“Saskia?” I called, my voice echoing through the space. I heard her before I saw her, nails against the stone as she came barreling toward me. I knelt, the flashlight falling from my hand as my arms locked around her.

“Good girl,” I told her, my voice shaking as I ran my hands over her fur, assuring myself that she was all right. “That’s a good girl. I’m here, Sass. I’m here.”

She snuffed once, shook me off, and then barked.

Once. Twice. Three times.

“She found something,” Gabriel stated.

With barely a glance in his direction, I followed Saskia as she led the way deeper and deeper into the cave. I heard the sound of running water—an underground river?—but kept my focus on the here and now, the band of light cast by my flashlight illuminating the steel-gray ground beneath our feet.

The cave hit a dead end, and Saskia barked again, three times. Find. Recall. Re-find.

I knelt to jostle her back and forth, to scratch behind her ears, even as my left hand aimed the flashlight past her. There was a red windbreaker on the floor. I stood, angling the flashlight to get a better look as Gabriel did the same with his.

“Bella!” I called the little girl’s name. If she’d found her way down here, like Saskia, she might not have been able to find her way out. “Bella? Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

The ground shook with a roll of thunder, close enough to set my teeth on edge. I turned back to Gabriel.

“She was here,” I said.

Gabriel let his light roam over the area around us and stopped it on what appeared to be some kind of makeshift fire pit. He knelt next to it, dipping his fingers into the ash and studying the way the brush was scattered.

Then he looked back up at me. “Bella was here,” he echoed. “And she wasn’t alone.”

Chapter 20

I tried to radio in what we’d found, but between the weather and the fact that we were inside the mountain, reception was shot.

We found Bella’s windbreaker. I ignored the roiling emotions gnashing inside me and focused on rehearsing what I would say when we finally got through. There are signs of a campsite. Bella isn’t just lost. Someone took her.

“You’re pacing.” Gabriel was leaning against the wall of the cave, standing guard over the evidence. Saskia lay at his feet, surprisingly docile. “Afraid that whoever has Bella might be coming back?”

Fear wasn’t something I felt about possible threats. Fear was here and now, fight or flight. I wasn’t afraid.

I was angry.

“Some crimes make sense.” I didn’t pause to think about how that comment might sound. “Taking what you need, even if it belongs to someone else. Striking hard and fast and first.”