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This is why you’re here,she reminds herself angrily. This is the break they’ve all been hoping for, but she’s so terrified of the finality of what’s in store that Meg can barely stand being in her own skin. She wishes desperately—and so selfishly it hurts—for anyone else’s vantage point at this very instant.
They dip still lower, but the trees are dense around the circumference of the pond, and she can’t quite make out its banks. They turn south a few degrees, and then north, and Meg is about to pause in her efforts to call in what they’ve found so far—it’s the biggest break all search—when she sees him.
At her cry, Rick whips his head around and sucks in a breath so violently Meg hears the echo reverberate from her headset into her eardrums. The child is lying behind a fallen log, partially obscured by river weed. He’s prone, dressed in nothing but a T-shirt and underwear, and he looks so pitifully discarded with his face in the dirt and his wet hair caked in mud, tears instantly obliterate Meg’s vision. She strains through the blur, but it’s no use. From this height, Meg has no way of knowing if the child is alive or dead.
Rick pauses in flight, and they quiver there in midair like a huge hummingbird while he waits for her to radio in. It’s imperative they communicate these coordinates before finding a suitable landing zone, but how can she, when she cannot yet determine status? The image of the child—which one, she’s still uncertain—is burning a hole in her brain, and she’s not sure she can pick up the mobile radio just yet. Not while Silas is somewhere below, surely standing by.
“Maybe we should land first,” she says weakly through their intercom.
“What? No. Call. It. In.” Rick’s tone leaves no room for argument. “And don’t forget to color-code it, Meg.”
The instruction hits like a punch to her gut. Eyes smarting, throat constricting, she wraps her palm around the radio, switches to the proper channel—MRA-1—and depresses the talk button.
“Helo One to Base.”
“Helo One, this is Base. Go ahead.”
“Base, we have a find.” She can barely get the words out. Is Silas there? Is Silas listening?
Darcy’s voice sounds as clipped as Meg’s is cautious. “Status, Helo One?”
A sudden surge of static makes Meg’s skin jump. She worries for a second she might retch. “From the air,” she transmits slowly, “we see one subject.” She pauses again, and then continues in a rush. “Black appears likely.”
Even through the squelch of the airwaves, she can hear the thickness to her tone, betraying her attempt to sound neutral. To not further alarm Silas. He won’t need a course in radio communication to interpret what she’s saying. To know what this might mean.
After she communicates their GPS coordinates, the helo rises below her feet, angling sharply left. Rick cannot land, not right here. It takes him several more sweeps to spot a suitable LZ, and then they lower slowly, putting down in a dry marsh bed. Rick powers down while Meg releases the bulky jump kit of medical supplies from the side of the cockpit. They can’t be farther than a quarter mile from the pond, but she charts the coordinates of this new location anyway and relies on the GPS to direct them back to the site. As they take off at a fast jog—following the prompts of the GPS won’t allow for an outright sprint—her mind races to recall every bit of first aid she’s ever had to learn. Despite her initial assessment, she hopes with everything in her being that her education will be put to use.
They find the boy quickly, still prone, still exactly as they last saw him. Meg sinks to the ground at his side, and after only one glance she determines him to be the older of the two Matheson brothers.This is Spencer.The bare skin of his legs is almost as gray as the water. But Meg’s seen dead bodies. She knows firsthand the way they elicit an instant, answering response from the living, breathing searcher who finds them, an instinctive recoiling that prickles the skin in a rush of gooseflesh that alerts to the fact that something is off. And she’s not feeling it.
This is a case of prolonged and advanced hypothermia. “We need to roll him over,” she tells Rick, praying that she’s right. She gives a count, and they turn him toward them—he’s light, it’s easy—and she bends toward the child until she’s nearly flat on the ground herself. The marshy earth immediately soaks through her pants at her knees, and the pond water seeps into her boots, but she presses her face directly to Spencer’s cold cheek, concentrating solely on the puff of breath she’s desperate to feel.
When she detects nothing, she leans in closer. Her hair brushes Spencer’s nose, and Meg thinks she feels his breath, just barely. It’s nothing more than the slightest stirring of the air—even this kid’s chest is unmoving—and as Meg presses two fingers to his carotid artery at the side of his neck to gauge his pulse, she turns back to Rick. “A mirror!” she orders. “In my pack. Side pocket.”
He produces it quickly, holding it out just in front of Spencer’s mouth. They freeze, and then, unbelievably, they see it. The slightest trace of condensation fogs the surface of the tiny mirror, and for the first time since falling to Spencer’s side, both Meg and Rick take a full breath themselves.
Now Meg knows the pulse is there ...has to be here...has to be here... and when she finally detects it, she laughs out loud, even though it’s just the faintest thread of a beat against the pad of her fingers.“Spencer,”she says, her voice cracking. “We’re here, Spencer.”
He’s breathing, and his heart is beating, and now that they’re talking to him, it’s clear he’s semiconscious. His eyelids flutter, and then close, his lashes shockingly dark against the ashen skin tone of his cheeks, but he’salive, and even as Rick digs into the jump kit for an emergency blanket, Meg reaches for her radio. This time, when she connects to Base, she doesn’t hesitate.
“Darcy? We’re on-site.” She doesn’t wait to be confirmed.“We have red.”She’s asked to repeat, and she doesn’t mind a bit. She hears herself laughing in relief and in elation, but she doesn’t attempt to contain it.“We have red.”
22
SILAS
One week prior to Howard search
August 2003
Marble Lake Lodge
Silas avoided Meg for two full weeks following their hike to the mines, and he suspected the effort was mutual. Maybe, with some distance between them, the magnetic tug that threatened to pull them both under wouldn’t feel so visceral. Maybe betraying his best friend could still be avoided if he and Meg just ran out the clock. He told Danny that Uncle Les had him working morning until night during peak season at the lodge, which wasn’t a lie, but only because Silas had willingly volunteered, to which Aunt Mary had reacted by checking his forehead for a fever.
“Let the boy help, if he’s got a mind to,” Les told her. “He’ll be headed to college soon, and then where will we be?”
Where wouldMegbe?When summer was over, would she choose safety or possibility, the expected or the unknown? No matter what else happened, he hoped she’d take a chance at her own path. He remembered how intently she’d bent over the map and compass by Long Lake,eager to learn, ready to explore, and he felt better about those odds, but only just.
And so he cleaned out guest cabins with a zeal that earned him a satisfied nod from Uncle Les, stacked wood for the nightly bonfire in record time, and sorted the linen closet so efficiently Mary couldn’t find anything anymore. While, for all he knew, Danny and Meg carried on with their lives down in Feather River, doing whatever they’d always done before Silas had entered their lives.
