Page 73 of The Lovely and the Lost

It felt wrong to watch—too intimate, too private—but I couldn’t drag my eyes away. I heard every catch of Bella’s mother’s breath, saw every frantic kiss they pressed to her head.

I promised I’d find her,I thought. My eyes stung.I promised I’d bring her home.

I fought the tsunami of emotion welling up inside me. I turned my back on the reunion. A pair of familiar arms wrapped around me. I didn’t fight Cady’s embrace, but I couldn’t make my own arms move. I couldn’t hug her back.

“Perhaps Kira could enlighten us on how she found Bella?” The sheriff managed to make the question sound reasonable, almost comforting, as if he was asking to give me something to focus on, rather than launching a veiled attack.

Something snapped inside me. Finding Bella hadn’t changed anything. It hadn’t changedme, but I didn’t have to pretend that this was okay, thatIwas okay.

“You need to leave,” I said, my voice low, my body remembering what it had felt like to lunge for his throat. I forced my gaze to Cady’s. “He called me an animal.” The words cost me. Theyhurtme. “A dirty little animal.”

“What are you talking about?” Cady rounded on the sheriff. “What is she talking about?”

“He had my file,” I said quietly. “I have it now.”

The FBI chose—wisely—to escort the sheriff elsewhere and give Cady a moment alone with me.

“Kira.” My name caught in Cady’s throat. “Baby, I am so sorry.”

“Sorry that he told me?” I asked, the question physically painful. “Or sorry that you didn’t?”

I never got an answer to that question.

“Excuse me?” Bella’s mother interrupted the two of us. “You’re the one who found her?” she asked me.

I nodded, and a moment later, the woman’s arms were wrapped around me. I breathed through the bone-crushing hug. She touched me, and I let her.

After a small eternity, Mrs. Anthony gathered herself together and pulled back. She pressed something into my hand. “Bella asked me to give this to you. I have no idea where she got it, but…” The woman bowed her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. “If you ever needanything…”

I didn’t reply. One hundred percent of my attention was focused on the item that Bella’s mother had placed in my hand. It was a medallion, silver and tarnished, with two figures engraved on its surface. There was writing etched around the edge, but I couldn’t read it.

It’s a saint,I thought, a chill crawling down my spine.A pendant, like the one Mac gave me.I knew, in the pit of my stomach, where Bella had gotten it. Her angel had given it to her.

The same angel that had erected the Circle for the Lost. The one who’d told Bella that Cady would come.

There are five founding families,I thought, my racing mind going back to the town history.Turner. Ferris. Ashby. Rawlins. Wade.

“What do you have there?” Mac’s voice was as low and soothing as ever when he leaned over to see the medallion I held in my hand. My fingers closed over it. I surged forward, catching Bella and her family as the FBI was guiding them toward a private room.

“Bella,” I called.

The little girl turned to look at me. I knelt down to her level and held out the medallion. “Who did the angel need to save?” I repeated the question that the child advocate had asked Bella.

Bella crooked a finger at me, indicating that I should bend down. And then she finally gave me an answer. “Someone she loves.”

The wordshefell over the room with the force of military-grade explosives. Bella’s angel was a woman.

A woman. From one of the founding families. Wants to save someone—someone she loves.My mind racing, I looked down at my hand, my fingers unfurling to reveal the pendant.

“May I?” Mac asked me. This time, I allowed him to take it from my grasp.

“Mac?” Cady fit a thousand questions into a single word.

Mac swallowed. “Saint Anne,” he said finally, his blue eyes intent on Cady’s. “She’s the patron saint of mothers and grandmothers.”

Images flashed through my head.Hash marks on trees. The Circle for the Lost. Five founding families.

In 1922, three children of founding families had gone off into the wilderness and never returned. More than three-quarters of a century later, Cady, Mac, and John Ashby had taken a job in South America—and only two of them had come back.