“Drowned,” the female agent replied. “Most likely in the river.” She stopped dancing around the point and laid it out for us. “We’ve found no evidence of foul play. In at least two cases, we believe the bodies were buried a month or more after the victims died.”

It was hard for me to imagine Ness killing someone, but it was strikingly easy to imagine her laying a stranger to rest.

The day before, Mac had told me that he didn’t find bodies. I find lost ones, he’d said, and I bring them home.

Chapter 51

Ness Ashby was nowhere to be found. The FBI searched the Bennett property. They went through her cabin with a fine-tooth comb, and they didn’t find a trace of the old woman.

Not so old that she can’t still take to the mountain, I thought. Not too old to pull Bella out of the river or take advantage of the kind of search that people will mount for a missing little girl.

“I’m mad at you.” Free came to stand right beside me. “But for the next ten seconds, I’m going to pretend that I’m not.”

I felt like I’d swallowed a tennis ball, but I managed to respond. “You want me to tell you what’s going on?”

“Eight seconds.”

Luckily, I was an expert at keeping things short. “I found Bella. The person who took her wanted us to find her.”

“Three seconds,” Free said lazily.

“The person who took her was Ness.”

“Ness?” Free repeated, forgetting all about her countdown. “Older woman about yea tall? Tough as nails and makes corn bread even better than Cady’s?”

When I’d gone out to search, I should have taken her with me. Free and Jude should have been there when we’d found out the truth. Gabriel, too.

“Ness did it for Cady,” I told Free. “And for Bales.”

Free was quiet for long enough that I wondered if she was trying to make sense of what I’d said or if my temporary pardon had run out.

“Finding Bella was supposed to fix me.” I didn’t know what else to say or how to explain what I was talking about or why it mattered.

Fortunately, Free didn’t believe in segues between one subject and the next. “We’re unconventional,” she told me. “Not broken.”

We. I took a hesitant step toward her. “New part of the Creed?”