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11
MEG
Matheson search
November 20, 2018
8:30 a.m.
Marble Lake Wilderness
Meg’s feet slip and slide as she climbs the steep terrain behind the lodge, the exposed roots and granite slick with rapidly dissipating frost. The moisture remains heavy in the air, clinging stubbornly to the low-lying shrubbery that covers the hillside. Her pants get wetter with every pass through the abundance of branches and leaves, and she cannot help but wonder what kind of seven-year-old kid could navigate this punishing slope, not once, but several times, according to the information Darcy had gleaned. And forfun, to boot.
Silas Matheson’s kid,she reminds herself.That’s who.
As she climbs, Meg purposely deviates from her straight upward path so that her movements produce a loose zigzag pattern. She needs to cover as much ground as possible, and at every fallen log and boulder she stops and forces herself to look beneath. It’s standard search procedure, but bracing for the worst has never gotten easier. Each timeshe stoops, pushing aside the limbs of trees to peer into their wells or around their trunks, calling for Spencer and Cameron, she feels a quick tightening of her gut that’s not quite panic, and not despair, but something in between, a hollow disassociation that toes the line between self-perseverance and optimism. Knowing the search victims’ father personally adds another element to the equation: dread.
Because what if she has to look him in the eye, this sleep-deprived, despairing shadow of the man, the concept of whom she has tucked away into a time capsule in her mind all these years, and tell him the worst? She can’t. She won’t. And so she keeps calling out. Keeps that optimism front and center.
It’s not until they’ve reached the perpendicular trail at the ridge that she has a moment to stop and catch her breath. The temperature has risen—mercifully—since the sun crested Marble Peak to the east, but will this reprieve be enough for the boys?
“You can develop frostbite on exposed skin within thirty minutes once the air is below freezing,” Matt Bower, their chief medical consult from Washoe Medical Center in Reno, told them just last month at their annual winter-weather-training session. How long were the boys exposed last night? Hours.
“Factor in the windchill that’s a constant in the High Sierra, and things get interesting even faster.”
Where is Matt now? Did Darcy call him in? If—no, Meg corrects herself—whenthey find Spencer and Cameron, God willing, they’ll need as swift attention as they can get. Meg’s wilderness first-aid certification is just not going to cut it.
She stops short next to Danny; Max and McCrady are still a quarter mile back, making their way toward them to regroup.
“Can you believe this?” she says softly, watching his face for his reaction as he reaches around to the side of his pack, yanking his water bottle free. “It’s surreal, looking for Silas’s kids.”
“No, I can’t,” he says only, eyes trained on the forest in front of him as he gulps his water. She supposes he doesn’t owe her any comfort, but theyarein this together, the two of them. They made that decision years ago, after Silas left, Danny sticking stubbornly to his firefighting career path, Meg directionless in the face of so much turmoil. At a loss, she stumbled upon a job listing for the county, only a high school diploma required. She hadn’t known it reported directly to the Feather River County Sheriff’s Department until she arrived, in a borrowed skirt of her mom’s, for an interview, just to be faced with the presence of Sheriff Walters himself, and worse: Jessica Howard’s mother sitting across the desk from him, a wet Kleenex gripped in one fisted hand.
“Meg,” Teresa Howard cried, smiling through her tears, even though the last time she’d seen her, only months ago, had been at the lodge. During that awful, interminable wait for news of her daughter. “Aren’t you a welcome sight. I just knew you’d never give up on my girl.”
Meg took an abrupt step backward as though stung, swiveling toward Walters in confusion. What was this? An ambush?
As it turned out, just unfortunate timing. In the weeks since the search for her daughter had been called off, Teresa Howard had become a fixture at the department, putting in petition after petition to reopen the efforts. This day, she’d just happened to interrupt Walters’s interview schedule.
What could Meg have done in that moment but agree with Mrs.Howard? So she told her that of course she would never forget Jessica. That if she got this job—here, she glanced briefly at Walters—she would dedicate her working hours to cases like hers. And then she went to Danny, her employee onboarding paperwork in hand, and told him she would be joining Feather River Search and Rescue. On the payroll and as a volunteer. It was the right thing to do. It was also theonlything resembling a path she could follow.
Danny had been there for her, signing up for SAR training the same week as Meg. Attending every training session at her side. Theonly thing theyhadn’tdone together was discuss the Howard case or Silas Matheson. Not ever. Not if they could help it.
“Walters seemed to have a lot of questions for him,” she presses now. Silas had still been sequestered in the command tent when they departed.
Danny only stares stoically forward, then takes a swig of water.
“Odd that Santos is here, too,” she adds. She can count on one hand the number of times both first and second in command have shown up for the same search at the same time.
“Makes sense, kid search and all.”
“Dan, c’mon! You know it’s not just because of the kids.” She lowers her voice. “Walters is drawing unfair comparisons to ...” She bites off the rest, because after last night’s discussion, he knows perfectly well what she’s getting at, and as it turns out, she’s gotten pretty accustomed to avoiding this subject, too. “Silas doesn’t deserve this,” she finishes softly.
This finally gets Danny’s full attention. “And why exactly not?” He replaces his water bottle into his side pocket with the same poorly controlled anger with which he bagged their groceries at Clark’s the day they learned of Silas’s return. “It’s like I told you,” he says. “Everyone knows the three of us were involved back then. And everyone knows Walters failed to find Jessica. It will be on his recordforever, Meg, as sheriff of this county. Do you think he wants a repeat? No, this time he won’t botch it.”
Meg takes a startled step backward. Because what’s that supposed to mean? “The two searches can’t be compared,” she hisses. “Jessica went missing in the summer. She was an eighteen-year-old female, scared, yes, but not without any sense of her bearings that night. Surely two young boys, without adequate clothing, food, or shelter, lost at the start of winter is an entirely different scenario.”
Danny just stares at her, incredulous. “Same search area, same subject questioned? Ofcoursethey can be compared. And unlike last time, there’s only one common denominator, isn’t there?”
