Page 59 of The Lovely and the Lost

“Mac and I are headed back to the site,” Cady continued, “and so help me, if you three eventhinkabout following, I will devote the time between now and your eighteenth birthdays to constructing new and inventive ways to make you rue your collective existence on this planet. Is that clear?”

“Crystal!” Jude chirped.

“Message received,” Free confirmed.

Cady turned to me. I said nothing, but I did reach forward to grip her hand. I thought she might push me away again. Instead, she squeezed back.

“No giving up this time,” she told me. “No running away.”

A ball of emotion rose in my throat, and a moment later, Cady was gone.

“Bella might still be out there,” I said. If I could say it, maybe I could believe it. “She might still be alive.”

I hadn’t promised Cady that I would stay out of this, because I wasn’t sure that I could—or should. We needed to do everything we could for a child people had given up on. For Bella.

For Girl.

I blinked, and suddenly, Jude was pulling the car onto the gravel drive leading up to the Bennett property. I’d lost time. Seconds? Minutes? I wasn’t sure. I focused on the here and now—and the fact that we weren’t alone.

“That’s the sheriff’s car,” Jude commented, pulling up beside it. “And that’s the sheriff. And that’s—”

“Gabriel.” I finished Jude’s sentence, my jaw clamping down as I registered the way the sheriff shoved Gabriel as he marched him toward the car.

As I registered the handcuffs on Gabriel’s wrists.

Trapped.I felt like I was looking at the wolf from my memory, his leg caught between vicious metal jaws. But Gabriel didn’t thrash or fight, didn’t so much as resist as the sheriff put a hand on the back of his neck and roughly pushed him into the backseat of the police cruiser.

“Don’t. Touch. Him.” I was out of the car and inches from the sheriff in a heartbeat. I was vaguely aware that Saskia had followed me, that Silver—as old as she was—stood at my other side, her teeth bared.

“Don’t,” Gabriel said sharply. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or the dogs. He didn’t have a chance to say anything else before the sheriff shut the car door.

“I would advise you to take a step back,” the sheriff told me before shifting his gaze to my canine companions, liketheywere the real threat.

“Stepping back now!” Jude put himself between me and the sheriff. “And since we’re stepping back,” he said cheerfully, as he began herding me away from the sheriff, inch by inch, “I’m sure you wouldn’t mind telling us exactly what you’ve arrested our good friend Gabriel for.”

“He’s not under arrest.” The sheriff didn’t sound particularly happy about that. “He’s just coming down to the station to answer some questions.”

“Without a lawyer?” Free inquired politely, squatting down next to the dogs, calming them the way Jude had calmed me. “And under duress?”

“Do you want to mention the handcuffs?” Jude asked me. “Or should I?”

I wanted to showmyteeth. I wanted the sheriff to look at me and know that I knew exactly what kind of coward he was.

“We have reason to believe that Gabriel might know something about Bella’s kidnapper,” the sheriff told us before offering me a very small close-lipped smile. “But ifyouwould like to explain how it is that you and Gabriel found the cave where Bella was being kept, why Gabriel decided to take a road trip to Alden, and how the whole lot of you just happened to stumble across a mass burial site exactly as it was being uncovered, I’d be glad to take your statement as well, Kira.”

What could Gabriel possibly know about Bella’s kidnapper?I thought about the maps on his walls, the police scanner. I thought about the way he’d left the crime scene yesterday before the sheriff had arrived.

“What do you say?” the sheriff asked me flatly. “Would you care to join us down at the station?”

That was a threat, an attempt to control me. I could feel Girl inside me, the pressure in my head building as I kept a rein on the desire to let her out.

Jude shot me a look that I clearly interpreted to meanFor the love of all things good and holy, do not go down to the station.

I tamped down my instincts and shot Jude a look that I hoped communicated something along the lines ofFind Ness or Bales.I wanted to be out there, searching for Bella, but I also knew, deep in the pit of my stomach, that I couldn’t leave Gabriel with Sheriff Rawlins.

Gabriel’s stepfather didn’t get to control me. He didn’t get to haul Gabriel off alone. Pushing down the roar of the forest, I responded the way I thought Cady would have, if someone had tried to strong-arm her.

I held out my wrists and met the sheriff’s gaze head-on. “Do you want to cuff me, too?”