Indelible (30 page)

Trevor had to smile. Natalie had instinctively served to Sara’s sweet spot, and Cody tugged her heartstrings to the point of tears, before sweetly dropping off to sleep. From a couple of comments, he guessed Sara still nursed some denial, but she’d get it eventually. As for Pictionary, he and Whit gave as good as they got and if there was little gloating as Natalie bundled Cody—

He and Whit locked eyes when their phones vibrated simultaneously.

Whit reached his first and read the text. “Search team. That’s us. Staging: Summit Saloon.”

Trevor frowned. “Not a good night to be lost.”

“Not a good night to search,” Whit added, rising.

Natalie and Sara stood up with them, concerned, but this was what they did.

He said, “Nattie, I’ll run you home. It’s on the way.”

“Okay.” She hurried to gather Cody.

Whit kissed his wife and went on ahead.

Climbing into his vehicle, Natalie heaved a sigh. “Thank you for not leaving me there.”

He laughed. “You did great.”

“You don’t know how intimidating it is.”

“No, I get it.” He squeezed her hand, then focused on driving. The roads were mostly dry, but visibility terrible, gusts creating ground blizzards from the dusty snow.

When they reached her house, she said, “I can get Cody.” She climbed out quickly and removed the child, calling, “Go ahead.”

The minute they were inside, he took off. Always prepared with gear in the SUV, he still took longer than he liked to reach the Summit. Anyone out in this would be all but blinded.

“Teenage girl,” Whit told him when he arrived.

Trevor’s stomach sank.

Collars pulled up, the police chief and Sheriff Gilmore had their heads together over a map. Trevor scanned, but didn’t see Tia among the SAR personnel. She was the best they had for trails, but this was shaping up differently. Jonah looked out at them, lights from the fire engine flashing over his face. “Our missing girl is sixteen, small build, brown hair, wearing a Redford High hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans. Her name’s Michaela. Presumed intoxicated. Might be the first time. She may have lost her way, fallen, or passed out.”

The sheriff took over. “Chief, you and your people search the streets and buildings through town. SAR, we’ll form a grid search out from the parking lot up the slopes. Be careful. We’ve had one cougar attack, and, in spite of the snow, it’s autumn, not winter. Beware of bears.”

Any bear with half a brain would have booked, but some had less than half.

“Also Michaela was sick in the lot. Her stomach could revolt again.”

Trevor turned to Whit. “At the scent of vomit, send up a flare.”

“My vomit sensors are shot. Common occurrence at my house.”

The sheriff said, “Keep your line as well as the terrain allows. All right, let’s go.”

They aimed the flashlights low to minimize glare off the blowing snow. Trevor blinked it from his eyes as they searched for places a girl might lie unconscious. There’d be no tracks.

He told Whit, “I can’t believe she’d take to the woods in this. If she’s staggering drunk, wouldn’t she move downhill?”

“The stuff available now, she might be following UFOs.”

The wind jammed the breath back down his throat. “It would take some hallucination to draw me out in this.” He looked over his shoulder where the Summit’s two parking-lot lights marked the upper edge of town.

Noreen Malmquist, the firefighter directly to his right on the grid search line, had been in the saloon when the girl vanished. He turned to her. “Did anyone notice a vehicle leaving the lot while Michaela was out?”

“The smokers on the porch said no.”

The only access to the tiny back lot, on wheels, was past that porch. But the sheriff and chief had to consider foul play. Small, elite community or not, she was a teenage girl in a compromised condition.

At a blast of snow, Trevor pulled the face protector up over his mouth and nose. The higher they climbed, the colder and darker it got.

Beside him Noreen cried out, angling her flashlight about thirty feet up a stony promontory to the girl swaying on a ledge. His chest seized. The ledge was hardly wider than her feet. Even if she realized her danger, she couldn’t seem to stop swaying. That would be the booze.

Trevor shot his light up the stone. No way she got there without equipment. Several searchers headed around, but that would take too long. He spoke into his radio. “Situation’s precarious. Subject extremely unsteady. I’m climbing.”

“Go ahead, MacDaniel. Do your stuff.”

With time they’d come at it from the top and lower a rope, or in this case a team member. But she looked ready to pass out. He had rope, but he’d have to free climb to set it. With his headlamp lighting the way, he reached up.

Just today he’d done this on the climbing wall—without the storm. His fingers dug into the frigid rock, his feet found purchase.
Hold on
, he willed her. If he could reach the ledge and secure her, others could hoist her up. Wind choked. Snow flew in his eyes like talcum powder.

Someone spoke to her from below, urging her to hold still, help was coming. He stretched and pulled, three or four flashlights lighting the rock face from below, careful, he hoped, not to blind her. He propelled himself up to one frosty hold after another, balancing caution and haste. It would do her no good if he fell. Just a little more.

Before he could find the next grip, cries preceded the sickening sound of her fall. Clinging like a lizard, he pressed his face to the stone, sick inside. It was a survivable distance. They might have softened her landing, but he couldn’t bring himself to look.

As searchers rushed to the fallen girl, he moved stiffly down the rock. In five more minutes, he’d have had her. His feet hit the ground. Throat tight, he circled the promontory.

Noreen hollered, “Get a stretcher up here!”

Outside the Pastimes Book and Media Center, Jonah released the radio button and prayed. With the gusting wind and lousy visibility, they couldn’t bring the chopper in to transport her to the hospital. Firefighters were on the mountain with a stretcher, and the ambulance stood by in the Summit parking lot. It would have to be enough.

He’d spoken to Michaela in assemblies, worked beside her in fund-raising drives. She was not one he’d have ever picked for this. Officer Donnelly came up beside him, silent and stoic. She’d lost her husband in jail last fall and given birth to their second child a few months later. She’d been tempered by that, a solid officer, but none of them took this stuff easily.

He said, “Let’s get up to the Summit. I want to talk to Michaela’s parents.”

Moser swung over in one of the cruisers, and he and Sue climbed in. It felt like an avalanche had landed inside the car, and they were all trying to decide which direction was up. Jonah reached the sheriff by phone and got the details. What was she doing up there?

He entered the saloon, where the parents paced. He knew Randy, a small, weathered man, but not the wife. “Randy, Mrs. Weller. Michaela’s had a fall on the mountain. I don’t know how serious her injuries are, but we’re working to get her down right now.”

They were rightfully stunned. “Who’s she with? Why was she up there?”

“I don’t know. Did she have a boyfriend or someone she might sneak out to see?”

They looked at each other, confused. Her mother said, “She’s dated a little casually. She’s only sixteen.”

At sixteen he’d been anything but casual. “A friend you don’t like? Someone older?”

“She’s friends with good kids. She doesn’t have secrets.”

Everyone had secrets. But Michaela’s were probably not dark and dangerous. “Was she acting strange, depressed …”

Randy’s face twisted. “You think she jumped?”

“We know she didn’t. Either she lost consciousness or her balance. The fall was accidental, but that doesn’t explain why she was on a rock ledge in this weather.”

The wife began to cry. Randy bent his head to hers. “She’s going to be okay.” His eyes pleaded.

Jonah gave what assurance he could. “We’re doing everything we can.”

He went out the back, reaching the staging area as Trevor MacDaniel came off the mountain. The man looked shell-shocked. In things like this, getting close hurt the same as not even.

The back door pushed open and Jazmyn Dufoe charged out. “Trevor!”

Dread drained the man’s face. There wasn’t anything Jonah could do for Michaela, but he could save the one who’d tried to help from this particular assault. “Go home,” Jonah told him and turned to face the reporter.

Seeing her main target escape, Jazmyn demanded, “Chief Westfall, can I have a minute?”

He planted himself. “I have about one.”

At first she thought it must be Cody. But peeking in, she heard nothing but his slightly nasal breathing and the whisper-soft humidifier issuing a fine, thin fog. Back out in the hall, she heard it again, the knocking. Groggily, she went to the door. “Yes?”

Trevor said, “I know it’s late.”

It was almost three. She opened the door. His skin was wind chapped, his lips tinged blue. His gloved hands shook.

He looked at them. “Adrenaline.”

“Come here.” She pulled him inside, the night chill entering with him, or maybe it was anguish. She could only glance and look away, but their search must not have gone well. “What happened?”

He pressed the back of his hand to his nose, sniffing from the inclement weather. “A teenage girl got lost and fell.”

“From what?”

“A crag behind the Summit Saloon. I can’t imagine how—” His face contorted. “It doesn’t make sense.”

She knew what was going on in his head.
It’s the ones that if we’d found them sooner …

He sighed. “I got you up.”

“Well, yes, but I slept the other half of the night.”

He smiled grimly as she pulled him toward the couch. “You don’t need this.”

She tugged his coat sleeve, and he shrugged out of his parka, shed the gloves and hat as well.

“How badly is she hurt?”

“Bad.”

“I’m so sorry.” She rubbed his arm.

“I almost reached her. If she’d held on five more minutes …” He dropped to the couch and lowered his face to his hands.

She sank in beside him. He smelled of wet pine. Fragments of needles stuck in his hair.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

She rested her hand on his back, touched and encouraged to finally give him comfort. “I’m glad you are.”

“I keep thinking I could have climbed faster, gone a different way, let her know I was coming. Others were talking, but why didn’t I holler out to her so she knew?”

He wasn’t looking for an answer. She closed her hand around the back of his neck and rubbed the ropy tendons.

“If I could see the rock like you do …”

“Mine was a single boulder on a sunny afternoon. You were out there in the dark, in the storm.”

“I know. But that doesn’t stop it.”

She slid her fingers into his hair. “What does?”

“I don’t know. Answers maybe.”

Or prayers. This wounded guardian deserved a dose of mercy. As if feeling her lifting him up, he turned his face, and she took it in. Regret. Failure. Shock and confusion. His weathered cheekbones, his bristled jaw, his raw and haunted eyes.

“Aw, Nattie.”

“No. Please. I want to see it.”

“I didn’t mean to show you.”

She touched her fingers to his face. “There’s a plastic-wrapped block of clay in the garage. Can you bring it to the kitchen, with the board it’s on?”

He went and got the clay. Standing at the counter, she worked until the gray hues of dawn infused the room. Eyes gritty with fatigue, hands cramping, she let go, and Trevor was there, before and behind her.

He gripped her shoulders and kissed the side of her neck. She leaned back, and he held her for long, silent moments, his prickly jaw pressed into her cheek.