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“I got a good feeling about this,” B.J. said as they followed the rest of the search team.
“Hope you’re right, little brother,” Aaron said. “It means a lot to the family to make this right.”
B.J. nodded. “I know. But we’re really new to the mountain. Sometimes I feel like we still don’t quite belong, even though everyone is down with us being here.”
Aaron frowned. He’d had no idea B.J. felt like this.
“No, no way,” he said. “Where you’re born isn’t who you are. Up here, blood kin is the key to belonging. Mama grew up here, and Grandma Helen before her, and all the way back through the generations to the first Brendan Pope, your namesake. You walk with your head up. You don’t have to explain yourself to anyone.”
B.J. sighed. “Yeah, okay, you’re right. I think sometimes I’ll never fully shed the shit from before.”
Aaron frowned, shifting his pack as they walked. “Forget before. Today and all of our tomorrows are what matters now.”
A few moments later, they reached the falls and joined the rest of the team. Cameron had copies of photos of the areas they were going to search, and handed them out to each man present, then explained his plan.
“These are the two areas of focus. It has been suggested there could be a cave behind the waterfall, so half of us will concentrate on that. Make sure you’re a damn good swimmer before you volunteer for that team, because the rocks are bound to be slippery, and if you wind up in the water, at least be able to swim your way out. The rest of us will concentrate on searching the wooded area. The Lidar scan indicated an area that had once been a clearing, and there might be some kindof structural foundation buried beneath a century’s worth of decay and undergrowth. You can see the areas from these photos.”
That immediately separated the men without argument. All of them could swim, but some of them were leery about dealing with the falls.
Aaron could just see B.J. clamoring over those rocks with the same abandon he showed on his Harley, and volunteered them for the foot search in the woods.
B.J. gave him a look and then grinned. “Mama told you to bring me back in one piece, didn’t she?”
“You already know the answer to that,” Aaron said, and began looking at the photos in relation to where they were standing. “Okay, whatever we’re looking for is on this side of the falls, so let’s head back south, and then maybe wind our way west a little and see what we can see.”
As they walked away, Marcus Glass followed, as did four other men, and the farther they walked, the more they began to spread out, until some of them were out of sight, while Cameron and the other six searchers began looking for a cave behind the waterfall.
It was slow going, and as the first hour passed, Wade Morgan, one of the searchers at the falls, slipped and fell into the pool beneath, and got hammered by the water pounding down. He came up gasping. By the time he swam to the creek bank, he was out of breath.
“Are you okay?” Cameron asked as he and Louis reached down and pulled Wade up and out.
“Oh, yeah, I’m okay, but the pool is deep, and thewater coming down off the mountain is pretty strong. It pounded the crap out of me before I could swim out.”
“Go pour the water out of your shoes and take a rest,” Cameron said.
Wade nodded and headed for a stump back in the trees as Cameron and Louis returned to the search.
All of a sudden, they heard someone shout and went running back to the search area. Darren Cauley, one of Annie’s grandsons, came hacking his way out of a dense growth of brush, scratched and bleeding.
“Cameron! I found something. I think it might be a cave entrance.”
“Did you go in?” Cameron asked.
Darren ducked his head. “I didn’t want to go in alone with no one knowing where I was, for fear I’d walk up on a bear.”
“No shame in being careful,” Cameron said. “Got a flashlight with you?”
“Yes, sir,” Darren said.
“So do I. Lead the way. We’re right behind you,” he said, following Darren through the thick brush until he stopped abruptly.
“It’s there,” Darren said, pointing to an opening about six feet wide that narrowed upward into a point about eight feet from the ground. Basically, a tepee-shaped opening in the side of the rocks.
Cameron had a handgun in a holster and was suddenly wishing for a hunting rifle as he stared into the black void before them. Then he took a deep breath.
“I’ll go in first. You three come in behind me, okay?”
They nodded, watching as Cameron turned on his flashlight and stepped into the opening, pausing slowly to sweep the interior with light.
