“He’ll come back.” At least he hoped so.
Logan’s jaw tightened. He nodded, then started the engine again. “Let’s go find Greta.”
The drive back to Maple took four minutes. Bear counted them. Counted the turns, the empty streets, the dark windows of houses where people were asleep and didn’t know that Greta Dougherty was missing and her dog was broken and Daniel fucking Goodwin’s truck was somewhere in the night with a head start they couldn’t measure.
When they turned onto Maple, the street was full of vehicles. Neighbors had come out onto their porches to gawk.
Walker’s truck was at the curb in front of Greta’s house, Boone’s beside it. Ghost’s black SUV blocked the street at an angle. Jax’s truck, X’s, and River’s ancient beat-up Ford all blocked the other end.
They were all there, and they were pissed.
Logan parked behind Walker’s truck and killed the engine.
Bear got out. His foot screamed, and he ignored it, limping across the grass to where Walker stood with his phone in his hand and his hat pushed back. Boone was beside him, arms crossed. His expression said he was deciding who needed to be hurt and how badly. Ghost stood next to his SUV, his laptop open on the hood, laser focused on the screen, typing fast. Jax, Jonah, and Anson were by the driveway with Hatch, all of them quiet, and X and River were near the trucks, talking in low voices that fell silent when Bear got close.
Naomi stepped out of Greta’s front door with her phone pressed to her ear. She saw Bear and held up one finger—wait—then spoke into the phone in the clipped professional tone she used when she wanted to make sure people listened.
“Yes. Greta Dougherty. Five-foot-three, strawberry blond hair, around one-hundred-twenty pounds. Last seen approximately twenty minutes ago, being loaded into a truck. Suspect vehicle is a dark-colored pickup, last seen heading east on Maple. I want to confirm that Daniel Goodwin is still in lock-up. He was arrested for assaulting her earlier tonight.” A pause. “Yes, I’ll hold.”
Walker crossed to Bear. He looked at Bear’s face, then down at his feet, then back up. “Dane. You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine.”
“Fuck,” Naomi said softly, and he spun toward her, heart high in his throat.
“What?”
She hung up and glanced at Walker and Ghost before her gaze settled back on him.
“Goddammit, what?”
“Hey,” Ghost said and stepped between them. “Back off. She’s on your side.” It was only when his hand landed on Bear’s chest that he realized he’d stepped into Naomi’s space, crowding her.
“Sorry.” He backed up a step and dragged his hands over his head. “Just tell me what you found out.” Alice’s bones, buried in the mud of the creek bank, flashed through his mind. No. He viciously shoved the image away.
Greta was not going to end up like Alice.
Naomi exhaled slowly and met his gaze. “Daniel is still in jail. Whoever took Greta, it’s not him.”
thirty-two
Bear had been watching the clock on the microwave for forty minutes when the state police rolled in at 2:47.
Three vehicles — two marked cruisers and an unmarked sedan — their headlights sweeping across Greta’s dark house, turning her front lawn into a stage. He counted the doors opening. Four. Five. Six. Men in uniform spreading out across her property, flashlights cutting through the dark, radios crackling. His hands were flat on the counter and he couldn’t make them move.
Behind him, Walker was on the phone with someone — state contact, maybe FBI, Bear couldn’t track it. Ghost’s fingers moved across his laptop keyboard in the steady rhythm that meant he was deep in whatever digital labyrinth he’d disappeared into. Naomi paced the living room, her own phone pressed to her ear, voice low and clipped.
Bear’s foot throbbed. Johanna had wrapped it — gauze and medical tape, efficient and tight — but blood had already seeped through in a dark oval near his heel where the glass had gone deepest. He could feel it, wet and warm inside his boot, but he couldn’t make himself care about it.
Greta was out there. In a tarp. In a truck. With someone who had hit her dog hard enough to break bone.
His vision went white at the edges and he made himself breathe.
Across the street, more lights came on. Crime scene tape going up around Greta’s porch. Someone photographing the front door. Another officer crouched near the driveway with a flashlight, examining tire tracks in the grass. Bear watched them work and felt the distance between himself and useful action stretch until it was unbearable.
King still hadn’t come back.
The thought landed with a cold edge under everything else. King had taken off after the truck and disappeared around the corner, and Bear had been so focused on Atlas and Greta and Logan that he hadn’t tracked it. King was out there somewhere in the dark too, probably miles from home now, chasing a vehicle he couldn’t catch.
