“Distract me.” My body physically shook with the effort of trying to take a mental step back from this case—from Bella. I bowed my head and let it rest against Silver’s. Her fur was coarse, but it didn’t feel rough against my skin. “Tell me something that has nothing to do with kidnapping or missing children or what might be happening to that little girl right now.”

My fellow Miscreants obliged.

“Bales has officially banned the use of confetti,” Jude said at the exact same time that Free opted for, “I might have made another trip to town. And I might have asked around about Ash. And Cady. And Mac.”

Now that was a worthy distraction. Jude and I hadn’t really talked about the argument we’d overheard between Cady and Bales. We hadn’t discussed Ash—or what the fact that Cady had “loved” Ash might mean for Jude. I couldn’t remember Cady ever dating. She’d had Jude young.

She’d known Ash when she was young.

Jude sat straight up on the bed and twirled toward the window. “And what, pray tell, might you have learned on this trip to town, Free Morrow?”

Free took her time responding. “Cady ever mention anything to either of you about spending her early twenties as part of an elite search and rescue team?”

I felt my eyebrows skyrocket.

“Traveling the world?” Free continued. “Partaking of death-defying adventures in some of the worst and scariest places this planet has to offer?”

“I would like to say that this sounds vaguely familiar,” Jude replied. “However…”

However. That wasn’t the beginning of a sentence. It was the end of one. Cady hadn’t told us anything—not about her past, not about this SAR team, and not about Ash. For once, Jude did not offer up a maniacally optimistic view of the situation.

A protective instinct stirred inside me. If there was one thing that could distract me from the predator who had Bella, it was a threat to my family. Whatever secrets Cady had been keeping, whatever answers she’d withheld—they meant something to Jude.

“Did you find out anything else?” I asked Free, talking for Jude the way he’d always spoken for me. “Who Ash was? What happened to him?”

“Ash’s full name,” Free said after an appropriately dramatic pause, “was John Ashby.”

“Ashby.” Jude was the one who made the connection. “Isn’t that Ness’s last name?”

“I’m guessing Ash was either her nephew or her son.” Free wound her blond hair around her fist. Even when it came to absentminded hair twirling, she did nothing halfway. “There’s more of a story there,” Free declared, “but dragging those particular skeletons out of the family closet might require venturing back to town and finding some chattier locals.”