There was a roar in my ears, a whisper, and then
nothing.

“The cases might not be connected,” Free was saying. “These missing persons might have nothing to do with Bella.”

And how, I thought, does that make you feel? I had to stifle the urge to physically shake off the question. Feeling was dangerous. Thinking was better.

As long as I was thinking, I was me.

“Say the cases were connected.” I turned to Free, my focus intense. “Andrés Cortez is the earliest case we have a file for. Do you think he was the first?”

Free balanced precariously on the windowsill, one knee pulled to her chest and the other dangling toward the ground. “The first what?”

I thought of the doctor, asking me about Saskia. Someone hurt her. There was still a part of me that believed that was what humans did. They hurt things—not because they had to, not in self-defense, not to sate their hunger.

Because they could.

“The first victim.” Free answered her own question—or maybe the expression on my face answered it for her. “You think all these people were kidnapped, like Bella?”

I didn’t know what to think.

Chapter 28

It was Free’s suggestion that we talk to Gabriel. It was my idea to go alone. Every instinct I had said that Gabriel wouldn’t do well with being outnumbered. I was the one who’d spent the most time with him. I was the logical choice. Free wasn’t happy about that, but she agreed: I would talk to Gabriel.

I would ask him about his brother.

For the first time since Cady had sent me off the mountain, my body and the restless energy inside it felt aligned. I made it to the shack I’d seen Gabriel disappear into the night before and paused. Up close, the term shack seemed insufficient. It wasn’t big—maybe twenty feet by twenty—but it was solid. It had been made with wood but made well. The color had faded with time, enough so that I doubted Gabriel was the one who’d taken hammer to nail. But someone had built this place, board by board.

I understood, objectively, that knocking was something people did. But announcing my presence—giving away my position and waiting, open and exposed—wasn’t something I’d ever been able to bring myself to do. Jude had joked for years that my version of knocking was to stand silently outside a door, glaring intensely.

I might have given up on this particular door—I wasn’t even sure why I’d come—but I heard something. The sound was muted, but I had a way of listening, focusing on one thing and blocking out everything else.

And there it was again—a low-pitched murmur. A moan.