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November 20, 2018
3:14 a.m.
Feather River
Meg is fast asleep when the shrill insistence of her ringtone cuts across her darkened bedroom and into her subconscious. So much for a full night’s rest. Blearily, she picks up, because a call at this hour can mean only one thing.
“Morning, Meg,” Charlotte mumbles into the phone.
Meg runs one hand through her tangled hair, reaching with the other to shut off her alarm, which had been set for an optimistic 7:00 a.m. “Yeah. Hey, Char. I’m here.”
“We’ve got a full call-out. We’re meeting at the station in thirty minutes. Can you make it? We’ll be headed up in the Marble Lake direction.”
The wordsMarble Lakehave Meg instantly sitting up straighter, but the question is purely rhetorical: Meg always makes it. She says a silent goodbye to a lazy morning and then nods. Realizing belatedly that thevisual affirmation won’t suffice, she answers audibly. “Yeah, Char. See you soon.”
She nudges Danny, who has slept right through the call, then swings her legs off the bed and stands, swiping blindly for the light. He groans, flinging an arm over his face, but a moment later, he, too, is up, no more likely to skip a call-out than Meg.
Their field uniforms are easy to spot in the closet, the obnoxiously bright orange button-down shirts and olive Carhartt pants standing out in sharp contrast amid the row of flannels, tees, and jeans. As Danny debates his footwear choices, Meg grabs her favorite thermal undershirt before layering her uniform over it, then pulls wool socks and her hiking boots on. It may still be fall, but this is the High Sierra, and they’ll be lucky if the temperature clears the low twenties before sunrise.
In the kitchen, they skip coffee, knowing there will be plenty of it, although admittedly bad, later, opting instead for a handful of energy bars and packets of instant oatmeal, which they stuff into the two go bags sitting in the front entryway. They’re both always search-ready, repacked after every mission.
In a routine born of long practice, they snag their water bottles from each side pocket, fill them silently at the kitchen sink. Usually, they’re both too bleary for conversation on early-a.m. call-outs, and today is no exception, but Meg stops Danny by the door anyway, a hand on his forearm.
“You okay?” He’d gotten in late. She was too tired to revisit the tension in the car after the SAR meeting, and the lack of resolution hangs in the air between them.
But Danny just says, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
He snags the keys from the sideboard, and Meg takes the cue with a bit-back sigh, grabbing her orange-and-black parka,Feather River County Search and Rescuestamped in large block letters across the back. As they head out the door, she tells herself to let it go. When Danny broods, less is more. The challenge for Meg is not hearing the echo ofpast trauma in the silence. It takes effort, but she decided long ago that making it work with Danny was worth it. Otherwise, what did she give everything up for?
In the car, the digital display on the dashboard reads 3:25 a.m., and as they retrace the short drive to the department station, she worries her lip, trying not to overanalyze today’s search location. She’s been on plenty of other searches in the Marble Lake area during her SAR career, in addition, that is, to the one that started it all. This one won’t be any different. Right? The guest season is well over, so she suspects this search is for a missing hunter, the most common scenario at this time of year. She won’t know for sure until their first debriefing, but there’s no reason for Marble Lake Lodge—or its new owner—to be directly involved in any way.
She glances sidelong at Danny, wondering if he agrees, but even though she knows he’s now seen the search location on his call-out text, his face remains unreadable. Silence it is, then, which comes as no surprise; they never talk about Marble Lake Lodge or what happened there.
She retrains her eyes on the road, letting the darkened tableau of green pines and winding river rise up to meet her, their reflections rolling off her windshield like waves lapping at the glass. A Northern California town with a population of two thousand probably calls to mind images of country charm and rolling foothills, maybe a winery or a Silicon exec or two, but not here. In this western corner of the Sierra Nevada, the mountains framing Meg’s view are high enough that she’s forced to lift her chin to glimpse their peaks. Studded with jagged granite, the steep elevation is marked by lodgepole, ponderosa, and patches of snow that never completely melt.
She takes it all in, still trying to shake that “in a rut” feeling from the night before. Growing up in the shadow of these mountains, she took them for granted for years. At least until her eyes were opened to the fullness of their beauty. And the danger.
At the station, the parking area is already filling. Meg pulls into her usual nine-to-five spot, and she and Danny sign in to the call, scrawling their names and radio numbers on the form to confirm their presence. Most of the people are milling around outside, and Danny gravitates there, but Meg lets herself inside to wait, leaning against the side of a desk—herdesk, it just so happens—to await the remainder of what Charlotte likes to call her call-out victims. It always takes her aback, how different this place looks at zero dark thirty, the usual bustle and noise generated by too many people sharing a small space (Thanks, budget cuts) replaced by an almost eerie solitude. Her reception area is still and silent for a change, the papers she’d left neatly stacked on her desk still undisturbed from the day before. The entire building, in fact, seems cast in a soft predawn glow.
It’s a temporary respite. Twenty minutes later, the rest of the half-awake searchers have arrived, and everyone huddles around the call-out desk, awaiting orders. They’re all fueled by the same adrenaline that got Meg and Danny out of bed in a hurry, peppering the team leaders with questions she knows they aren’t at liberty to answer. Rideshares up to the search staging area are quickly organized, and Meg and Danny’s rig pulls out just before 4:00 a.m., cruising out of Feather River and then higher into the mountains up Marble Lake Road, each twist of the pavement as familiar to her as the inside of her own home.
It feels good to get moving again, butanothertwenty minutes later, the remainder of Meg’s initial rush of adrenaline has failed her, the hum of the engine lulling her back against the seat. She’s just leaned her head against the passenger-side door of the sheriff’s-department 4x4, welcoming the wash of dry heat blowing across her face from the adjacent air vent, when her driver slows and then turns the wheel. She sits up only to blink in surprise and then dismay: of all the acreage of the Marble Lake wilderness, they had to choosethisexact spot as the location for the day’s staging area?
There it is, right before her: the Marble Lake Lodge sign, pointing toward the old stomping grounds and new home and business venture of Silas Matheson. They’ve rolled right into the guest parking area, beyond which she can catch glimpses of the metal rooflines and stone chimneys of the lodge proper. Though she’s taken it upon herself to hike the nearby trails dozens of times in the last fifteen years despite her requests to reopen the Howard case falling on deaf ears, she’s studiously avoided the lodge itself. What if she ran into Les or Mary Albright, who’d want to fill her in on their nephew’s new life in Portland? Or, worse, what if they’d want to revisit the past, Mary Albright pinning her direct gaze on Meg before enfolding her in one of her signature hugs?
She looks at Danny again, whose poker face has finally failed him. He looks every bit as unsettled to be here as Meg, glancing anywhere but directly at the lodge. The relatable attempt at self-preservation sends a stab of sorrow through Meg. In her experience, out of sight is never out of mind.
That feeling of ill ease settles more firmly in her gut. Again, she tries to talk herself down. Surely, it’s coincidence that the search is centered here, epicenter of both Meg’s longest-running nightmares and her most recent misgivings. The lodge must simply be the most strategic base for today’s operations. That’s all.
All the same, as she and Danny join the rest of the searchers who have already assembled, she once again feels wide awake. Is Silas here somewhere, assisting? Has he opened the lodge up to the operations team? She’s grateful that the parking area is set about a football field’s length away from the smattering of buildings. As curious as she’s felt about Silas’s new life, she’s not sure she’s ready to face him in casual conversation. Too many unanswered questions still churn through her mind when she lets her defenses down: Does he blame her for what happened? Is that why he left? Or has he been punishing himself all this time by casting himself into exile?
She can’t go there, certainly not today. Danny must feel similarly, because he’s shut back down, his face carefully neutral now that they’ve joined the others, so she makes a beeline for the coffee carafe at the cook van. At this point, it’s more for something to do than out of any need of caffeine.
“Hurry up and wait,” someone groans, and she smiles tightly, acutely aware of the bureaucracy of search-and-rescue operations. The red tape, the spitting contests, the trampling of various agencies’ toes that you’d think would be limited to the movies is all true, in spades.
“What’s the holdup this time?” she asks her closest neighbor to the coffee carafe, an old-timer to the team. He rocks a signature Santa Claus beard but lacks the accompanying apple-red cheeks and twinkle in his eye.Barry,Meg remembers. She always struggles with his name, so un-Santa-like.
“Hell if I know,” Barry tells her. He juts his chin toward the bright-yellow van, nicknamed the Lemon. “They’ve been holed up in there for what feels like forever.”
