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“I don’t know. Team Eight called in on Santos’s handheld but told us to stand by.”
“Team Eight?” Meg confirms. “That’s a K9 team, isn’t it?” Darcy nods, just as Santos joins them in the small space. “One of the dogs has alerted to a scent at the bottom of a ravine,” he says breathlessly.
“Bottom of aravine?” Silas interjects, sounding like his heart might have just plummeted into one as well. “Whatravine?”
“Stay calm,” Meg implores even as her own heart starts to hammer loudly, and in the crowded confines of the van Silas curls his hands into fists at his sides. Probably in order to resist the urge to take the lieutenant by the shoulders and shake more information from him.
“Sit back down,” Santos commands, and Silas complies, which is good, because otherwise Meg knows he’d be relegated out into the rain to join Danny.
“Is the dog one of ours?” Meg presses. “An air-scent dog?”
The lieutenant darts an anxious glance Silas’s way, reluctant to answer, and then concedes. “No,” he says, and Meg stifles a moan.
“What?” Silas demands. “What does that mean?”
“It means this dog is trained to search indiscriminately, for any human scent,” Santos says. He takes a breath, looking to Silas in apology. “This one is a cadaver dog.”
She’s glad Santos is the one to say it, especially when Silas sucks in a near-violent gasp of air.
“This could mean nothing,” Meg tells him, wanting to soothe even as the tension in the com van ratchets up another notch. Sheriff Walters himself has joined the crew inside the van, and Santos waves him over, pressing through the narrow space to the topo map spread on a table. They both bend over it.
“They called in from here,” he announces, his finger marking his place on the map. Meg leans in, craning to see over Santos’s right shoulder. He’s indicating a steep decline ending in what appears to be a narrow canyon not far off the Lakes Loop trail.
“How far off is that location from where you found Spencer?” Silas asks, muscling his way through, and can Meg blame him? The man iswaiting for the radio to crackle to life with news of his son, news that very well could confirm the end of Cameron’s life, the end ofhislife as he knows it. Santos consults Meg’s coordinates on the spreadsheet, confers with Walters, then frowns as he carefully counts the number of severely arcing contour lines between his finger and the location on the map and then measures the distance. It seems to take him an eternity.
“About a hundred sixty feet, at most?”
He doesn’t sound sure. How could he not be sure?Meg grits her teeth; it’s hotter than hell in this van, and as Silas jostles against Darcy in his attempt to get even closer to the map, it’s also clear that it’s way past capacity.
“Well, what does the topography look like?” Silas presses. “Is it even possible for Cam to have walked from one point to the other?”
Santos looks back down at the map. “Um ...”
“It looks like a very steep slope,” Silas interjects again, bouncing forward on the balls of his feet.
“Give him a minute!” Darcy counters. She’s shouting, now, too, but Silas isn’t listening. Neither is Meg, because the field team is going to call any minute now. Team Eight is going to have a report, and the only thing keeping either of them sane is their focus on this map.
“If I could just see,” Silas says. “I’d know if it was possible ...”
“Sit back down!” Darcy demands just as Meg pivots to allow Silas full access to the map.
“Let him look,” she insists simultaneously. She and Darcy are still locked in a standoff when the radio beeps shrilly on the counter.
“Team Eight to Base?”
No one can reach it.
Meg has pushed herself against the wall; Silas is pressed between Darcy and Santos, with Walters on the other side of the table. Whatever scant amount of oxygen remains circulating in the room seems to instantly invert; Meg is standing in a black hole of building turmoil and increasing temperature and—
“Team Eight to Base?”the voice on the radio reissues.“Come in?”This time, Santos manages to curl his hand around the mobile unit.
“This is Base. What do you have, Team Eight?”
“A delay, unfortunately. The terrain’s inaccessible. We’ll need a rappel team.”
Silas makes a pained sound, agony with a dash of his typical intolerance for inaction. He moves as if intending to start pacing, but can’t, of course. The radio continues to buzz with conversation, requests, plan Bs, but Meg barely hears them, her head already in her hands. They know all they’re going to know for now, which is apparently still nothing.
She exits the Lemon to find Danny, surprised that she doesn’t have to search far. He’s standing just outside the door, the rain pouring off him in thick sheets that pool at his boots. She pulls her SAR baseball cap low over her face.
