“Greta.” His voice broke as he pulled her to him, his arms wrapping around her so tightly she could barely breathe.
She clung to him, her fingers digging into his jacket, and pressed her face against his chest.
“It was Cody,” she managed, her voice muffled against his shirt.
“We know.”
“King saved me.”
Still holding her tight, Bear looked down at the dog.
King grinned back with his blood-stained muzzle, his tail wagging.
Bear released her long enough to crouch down at his dog’s level. He put both hands on the sides of King’s enormous head and pressed his forehead to King’s and stayed like that for a beat.
“Best boy,” Bear said. Rough. “Best damn boy in the world.”
King’s tail thumped harder against the porch.
Bear straightened up, one hand still on King’s head, the other reaching for her. He pulled her in again, and she went without resistance.
“Tink,” he breathed and buried his face in her hair, and she’d never been so happy to hear that stupid nickname. “I thought I lost you. When I found Atlas?—”
She shoved away from him and stared up into his eyes. “Atlas! Is he—” She broke off, too afraid of the answer to the question.
“He’s okay. He’s with Lila. His jaw is fractured, but she can fix it. He’ll be okay.”
“He protected me, too.” The memories were coming back in a flood now. “He was trying to warn me. He knew someone was in the house. He was trying to protect me.”
He tightened his arms around her. “Both dogs are getting prime rib every night for the rest of their lives.”
Behind him, she heard truck doors slamming and Boone’s voice calling out orders. She saw Ghost moving fast and silent toward the cabin. They were going to find Cody chained in the basement. They were going to find the tally marks on the wall. They were going to find the Bible on the table where Alice had hidden the only thing she’d kept.
Greta dug her hand into her pocket and pulled out the bracelet, holding it up in front of Bear’s face.
His eyes widened when he saw it. “I thought you?—”
“It isn’t mine. It’s hers.”
His face went still. “What?”
“Cody kept her prisoner. He chained her to the wall just like he did to me.” She swallowed hard and watched the interlocked hearts sway in her shaking hand. “The bones they found—they weren’t hers. They were someone else’s. Alice escaped. She got out on her own.”
Bear looked from her face to the cabin behind her, then back again. “Jesus Christ.”
“She’s out there somewhere. Alive.” The words felt impossible even as she said them. “I have to find her.”
Bear looked at the bracelet as the sun broke the horizon behind the pines and the world went gold.
Then he pulled her in again, harder this time, and she let him hold her up because her legs had finally stopped working and the only thing keeping her standing was his arms.
“We will,” he said into her hair. “Greta. We’re going to find her and bring her home.”
thirty-four
Evander dragged his boots free of the sucking mud one step at a time, the saturated earth fighting him for every inch of forward motion. Ahead, Tilly quartered through the scrub in tight zigzags, head low, shoulders working as she covered the grid. Ten yards to his right, Jonah sat Sundance at the edge of the tree line with binoculars up, glassing the brush in long sweeps. They had been working this section of riverbank for three hours and turned up nothing but deadfall and cold water pushing fast through the willows.
This terrain was hell. Not the dramatic kind that photographed well — no cliffs, no exposure — just the grinding misery of ground that fought back. The river had swollen with rain and pushed past its banks, turning the floodplain into a maze of standing water and mud thick enough to pull a boot clean off. Downed cottonwoods blocked the direct routes, forcing him to navigate around trunks still slick with river silt. The willows grew dense at the waterline, branches whipping at his jacket when he shoved through, and the cold came up off the water in a steady current that worked its way into his bones.
