expected him to be looking for us.

He wasn’t.

Kidnapping,the sheriff had taunted me.Assault.

Gabriel walked with his head down and disappeared behind one of the shelves.

“That’s not suspicious,” Jude declared. “That’s not suspicious at all!”

Jude and Free only knew that the sheriff had mentioned Gabriel having a criminal record. They didn’t know what that record entailed. I wasn’t used to keeping secrets from them, and I wasn’t entirely sure why I had kept this one.

The sheriff might have been lying.

He might have been telling the truth. I reached out and laid a hand on Jude’s arm before he could start strolling in Gabriel’s direction.

“We should go,” I said.

“Should we?” Free was clearly on the verge of whipping out the Creed. I knew that if Ihadtold her what the sheriff had accused Gabriel of, dragging her away from a chance for answers would have been every bit as impossible as coercing Duchess into the bath. I wanted answers, too, but I doubted that Gabriel would respond any better than I did to being cornered. When I faced him down, when I asked my questions—I’d do it one-on-one.

I started for the exit, knowing that Jude would follow me and that, eventually, Free would follow Jude. But I couldn’t help looking back over my shoulder. Gabriel was no longer hidden from view. He was doing a good job of acting like the contents of a nearby bookshelf had commanded his attention, but from this angle, I could see the way his dark eyes stared through a gap in the shelf.

At story time.

At the kids.

After the library, we headed back to the house. Dinnertime came and went, and there was still no word from Cady. Jude and Free had uncovered a treasure trove of old board games and were currently trying to play three at once, but I didn’t feel likeplaying.

Restlessness clawed at me. I’d never been the biggest or the strongest or smart in the way that tests captured, but I had a finely developed sense of when to fight and when to turn tail and run, and this time, I’d given up too soon.

I should have been out there looking for Bella.

When staying inside became impossible, I roamed. Pacing the Bennett land, I found two other houses inside the property line: one a cottage, the other closer to a shack. Burying myself in the woods near the latter, I sat with my legs stretched out along the base of a fallen tree. My right hand made its way to my ankle, feeling the coarse, scarred skin on my legs.

The monster almost had Girl.

The sky overhead might have looked clear, but a dull ache beneath the scars told me that there was weather headed in.If they don’t find Bella before the storm hits…

Trying to ignore the constant, gnawing churn inside me, I turned my attention to the book in my lap.A History of Hunter’s Pointwas, it turned out, less of a written history than a town scrapbook. It traced the town’s development from its founding in the 1850s through modern-day. By the time I made it to the 1920s, when Sierra Glades was established as a national park, I’d noticed that the same names appeared over and over again in Hunter’s Point history, across the generations.Rawlins. Turner. Ferris. Ashby. Wade.These were the founding families.

It wasn’t until I made it to the last few chapters that I started seeing people I recognized.Cady Bennett and John Ashby. Bales Bennett on horseback. Sheriff Bradley Rawlins, his first day on the job.

“You’re smarter than this.” A sharp voice broke my concentration, and I looked up. There, through the trees, I could make out two figures.Gabriel and Bales.

“No one saw me.” Gabriel stopped on the shack’s makeshift porch. He was avoiding eye contact with Bales.

“The librarian did.”

The sound of gentle padding alerted me to the fact that Silver had followed them out here. It was only a matter of time before she scented me, if she hadn’t already.

I willed her to stay right where she was.