Page 76 of The Lovely and the Lost

Free reached over and did it for me. Her sharp intake of breath was the only warning I got before the face in that photo cut me, straight to the core.

“Jude.” I bit down, like I could somehow unsay it. Like I could make the familiar, loopy grin in that photograph any less Jude’s. The picture was old—a year or two at least—but Jude still looked like himself. He’d been unmistakablyJudesince he was a kid.

“Silver died.” I wasn’t sure why I was telling Free this now. “Silver is dead, and Ness drugged NATO, and Jude…”

I couldn’t keep talking, but I refused to give in to the haze of shock that threatened to fog my mind. I didn’t have the luxury of losing it right now. There was one thing that mattered andonlyone thing.

There was a white cloth, nailed to the wall, directly over the circle. I grabbed it and pulled it down, the sound of the ripping fabric jarring the rest of my senses back into play. I lifted the cloth to my nose. A faintly sweet, faintly chemical smell had me jerking it away from my face.

I didn’t recognize the scent. I didn’t have to in order to picture weatherworn hands pressing this cloth over Jude’s face. The fingers on my left hand held tight to the pair of photographs from the envelope, to the map, and I thought back to the moment when I’d found Bella, lying beneath that canopy. I thought about how the child had said that her angel needed her help.

I remembered wondering if Bella had been bait, if I’d fallen into a trap.

Not a trap,I thought, bending at the waist with the force of the realization, the chloroformed rag in my hand.A distraction.

The FBI confiscated the map, the pictures, and the cloth. The rangers began coordinating transportation to the far end of the park, an expansive ancient forest as different from the mountains as night from day.

We were told, by people who knew what they were doing, that Jude would be returned to us unharmed. That meant nothing to NATO. Jude’s dog was groggy—and inconsolable.

I wasn’t much better.

Inside the main house, Bales immediately started packing. He had an emergency pack half-ready to go, and the crisp, dispassionate way he moved reminded me that he’d been military—either intelligence or special forces. Without a word to the rest of us, he took out his phone, sent a text, and reached into his bag.

Cady caught his arm halfway there. “You’re going after her.”

“The FBI thinks the place Ness marked on that map is an end point,” Bales said gruffly. “I happen to know the woman well enough to know that she wouldn’t give away the game.”

“You think the map is a starting point.” Mac’s eyes were sharp.

“I should have seen it.” Bales never stopped moving, never sped up or slowed down or showed any hint of the toll this had to be taking. “The way the trail kept disappearing and reappearing. The way she was keeping to herself.”

“You couldn’t have known.” Cady wasn’t being generous. If she hadn’t believed that, she wouldn’t have said it.

Every muscle in Bales Bennett’s body went taut. “She did this for me.”

Ness had taken Bella to bring Cady home, to bring Mac home, to give Cady’s father one last chance to make things right. I could see that but couldn’t bring myself to care, because Ness Ashby had victimized an innocent child. She’d taken Jude. Whatevergameshe was playing, whatever her goal was now, she was using the person I loved most in this world to do it.

The person I’d hurt. The person I’dmeantto hurt. The person who’d never done anything but try to take care of me.

“She did this,” Bales said a second time, his voice sharp, “for me.”

“And what about the bodies she buried?” Gabriel had hung back, silent in the shadows, from the moment the FBI had taken the evidence we’d found. Now he didn’t seem to be able to stop himself from speaking. “If one of them is Andrés—did she do that forme?”

I hadn’t stopped once to think about what Ness being the kidnapper might mean for Gabriel. He’d known her. He’d trusted her.

“Whatever she’s done or hasn’t done,” Bales said, meeting Gabriel’s gaze and holding it, “I cannot believe the woman I know would have keptanyinformation about your brother’s disappearance from you.”

“The woman you know took Jude.” Free was on the warpath. “She knocked him out andtookhim and left some sick treasure map behind. I don’t think we can assume there’s much she wouldn’t do.”

“Free’s right.” Cady’s voice resonated with the ache I could feel building deep in the pit of my stomach, deep in my bones. “The Ness I thought I knew wouldn’t have taken my son. She couldn’t have.”

“You didn’t see her,” Bales said, his head bowed, his fingers holding tight to his pack. “When Ash went missing, you were too caught up in your own grief to see hers. But I saw it, day in and day out.” He forced his eyes back up to Cady’s, his head still bowed. “I made the call to my contacts in South America.”

Cady took a literal step back from that admission.

“I told you that I wouldn’t,” Bales continued. “I told you that some things weren’t worth the cost, but I loved Ash, too, and eventually, I broke. I called in favors that I never should have called in. I paid a price I never should have paid, and I went down there.”

“You should have told me.” Cady shuddered. “If I’d known…”