Page 47 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
Her gaze cuts away, but she says nothing.
“No one in Haven’s Rock is running from crimes they committed. Mistakes they made, possibly.” I let that sit for two seconds. “But everyone makes mistakes, and sometimes the price they’re being asked to pay is too high. No one here is running from the law. No one here is a known pedophile. But as for how much you know about them?” I shrug. “Is it any different than down south?”
She glances at me.
I continue, “How well do you know your neighbors there? Your sons’ teachers? Their friends’ parents? Their coaches and instructors and everyone your sons come into contact with in their lives? When I say no one here has ever been accused of crimes associated with children, that’s more than you can say for your neighbors at home.”
She doesn’t answer. Just keeps looking out the window.
“I investigated Gunnar,” I say. “I am still keeping an eye on him, and he’s been assigned a roommate until this is over. He is not allowed to leave town, even to join the search. If you have any reason to suspect anyone else, we will take the same steps. And if you know a reason why someone might take Max—even without being able to name a suspect—I need to know it.”
She shakes her head and says nothing.
“All right then,” I say. “I’ll get back to work. We’re doing everything we can to find him.”
At that, something in her cracks, her shoulders shaking, her voice breaking as she says, “I know.” She looks up. “I’m sorry if I snapped. I’m just … I don’t know what to do. We came here to be safe and…”
And now this.
She doesn’t say it, but I still feel it.
I feel every bit of it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Right after that, Dalton comes out of the forest for a late lunch, which is perfect timing. I can head back in with him, both to search and to talk.
He doesn’t know what to make of Dana’s behavior any more than I do. He can only agree that it’s suspicious.
Is it possible she’s received a demand already? That Max has been kidnapped to force her to undo whatever she and her husband did, even if it’s only retracting the statement of innocent bystanders? If that’s the case, what’s the chance she’d keep it from us?
High. One of the first things kidnappers do is warn their target not to contact the police. Of course they don’t want you contacting the police. Just like police don’t want you lawyering up. In both cases, if you listen, that’s in their best interests, not yours. But television and movies are filled with dramatic kidnappings where the target brings in the police and everything goes horribly wrong, because otherwise, it’d make a boring show.
Has Max’s kidnapper told Dana not to involve us, or her son will suffer the consequences? Is that why she was out when Isabel and I arrived, why she’d seemed harried and distracted? Why she’d been on the defensive?
Except, well, I put her on the defensive, didn’t I? I wanted her defensive to see what happened, and her response wasn’t what I would expect from a woman whose son had disappeared into the wilderness.
Are we making a mistake concentrating on the forest search?
We head by Lilith’s cabin again. She’s still not there, and Nero still is there, standing guard and not letting us get close. Then we check the spot for messages from “Mr. Rogers,” but there’s nothing.
“There is someone in the forest,” I say. “Max’s bear-man. Almost certainly the same guy Mr. Rogers’s miner saw.”
“Agreed,” Dalton says.
“The question is whether he’s involved in Max’s disappearance.”
“Yep.”
“We know Max saw the bear-man. The obvious answer is that he went out to get a better look.”
“Yep.”
“But it’s also not the only answer.”
“Yep.”
I scowl over as Dalton holds back a branch for me. “You aren’t helping.”
