“And what about Andrés?” Gabriel said. There was nothing light or airy in his voice, no smile on his face as he stepped toward Ness. “Did you mourn my brother? Remember him? Give him peace?”

“Gabriel, no.” Ness turned her attention back to him. “I don’t know what happened to your brother.”

Seconds ticked by, the two of them locked onto each other. Mac lunged forward. Ness turned the gun on him so fast that I wondered if she’d known he’d be the one to make a move the entire time.

“If I knew what happened to Andrés,” Ness said, her voice taking on an uncomfortable edge, her gaze on Mac’s now, her finger hovering over the trigger, “I wouldn’t have left you to wonder. Not you, Gabriel. You’re family.” Her chin shook. “I wouldn’t do that to family.”

“We didn’t leave you wondering on purpose,” Cady said, her throat making an attempt at strangling the words. “If we knew what happened to Ash…”

Ness turned the gun on Cady, stepping back from Mac, back from all of us. “You know something,” she said, as if willing those words to be true. “When you left, you weren’t just running away from your father. You were running away from what happened.” Ness’s voice went up an octave. “Something happened.”

Ness had raised Cady. She loved her. But as I breathed the stale air inside that tree and watched the way Ness looked at my mother, at Jude, still unconscious on the floor, I suddenly knew that Bales had been wrong.

Ness might not have come here intending to hurt Cady, but she could do it.

Mac must have sensed the same thing, because he held his hands up, stepping back and away from Ness, and he started to talk. “We went down to South America to retrieve a client’s daughter. She’d been taken and was being held at a camp farther into the jungle than anyone else was willing to go.”

Cady shifted to put her body more squarely in front of Jude’s. She had a two-handed hold on Saskia now. “We found the girl.” Cady’s voice cracked. I could see her folding in on herself, see the memories taking hold. “We got her out. We made it to the extraction point. But Ash…”

Words failed Cady. I’d been there. I wanted, more than anything, to go to her, to block her body with mine the way she was blocking Jude.

“Ash what?” Ness prompted silkily, her voice so soft that the lack of volume almost masked the intensity underneath.

“Ash went back.” Mac provided the answer. I could sense him willing Ness to turn the gun his way, but she kept it focused on Cady.

“Why?” Ness demanded. “Why would he go back?”

“I don’t know,” Cady said.