Page 86 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
“I hope you didn’t spend too much time looking for me.” She catches my expression. “Or should I hope you spent at least some time looking for me?”
“We were searching for someone else, so you were just kinda lumped in with that.”
“Lumped in. You do know how to make a girl feel all warm and fuzzy. So you do have someone missing then? That’s what I’m here about.”
My heart jumps. “You saw someone?”
“No, but I think Nero did. He was outside last night, and I heard him growl. I went out just as something—presumably an animal—ran off. I didn’t think anything more of it until this morning, when I found signs of a person in the woods. Has another woman of yours gone missing? You do seem to lose a lot of them.”
My heart speeds up. “A woman?”
“That’s my guess. I found a couple of partial footprints, and they were small.”
“Small enough to belong to a ten-year-old boy?”
“Boy?” Her head jerks up, eyes widening. “Oh, hell.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lilith is full of apologies after that, losing her usual cool. Yes, she’d headed straight to Haven’s Rock on seeing the footprints, but if she’d known it was a child, she’d have moved faster and she wouldn’t have just waited outside our house for someone to show up.
She describes the partial prints with an artist’s eye for detail, and they are undoubtedly Max’s.
He was alive last night. I need to take comfort in that. He’d been alive, and he seems to have stumbled on Lilith’s cabin before Nero frightened him off.
I can wish it’d gone another way. Wish Nero had been inside. Wish Lilith had seen Max and called him back. Wish Max had realized the wolf wasn’t a threat and stayed until Lilith came out.
That’s not what happened.
What did happen? That’s what I’m working through even as I’m running into town for Dalton. Had the bear-man been leading Max through the forest when they both stumbled on the cabin?
That seems the obvious answer, and yet …
And yet there is another possibility my mind keeps pulling back, a little too eager to seize it.
What if Max escaped?
What if we’d misread the trail? We know Max was on foot when he fled the shack. We found his prints and his captor’s. We presumed his captor killed Sandy, grabbed Max, and ran with no time to think about the trail they left.
What if it wasn’t Max’s captor running with him, choosing the creek to obscure their trail?
What if it was Max running with his captor in pursuit? Max wading into the water because he knew that was a way to hide his trail?
The bear-man hears Sandy. He hurries out before Sandy finds Max. But in his haste, he doesn’t secure Max. While the bear-man is killing Sandy, Max escapes.
Max loses the bear-man with his creek trick. Then he stumbles on Lilith’s cabin. But before she can come out, Nero spooks him and he runs.
If Max is alone out there, he is obviously still in trouble. We need to get to him before his captor does.
* * *
We’re leaving Haven’s Rock again, this time with Anders joining us. He’s met Lilith, and normally they’d be lagging behind, talking, but no one is in the mood for socializing. We want to get to Lilith’s cabin as fast as we can. We consider taking the motorized vehicles, but the noise could tip off Max’s captor. Even if he no longer has Max, we don’t want to tell him where we’re looking.
Once we reach the cabin, Dalton orders everyone to stand back. It’s a testament to how rattled Lilith is that she doesn’t argue, given it’s her home. We understand he wants a scene that’s as clean as it can be. Even Storm must stay with me while Dalton takes the first shot at deciphering the trail.
We watch as he examines the spot where Lilith heard someone running into the forest. Then we all wait while he works. I’m the least patient, pushing down the proprietary sense that this is my scene. It’s not, of course. No crime was committed here, and Dalton’s right that it must remain as pristine as possible while he tracks. Yet when he shouts for me, I’m off like a shot.
I circle wide around the area and find him in the forest. He lifts a hand for me to approach with caution. When I do, I see him pointing at something that has my heart sinking.
