Chapter 34
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.
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 not doing anything.”
“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.
“Alice?” Jonah stopped at the edge of her reach and lowered himself into a crouch, sinking his center of gravity, making himself smaller. He took off his hat and set it on his knee before dragging a hand through his rust-colored hair. “Your name is Alice, right?”
She didn’t answer. Just stared at him, unblinking, hands still raised defensively in front of her.
“My name’s Jonah Reed. I know your sister, Greta. We’ve been looking for you.”
At the mention of Greta, she unfolded slightly. She opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, but no sound came out.
“It’s okay,” Jonah assured and inched closer. “You’re safe now. Nobody’s going to hurt you. We’re going to get you somewhere warm, get you looked at. But we’ll take it slow. Nothing happens unless you’re ready for it.”
Her hands lowered by an inch.
“That’s good,” Jonah said. “You’re doing real good.” He settled deeper into the crouch. “I’ve got a horse here, just through those willows. Her name’s Sundance, but we call her Sunny. She’s about the gentlest mare you’ll ever meet. Wouldn’t hurt a fly even if it bit her first.”
He kept on. About Sunny, about how she loved apples but turned her nose up at carrots. About how she’d stand for hours while someone groomed her, eyes half-closed, content. About how the barn cats slept on her back sometimes, and she never seemed to mind.
Evander stayed back and watched. He didn’t have whatever this was.
Couldn’t have, not after the things he’d done with his hands.
Jonah crouched in the wet sand six feet from a woman who had spent fifteen years learning that every approaching footstep meant pain, and he was talking to her about apples.
About barn cats. About a mare who didn’t mind being slept on.
His voice had not changed pitch since he came through the willows.
Evander understood the mechanics of what Jonah was doing. Lower the body. Soften the voice. Telegraph every motion. But he could’ve done the same, and it wouldn’t have the same effect. Jonah radiated gentleness and patience, and it wasn’t just a tactic. He was how he was built.
Evander had been honed out of harder material.
He had crossed an avalanche-prone ridgeline against orders and gotten two men killed for the sake of reaching one.
He had spent five years in a cell learning what kind of meanness kept other men away from him.
He had built a cabin on land where nobody came, and he had run trip wires through the trees around it.
Gentleness was a country he had no passport to.
So he stood back with his hands at his sides and let Jonah work.
Alice’s breathing started to slow. Not calm — nothing in her posture read as calm — but less panicked, the sharp gasps smoothing into something closer to normal respiration.
She tracked between Jonah’s face and his hands, checking both, reading him the way she had likely learned to read her captor over fifteen years in a basement.
“You look cold,” Jonah said. “I’ve got a coat you can borrow. I’m going to take it off slow, then I’m going to hold it out to you.”
He moved in increments. Worked the zipper down. Shrugged out of it without standing, easing it off his shoulders while staying in the crouch, and held it out between them.
Alice looked at the coat. Then at Jonah. Then back at the coat.
She extended her hand. Slow. Shaking. She caught the edge of the coat and pulled it toward herself, dragging it across the wet sand until she could wrap it around her shoulders.
The fabric hung loose on her, sleeves swallowing her hands. She pulled it tight and closed her eyes.
“That’s real good,” Jonah said quietly. He inched closer and stopped, letting her adjust to his presence. “I’d like to get you out of here. Get you home to Greta.”
Once again, Alice relaxed a degree at the mention of Greta.
Smart, using the sister’s name again like that. It was a play Evander himself would’ve made.
Except Jonah wasn’t playing her. Evander knew that, somewhere underneath the analysis. Jonah had said the sister’s name because Greta was waiting, and Jonah was a man who reached for true things when someone was hurting. There was no calculation in him.
It didn’t track.
Everyone was a selfish asshole at heart.
Everyone.
Tilly wandered back toward him and sat in the scrub at his side, ears forward, watching. He wanted to think his dog was just as confused by this interaction as he was.