Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it meant nothing that I could see parallels—no matter how thin—between these pictures and the path our kidnapper had taken. There was nothing in the History about the caves, nothing about Alden or the clearing.

But we’d lost—and found—Bella’s trail multiple times in the first forty-eight hours. At the river. At Sorrow’s Pass. In the valley.

Tracking Bella and her abductor from one location to the next had proven futile, again and again. Whoever had taken her was too savvy, knew the park too well. The only thing I could think to do—had to do—was to stop following, stop tracking, and start figuring out where that person might be headed next.

Andrés? I wondered. Someone else? Whoever it was, the person who’d taken Bella had a reason. The Circle, the hash marks on the tree, the disappearing and reappearing trail…

I stood. Cady and the other searchers would have attempted to pick up Bella’s scent where they’d had it last. They’d be searching downriver. That made sense. It was the right call.

But I wasn’t in a place to make the right call.

I left a note for Jude and Free. I wasn’t sure where either one of them had gone, only that I’d chased them away. A note wasn’t much, but it was something.

I wanted to leave them something.

I borrowed the keys to the truck. And Saskia and I set off for the park—for the campsite where Bella’s family had been staying.

Back to the start.

Chapter 46

Sass and I retraced our steps: along the river, through the woods, up into the base of the mountain. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Maybe, like some of the hikers who’d passed through Hunter’s Point over the years, I was looking to get lost.

I hadn’t had a fresh scent to give Saskia, but my K9 pushed forward with uncompromising determination, as if knowing that I was looking for something was, in and of itself, enough.

Instead of attempting to make our way up to the pass, sans helicopter, I doubled back to the river, the photograph from the History still fresh in my mind. Running water was useful if you were looking to evade trackers. It wasn’t foolproof, but if I had to venture a guess about how Bella’s abductor had managed zigzagging back and forth across the park, it was a good bet the river had played some role.

Sorrow’s Pass is downriver from the campsite. Alden is downriver from Sorrow’s Pass.

As Saskia and I made our way along the riverbank, the terrain grew rougher and the water picked up steam. If we wanted to cross to the other side, we’d need to do it soon.