Page 51 of The Lovely and the Lost

Hearing her say those words should have made me angry. Instead, it hurt.

“I’m not fragile,” I said. “I’m not going to break.”

Cady’s reply was lost under a web of static, and then the line went dead. Free arched an eyebrow at me in question.

“She wants me to stay away from Gabriel,” I said flatly.

I could see the wheels in Free’s head turning. If she told me that Cady was right, ifsheacted like I was broken—I wouldn’t be able to take it.

Instead, Free twisted and pounded a fist on the window separating us from the truck’s cab. Jude opened it.

“What can I do for you?” he asked pleasantly. “Gabriel and I arebonding.”

Free just smiled beatifically. “How would you gentlemen feel about a little road trip?”

Gabriel didn’t particularly feel like taking us anywhere, but Free could be very convincing. She requested a place with a view. That was how the four of us came to be standing on a stone ledge in the shape of an arrowhead, facing away from the national park. At first, all I could see as I looked out was green—a thousand and one shades of it. The landscape stretching toward the horizon looked like it had been painted with a knife: thick and textured andalive. I could see civilization if I looked for it. But why would I? Why would anyone?

Free walked right up to the edge and looked down. “How far is the drop?”

“Maybe a hundred feet?” Gabriel guessed.

Jude looked at me. He looked at Free. And then he peeked over the edge of the ledge, threw his head back, and howled. Free joined in: half yodel, half victory scream.

“Don’t you ever just want to yell?” Jude asked a visibly startled Gabriel. “To take everything inside of you—every worry, everywhat if, every question that haunts you—and just…let go?”

“Not particularly.”

Free flipped her ponytail back over her shoulder. “Are you a liar or a stick-in-the-mud?” she asked Gabriel.

He probably had a smart-mouthed response to that question, but he didn’t get a chance to use it, because Ididknow what it was like to swallow screams and howls. My dark place was a living, breathing thing. I’d barely held it at bay in the caves. It rose up like a wave inside me with each setback in the search for Bella, and in between, it churned.Watching, waiting, feeling, scratching against the door to be let out—

I raised my face to the sky and let loose a howl of my own. Jude whooped, and Free joined in, and soon, the dogs had added their voices, all except for Saskia, who was pacing the fringes, her blue eyes focused on Gabriel. The edges of his lips had just started to curve upward when, suddenly, he paused, cocked his head to one side, and then started jogging back toward his truck.

I followed him, and Saskia followed me. I made it back to Gabriel’s truck just in time to see him reach through the open window and fiddle with the dial on what looked to be a

radio. It took me a few seconds to register the fact that the radio was on when the truck was not, and another after that to process the muffled words coming out of the speaker.

This wasn’t a radio.

This was a police scanner.

Gabriel must have realized I was standing there, because he turned toward me. “Kira.”

I bristled. He hadn’t mentioned owning a police scanner. He hadn’t even hinted that he was keeping tabs on the sheriff’s department.

“Kira,” Gabriel said again, his voice softer this time and oddly devoid of emotion.

“What are you doing?” I asked him. “What is this?”

Very slowly, he straightened his body. He dropped his arms to his side. “Behind you.”

As I turned, I became acutely aware of the world around us.The smell of dirt. The sound of Free and Jude and the dogs on the ledge.

The feeling of being watched.

I scanned our surroundings, pushed back against the sound of my own heartbeat, my breath, andlistened. I heard nothing, but my head swiveled to the left of its own accord. There, in a tree less than ten feet away, I made out two eyes glowing an unearthly yellow.

Reflecting the sun,I thought, but the words were distant, like someone else had thought them and I’d only overheard. My own thoughts—the ones I lived and breathed andfeltrushing like blood through my veins—were entirely focused on the shape of the animal watching us from that tree.