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Slowly, Ellie pushed to her feet. “Gloves on, everyone.” Then she made the mistake of looking at George.
“Jesus,” he said, his face pale, his mouth trembling. “Someone tied her up like a damned dog? How—”
“Don’t—” Ellie could feel the tears streaking down her cheeks; it was unprofessional, but inevitable. “Let’s go,” she said to Cal.
In a silence so thick it was hard to walk through and harder to breathe in, Ellie conducted her first true crime scene search. They found a pile of woman’s clothes, a single red patent leather high heel, a blood-spattered knife, a box of half-finished dreamcatchers, and a small ratty baby blanket so dirty they couldn’t be certain what color it had once been. Appliquéd daisies hung askew from the trim.
When George saw the blanket he made a strangled, desperate sound.
“Oh my God . . .”
Ellie didn’t dare look at him. She was hanging on by a thread here. If the look on George’s face matched the sound of his voice, she’d lose it. “Catalogue everything, Earl,” she said.
Behind the lean-to was another stake with another leather ankle strap; this one was bigger; it too was caked with dried blood. Someone else had been staked out here. An adult.
Zoë.
“She couldn’t even see her daughter,” Ellie whispered. Zoë’s rope was longer; it allowed her to reach the mattress in the lean-to.
Cal touched her again. “Keep moving.”
She nodded, hearing the thickness in his voice; it matched the stinging in her eyes. She moved forward slowly, studying everything from the pile of junk by an old moss-furred stump to the dirty, stained mattress that lay between two Douglas firs. There were animal signs everywhere—this camp had been vacant for a long time; the scavengers had come in.
Back in the trees, not far from the dirty mattress, Ellie found an old trunk, rusted almost shut. It took her a few tries, but she finally opened it. Inside she found piles of old Spokane newspaper clippings—most of them were about prostitutes who’d disappeared from the city streets and never been found. The last clipping was dated November 7, 1999. There were also several guns and a blood-encrusted arm sling.
Down at the bottom, buried beneath the bandages and newspapers and dirty silverware, was a yellow plastic raincoat and a ratty Batman baseball cap.
Behind her George let out an anguished cry. “He saw it. That flower delivery guy saw the kidnapper parked in front of my house.”
Ellie didn’t turn around; she couldn’t see George right now. But she heard him drop to his knees in the muddy dirt.
“If they’d listened, maybe they could have found them before he did . . . this. Oh my God.”
When he started to cry, Ellie closed her eyes. She’d done her job, found the truth.
But it wasn’t the truth she’d wanted to find.
ALICE’S HEART IS POUNDING IN HER CHEST. SHE KNOWS SHE SHOULD RUN! But she can’t leave Jewlee.
Still, she hears the voices here. The leaves and the trees and the river. These are the sounds she remembers, and though there is fear in her chest, there is something else, something that makes her get to her feet.
Wolf brushes up against her, loving her. Not far away, his pack is standing together, waiting for his return. This Alice knows. She can hear their padding footsteps and growling at one another; these are the sounds below, softer than the rustling leaves and the rushing water. The sounds of life that fill all this darkness.
She bends down. It takes a long time, but she finally frees Wolf from the smelly, icky trap on his face and around his neck.
He looks up at her in perfect understanding.
She feels sad at the thought of losing him again, but a wolf needs his family.
“Fwee,” she whispers.
He howls and licks her face.
“’Bye,” she whispers.
Then he is gone.
Alice looks back up at Jewlee, feeling such a swelling in her heart that it almost hurts. She knows what she wants to tell Jewlee, but she doesn’t have the words. She takes Jewlee’s hand, leads her well around the place (she doesn’t want to see the cave again; oh no). They climb over one of the trees Him cut down and push through a patch of stinging nettles.
