He kept moving.
Tilly read the ground in a language of scent he would never fully understand. Her tail stayed low. Not flagging. Not signaling. Just working. Her body told him everything he needed to know — when she was tracking something worth following, when she was eliminating dead zones, when she was tiring and needed water. He carried a collapsible bowl in his pack and had stopped twice already to let her drink, kneeling in the mud while she lapped at it and he scanned the far bank.
Behind him, Sundance’s hooves made soft sucking sounds in the saturated ground. Jonah stayed mounted, using the height to glass sections of terrain Evander couldn’t pick up from down low. They had divided the work without discussing it. Tilly covered scent. Jonah covered sight. Evander covered the ground between them. The system worked because none of them talked more than necessary.
The river ran brown and fast to their left, swollen with snowmelt and rain, carrying pieces of the mountain down with it. Branches tumbled past in the current. Foam collected in eddies behind rocks. The roar of it swallowed smaller noises and made him lean harder on what he could see.
Tilly stopped.
Not a pause. A full stop. Her body went rigid, head dropping, the ridge of fur along her spine lifting from shoulders to tail. She stood at the waterline with one front paw raised, frozen mid-step.
Evander raised his right hand in a closed fist.
Behind him, Sundance’s hooves quieted. Leather creaked as Jonah shifted in the saddle. Then nothing but the river.
Evander moved forward slow, placing each step, watching Tilly’s body for changes. She held her position, attention locked on something ahead in the willows. Her nostrils flared. Her ears stayed forward and tense.
The scrub thickened here. He pushed through the first layer, branches scraping across his jacket, and stepped into the narrow space between the willows and the water.
A woman lay collapsed at the edge of the river.
The nightgown had been white once, but it had turned gray with age, darker at the hem where river silt had soaked into the fabric. Her bare feet were caked with mud to the ankles. Her hair plastered the left side of her face, dark with water or sweat or both. The skin at her wrists was raw and broken, abraded in rings that circled both arms like bracelets, damage that came from restraints worn through skin over time.
She was conscious. Open eyes tracked him as he came through the willows. Her breathing ran shallow and fast, visible in the rise and fall of her chest under the ruined nightgown.
He took one step closer.
She shoved herself backward against the bank with a sound that bypassed language entirely—animal and raw and desperate. Her heels carved into the wet sand, finding purchase, pushing her body away from him. She brought her hands up between them, not defensive, not reaching, just up, creating space, keeping distance.
He stopped.
Holy… fuck.
He had been at the back of the cemetery when they lowered the casket. Had stood in the tree line where no one would see him and watched Greta Dougherty, with shaking hands, unfold a paper and read words about her sister. Watched her put a gold necklace in the casket before they closed it. Watched Bear hold her while she came apart.
But the bones in that casket were not Alice Dougherty’s.
“Jonah,” he called over his shoulder.
Alice flinched.
He gritted his teeth. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
He didn’t think it possible, but she made herself even smaller.
“What the hell are you doing?” Jonah demanded as he pushed through the willows. He put himself between Evander and the woman like he was the fucking bad guy here.
“I’m notdoinganything.”
“You’re scaring her.”
“I’m standing here.”
“Scowling. Knock it off.” Jonah turned away and held up his hands as he approached her.
Alice kept one eye on Evander, but her attention shifted to Jonah. Her breathing ran fast and shallow, the rise and fall of it visible under the ruined nightgown.
She reminded Evander of a rabbit, all eyes and twitchy nerves.
