AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Meg?”
She pivots back around slowly. He touches a hand to her shoulder, feeling the heat of her through her thermal. A modicum of the weight he’s been carrying lifts off Silas’s shoulders, allowing him to mentally uncurl from around the knot of agony that accompanies him everywhere now. “Thank you,” he tells her.
Somehow, she’s always exactly what he needs.
16
MEG
Matheson search
November 20, 2018
12:55 p.m.
Marble Lake Staging Area
At the sound of her name, Meg jerks back from Silas. Sheriff Walters stands right behind her, and she chastises herself for nearly jumping out of her skin; after all, the man has been glued to Silas’s side all morning.
“I believe you’re needed by the Lemon,” he says, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the com van, and though his voice reflects the ease with which they work together, day in and day out, his tone leaves no room for misinterpretation.
She follows orders, turning away from Silas with a million more words caught somewhere in the back of her throat, her thermal shirt still recording his touch where he pressed his fingers into her damp skin. Was Silas really gripping her that firmly?Had she really not noticed?
She fixes her gaze on the com van, where Max and McCrady are clustered by the closed door, waiting for Team Five’s debriefing with Darcy. Danny has already joined them, obedient to a fault as always,and McCrady’s trying to show him something on his GPS screen. His eyes are boring into Meg, instead, as if he’s taken on the collective displeasure of the team for her delay.
“Sorry to keep everyone waiting,” she says as McCrady reholsters his unit. By breaking rank to talk to Silas, she’s delayed them from their rest and a hot meal.
“No, we get it,” McCrady says generously.
“We were just asking Danny how the dad is holding up,” Max adds.
“Just needed a comforting shoulder, I think,” she says, though it may have been the other way around. She slides out from under the weight of her pack as Darcy approaches to debrief them.
A few other small search teams have returned to base to grab lunch and a rest as well, and now a gathering of twenty-odd searchers circle around the steps of the Lemon so that Darcy can address them all at once. Meg stands between Barb, who runs the local animal shelter, and Steve, who plays in Danny’s regular poker game.
“Keep in mind,” Darcy says, handing out newly printed search maps with the areas already covered now shaded in gray, “we are still presuming the two boys to be together.”
“But lots of people tend to split up,” someone objects.
“Not these two,” Darcy shoots back. “According to their father, these kids stick together like glue.”
“They’re really close,” Silas announces himself, from somewhere at the periphery of the group. Heads turn to look at him as he adds, “Everyone always says how unusual it is ...” His voice breaks. “Brothers that age, being just about ... inseparable.”
Faces pinched in sympathy nod at his words, and there’s an uncomfortable shuffling of feet and gear as Silas is steered away by Santos. A mercy, Meg thinks. He doesn’t need to be here, listening to all this. The mental image his words conjure—two little boys united in their fear—has already sent a quick wave of nausea to rise up in the back of Meg’s throat. How much worse must Silas feel? Are his kids hunkereddown somewhere, frozen in indecision? Or are they fighting their way through underbrush together, wet and frantic? She remembers what he just said, about trying so hardnotto think, and the pain laced through his voice echoes in her head long after he’s disappeared back into the command-center tent.
Darcy ushers someone else up to the Lemon step to address the group next, and Meg can’t decide if she’s glad or dismayed to see that Matt Bower from Washoe Medical has arrived in the field, as she thought he might. He tells them a wilderness EMT team has been called in from Reno, adding, “But every one of you need to review your first-aid protocol in the meantime.”
Another handout makes the rounds through the group on the heels of the first, with bullet points on treating hypothermia in the field.Avoid spot treating, warm the core, remove clothing ...the list goes on, but Meg retrains her attention on Matt, confident she knows this stuff.
“Darcy says you all have been working under the intel that these boys are likely to be proactive, mobile, and covering lots of ground, but with temps like we’ve seen last night and today, we need to remember that prolonged exposure to the cold affects the brain as much as it affects the extremities.”
“Which means hampered reasoning skills, folks,” Darcy interjects.
“And how much reasoning are we expecting from seven- and five-year-olds in the first place?” someone mumbles to Meg’s left. She glares at him.
“We need to be prepared for more erratic behavior at this point,” Bower says, his voice projecting over the crowd loud enough that Meg worries Silas hears, ensconced in the tent. “If the kids are still on the move, they may be getting clumsy, slower, confused. Injuries could occur, falls, things like that.”
“And if they’ve slowed to the point of immobility, they may be even harder to find, even in one place, if they’ve taken cover somewhere,” Darcy adds.
