Page 69 of The Lovely and the Lost

Back to the start.

Sass and I retraced our steps: along the river, through the woods, up into the base of the mountain. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Maybe, like some of the hikers who’d passed through Hunter’s Point over the years, I was looking to get lost.

I hadn’t had a fresh scent to give Saskia, but my K9 pushed forward with uncompromising determination, as if knowing thatIwas looking for something was, in and of itself, enough.

Instead of attempting to make our way up to the pass, sans helicopter, I doubled back to the river, the photograph from theHistorystill fresh in my mind. Running water was useful if you were looking to evade trackers. It wasn’t foolproof, but if I had to venture a guess about how Bella’s abductor had managed zigzagging back and forth across the park, it was a good bet the river had played some role.

Sorrow’s Pass is downriver from the campsite. Alden is downriver from Sorrow’s Pass.

As Saskia and I made our way along the riverbank, the terrain grew rougher and the water picked up steam. If we wanted to cross to the other side, we’d need to do it soon.

Why?a voice inside me insisted.What are you looking for, Kira? What could you possibly hope to find?

I thought back to my dream, to the claustrophobic panic of being pinned to the ground and watching the dark-haired woman bury rock after rock, feeling like she was burying me.

I don’t know.

The only thing that I knew was that I couldn’t turn back. I’d brought a map with me, but even when I twisted away from the rushing river, unfolding the map and shielding it from the wind, it couldn’t tell me what I wanted to know.

What happened to those people in 1922? Where did they disappear to? Where did they go?

Maybe Gabriel—or Bales or the librarian who’d given me the book in the first place—could have told me if local legend held the answer. Maybe it didn’t matter—maybenoneof this mattered. But there was nothing left to do but push on.

Saskia darted in and out of the forest. The longer we forged on—the farther from civilization we went—the faster my K9 ran, her movements liquid-smooth and wild, like the day’s events had unleashed in her the opposite of what they’d loosed in me.

No doubt. No hesitation. No pain.

As if summoned by my thoughts, Sass barreled back out of the forest. I willed her to bark. I willed her to signal that she’d foundsomething.

But there was nothing to find.

I’m not going to find Bella or her kidnapper. I was never going to find them.I tried to fight that admission, but lost. I’d wanted so badly to do something, to believe that Icoulddo something, to make it so that doing something would somehow fix everything I’d broken.

I was so caught up in wanting that—mourning even the possibility of it—that I almost missed the small stone circle. The landscape of the riverbank had changed since 1922. Time and nature had worn away at the rocks. Only the very edges stuck out of the dirt. I stepped into the Circle and turned, 360 degrees. Nearly a century before, someone in Hunter’s Point had erected this memorial.

I’d expected that to mean something.

I’d expected that tomatter.

But the Circle I’d found was barely a Circle at all.

A wave of emotion rising up inside me, I squatted down, my fingernails digging at the dirt around the nearest stone.It’s not fair,I thought. Pain shot up through my hands as I dug faster and harder, one nail snapping and then another.

Saskia barked. She didn’t like seeing me like this.

I couldn’t stop.

When the rock came free, I lifted it with two hands and stared at it, then hurled it into the river with everything I had.

Saskia barked again, and I turned to her, as shredded inside as the skin on my battered hands. And then I took in her posture and she let out a third bark, sharp and crisp.Unmistakable.

I whirled, scanning our surroundings, trying to figure out what she’d found. My gaze stopped on a tree, older and thicker around the base than any of the others. Etched into the trunk of that tree was a series of hash marks.

Hundreds of them.

Thousands.

I made my way toward the tree, let my bleeding fingers trail over the hash marks before I could bring myself to believe that this was real. Bella’s kidnapper had been here.