Page 50 of The Lovely and the Lost

“I saw Gabriel leaving the property. I followed him. And once I was following…”

“I’ve seen you in stalk mode,” Free said. “I know what it’s like, but I also know that at some point, you had a choice, just like you had a choice about keeping secrets.”

Right before I’d left, I’d told Jude what the sheriff had said about Gabriel. I could see how dumping the wordskidnappingandassaulton a person and then pulling a disappearing act might have been cause for some concern.

“The sheriff is Gabriel’s stepfather,” I told Free. It was easier to share a secret than to promise to stop keeping them.

Free processed the barbed edge in my voice. “On a scale of one to ten, how much do we hate the sheriff?”

In answer, I let my upper lip pull back from my teeth. Then I snapped them together. Saskia was on all four feet in an instant.

“That much.” Free let out a low whistle. NATO ambled into her lap, and she gave him a good scratch before pushing him off. Duchess farted again.

“You’ll have to excuse Her Ladyship,” Free said. “Being left high and dry at Extreme Hide-and-Seek gives her indigestion.”

Free wouldn’t hold a grudge, not if she so much as suspected I might need her. But shehatedbeing left behind. She probably wouldn’t say another word about it, but if a dog wanted to continually fart in my general direction, she was all for it.

I was still weathering Duchess’s onslaught when Free’s phone rang. Free glanced down at the caller ID, then tossed it to me.

Cady.

This was not going to be pretty.

“Hello.” I answered calmly and heard Cady let out a breath the moment she recognized my voice.

“You want to explain to me why I have a message on my phone from Free, claiming you’d gone missing?”

Cady didn’tsoundangry, but that dry, no-nonsense tone never boded well.

“Not particularly.”

I expected Cady to rephrase the question as an order, but instead, she hesitated. “Are the flashbacks getting worse?”

That question was a visceral reminder that there had been a time in my life when taking off—running, hiding, holing up—had been my MO.

“I just got caught up in doing something,” I said.Somethingseemed so much less likely to set Cady off than the wordsearthquakeandrockslideandjuvenile delinquent.

“Do me a favor,” Cady ordered. “Don’t get caught up again.”

I had control. She expected me to use it.

“Cell reception here is coming in and out.” Cady’s words proved almost prophetic. Whatever she said next, I didn’t hear it.

“Go,” I said. “Find Bella.”

“Kira.” There was another long pause on the other end of the line. “I’m not sure there will be anything left to find.”

“You think she’s dead?” I felt like I had a piece of bone caught in my throat. This was what I got for letting myself be taken off the case, for taking a step back and even entertaining the notion that reading missing persons reports and asking questions qualified asdoing something. “You think she’s been murdered?”

Silver rolled over, pressing her body against mine and stretching out along the length of my legs. To my surprise, Saskia didn’t just tolerate it, she lay down on my other side.

“We’re not giving up.” Cady hesitated, just for a moment. “In the meantime, if you see Gabriel, give him a wide berth.”

If I’d been walking, that instruction would have stopped me dead in my tracks. “What?” I said. “Why?”

Had the sheriff said something to her? Why would Cady—who had better sense than anyone I knew—listen?

“Gabriel’s volatile, Kira. If the circumstances were different, I would be fighting for him every bit as much as my father is, but he’s not my kid. You are, and you have a lot going on right now. Whatever Gabriel’s been through, whatever anger he’s carrying—it’s not good for you.”