Gabriel didn’t particularly feel like taking us anywhere, but Free could be very convincing. She requested a place with a view. That was how the four of us came to be standing on a stone ledge in the shape of an arrowhead, facing away from the national park. At first, all I could see as I looked out was green—a thousand and one shades of it. The landscape stretching toward the horizon looked like it had been painted with a knife: thick and textured and alive. I could see civilization if I looked for it. But why would I? Why would anyone?

Free walked right up to the edge and looked down. “How far is the drop?”

“Maybe a hundred feet?” Gabriel guessed.

Jude looked at me. He looked at Free. And then he peeked over the edge of the ledge, threw his head back, and howled. Free joined in: half yodel, half victory scream.

“Don’t you ever just want to yell?” Jude asked a visibly startled Gabriel. “To take everything inside of you—every worry, every what if, every question that haunts you—and just…let go?”

“Not particularly.”

Free flipped her ponytail back over her shoulder. “Are you a liar or a stick-in-the-mud?” she asked Gabriel.

He probably had a smart-mouthed response to that question, but he didn’t get a chance to use it, because I did know what it was like to swallow screams and howls. My dark place was a living, breathing thing. I’d barely held it at bay in the caves. It rose up like a wave inside me with each setback in the search for Bella, and in between, it churned. Watching, waiting, feeling, scratching against the door to be let out—

I raised my face to the sky and let loose a howl of my own. Jude whooped, and Free joined in, and soon, the dogs had added their voices, all except for Saskia, who was pacing the fringes, her blue eyes focused on Gabriel. The edges of his lips had just started to curve upward when, suddenly, he paused, cocked his head to one side, and then started jogging back toward his truck.

I followed him, and Saskia followed me. I made it back to Gabriel’s truck just in time to see him reach through the open window and fiddle with the dial on what looked to be a
radio. It took me a few seconds to register the fact that the radio was on when the truck was not, and another after that to process the muffled words coming out of the speaker.

This wasn’t a radio.

This was a police scanner.

Gabriel must have realized I was standing there, because he turned toward me. “Kira.”

I bristled. He hadn’t mentioned owning a police scanner. He hadn’t even hinted that he was keeping tabs on the sheriff’s department.

“Kira,” Gabriel said again, his voice softer this time and oddly devoid of emotion.