Azure (The Silver Series Book 5) (5 page)

“
I could help,” Nora
pointed out.

Traer's voice was deep with sarcasm. “By
limping up a trail and tearing your stitches?” He paused. “Of
course, if you bleed out it really would be helpful.”

Hurt swept through her eyes, but it was
replaced by defiance. “For your information, I grew up in the
canyon lands and I've helped on my fair share of hikes. An extra
pair of eyes won't hurt.”

He gave a slight laugh. “It's not eyes we
need. We've got it covered.”

“
I don't think it'd hurt if
she came,” I said quietly from the doorway. The thought of leaving
her alone with the other werewolves wasn’t a pleasant one. The
chance of the Alphas entering my room didn’t seem a long stretch
after what we had been through.

Traer turned, protest on his face. “She'd
slow us down.”

“
I would not,” Nora
countered.

“
You think you could keep
up?” I asked seriously.

“
If you can,” she shot
back, her eyes flashing.

The doctor glanced at her and I saw a brief,
reluctant glimmer of humor at her attitude. Our friendship gave him
some leeway, but none of the other werewolves dared to talk to me
like that.

I shrugged. “You come at your own risk.”

“
That's how I prefer it,”
she replied.

Traer rolled his eyes and left. I moved to
follow him into the hallway, but she stopped me.

“
Uh, Vance?” My heart gave
a faint thump at the way she said my name, hesitant, yet
familiar.

I turned back slowly. “Yeah?”

“
Do you happen to have some
pants I could borrow?”

I smiled at the thought of her hiking in her
shredded jeans. “I'll find something.”

She met us outside a few minutes later in a
pair of my sweat pants and a dark blue tee-shirt. Both were too big
for her, but she did her best to make them work by rolling the
pants at the ankles and waist and tying the shirt on one side.
Traer gave a barely stifled sigh of annoyance, and Max and Seth,
both in wolf form, avoided looking at her. I motioned for them to
jump into the back of the jeep.

“
They're going as wolves?”
Nora asked, surprised.

“
When we find the hikers,
we can attribute it to the miraculous tracking of our faithful
pets,” Traer replied. He climbed into the front passenger seat,
leaving Nora to ride in the back next to the wolves. I considered
asking him to move, but changed my mind at the stubborn look on her
face. Traveling next to phased werewolves might slow her thoughts
of escape.

She climbed stiffly into the back and tried
to ignore Max and Seth the best that she could. The two gray wolves
did the same to her. “When in fact it'll be your tracking skills
that find them?” she questioned.

“
Vance's. He's the best
tracker we've got,” Traer replied with a hint of pride.

I climbed into the driver's seat and drove
us down the back trail the led away from Two. We took the hour long
trip through sandy roads that were little more than dirt trails and
ended at the Search and Rescue outpost. Ron, Dave, and several
other members we had worked with before met us out front.

“
They've been out since
Tuesday,” Ron said without preamble when I got out of the jeep. The
others stayed in their seats to wait for my orders. Ron tipped his
hat at them. His eyes lingered on Nora for a split second, then he
gave me his usual cheerful smile. “We've had the troop out for the
last day and a half, but no good. Either these kids have walked off
the face of the earth, or gotten themselves stuck in a crevice
somewhere and can't find their way back out.”

“
How do you know they're
missing?”

“
The mother of one of the
boys called, then came in. She and several of the other parents are
staying at the motel awaiting word.” He held up a worn red baseball
cap. “She brought this from her son Alex. Think your dogs can track
them?”

“
Haven't failed us yet,” I
replied, accepting the cap.

Ron nodded toward a red and yellow jeep.
“I'll lead the way.”

I climbed back in the driver's seat, took a
surreptitious sniff of the cap, then handed it to Traer. He tossed
it back to Max and Seth. It landed on Nora's lap and both wolves
eyed her warily.

“
Oh, it's not like I'm
going to bite you,” she said crossly before setting it in the seat
between them. “I'm the one who should be worried.”

Both wolves gave snorts of offense and
turned their attention to the hat.

“
So how did you get a
reputation for Search and Rescue?” Nora asked as we followed the
jeep up the road.

Traer smiled without looking back. “Vance
found Ron's ten year old daughter out in the Spires when everyone
had already written her off as dead. Since then, they call us
whenever they have difficult cases.”

I glanced at Nora in the rear view mirror
and met her searching gaze. Frustrated, but unable to explain why,
I turned my attention back to the road and concentrated on the
scenery.

We pulled up to a sandy wash about five
miles from the station. A green lifted jeep and a beat-up red car
sat side by side just off the faint tracks that made up the road.
From their tire marks and the sand that coated them, it was obvious
they had been there a few days. We climbed out of the jeep and
followed Ron and his men to the beginning of the wash. The wolves
ran ahead and started sniffing the trail.

“
We've searched to the end
and expanded half a mile to each side to no avail. This one's been
a challenge,” Ron said. He took off his cap and mopped his bald
head with a handkerchief before replacing it.

“
I like a challenge,” I
replied.

Nora gave a soft snort of mockery behind me,
but I ignored her and glanced at the sun. “No time like the present
to find what we're looking for.”

“
If
you find something,” Ron replied amiably.

I laughed,
“
When
we find
something.”

He chuckled and fell in behind us so they
wouldn't mar the tracks any more than they already had.

“
What's that about?” Nora
asked Traer from my left.

“
Ron hates the fact that we
can find the hikers they've misplaced,” Traer said.

“
We don't misplace them,”
Ron replied from a few paces back. “Hikers are very good at
misplacing themselves without our help.”

I smiled at his disgruntled tone. “These
valleys are full of so many pockets and crevices it takes a team to
find them,” I replied to soothe his ruffled feathers.

He tipped his baseball hat at me like an old
cowboy and turned his attention to Nora. “Glad to meet a new member
of Vance's group.”

I watched her out of the corner of my eye
and fought back a smile when she bristled. “I am not a part of his
group.”

“
Well, uh, a friend then?”
Ron pressed, confused at her hostility.

“
An acquaintance,” she
allowed without looking at me. She tripped over a stone and
winced.

“
Are you alright?” Dave,
one of Ron’s rescue team, asked quickly.

Nora brushed it off, but her face was
pinched with pain. “It's nothing, just sprained my ankle a while
back and I’m still working to return it to full strength.”

Traer threw me a worried look, but I knew if
I sent Nora back to the jeep someone would have to go with her. She
was stubborn enough to put up quite a commotion at the suggestion,
and I preferred not to deal with that kind of headache while
looking for people in a possibly dire situation. Riff's face
flashed in my mind and I shied away from the fact that it was the
same thinking that might have gotten him killed.

The sun beat down from straight overhead and
made waves in the air around us. The trail passed two stone pillars
that marked the turn-off for the regular hiking path, then narrowed
as we continued down the wash to the point that we had to walk
single file with the wolves running ahead. Seth and Max always
enjoyed trailing and were usually the werewolves I brought along.
They raced ahead, then loped back to encourage us on.

The wolves whined once at several scents
that left the wash up a trail to our left, but the smell from the
boy's hat wasn't one of them, so I motioned discreetly for the
wolves to go on. The pounding in my shoulder faded as my senses
sharpened and I focused on the scent of the boy ahead of us mingled
with those of his friends. There were at least three different
human scents mixed with his that wove in and out of the baked sandy
sage aroma of the trail.

Nora started limping slightly, but I pushed
on, anxious to reach the group before they had to spend another
night in canyons that cooled rapidly after sundown. Traer fell back
with her and the Search and Rescue team and the distance slowly
increased between us. The wolves trotted silently in front of me,
gray tails waving slowly from side to side and fur rippling in a
stray spring breeze that made the sand dance like tiny tornadoes in
their paw prints. I pressed on after I heard the others take a
snack break, reminding myself that as far as we came in, we would
have to return and possibly with incapacitated hikers.

We followed the scent down a second wash and
I left an arrow of stones to show the others where we had gone. The
wolves trotted up the sandy furrow, but I stopped after a few
paces. The scent had vanished.

I spun around, testing the air for the
guiding scent. When I couldn't find it, I went to the mouth of the
wash where it had been, then crouched and studied the landscape
carefully. A sandstone wall rose on my right with a slight crack in
it. The wash on my left was shallow and had a few boot prints in
the bottom, but none of them belonged to the boy's scent. I grabbed
a handful of sand and let it flow through my fingers as I looked
around.

A broken twig on a sage bush at the top of
the wash across from me caught my attention. I rose and dusted off
my hands. The ground around the bush looked unbroken, but closer
observation showed it to be sandstone that had been swept clear of
the top layer of sand that covered everything else. The hard
surface wouldn't show footprints.

I crossed the wash and climbed carefully up
the other side. The boy's scent covered the bush and a gnarled root
he and his friends had used to reach the top. The wolves appeared a
moment before I whistled for them. When they climbed the wash next
to me and saw where the boy had gone, both Seth and Max looked
comically relieved. They ran on ahead and I decided to wait for the
others to make sure they didn't miss the trail.

The wolves came back a few seconds later
whining and looking anxiously in the direction of the scent. I knew
better than to question their judgment. I tore off a strip of cloth
from the bottom of my green tee-shirt and tied it to the sage
brush, then followed Seth and Max up the trail.

The top of the wash led to a narrow canyon
with sheer walls on either side. My wolf instincts cringed at the
thought of being trapped in the enclosed space, but the wolves
jogged through as though they had other things to concern them than
being cornered. I took a calming breath and followed, my hands
trailing on either wall.

The sound was muffled. It was obvious why
the Search and Rescue team hadn't been able to find them. The sheer
walls and thick sandy floor effectively prevented any yells from
reaching the wash where they had turned off. The wolves started
running and I jogged after them until they stopped at a hole in the
ground that dropped into a red rock cave far below the rim. The
hikers started to yell at the sound of our approach.

“
Hello? Is anyone up
there?”

“
Yeah,” I shouted down.
“I'm Vance. Search and Rescue is close behind.”

“
Oh, thank goodness,” a
female voice said. She then shouted, “Don didn't see the hole and
fell through. He broke his leg pretty bad. We were climbing down to
help him when the rope broke and we got trapped down
here.”

“
How many are
there?”

“
Four,” a male voice called
up. “Tina was hurt in the fall, but she says she can
climb.”

“
Just give me a rope long
enough get us out of this hole,” she replied with a threatening
tone that made me smile.

“
The others'll be here
soon,” I promised. I turned to the wolves. “I'm going to climb down
and make sure they're alright. Seth, go back to the others and help
them find this place without falling in. Max, keep watch in case I
need anything.”

Both wolves snorted in assent and Seth
trotted back down the trail. I studied the hole. Sunlight from high
above filtered down through several similar holes to light spots
along the floor quite a ways below. I could just make out the
hikers under the lip of the cave. It wouldn't be hard to reach them
with my werewolf strength. The problem was making it look realistic
and I didn't have any rope. I could either wait for the others, or
get creative.

Patience wasn't one of my virtues. I lowered
myself down the rim, then eased slowly along the wall with my hands
and feet on either side.

“
What are you doing?” one
of the hikers asked in alarm.

I moved down to where the wall suddenly
distanced itself, jumped to one side using my hands and feet to
slow me, then pushed off to the other side and slid to the bottom.
I stood and dusted myself off, then turned to face four surprised
stares.