Golden butterflies flicked around the upper branches and the gentle rush of the river accompanied the birdsong instead of thundering through his head as it had done the past few days. Maybe the storms were over.
He frowned and turned his head to glance toward the river that had carried him here, and his breath caught in surprise. The flooding had indeed gone down overnight but unless he was hallucinating that was not the Black Oak River directly below.
He squinted toward the sun again and then turned his head and studied the surrounding terrain. Using the sun on the eastern horizon as a gauge, he located Dogwood Ridge about a quarter of a mile south of him, its cliffs rising nearly a hundred feet above the Black Oak River in one spot.
He wasn’t even close to the main river! Apparently the log that served as his watery transportation last night was thrust toward the north fork of the river. No wonder he’d hit shallow water. This was Shadow Branch. He had hiked this area countless times.
If he could travel straight north about a mile and a half—uphill most of the way—he would come to an old farm road.
He closed his eyes and rested. The prickly needles of the pine branches scratched his head, neck, and shoulders. At least those parts of his body weren’t paralyzed.
The ache in his temples had receded. The roaring in his ears had stopped. Maybe he could drag himself to help.
But a mile and a half? In his condition, he might as well be halfway to the moon. He hadn’t been able to even pull himself forward without the leverage of the tree branches overhead.
And yet, if the unseasonably warm weather were to change suddenly he could die from hypothermia.
That would be too easy.
He reached for a pine branch and strained to pull himself forward. Inch by hard-earned inch.
He collapsed again. He didn’t have the strength.
He closed his eyes and listened to the birdsong once more. How long had it been since he’d taken time to listen? How long since he’d taken more than a few seconds to enjoy the beauty of the spring blossoms? How long since he’d taken time just to be?
He shuffled up on his elbows and tried to roll over onto his side. His lower body lay there like a lump of concrete.
“Don’t take me now,” he murmured. “I can’t just wait here helplessly to die.”
He thought about that for a moment, then grimaced at such a stupid remark. He had no choice. It was all he could do.
A verse he had memorized years ago came to him: “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
He looked up into the sky past the branches again. “Lord, can this possibly be your will?”
Had something gone horribly wrong? All these years he thought he’d been doing what he was called to do. He’d tried so hard, ministering to the members of Dogwood Springs Baptist Church, going far above the call of duty, answering every cry for help. After the struggle last summer with doubts about his calling, he’d felt confirmed, renewed, and so sure. His faith in God had grown, strengthening his life and the lives of those to whom he ministered. His ministry had grown and—
He closed his eyes and laid his head back. His ministry.
“Is that it?”
The constant activity, the constant scramble to meet the needs and requests of so many people... had overwhelmed him. His efforts had definitely overwhelmed Jessica.
And yet... what else did God expect him to do? Ignore the requests? Let those people sit alone in their hospital beds or isolated in their homes?
The special service to which he’d felt most led these past months did not take place within the church building. It had taken place within the hospital building and in the homes of patients as they recovered.
More often recently he’d been drawn to patients. He’d thought of that as another calling.
Could that be his true calling? His only calling?
And was it too late now to answer?
Until now, Archer thought one of his spiritual gifts was faith. But as this awareness of his mortality attacked him he had to face something he had never faced before—at least not to this extent—had he ever really learned to trust God at all?
He recalled something his mother believed about faith—that it wasn’t something you automatically did, it was something God gave you when you asked. What a person really needed was enough faith to pray and then they had to let God take it from there.
“Lord, help me, please. I have no faith at all.”
***
The deep, warm molasses voice of Floyd Stewart, the local radio announcer, spilled from Mitchell’s speakers. “Although efforts are still underway to find the body, a spokesman for the search-and-rescue operation has informed us that the more time that elapses, the less chance they have of finding the pastor alive.”
Mitchell snapped the radio off. “The body,” he muttered. “What makes you think he’s already dead?” And how would Archer’s wife feel if she heard those words?
He glanced into his rearview mirror and glared at the bumper-hungry driver behind him. He pulled to the side of Highway Z and motioned angrily for the moron to pass, then checked to make sure some other speed demon wasn’t racing up behind him.
He steered back onto the road and continued to drive slowly for another mile. Nothing tugged at his memory and he began to question his own sanity. What made him think he could find the place where Archer left the road when well over a hundred people had already combed the area below the bridge where Archer’s car had allegedly gone off?
He tapped his brake when he saw cars parked up ahead. Instead of driving past them he started to pull onto the side of the road again but then he caught sight of the marker for County Road 22.
The county road circled back along the edge of this ridge into town. It had been a favorite parking spot for lovers back when he was a teenager, both for its beautiful view across the Black Oak River and for its privacy.
There would have been no reason for Archer to use it Friday night.
It was no use. If Archer was anywhere to be found the searchers would have found him. They must have combed every inch of those riverbanks in the past couple of days.
Mitchell checked his time. He was late for his first appointment. He made a U-turn, gunned the motor, drove back toward town. He had no time to follow rabbit trails.
And yet... was he missing something?
***
“Hello! Is anyone out there? Can anyone hear me?”
Archer’s throat burned from overuse. His elbows, forearms, and hands were bruised and scraped.
He had managed to drag himself perhaps twenty-five feet from Shadow Branch before collapsing with exhaustion.
He thought of a lady who had belonged to their church years ago. She’d been bound to a wheelchair for twenty years before her death. Though physically weak and as frail and helpless as Archer was now, Annabelle Jordan had been one of the most encouraging people Archer had ever known.
Oftentimes, when something went wrong with the life of a church family or citizen of Dogwood Springs, Dad would call Annabelle immediately. Her serene faith had struck Archer with an awareness of the power of the Holy Spirit, even back then. Annabelle had never had to take a step, never had to climb out of bed when she received a call during the night. She prayed. It was something he’d remembered well when she died.
Now he found himself wondering if he’d forgotten all he’d ever learned. After all this time how could this pastor’s son doubt so much?
Tears of sorrow burned his eyes. He didn’t want to die yet. He didn’t want to leave Jessica. He wanted the experience of raising a family.
He wanted... he wanted.
And that was the whole problem, wasn’t it? What he wanted shouldn’t matter. He needed what God wanted for his life.
Rivulets of water trickled down toward the river somewhere in the distance but where he lay, as far as he could tel
l, the ground was nothing but mud. Oak, cedar, and sycamore trees formed a lacy canopy overhead.
He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten here because so much of that horrible float trip had been filled with pain and fear and he’d been overwhelmed by the struggle to hold on to the log. He had a vague recollection of the log drifting with the current of the river and of other logs and debris colliding with him or his mode of transportation. He remembered the other passenger on the log. A reptile.
It hadn’t touched him after that first contact.
A passage from Isaiah struck Archer’s heart, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.”
He needed to focus on those words. He needed to encourage that peace to carry him no matter what happened.
Don’t listen to the whispers of fear. Sometimes faith had as much to do with what you didn’t believe as what you did.
After a short rest, he checked his bearings and reached for the base of a sapling to pull himself forward.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Mitchell could not get Archer out of his mind. Every time he closed his eyes he saw those taillights. Every time he thought about his earlier drive along Dogwood Ridge, he thought again about that other road—County 22.
Common sense told him there would be no reason for Archer to have taken that road. But common sense also told Mitchell that if Archer was on the north side of Dogwood Ridge anywhere near the river, especially since the flooding had gone down, someone would have found him. There were too many people looking for him. And so unless Archer was buried somewhere in the bottom of the river, he would have been found.
After the final patient of the day walked out of the office, Mitchell swiveled around to stare out the window. Was he obsessing? Why this sudden overwhelming concern for a man with whom he seldom agreed and who irritated him beyond measure with his presence in the ER, supposedly “helping” patients to heal with his prayer talk?
A flicker of pastel caught his attention from the corner of the clinic building—pink-and-white dogwood blooms, side by side, decorating the dark brown brick with delicate beauty.
He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, took a deep breath.
The shape of those blooms flicked through his mind. Red eyes replaced them.
He sat up abruptly, eyes open wide. With fuzzy inaccuracy, he remembered a visual of pink-and-white dogwood blossoms glaring in the headlights.
Friday night? Early Saturday morning? He had awakened to that vision.
In less than ten minutes he was driving along Dogwood Ridge.
He still could not recall anything that might have placed him here on Friday night except for the dogwood blooms. Could he have hydroplaned and gone off the road and collided with trees?
Was there a second collision?
He bypassed the cars parked alongside the road and studied the dogwood trees for signs of damage. When he came to County 22 he stopped. It wouldn’t be logical to search that road for him.
But was it logical to cover the same area that had already been covered many times?
He turned west on the loop back toward town, watching for a copse of pink-and-white dogwoods together. About a mile from the turnoff he found them. He pulled off the pavement and parked. The trees stood about five yards from the edge of the curved asphalt. Mitchell got out of the Envoy.
He found nothing. No scarred bark that might have been damaged by his vehicle. No uprooted dirt. No marks in the mud indicating recent activity.
He strolled to the edge of the overlook and gazed down into the river valley below.
Mitchell had developed a heightened sense of responsibility early in life and until the past few months he would never have dreamed of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. And yet he was forced to admit that Grant Sheldon had been right when he confronted him.
“What if I killed Archer?” he whispered. He held his hands up and stared at them. These hands that had always been used to help the sick might well have been used to steer his vehicle into Archer Pierce.
If that turned out to be true he wasn’t sure he could bear the guilt of it.
He turned and walked along the rim of the cliff, studying the river’s edge. From here he could see the deposits of mud along the bank caused by the flood. Trash and uprooted trees had collected at the curve where the river forked. Typically, the left fork became a shallow creek called Shadow Branch, which flowed into Honey Creek a few miles down.
While the Black Oak River followed the curve of Dogwood Ridge, the creek meandered through a forest of pine and oak.
Mitchell studied the watermarks along the river’s edge. The flattened grass and line of waterlogged trash showed that the valley had indeed been a veritable lake when the flood reached its zenith sometime this past weekend. No wonder they were having trouble finding Archer. If he’d been caught by the current as his car had been he might be anywhere by now.
But what if he’d been caught by a different current?
Mitchell realized that he’d been subconsciously searching for a human form down there amidst the rubble. Archer’s form.
He swung away and covered his face in a wash of unaccustomed grief. “He can’t be dead,” he whispered to himself. “Not Archer. Of all people, not Archer.”
He recalled sitting in church and listening to Aaron Pierce’s sermons week after week, desperately wishing he could speak to this God Archer’s father had believed in so completely.
Then he remembered something Archer told him late last December.
“How can an intelligent man continue to believe after so many unanswered prayers?” Mitchell had demanded.
And Archer had responded with some inane words about God’s love and about how He truly did answer prayers.
Mitchell had paced around the desk in Grant’s office and leaned over Archer with a glare. “Are you trying to tell me my daughter’s drug addiction is part of His will? Are you trying to tell me that Oakley Brisco’s death was God’s will?”
“Those were results of free human choice, not God’s will.”
“Maybe you really are there.” His mutter softened to a hushed whisper. “Maybe you just choose to hate certain people. Maybe I’m at the top of your hate list.” The words came as a hard taunt. “But why do this to Pierce? He’s been your staunchest supporter in this town. If he was right about you why did you let him be hurt?”
He stopped and swallowed and focused his glare over the river that rushed past. “Where is he now? Why didn’t you save him, of all people?”
He closed his eyes.
Archer Pierce had never hurt him. Pierce had been one of the few people who had almost convinced him to listen when he spoke about his God.
The love of God. What a joke.
“You are worthless to him,” he hissed at the sky, then retreated to the SUV, turning his back on whatever gods or sentient beings might have been eavesdropping on his questions. Crazy to open himself to such stupidity.
He was halfway back to town, observing that it was just as well this road was not heavily traveled, since the high shoulders made it so slick during wet weather. Another memory hit him and he slammed on his brakes.
Hydroplaning! Those red eyes, dim-bright-dim-bright, then winking slyly... sliding across his field of vision like a taunting spirit...
Archer’s taillights slid back and forth because he was hydroplaning.
Mitchell caught his breath and made a U-turn. He’d remembered one more thing—the river that night. For one brief second, in a flare of lightning, Mitchell remembered wresting his gaze from the sight of those glaring red eyes and catching a glimpse of the valley below. He’d seen the flooded river that had overwhelmed its banks.
And then those eyes blinked at him—the taillights attacking his front bumper with a jolt as he stomped the brakes and tried to avoid them.
No, they had not attacked him. With a welling of nausea he realized he had atta
cked them. His tires had wavered and he’d swerved, most likely losing traction, and he’d felt the jolt again. And then the brakes had caught and held and the taillights went on without him, into the trees, over the... cliff. All had gone black for Mitchell then.
It made sense. His air bags had deployed upon impact with Archer’s car. They had deflated by the time he hit the trees.
He stopped at another copse of blooming pink-and-white dogwoods and cedars, where the view of the river was best. He parked and got out.
He was about thirty feet from the trees when he saw the damage on the bark of the two dogwoods closest to him. He ran to them and knelt to study them more closely. He looked back at the brush guard of the Envoy. Exact match. This was it. This was the place!
They were slightly bent, barely scraped, where his guard had hit and been thrust back away from the trees a couple of feet. From the look of it they had apparently kept him from going over the cliff.
And Archer?
Mitchell ran to the cliff and peered over the side. The car would not have had a straight shot into the river from here, because about ten feet down the side of the cliff was an outcropping of rock. About twenty feet below that was a ledge of dirt about four feet wide that looked as if part of it had collapsed into the water. Could the car have done the damage?
Mitchell grabbed a tree root and swung over the edge of the cliff. He wasn’t dressed for rock climbing but he could scramble down this cliff easily enough if he was cautious.
He reached the boulder and found a small sprinkling of glass that looked as if it might match the shattered windshield of a car. It could be the car had hit this boulder on the way down—or it could be the remains of some long-ago accident.
He scrambled down to the ledge below the boulder, cautious not to collapse it further. He peered over the edge and saw that Archer could have dropped directly into the water. The surface was about twenty feet farther down right now but might have been much closer a couple of days ago during the worst of the flood.
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