Page 58 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
I burst into fresh tears, and he gathers me in his arms and holds me while I cry.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
April wants me to come in for an immediate examination. She isn’t a gynecologist or even a general practitioner, but she’s had to become the latter, and she’s dedicated the past three years to learning about the role she’d been thrust into. She knows how to conduct the preliminary examinations and oversee a pregnancy, and she wants to do that exam right away. But we have a little boy to find. Until I need to take a break, I’m on the job every waking hour.
Back to the case then.
Last night I wanted to go in hard again on Dana and Louie. And now? Now I’m not sure that’s the right move. I don’t have anything to go in with.
Knowing Dana’s story makes me confident that Louie is wrong. She’s no less of a victim than she seems. She did witness a murder. Émilie’s investigator confirmed that by matching up the details with a case, which led to Dana’s previous identity, which allowed the investigator to verify her background.
We don’t need to know her name or details on her background. We just needed confirmation that Dana and her husband didn’t have any criminal connections to suggest they weren’t innocent bystanders. There was also an actual home invasion, during which her husband was killed. Police reports confirmed all that for Émilie’s investigator. Dana and her sons are here for exactly the reason they seemed to be.
So why was Louie convinced otherwise?
Maybe because he wanted us to be convinced otherwise. He presumed we couldn’t follow up. The “not following up” misconception seems legitimate given the way he blustered about his own past, even when we threatened to check.
He’s mistaken us for mere employees, as we were in Rockton. Sure, we could go to our “boss” and demand answers, but were we entitled to those answers? No. He’d been promised privacy, and he doesn’t know that we are the people promising it. That’s the way we’ve set up Haven’s Rock. No one knows we own it, and if we seem more like mere employees, that’s to our advantage.
Louie claimed hunting and search-party expertise, but when we pushed, he dialed that back to what seemed like a few hunting trips and participation in a couple of search parties. Covering his ass, in case we really could check?
I am ninety percent sure he lied about why he was in the forest. He was out there doing something and—
“Us,” I say aloud.
Dalton and I are in the forest with Storm, ostensibly searching for Max, but mostly giving me fresh air so my stomach can settle … and giving us quiet time to process our news while doing something productive. We’re holding hands, not talking, with me mentally working through the case while Dalton checks for fresh signs that anyone has been out here.
“Us…?” Dalton says. “I’m guessing there’s more to that exclamation, unless you’re just randomly proclaiming our love to the world.” He pauses. “Or you’re shouting the title of that horror movie we saw, which I’m really hoping isn’t the answer, because I don’t even want to know how it relates to Max going missing.”
I shake my head. “I was thinking about Louie. Why he was in the forest. What he was up to.” I look at Dalton. “Us.”
“This is payback, isn’t it? You’re sick because of something—one could argue—that I did, and so you’re repaying me with cryptic clues.”
I bump my head against his shoulder as we walk. “I’ll give you a hint. What was Louie doing in the forest? The answer probably isn’t that he just happened to bump into us twice.”
Dalton curses. “Of course. There’s a whole fucking forest out here.”
“He was spying on us. Hopefully not the whole time we were out there, which would be really embarrassing if it took us that long to notice him.”
Dalton shakes his head. “Storm would have realized it even if we didn’t. My guess is that he was keeping his distance until he needed to get closer to hear us.”
“So he was spying on us.… To make sure we were actually searching for the bear and then for Max?”
“Well, if someone kidnapped Max by pretending to be his bear-man, that kidnapper knew more about the situation than we’d told the residents.”
I nod. “Which Louie could have overheard us talking about. We’d been doing that when Storm smelled the black bear.”
“And then once Max goes missing, whoever has him stashed might want to be certain we don’t get too close.”
“And divert us if we do?”
Dalton shrugs. “Louie did make enough noise for us to hear him. And it did keep us from going further.”
“So we should head back and search that area.”
“Or I should, while you chat with Louie. See if you can get him sweating. Take…” He tilts his head. “Take Yolanda. I get the feeling he’d rather talk to a man. Or a woman he can patronize.”
“Not many of those in Haven’s Rock. Yes, I think Yolanda will do nicely here.”
