A stick snapped up ahead of us. Victoria pivoted, and so did the light. One second, I spotted clothing slung carefully over a low-hanging limb on a nearby tree, and the next second, a naked man stepped into view and turned in the direction from which he’d just emerged.

Beside me, Lily let out a strangled whisper. “Daddy.”

I’d thought, in passing, that Lily’s father might be having an affair, but there was a difference between thinking something in the abstract and seeing it in the flesh. Literally.

I briefly entertained the ridiculous idea that maybe Aunt Olivia was out here with him, but the next second, a woman stepped into view. She saw the flashlight, even though Uncle J.D. was too involved in what he was doing—and her—to notice.

“J.D.,” the woman said softly.

I stared at her, trying to process what I was seeing. The woman reaching to grab her clothing off the tree had blond hair, but her features and skin-tone bore a striking resemblance to Victoria’s.

I know that woman. I told myself I was being ridiculous, that there was no way, but the next word out of Uncle J.D.’s mouth put a nail in that coffin.

That word, which he murmured into her neck, was: “Ana.”

CHAPTER 23

Lily made a mewling sound. Her father saw her, saw us. There was frenzied movement as he pulled on his pants, then a string of stammered explanations, none of them worth a damn thing. Questions, cursing, demands—and all I could think, through all of it, was that the woman standing next to Lily’s father, the very naked woman he was having an affair with, looked so much like she had as a teenager.

Ana Sofía Gutierrez. She wasn’t dead. She wasn’t missing. She was here, pulling a dress over her head. She was looking at Lily and at Victoria and at me.

“Lily’s bleeding.” Victoria somehow managed to sound, if not calm, then at least somewhat in control of the situation. “We crashed. She hit her head. Hard.”

“Lily . . .” Uncle J.D. choked on her name. “Sweetheart, what—”

“No.” Lily’s voice wasn’t quiet, exactly, but I had to strain to hear it.

“No,” J.D. repeated. “You didn’t hit your head?”

“Stay away from me.” Lily took a step back. Her entire body was shaking. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t touch me.”

I crossed in front of her, between them. I had about a million questions, but right now, it didn’t matter that the woman was Ana—or that Campbell and I had been looking for her. It mattered that Lily was bleeding, figuratively and literally.

It mattered that she was shattered.

“Sawyer.” J.D. turned his attention to me. “What happened?”

I hated him for doing this to her, the way I hadn’t ever quite been able to hate him for myself.