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He looked ... wrong somehow. Amped up and unnerved. Not his usual dependable self. He hated it as much as Silas did, not being able to help.
“They won’t call it off yet,” Silas argued. Because they just couldn’t. “Not until they find her.” That was how these things worked, wasn’t it?
Silas looked back out the window, over the grounds of the lodge. Plenty of trucks and trailers still dotted the parking area. Plenty of people in orange shirts still milled around. But someone had begun attaching big yellow ribbons to some of the trees. For missing people, Aunt Mary had explained. In memory. Which had caused Silas to clench his fists in despair. Jessica was missing, yeah. But she wasn’t ...she shouldn’t be ... memorialized. Why were these searchers skipping so many steps, jumping directly to the end?
“I’m just the messenger,” Danny said. “I heard that guy, the sheriff? He said this was it, Silas. In a few more hours, no one’s even going to be looking anymore.”
Not.Looking.Anymore. The three words hung there, taunting Silas, like they dangled from individual strings, just out of reach. It made him want to bat the air with his fists. He pushed off from the windowsill ledge. Enough sitting around. “We shoulddosomething, then.”
Danny just eyed him warily, like he did most of the time these days, before turning away, like Silas was some kind of lost cause. “When are you going to get it?” Danny said. “You can’t power your way out of everything.”
Silas stared him down. “I’m not trying to getoutof anything.” Typical Danny, with his bizarre need to beat him to the moral high ground. He wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him. “Somethinghappened out there,” he pressed, his voice rising.
“Well, we can all agree on that,” Danny snapped, his voice somehow obtaining an even higher air of superiority.
“It’s not me who—”
“Stop it.”
Meg. He hadn’t heard her climb the stairs as they’d been arguing. He spun to look at her just as Danny, too, turned to face her, and for a moment, the familiar triangulation of their friendship caught and held, the three of them legs of the same stool, propping one another up by sheer shared experience alone. And then Danny’s eyes gleamed with something like challenge and Meg shifted her gaze to the floor and the stool was kicked out from under him.
“Sheriff Walters is trying to get us to turn on one another,” he told them both. “Can’t you see that?”
That gleam of Danny’s flashed fire. “And we wouldneverdo that, would we, Matheson? Turn on each other?”
The accusation sliced cleanly, right to the bone, but Silas stood his ground. What had Meg so often said? He was like a rock in a current. That was it. A wall to the wind. He couldn’t budge now. Not with so much at stake.
“We’re not to blame,” Silas said firmly. “None of us.”
If he willed this to be true, would it set in stone? Or would it just solidify the guilt sluicing through him into granite as ancient as the peaks of the Sierra, destined to outlive them all? He was still trying to decide as Danny pivoted and retreated down the stairs. He turned back to the window, eyes stinging, until he heard Meg’s footsteps following suit.
3
MEG
November 8, 2018
Feather River
Meg Tanner stands for the customary Pledge of Allegiance that opens every meeting of the Feather River Search and Rescue team, then settles in for an afternoon of mind-numbing bureaucracy, interspersed with much more welcome training, protocol, and fifteen-minute coffee breaks. Over a decade into these weekly meetings, she knows to sneak a granola bar or two into the sheriff’s department, just in case they go over the ninety-minute time allotment. Which they always do.
She nudges Danny, sitting to her right, and offers him a bar, which he accepts with a grateful nod. Her commute from her day job as department secretary to the sheriff is less than fifty yards, but he’s come directly from work at the fire station, still in his navy-blue uniform pants and Feather River Fire T-shirt. Meg will cook dinner tonight, she supposes, since Danny has pulled mess-hall duty two nights running.
Lieutenant Julian Santos, second in command, is at the podium, announcing this month’s budget, or lack thereof, and the K9 team isrestless in their seats toward the back, mumbling about the new training harnesses promised to them.
Santos holds up one hand. “No one waspromisedanything,” he reminds the group. “Not during this budget year, anyway.” Something about tax dollars diminishing, that bill they so desperately needed passed last election not going through.
Meg has known Lieutenant Santos for his entire tenure as special officer in charge of Feather River County Search and Rescue operations, and he’s always shown impressive patience while dealing with the same old thing: never enough money to spread around, the hospitality team begging for upgraded cookware, the ATV team hoping for a new trailer, the dive team petitioning to attend that training seminar in Sacramento. Meg waits it out. They’ve already debriefed on the four searches they’ve had this month—hunting season is always busy—and she’s anticipating what’s next on the meeting agenda: SAR’s yearly stats. They’re still a month shy of the end of 2018, but she compiled the data herself at work just today, at the request of her boss, County Sheriff Greg Walters.
Walters himself approaches the podium to deliver what Meg already knows to be good news. She’s smiling before he’s even finished shuffling the papers in his hands and has located his reading glasses, which were already perched on his nose. “Well, looks like we’ll do it, folks,” Walters says, his normally gruff intonation softening at the edges. “As of today, we have one hundred percent finds for 2018.”
Applause erupts, chased by a few whoops and one earsplitting whistle from Craig Bonway, head of the K9 group. Meg winces even as she laughs.
Then she sobers. Because next to her, Danny has crossed his arms over his chest, his shoulders tense. Meg allows herself a prickle of resentment. Can he not just take the win? Instead, per usual, he seems to insist on self-flagellation. And it’s not for the benefit of the old-timers in the room, who are, at this very moment, probably glancing their way. No, Danny brings this punishment on himself.
A 100-percent find rate does not mean every search victim is found alive in a given year, but it does mean they’refound. Which means a recovery effort, complete with answers for the friends and family. Meg glances sidelong again at Danny. Is he thinking what she’s thinking ... what she’salwaysthinking: What about 2003? What happened to Jessica Howard that August night?
It’s why they’re both here, when it comes right down to it. Meeting after meeting, search after search. It’s why they’ve both dedicated their professional lives and their free time to this county. To comb the wilderness that swallowed up their friend all those years ago. Because it sure isn’t for the bad coffee and the end-of-year barbecue at the river, where ATV-unit captain Chuck Roland can be counted on to break out his ukulele.
