I stood and backed away in a single, liquid motion. I turned toward the door, intending to flee, but as I did, I caught sight of the wall I’d reached for when I’d stumbled backward. My hand had hit paper, and now I could see why.

The surface was covered, ceiling to floor, with notes and maps, photographs and pins. I recognized bits and pieces from the missing persons reports I’d read over, but that was nothing compared to the whole.

An eight-foot-by-ten-foot map of Hunter’s Point and the adjacent mountain hung in the center, marked up so thoroughly with black marker and flags that I could barely make out the words underneath. Smaller maps broke the rest of the Sierra Glades into quadrants.

Seven hundred and fifty thousand acres, I thought, reaching up to press my fingertips gently against the map in the center. In a lifetime, Gabriel couldn’t cover that much ground.

But he could try.

Chapter 29

Bales had claimed that Gabriel knew the mountain better than anyone. Now I understood why. I thought back to the way that Gabriel had helped me find Saskia when she’d gone missing.

Caves, I could hear him telling me. My brother used to insist that they were out here, but I spent an entire summer looking and never found one.

Based on what I’d seen on Gabriel’s wall, I was willing to bet he’d spent longer than one summer looking. In fact, I would have bet the clothes off my back that he’d spent years.

“A quiet Kira bodes well, I always say!” Jude plopped down beside me. I was sitting with my back up against the tree I’d slept under our first night in Hunter’s Point.

“Is this an ‘obsessing over the fact that I’m stuck here instead of out searching’ quiet or a ‘meditating on what was in those files’ quiet?” Free asked, jumping to catch hold of the tree’s lowest branch and pulling herself effortlessly up. “Or an ‘I should have taken Free with me to talk to Gabriel’ one?”

Jude stretched out his mile-long legs and laid the folder of information we’d obtained from the librarian delicately on his lap. “I have always felt, deep down,” he said once it became clear that I wasn’t going to answer Free’s question, “like I might be the second coming of Sherlock Holmes.”

Jude had also, at various points in time, claimed to be the second coming of Ann Landers, William Shakespeare, and Princess Di. I said as much out loud, and my foster brother adopted a serene expression.

“I have layers.”

Above us, Free positioned herself on the branch, allowing her legs to dangle down. “And what, oh second coming of Sherlock, are your finely honed instincts telling you about our missing persons?”