Breathe in. Breathe out. I counted back from one hundred, one number per breath. One hundred. Ninety-nine. I stared out the window as we drove up a winding mountain road. Spread out in the distance, I could see nothing but unvarnished wilderness. Something about the way the mountain range cut into the sky made me feel vast, like the green of the trees and the crisp white snowcaps—the stone and dirt and water and air—were part of me.

Like I could get lost out there without ever leaving this car.

“Sierra Glades National Park,” Cady said. “Seven hundred and fifty thousand acres of mountains, foothills, canyons, and rivers—not to mention a forest that boasts some of the tallest, oldest trees on the continent.”

“Or as I like to call it,” Jude added from the passenger seat, “our new backyard!”

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Cady muttered as the town—what little there was of it—came into view. “We won’t be here long.”

Responding to Cady’s muttering, Silver lifted her head from my lap. Behind us, Saskia prowled, making use of the space Cady had cleared when she’d removed the third row of seats from her SUV. Pad sat calmly at the back window, ready for action.

As Cady pulled off onto a gravel road, Silver laid her head back down on my lap and plopped one paw over my leg, a clear order that I should stay put.

“I take it that our beloved grandfather is greatly revered in the town of Hunter’s Point?” Jude asked, continuing the steady stream of chatter he’d kept up for the whole drive. “For his wisdom. And his beard.”

“Unless something’s changed since I left, your grandfather doesn’t mix much with the people in town.” Cady didn’t elaborate.

“You don’t want to talk about him.” I meant that as a statement, but a question burrowed its way into my tone. Cady hadn’t told us anything about Bales Bennett. She had to have known that we’d overheard parts of their conversation, but she hadn’t so much as mentioned it—not once.

“We’re here to help with a search,” my foster mother said, her fingers tightening around the steering wheel for a split second before she forced them loose again. “That’s all.”

Cady was famous in search and rescue circles for training dogs, but as far as I knew, she hadn’t participated in an active search in years. Since she found me.

“I sense that this is something of a bittersweet homecoming,” Jude commented as Cady pulled in front of a cabin-style house and cut the engine. “Out of respect for the solemnity of the occasion, I shall refrain from confetti.”

Why did I have a feeling literal confetti would be making an appearance before long?