I managed a smile, and that let me refocus my thoughts. We were here for Bella. Everything else was noise.

“Grab breakfast and the bloodhounds—and Free, if you can find her,” I told Jude, channeling the restless energy inside me toward a purpose. “We need to get back out there.”

As long as I was doing something, I was in control.

“Technically,” Free hollered in our general direction as she carried a plate piled high with bacon out of the house, “we need to get up there. Sheriff called. They found Bella’s trail again, farther up the mountain. He’s on his way here to personally deliver us to our new ground zero.”

The moment Free mentioned the sheriff, Gabriel went very still. If I wasn’t already on high alert, I might not have noticed, but there was something in that stillness that hit me like the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, like a dog whistle, too high in pitch for normal people to hear.

A moment later, Gabriel, who claimed to be incapable of keeping his mouth shut, walked away without a word.

Chapter 16

When the sheriff arrived, Gabriel was nowhere to be seen. Bales beat us to answering the door. He looked the sheriff up and down. “Mind if I ask how you’re planning to get the kids to Sorrow’s Pass?”

“Airlift.” The sheriff kept his reply brief. “The rangers will fly them out.”

I didn’t like the sheriff’s tone—and I really didn’t like the fact that it was at odds with the small, sharp-edged smile on his face.

Bales said something else. The sheriff replied. I lost track of what was being said. We didn’t have time for this.

“Bella’s out there.” I looked past the sheriff—and past Bales—as I spoke. “Talk won’t bring her home.”

The sheriff shifted his gaze from Bales to me. “Then let’s get you kids in the car.”

His stare coated me like oil. The muscles in my stomach clenched, and before I knew what was happening, the sheriff was reaching for Saskia’s collar. In a flash of motion, Bales stepped in between them to push the sheriff back. Saskia’s teeth snapped together a fraction of a second later. A growl vibrated through her entire body, and she snapped again.

The sheriff shook off the old man’s grip. He rounded on me. “You need to control that animal.”

The way he said animal slithered under my skin. I stood there, nostrils flaring, caught between lunging forward and skittering back. My girl had come to us with scars—visible, human-inflicted scars. Saskia didn’t like men, and she didn’t like being touched.

I should have been the one to protect her.

“She doesn’t know you,” I told the sheriff, shifting my weight forward. “You can’t just try to grab her like that.”