Page 48 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
“You want someone to needlessly argue with you, ask the new Jen.”
I glance at him.
“Yolanda,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “Jen enjoyed making my job ten times harder than it had to be. Yolanda’s worse. She’s not trying to make my job harder. She just is. And while I know you’re joking, I may actually run this past her, though I don’t expect to get anything more than a lecture on how this proves our town is doomed to failure.”
“If it’s doomed to failure, why is she still here? Do we need to buy her a violin?”
I glance over. “A violin?”
“So she can fiddle while Rome burns? Not that there’s any evidence Nero did that. He was still a shit emperor, though, one who made a lot of money from that burning. But in Yolanda’s case, I don’t see the need or desire for profit, nor any way our demise benefits her.”
“Maybe she’s just sticking around to say ‘I told you so.’”
“Probably.”
I slow as I peer into the forest, already dimming as the sun drops. “Did we make a mistake letting children into Haven’s Rock?”
As the words leave my mouth, I realize the full import of them. If I am pregnant, if I could carry to term, would that be a mistake? We couldn’t even keep Max safe. How would we dare raise a child here?
But Dalton had been raised in Rockton. It couldn’t be called an idyllic childhood, given the circumstances, but in many ways, it had been idyllic. Despite all the problems, he still never wanted to leave Rockton. It was his home.
“If we did,” he says slowly, “then the mistake was in being unprepared because our only template was my own experience. I grew up in this forest. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have made the mistake we think Max did—walking into the woods to get a better look at something. Hell, at least he tried to get his brother to go with him. I wouldn’t have bothered.”
I understand what he’s saying, but I also hear what he’s not saying. That our first young residents were, however unintentionally, guinea pigs.
In the end, everyone in Haven’s Rock is a guinea pig. We’re trying something new, and we’ll adjust as we see how things work out. That’s fine if it’s something like realizing kids need more physical activity than we’re offering. It’s not fine if it means realizing we didn’t protect them as well as we promised, if someone in town—or out of it—could grab them and—
I take deep breaths to calm my breathing. Don’t think about that. Focus on finding Max.
On finding a needle in a haystack.
How many times had we searched for someone lost in the woods outside Rockton? Each time, I told myself that we were learning. Refining the process. Yet here we are, with our two best trackers, doing little more than tromping through the woods, hoping to pick up some sign of Max.
I need to remind myself that we’ve had plenty of successful searches. But it’s like those Hollywood kidnapping cases where calling in the police ruins everything. It’s the failures that stick in my head, the times when all our resources felt as useless as a magic people-finding wand bought off eBay.
These are the times when a little voice whispers that maybe Yolanda is right. Maybe we are dragging innocent people into our savior fantasies, and they are paying the price.
And then another voice, which sounds a whole lot more like my sister, snaps that I’m being ridiculous. If I have a boat, and I see a sinking ship, do I avoid picking up survivors for fear that one might fall into the ocean and drown? I’m not saying we’re these people’s only hope. But witness protection didn’t save Dana’s husband either.
Can we save her child?
Is it already too late?
And just then, as if in answer to my worries, Storm lets out a bark. A very particular, very happy bark. One that says she’s smelled something we’re looking for. Someone we’re looking for.
“Show me,” I say to her.
She takes off lumbering across an open area, and as we follow, I’m squinting into the dim light, hoping to see a small figure standing somewhere ahead of us. That’s what I want. Max’s figure—
“There!”
The word comes before I can stop myself. I’m not myself today, and when I spot his jacket, I can’t help but cry out. It’s only after I utter that word—and remind myself I could be running toward a kidnapper—that I put on the brakes.
“Storm!” I call. “Wait!”
She stops, and I catch up, and by then I have my gun out but lowered. I approach with my gun down, well aware that if I’m stepping into a hostage situation, I’ve already tipped off Max’s captor.
