Page 68 of The Lovely and the Lost

Silver had spent most of her life taking care of me. I could do this—this one thing—for her.

As Gabriel and I lowered Silver’s body into the grave, Saskia found us. She stood silently beside me, and when I began shoveling dirt onto Silver, the husky threw back her head and howled.

“The Andrés I knew wouldn’t have hurt anyone. He wouldn’t have taken that girl.” Gabriel gave me the answer I’d asked for earlier. I barely even heard it now. “But when we found Bella’s jacket in the cave…when we knew she wasn’t alone…”

“Do you know where he’d take her?” I asked dully. “If he was the one, do you—”

“I’d tell the FBI myself if I did.” Gabriel left it at that. He held my gaze for just a moment. I had the sense that if I’d been a normal person—if he had—he might have made physical contact. Instead, he inclined his head slightly.

And then he was gone.

Maybe he thought I wanted to be alone. Maybe this was what being given space felt like—space to mourn, to grieve.

I couldn’t stay here. Silver was in the ground. I’d pushed Jude and Free away. I needed out.

As I stared at the fresh dirt of Silver’s grave, I thought of the Circle for the Lost—halfway, the sheriff had said,between a grave marker and a prayer.

I could go back to Alden, back to the clearing where we’d found the bodies, and try to pick up the search for Bella. But what good could I possibly do there? The place was still crawling with law enforcement. It was their job to identify the victims, to follow up on any physical evidence. Whatever scent path Bella and her kidnapper had laid, the police had almost certainly disturbed it.

There’s nothing I can do.

Cady had made a difference for me.Silverhad made a difference for me. I’d spent years throwing everything I had into learning search and rescue, because if I could someday do the same for someone else, then maybe I could prove, even just to myself, that I was worth it.

That I’d deserved to be saved.

That I wasgood.

My eyes stung as I turned and walked back toward the house, forcing myself to focus on the search, on Bella, on anything but Silver lying in a hole she’d never climb out of.

This is what I knew: Bella’s kidnapper had taken her to a mass grave site. Was Bella meant to join those bodies? Had something gone wrong with the kidnapper’s plan? Or was the person who’d taken Bella just leading us all on a merry chase? If the sheriff had been telling the truth, the FBI believed that the kidnapper and the person who’d put those five bodies in the ground were one and the same. That meant that he or she had also probably erected the stone circle we’d found near the clearing. I had no idea what the hash marks on the tree stood for, what any of it meant to the kidnapper, but the sheriff had said that the Circle for the Lost was a Hunter’s Point tradition, dating back to the town’s founding.

As it so happened, I had a copy of the town history.

I flipped through page after page ofA History of Hunter’s Point, looking for any trace of the Circle for the Lost. I found it in a set of pictures from 1922. Winter had come early that year. A group of a dozen young people—including a Ferris, a Turner, and a Rawlins—had left on what was supposed to be a months-long journey into the wilderness. It was doubtful they’d made it beyond Sorrow’s Pass.

I hadn’t thought before about the pass’s name—or where it had come from—but as the pictures told the story of the explorers’ disappearance, the wordsorrowstuck with me, right up until I saw a photograph of the adjacent valley.

There, butting up against the riverbed, was a stone circle.Halfway between a grave marker and a prayer.

“Sorrow’s Pass.” I looked from one picture to the next. “The valley. The river.”

Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it meant nothing that I could see parallels—no matter how thin—between these pictures and the path our kidnapper had taken. There was nothing in theHistoryabout the caves, nothing about Alden or the clearing.

But we’d lost—and found—Bella’s trail multiple times in the first forty-eight hours. At the river. At Sorrow’s Pass. In the valley.

Tracking Bella and her abductor from one location to the next had proven futile, again and again. Whoever had taken her was too savvy, knew the park too well. The only thing I could think to do—hadto do—was to stop following, stop tracking, and start figuring out where that person might be headed next.

Andrés?I wondered.Someone else?Whoever it was, the person who’d taken Bella had a reason. The Circle, the hash marks on the tree, the disappearing and reappearing trail…

I stood. Cady and the other searchers would have attempted to pick up Bella’s scent where they’d had it last. They’d be searching downriver. That made sense. It was the right call.

But I wasn’t in a place to make therightcall.

I left a note for Jude and Free. I wasn’t sure where either one of them had gone, only that I’d chased them away. A note wasn’t much, but it was something.

I wanted to leave themsomething.

I borrowed the keys to the truck. And Saskia and I set off for the park—for the campsite where Bella’s family had been staying.