Long Road Home

by JoAnn Ross

  “Well, I’m just glad Dad’s finally getting out of the house. Thanks to Layla.”

  She glanced over at the house, which was partly covered with plastic now that Brody had started in on the remodeling for the pool. She’d feared her dad would balk at what he’d think of as charity, but all it had taken was to suggest that it would be a great surprise belated birthday gift from the community for Sophie, and he’d been all in.

  It was funny, she thought. Although he’d always been loving but gruff with her, over the past weeks, Tom and Heather’s kids had managed to wrap him around their little fingers.

  “I guess Brody took off for lunch.”

  “Yeah. He said he had to drive over to K. Falls to pick up some stuff.”

  “And Winema’s babysitting grandkids over at her daughter’s place. So,” she said. “It’s just us.”

  “Just us. All alone,” Sawyer agreed.

  “It seems, being two intelligent people, we should be able to think of something to do to fill the time,” she mused.

  “I’ve got a suggestion.”

  She tilted her head and looked up at the devils dancing in his eyes. “Great minds.”

  *

  AT FIRST JACK was unhappy that Scott had chipped a tooth and had to go to the dentist on the very day that the campers were going to go up the mountain. He liked the other kids okay, but Scott was almost like a brother. Not old enough to be bossy, but it was good to have a guy to talk to about stuff. Like about his mom and dad dying. It was weird. There were times when he’d close his eyes and not even remember what they looked like. Which Scott had told him was normal, so his stomach had mostly stopped aching whenever it happened.

  Scott had also told him how Cooper had taken him and his mom on the outlaw train ride, and how cool it had been, so Jack had asked Sawyer, who’d told him that he should’ve thought of that, and he and Austin would take him this very weekend.

  Which was another thing. Before she’d gone off to that sea camp, Sophie had told him she thought Austin and Sawyer might get married. Which he thought would be really neat because then he’d have a new mom and dad. But she’d said that they might have other kids and what if they liked those kids better?

  Jack didn’t think that would happen, because Scott was all the time saying that he really hoped his new dad and mom would have a baby brother or sister after they got married, and he said that Sophie was just being dramatic, like girls sometimes were.

  It was all really confusing. Which was why Jack had come up with his secret plan.

  *

  “YOU KNOW,” AUSTIN said after they’d let the colt run back to his herd in the pasture and put the tack away. “I just realized that you’ve never seen my bathroom. Brody remodeled it a couple years ago.”

  “It’s a little hard to come up with a reason to go up to your room when your dad’s in the house. And I’m a little too old to be climbing up a tree to sneak in your window.”

  “Yeah.” She swept a look over the snug blue Bikini Kill T-shirt clinging to his hot, sweaty, ripped torso. “I can tell how ancient you are. And have you noticed that all your shirts just happen to be girl bands?”

  He grinned. Shrugged. “What can I say? I like women.” He took his time checking her out the same way she had him. “One particular woman especially. One who, unless my lying eyes deceive me, isn’t wearing anything under that shirt.”

  Hers was a boring plain navy and felt as wet as his looked. The temperature had been building all day, feeling like an evening thunderstorm was brewing. Meanwhile, a storm of a different type altogether was rising in his eyes.

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she said. She rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m hot, sweaty, and I smell like a horse. What would you say to a shower?”

  “You’re on.”

  The shower in question was in the ensuite bathroom off her room. It was a walk-in, with no glass doors to clean, nor curtain to stick to your body on a cold winter’s day. The floor was heated, and for pure luxury, which they didn’t need today with the temperature climbing into the nineties, two red heat lamps had been installed overhead.

  “Wow. There’s room for a party in here,” he said when he saw it.

  “That was exactly the idea,” she said, pulling off her shirt.

  There was a time, when she’d been younger and all the girls had been flashing their boobs, lifted up and pushed together by those silly water bras, at Sawyer Murphy that she’d been afraid if they ever did make love, he’d be totally turned off by her AA cups. Even the first time they’d made love, although she’d matured into a full A, she’d still wished that she could wave a magic wand and have Katy Perry’s or Scarlett Johansson’s breasts suddenly show up on her chest.

  But amazingly, he’d loved them. Just as he made her lack of curves everywhere else seem sexy, running his hands and mouth all over the body that had been, like his, built by hard, physical work.

  “God, I love your body,” he said, as he had so many times over the past days.

  She’d already pulled her boots off before coming into the house. Now she shimmied out of her jeans, showing off the new scarlet, high-cut lacy bikini panties. An affair, she’d discovered, was dangerous to her credit card. “I’m glad to hear that,” she purred in a way she’d only ever done with Sawyer. “Since it’s all yours.”

  “Right answer.” He yanked the shirt over his head, threw it on the floor next to her clothes, stripped, then reached in and turned on the water. Which, like the foreman’s cabin, featured hot water on demand. Then he pulled her into the water, beneath the six sprays that told Sawyer what he’d already figured out for himself. That inside that lean and fit cowgirl body dwelt the heart of a hedonist.

  Going down on his knees on the tile floor, he took the low-cut waistband of the sexy-as-sin panties and pulled them down her legs with his teeth.

  After she’d stepped out of them, he stood up, grabbed a bottle of body soap—strawberries today—and, working up a lather between his palms, began to smooth it all over her body. “You smell good enough to eat,” he growled against her slick, wet stomach.

  And as the room steamed up and the warm water streamed over them, Sawyer feasted.

  *

  THEY’D JUST MANAGED to stumble out of the shower when Sawyer’s phone, still in the pocket of his jeans, began to chime. “It might be one of the kids,” he said, digging it out, which wasn’t all that easy since they were inside out. “Hey, Coop,” he answered when he saw his brother’s name on the screen.

  “What?” He hit the speaker icon. “Say that again.”

  “We got a call from the camp director,” Cooper Murphy said, once again using his official sheriff’s voice. “Jack got away from the group.” He paused a heartbeat, during which time Austin couldn’t breathe. “On the mountain.”

  39

  AS SAWYER BROKE every speeding law in the state driving to the mountain, Austin seated beside him. The adrenaline racing through her, speeded up even more by the wild beating of her heart, had her head spinning.

  “How did he get away?” she asked. Then waved the question away. “Never mind. He’s Jack. The mistake was letting him go to that stupid day camp. Even Heather and Tom didn’t think he was old enough to play junior Little League.”

  “Don’t play ‘if only,’” Sawyer said. “It doesn’t do any good. He’ll be all right.”

  “You’ve grown up hiking and riding on this mountain the same as I have,” she argued. “You know how large it is. How many crisscrossing trails. How many creeks and ponds, and oh, God, he could fall or drown or run into a mountain lion or a bear or—”

  “We’ll find him,” Sawyer repeated. “Coop’s called in all his deputies.”

  “Which would be two.”

  “True. But people are coming from Klamath and Lake Counties. The National Guard offered some copters to patrol the area, and all the ground and air search units are standing by, waiting to be deployed. He’s not going to be hidin
g, Austin. He’ll be looking for them at the same time they’re looking for him. They’ll find him. You’ll see.”

  “Like Cooper found Ellen?” she shot back, her nerves tangling, her gut roiling. She’d no sooner said the words than she wished she could take them back. “I’m sorry. That was cruel.”

  “But true,” he allowed. “And I’d rather have you say it to me than my brother.”

  “So many people get lost up here every year,” she said. Hadn’t she gone looking for them herself? And some of those, older and far more experienced than Jack, didn’t make it off the mountain alive. Please, please, please. The single prayer repeated over and over again in an endless loop.

  The command center was already being set up at the Glacier Summit trailhead, where Jack had first been discovered missing, when they arrived. Teams were being organized, sectors assigned. Whenever she’d taken part in a search, she’d always cared for the lost person, but she’d also always been able to keep some emotional distance. Not today.

  Rising high to dominate the mountain range on the north end of the basin, Modoc Mountain boasted three glaciers from which numerous creeks and streams flowed, along with beautiful alpine lakes, which could prove deadly to a lost, exhausted, frightened child. A little boy who, having wandered far enough and long enough, might foolishly pause to take a drink, or even wade into the lake to cool off from the late-afternoon heat that was growing more and more oppressive.

  The mountain was tall enough to make its own weather, and the thick, black clouds it was gathering around its snow-clad summit were making this situation even more dangerous.

  “It’s going to storm,” Austin said, her blood chilling despite the heat.

  One summer, when she’d been riding trail, helping the crew at the Arrowhead spread take a herd up to the high pasture, a thunderstorm had blown in quickly, making the air so electric that all the hair on her arms had stood on end and her ponytail had shot straight up. Seconds later, a jagged bolt of lightning had speared down from a low, rumbling cloud, striking a cow, killing it instantly, and setting off a stampede that had risked lives as the cowboys had scrambled to try to round up the cattle again before they went running over the edge of one of the many canyons.

  Sawyer shot a look up at the sky. “We’ve got awhile,” he said. “And yeah, it’s scary as hell,” he admitted, as if not wanting to dismiss her very real fears. “But the odds are in his, and our, favor. He hasn’t been gone all that long, and he’s outnumbered. We’ll find him.”

  As a distant rumbling came from the mountaintop and one of the anvil-shaped clouds blocked out the sun, Austin kept praying. Please. Please. Please.

  *

  JACK WAS BEGINNING to think this might not have been his best ever idea. He thought all he had to do was to just slip away behind those trees, come around again, and follow the trail he and the other campers and his counselors had been on while they continued back down to the ski lift for the ride back down the mountain.

  But he hadn’t figured there’d be so many trails. And some would stop, so he’d have to cut through the brush and around more trees, until he found it again. Or maybe it was a different one. When he got to where two trails crossed, he couldn’t figure out which way to go. Parker, Sophie’s boyfriend, had been telling him all about how to navigate by stars, but it wasn’t dark yet, so even if he could remember what he’d said, it wasn’t any help now.

  He did know that the sun rose in the east and went down in the west. That’s why his mom was always taking pictures of sunsets, saying Oregon had the most beautiful sunsets of anywhere in the whole wide world. But it was hard to even see the sun through all the trees, and when he did, it didn’t look like it was going to be setting right away.

  Which was when he realized that knowing east or west, or even north or south, wouldn’t help him, because the trail they’d been on didn’t go straight up the mountain, it went around. So he didn’t know which direction the ski lift or home was.

  He stepped over some deer poop scattered on the rocky trail. He’d learned to tell all different kinds of wild animal poop in one of the camp workshops, which he’d really liked, but a lot of the girls had made lots of stupid eewwww sounds, and some had even refused to look at it.

  Especially the bear poop that had fur in it from some animal it had eaten, though mostly bears liked fruit and berries. He passed some wild blueberry bushes and a tree stump that looked like the picture the counselor had shown him where a bear had torn apart a tree looking for honey. Winnie the Pooh and his honey pot was a pretty good story when he’d been younger. But no way did Jack want to meet up with a bear.

  He wasn’t on the river, which he knew was big and wide and, his parents and Austin and Sawyer had warned him, dangerous, but he had just come to a creek. Sophie, who was all about saving the planet since she’d gotten accepted at Sea Camp, had told him creeks and streams flowed into rivers, then rivers into bigger rivers, then finally into the ocean. So, if he followed this little creek, he’d eventually get to Black Bear River. Right? And then he could find his way back to Green Springs.

  *

  CAL POTTER WAS not only River’s Bend’s volunteer fire chief and the senior of the department’s two deputies, his five-year-old German shepherd, Marley, who usually hung around the fire station, was a trained and certified SAR (search and rescue) dog. Having witnessed him working before, Austin knew that, while some dogs tended to air scent naturally and others preferred ground scenting, Marley would flip between the two, depending on the situation.

  Cooper had told Austin that he was calling Cal, so she’d brought along a pair of Jack’s Captain America underpants and his Batman pajama top she’d pulled from the hamper.

  “Okay, Marley,” Cal said, putting the underpants under the dog’s ultrasensitive nose. “This is Jack. Okay? Jack. Got it?”

  The dog barked and began pulling at his lead. Getting out in the woods, sniffing stuff, finding someone who earned you treats was akin to spending a weekend at Disneyland to Marley.

  “Okay,” Cal told him. “Let’s go find Jack . . . Austin, Sawyer, you guys come with us. The kid’s gonna be wanting you.”

  Marley took off, headed up the trail, Cal following. Since the clouds that had been gathering fast, racing across what only an hour ago had been a bright blue June sky, had darkened to pewter and had begun to weep rain, Austin dearly hoped the older man’s optimism was justified. Please, please, please, she prayed as they headed up the mountain to find Heather and Tom’s son.

  *

  JACK WANTED TO be home. It was dark beneath the trees, and rain was dripping on him as he trudged along, trying not to listen to the sounds of rustling in the needles and leaves underneath his sneakers. He’d been hot earlier, but now he was getting cold and scared. Scared of never being found, scared of dying, like his parents and Riley and Marmalade and his grandparents before he was even born. And scared of getting in really bad trouble when he did get found. He wondered if Sawyer was one of those dads who spanked kids. His dad never did. His mom, either, but he’d known a boy in preschool who’d told stories about being spanked for all sorts of things.

  Birds chirped and squirrels had chattered down at him from the treetops when he’d first started out on his quest, like one of the ones in the How To Train Your Dragon video game Santa had brought him for Christmas. But now, as the rain started coming down really hard and the wind started blowing, everything had gone quiet. Making the woods really spooky like those trees in Wizard of Oz, which his mom voted for a lot when they were choosing movies to watch.

  “That’s what you need,” he muttered as he climbed over a log that had fallen across the trail. “Some magic shoes that you could click and be back home. At the ranch.”

  Which, for a few minutes, got him thinking that it was funny how, when he thought about being transported home, it was Green Springs, and not his old house, he could see in his mind. He was going to have to ask Scott when he quit thinking of Connecticut as his real home.
If he hadn’t known better, Jack would’ve thought Scott had lived in River’s Bend all his life.

  He heard the sound of water rushing and got excited. Maybe he was finally at the river! Then he turned the corner and found the sound coming not from Black Bear River but from a big waterfall roaring over a cliff into the pool at the very end of the trail.

  40

  IT WAS THERE Marley found Jack, sound asleep in a grove of conifers, not ten minutes from where he’d taken off. He’d been circling around, and if it hadn’t been for Horse Camp Falls, he might have made it back on his own.

  “Hey, Jack,” Sawyer said as the boy stirred, awakened by Marley’s joyous barking as Cal tossed pieces of beef jerky the dog snatched out of the air. “Whatcha doing up here?”

  Jack sat up, rubbing his eyes. Tears had left streaks in his muddied face. “I was climbing up to the top to pray to my mom and dad. Like Winema.”

  “Oh, darling.” Austin crouched down beside him. “You can do that anywhere.”

  “I can?”

  “Sure,” Sawyer said. “I prayed to my mom just the other day. Climb up and we’ll take you home.”

  “I wanted to talk to Mom,” Jack explained as they made their way back to the command center. “I wanted to tell her that you guys are really nice and I was glad you were my new parents and I really like living at Green Springs.”

  “I’m glad,” Austin said.

  “And I wanted to ask her if you guys were going to have any other kids besides me and Sophie. And if you’d love them any different from us.”

  “I’m up for more kids,” Sawyer said. “If Austin is. After we get married.”

  “I’ve always wanted a large family,” Austin said. “And of course we’d love you all the same.” Then as Sawyer’s words sank in, she stopped in her tracks. “Wait. We’re getting married?”

  “Well, sure. It’s time, don’t you think?” Sawyer asked.

  “Yes, of course.” This was not something she was going to screw up again. But . . . “Did you happen to have any plans to ask me?”