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“
Something’s up,” said
Sawyer.

In a glance I took in the half dozen dogs
and the deputies from the Sheriff’s Department. “That’s the K-9
Search and Rescue Unit. Somebody’s missing.”

He wheeled into a space beside a park
ranger’s truck and I leapt out, striding over to where a series of
tables had been set up with radio equipment, coffee, and snacks. I
recognized Eileen Nichols manning the home base and organizing the
tracking log. A dispatcher for the county, I’d known Eileen for
years because of Dad’s job with the fire department. As she
finished giving orders to the assembled K-9 unit, I looked around
to see if Dad was here. He was still on duty at the fire station,
but that didn’t necessarily mean he hadn’t been called in for this.
Eileen dismissed the assorted dogs and their handlers. I waited
until she’d finished making notations in the log before I stepped
up.

“
Oh good. Somebody on the
phone tree got you.” Eileen glanced over my shoulder, raised a
brow. “And you brought reinforcements. Even better.”

I didn’t bother to look as Sawyer stepped up
behind me.

“
I didn’t get the call,” I
told her. “What’s going on?”

“
Missing kids. One your
age. You probably know him. Rich Phillips and his little sister
Molly.”

My mouth dropped open. “What happened?”

“
His truck was found at the
trailhead by patrol at dawn, and his parents say he didn’t come
home last night. Last anybody saw him was when he picked Molly up
from her Junior Explorers hike yesterday around 4:30.”

“
His truck was at Hansen’s
when I passed by a bit after 5 yesterday. There might be something
on the security cameras,” I told her.

“
We’ll get somebody to
check, see if we can verify when he left and if anybody else was
with him. Your dad’s already out in the field with Eddie
Richenbach, but I can radio to find out their position if you’d
like to join in,” said Eileen.

“
No!” I said. God, the last
thing I needed to do was run into my dad right now. “There’s no
need to pull him from the search or hold him up waiting for me.
Where is he?”

She tapped a finger on his last reported
location and showed me his assigned sector.

“
And what’s not currently
being covered?”

She pointed to a couple of other areas. “Can
you search?”

I hesitated, spotting Dr. McGrath and the
rest of the team on the far side of the parking lot, talking to a
couple of park rangers. “Not sure yet. I’m technically working
right now.”

“
That’s right. Your dad
said you were working as a guide this summer. Well, I know you
won’t steer anybody wrong. You keep your eyes peeled out there
today for that Phillips boy.”

Sawyer waited until we started toward his
father. “You’re part of Search and Rescue?” he asked.

“
Yes,” I said, my mind
already on the search to come.

“
And what’s this thing
about being a guide?”

“
What my father—and
yours—don’t know, won’t hurt them.” When he said nothing, I felt a
spurt of panic and turned toward him. “Sawyer, please. I have my
reasons.”

He studied me for a long moment before
dropping his gaze. I followed and saw that my hand was clutched
around his forearm. Horrified that I’d touched him without
realizing it, I pulled back.

“
Please,” I said
again.

“
Give me your reasons, I’ll
give you my silence,” he said.

I grit my teeth, bit back a growl. “That’s
blackmail.”

“
I call it curiosity, but
hey, potato, potahtoh.”

Narrowing my eyes, I said, “There’s no time
now.”

“
Later then.”

Chapter 4

Sawyer

Of
course Dad and the others agreed
to search. One of those missing was a child. Research could
wait.

After briefly conferring with the woman who
seemed to be organizing things, we were split into groups—Dad and
Abby, Patrick and David, me and Elodie—and assigned search sectors.
Elodie passed out radios and explained the check-in procedure.

“
Be sure to keep a close
eye on your heading and make notes on your map.” She turned to the
other woman again. “Have the dogs alerted anywhere along the trail
yet?”

“
Here in sector three was
the last strong alert. They found Molly’s windbreaker. That was
about forty-five minutes ago. The Junior Explorers troop leader
thinks she left it when they stopped for lunch.”

“
So maybe Rich brought her
out here to find it before they went home,” said Elodie.

“
That’s the thinking. It’s
the damnedest thing. The dogs were able to follow their scent from
the parking lot to about a hundred yards in, then lost it. It’s
like they up and disappeared.”

“
We’ll find them.” She said
it with a grim determination that made me suspect she’d stay out as
long as it took.

I waited until we were away from the group
and into the park before breaking the silence. “So riddle me this,
Miss Rose. You can’t possibly be old enough to be certified in
search and rescue, yet you very definitely seem to know your shit.
How is that?”

She was so focused on looking for signs of
passage, I wasn’t sure she’d heard me.
“I’m as
close to certified as I can get. My dad has made sure of it. I’ve
passed all the classes and the tests. I just need to be eighteen.
When they have searches like this, it’s all hands on
deck.”

“
So this is something you
and your dad do together?”

“
Yeah.”

“
That’s kind of a strange
father-daughter bonding exercise,” I observed.

“
It’s practical,” she said.
“Mountaineering. Survival skills. Tracking. He’s been teaching me
how to do all of it since—” She cut herself off abruptly. “Since I
was old enough to train.”

I really wanted to know what she wasn’t
telling me, but I didn’t need my superior senses to tell that
avenue of questioning was totally cut off. At least this morning’s
bout of fear seemed to have abated now that she had something else
to focus on besides my questionable behavior.

“
Well that’s cool. So you
and your dad are like the Bear Grylls family of
Mortimer?”

She glanced back at me, a trace of amusement
on her face. “Do you see me jumping unnecessarily off a cliff or
being trailed by a camera crew from the Discovery Channel?”

“
Hey, the day’s still
young.”

Her lips curved in a smile that was gone so
fast, I almost wasn’t sure I’d seen it.

“
So what’s this whole deal
about you lying to everybody about your summer job?”

For a few moments she ignored me, making
notations in her notebook. She stalled a little longer by checking
our heading on her compass and comparing it to the topographical
map she carried. I had a feeling she didn’t actually need either.
As far as I could tell, she was as at home out here as any of the
native wildlife.

When she started moving again, she was
agitated, her shoulders stiff, her stride jerky. “I couldn’t tell
my father about this job. He wouldn’t approve.”

“
Why not? Does he have
something against science?”

She took her time answering, hopping down a
rocky incline like a mountain goat. I followed fast enough to catch
her quiet response. “No. He has something against college. He
doesn’t want me to go.”

“
But that’s nuts. You’re
brilliant. If anybody should go to college, it’s you. Is it a money
thing?”

Elodie glanced at me, her face twisted in
frustration. “No. Or it’s not just that.” She fisted her hands.
Flexed them. Fisted them again. “He’s afraid.”

“
Of what?”

She dropped her eyes down to her bandaged
wrist. “That I’ll turn out just like my mother.”

The subtle pain in her voice throbbed like
an old wound. There was something here, something to do with what
happened in that clearing. The wolf in me wanted to touch and
nuzzle, to soothe. Instead, I stayed quiet, waiting for her to
continue.

“
My dad didn’t go to
college. He never got the chance. He’s been saddled with me since
he was seventeen.”

“
Young to be a dad,” I
said. I tried to imagine having a kid now. That kind of thing would
be life altering in a way I couldn’t even fathom.

She flashed me a bitter smile. “Yeah, my
parents were a good illustration for the ‘Why’ of safe sex
campaigns everywhere.”

“
So he’s worried about you
repeating their mistakes?” That didn’t seem to fit with the grief,
but single dad of a teenage daughter—it wasn’t an unreasonable
fear. And it would explain why she hadn’t wanted me picking her up
at her house.

She was quiet for so long, I didn’t think
she was going to answer me.

“
Three days after I was
born, my mother handed me over to my father, checked out of the
hospital, and disappeared into the mountains.” She stopped,
crouching to check something that might have been the heel of a
boot print. It must have been nothing because she straightened
again and moved on.

“
When you say disappeared
you mean . . . ”

“
Disappeared.”

“
Like the kind of
disappeared they’d be calling out search and rescue
for?”

Elodie spared me a glance, nodded.

Well that explained the unusual
father-daughter bonding.

“
I’m not sure how long it
took them to realize she was missing, and I don’t know that it
would have made any difference if they’d gotten a search team out
sooner. It was days before anybody found her. By the time they did,
animals had savaged her body pretty badly. But it was still obvious
that she’d slit her wrists.” Elodie absently traced a finger down
the veins in her forearms.

The gesture chilled me to the bone.

Jesus.
I was devastated by the loss
of my mother, but at least she hadn’t chosen to die.

“
So the other day in the
clearing you were . . . ”

I didn’t really think the prompt would work,
but she kept talking.

“
Every year I go out on my
birthday and I test myself, to prove that I’m not like her. That
I’m strong enough to deal with the reality of my life.”

I wasn’t sure whether to be horrified or
humbled.

I did the math. “Wait, three days after you
were born . . . so that’s today. Today’s the anniversary.”

She nodded and sucked in a breath. I could
hear the tremble of tears when she spoke again. “It’s twisted and
morbid but there you have it. That’s what I was doing when you
found me. And that’s why I didn’t tell my dad about this job.
Because he’d have said no as a means to keep me close. And as it
happens, I’m more like my mother than either of us realized.”

“
No you’re not.” I couldn’t
help myself. I had to touch her, to brush away the tear that
glittered on the curve of her cheek.

“
How would you know?” she
demanded, rubbing angrily at the stream of others that
followed.

I ran a hand down her arm and curled my
fingers around hers. “Because you’re still here.”

She shut her eyes, and I was already cursing
myself for sticking my foot in it. But it was the right thing to
say. On a sigh, the tension seemed to seep out of her body, her
hand squeezing mine for the briefest of moments before she pulled
away, moving again in an obvious effort to shake off the mood.
“So,” she said. “There you have it. That is why I am lying to my
father. Satisfied?” There was an edge to her voice that let me know
she was still pissed I’d cornered her.

“
No.”

Elodie whirled and glared at me.

Before she could spew forth what was no
doubt an impressive display of temper, I said, “Now I owe you.
Fair’s fair. So here’s a secret nobody else knows: I’m lying to my
dad, too.”

She shut her mouth, waiting.

It was my turn to feel caged and restless,
so I took the lead on the trail. “I got expelled from school eight
months ago. Dad keeps pushing me to go to summer school so I can go
on off to college in the fall. I haven’t told him I already got my
GED.”

“
Why?”

There was the $64,000 question. “I’m not
what you’d call ‘on board’ with his plan for my life.”

“
You don’t want
college?”

“
I don’t know what I want
right now. He thinks everything can just go back to normal. That he
can just move us across country and start over like nothing
happened.”

“
What happened?”

“
My mother was shot.” The
pain was bright and hot in my chest, and it woke the rage. The
beast bristled, and I clenched my teeth, reaching for control. I
was not gonna spill this shit on Elodie.

A tiny hand slipped tentatively into mine,
squeezed. “I’m sorry.”

Anybody else tried to give me sympathy, the
beast would snap, but for Elodie, it settled down. So we walked for
a while in silence, hand in hand, until I was back in control.

“
It shouldn’t have
happened. She shouldn’t have been there. But she was so angry. She
and Dad had some kind of fight, and she’d gone out to blow off some
steam. Just for a run. And this trigger happy farmer thought she
was . . . ” I had to stop myself from spilling out the full truth.
“I don’t know what he thought she was. They said it was an
accident.”