Especially in Fairview Falls.
Bear’s voice broke.
“Yeah, sweetheart.”
He wiped his eyes with the back of one tattooed hand.
“I knew her.”
Avery leaned forward.
“How?”
Bear looked at the little girl he had been legally forbidden to meet.
Then told her the truth.
“She was my daughter.”
Avery’s lips parted.
Bear couldn’t breathe.
“That means…”
He nodded.
“I’m your grandfather.”
Avery stared at him for several seconds.
Then asked the most heartbreaking question Bear had ever heard.
“Why didn’t you come get me?”
Bear closed his eyes.
That question hurt more than any punch, broken bone or funeral he’d survived.
“I tried.”
Avery’s face changed.
“They said you didn’t want me.”
Bear shook his head violently.
“No.”
His voice cracked.
“No, baby. Never.”
He moved one hand toward her, then stopped.
Avery looked at it.
Slowly, cautiously, she placed her fingers inside his.
Bear bowed his head.
And the biggest man inside Iron Haven began to cry.
The ambulance arrived fourteen minutes later.
Sheriff Dean Rourke arrived in eleven.
That was the first thing Reese found strange.
He stepped from his cruiser wearing pressed khaki trousers and mirrored sunglasses despite standing beneath the garage roof.
Beside him came Marian Bell.
Avery saw her.
The child’s scream tore through the building.
“NO!”
She threw herself backward in the chair.
Bear immediately stepped between Avery and the entrance.
Marian lifted both hands.
“Avery, honey—”
“Don’t!”
Her voice shattered.
Marian’s pleasant expression flickered.
Only for a second.
But Bear caught it.
Sheriff Rourke removed his sunglasses.
“Warren.”
“Dean.”
“We received a report of a missing foster child.”
“You received it pretty damn fast.”
Rourke ignored that.
“Avery needs to come with us.”
“No.”
The sheriff’s expression hardened.
“You don’t have custody.”
“Neither do you.”
Marian stepped forward.
“Mr. Callahan, Avery has emotional difficulties.”
Bear felt Avery clutch the back of his shirt.
Marian continued gently.
“She fabricates things when she’s distressed.”
Avery whispered:
“See?”
Bear heard it.
So did Reese.
Marian smiled sadly.
“She’s been through terrible trauma because of what her father did to her mother.”
Bear took one slow step forward.
“Say what you came to say without calling my granddaughter a liar.”
The sheriff’s eyebrow lifted.
“Granddaughter?”
Marian went still.
They had not expected Avery to reveal the note.
Reese noticed.
“So you knew,” she said.
Marian looked at her.
“Knew what?”
“That Bear was her grandfather.”
“It’s in the file.”
Bear’s eyes narrowed.
The same county file that had described him as an unsuitable placement.
Rourke pulled several pages from a red folder.
Avery began shaking.
The red folder.
“This is an emergency protective order signed by Judge Lorraine Vale,” Rourke said. “Avery is to be returned to Hawthorne House immediately.”
A man near the back of the garage cleared his throat.
Everyone turned.
Elias Ward had been sitting quietly beside the vending machine.
Most outsiders saw only a sixty-four-year-old biker with a braided gray beard.
