It’s a needle problem, and someone has scattered the haystack across half the region.
We split the next phase of the search accordingly, sending small teams to quietly check abandoned structures and rural properties that sit just outside regular patrol routes, places too insignificant to matter until now. It’s slow work, methodical and frustrating, and every report that comes back negative feels like another hour lost while Bella sits chained and drugged and hurting.
I feel it when she weakens.
Not in a way I can explain to anyone else, but the bond dips and flickers at odd intervals, like a heartbeat struggling to keep rhythm, and every time it happens my chest tightens until breathing feels optional. Atticus feels it too, I know he does, because his shoulders tense in sync with mine,
