AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Interpretation: the incident commander has been sequestered in the communications van, com van for short, with their boss, Sheriff Walters, and whoever is today’s Feather River Forest Service representative, for over thirty minutes. Santos is probably in attendance as well. Meg studies the van, the bright paint peeling around the rims and along the undercarriage, where the snow and mud thrown up by the mountain roads alternately freezes and thaws all season long. Inside, the powers that be must still be strategizing.
Even out of earshot, stomping her feet to ward off the cold, Meg can guess at the gist of their conversation. They’ll have topographical maps spread out on the com-van table by now, with highlighted segments squared off. And if they aren’t still arguing aboutwhereto look, it’s aboutwhowill look. Every big search starts with a squabble about who’s better equipped, which agency is superiorly trained for the mission, even where the county boundaries fall and the jurisdictionshifts. Everyone wants the glory, even if it means their own county will be temporarily understaffed. When Meg first joined up, years ago, it seemed unforgivably petty. How, she asked her senior team members, could management be so shallow and crude as to bicker about the credit and the glory at the moment of some family’s anguish? At perhaps the very moment of a victim’s somewhere-out-there suffering? As someone who had once been on the other side, sitting and waiting, wrapped up in guilt and terror, it felt unacceptable to her.
It still does. Despite the early drive up and the predictable wait, her heart is beating quickly. She stirs her terrible coffee, watching the steam rise to cut through the cold air, and tells herself again that it’s not the unsettling location that’s keeping her heart rate up. No, this is the way it always is with her. From the moment the search-and-rescue text lights up the screen of her phone, something ignites inside Meg.
Admit it,Charlotte has told her on more than one early morning,you live for this shit.
Char’s right, but what choice does Meg have? The alternative is to forget, and she couldn’t do that if she tried. She gulps a mouthful of bitter coffee too fast, trying to swallow the irony of this, which she’s never been able to outrun. Luckily, distraction is in sight, in the form of her friend Phillip McCrady, approaching from the parking lot at an awkward hop-step gait while grappling with the slip-on traction cleats on his boots. Meg waves him over to offer a steady shoulder; his breath clouds the air as he bends forward, his gloved hand still attempting to tighten the rubber tread over the sole of his boot.
McCrady smiles gratefully. “Thanks, kiddo.”
Like Barry, McCrady is at least thirty years Meg’s senior, and the first time they were thrown together as a hasty rig team five years ago, she’d bristled at the nickname. Today it doesn’t even register in her brain. So what if she’s thirty-three years old, surrounded by retirees and career law-enforcement professionals? These are her people. Fromthe moment she applied for her first admin job with the county right out of high school, directionless and hurting, SAR has been her family.
McCrady slides her an affectionate grin, as though he’s read her mind. He gives the tip of her hair a playful tug. “At least I stopped calling you Red,” he adds with a chuckle.
Meg frowns. “It’s notred, exactly.”
“Sure, okay. Auburn, then.” McCrady pulls his gloves off and thrusts them at her. “Hold these, will you?”
She tucks them under one arm and takes a long drink of her coffee, wondering if she should dig her traction cleats out of her bag as well. The ice is only the thinnest sheet of frozen condensation here in the parking lot, but it’s unpredictable, crunching unevenly under their feet. There’s no snow yet, but Meg guesses the first big storm of the season is only days away at best.
When she lifts her head, Danny has materialized back at her side, letting his pack slide down his arm and fall with a thud to the icy pavement as he fishes out his own cleats. He still looks somber, which is apropos given the circumstances, of course, but she’s just wondering if he’s going to finally broach the subject of their search location when McCrady, never one to pass up the opportunity to use a nickname, acknowledges him with a jovial “Hey there, Boy Scout.”
This particular moniker has been chasing Danny most of his life, and Meg thinks he’s going to bristle, but instead, he manages to call up the same boyish charm that has drawn her to him since they were kids, brushing his light-brown hair out of his eyes as he straightens.
“Hey there, Phillip. Kathy keeping you busy in your retirement?”
“Probably busier than they’re keeping you out at the station.” McCrady chuckles.
“No rest for the weary public servant,” Danny answers wryly, only adding credence to his do-gooder status. He carries it well, though, probably because he comes by it honestly, and McCrady rewards him with an affectionate pat on the shoulder.
The dawn is fully upon them now, but the sky remains ominously opaque, closing in like a low ceiling just out of reach. Meg surveys the incoming clouds, trying to shake off an irrational sense of claustrophobia.
Danny follows her gaze. “Storm coming in, most likely. We know anything yet?”
“We will in a minute.” She nods in the direction of the Lemon. The com van’s door has crashed open, and today’s incident commander steps down with a sheaf of papers under one arm.
Danny lets out a low groan, and a few feet away, McCrady swears under his breath. “Shit, Susan Darcy.” Meg leans over and kicks the steel toe of his boot to silence him.
As with any job, some IC appointees are better than others. Personally, Meg has never had a problem with Darcy’s style—a combination of smart-ass gumption and raw impulse—but not everyone agrees with her assessment.
“All right, people,” Darcy calls, climbing up onto the running board of the Lemon. It’s a necessary maneuver, to ensure her five-foot-zero frame is viewed by all. “Gather around. We have two subjects. The first is a seven-year-old boy. The second is his brother, age five.”
Instantly, sounds of dismay pick up volume through the crowd at this unwelcome news. Next to Meg, McCrady says, “Well, shit.”
Barry kicks at the ice at his feet. “Not a kid search. Goddamn.”
Meg’s heart, too, sinks. Maybe that awful intuitionwasright, in a way. There’s nothing worse than searching for children. But then her brain makes an immediate, lurching leap and her stomach does a horrible flip: Children. Marble Lake Lodge. Silas. But it can’t be, can it?
She tells herself no, she knows nothing yet, but her stomach is still turning over on itself as Sheriff Walters steps in front, shushing them all with two beefy hands in the air. “I know it’s rough. All the more reason to get teams out there, get a move on. The boys have been missingsince just past sundown last night. First responders have been out since twenty-one hundred hours, with no luck.”
Another collective moan arises from the crowd at the news that these kids have already endured a full night out in this cold. Meg’s heart constricts further in her chest as Darcy lets a blaring whistle fly so she can begin reading out names, calling each searcher by radio number to issue GPS units and search vests.
As she works and the crowd starts to move into their groups, Meg listens for her own name, eyes on Darcy. First, however, she hears two others.
“The names of our search subjects,” Sheriff Walters calls from the com van, “are Spencer and Cameron. Last name: Matheson.”
Meg freezes, this sentence delivering a second punch to her gut in as many minutes. Danny, too, stills beside her. She must lose whatever color had graced her cheeks, because on her left, McCrady doesn’t miss a beat. “Hold on. You know these kids?”
