by CJ Lyons
Bill tried to open his eyes, but only one seemed to work. His head thundered with the effort, and he immediately closed it again. Pain, everywhere, so intense he couldn’t localize where it was coming from, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.
What? Where? The questions floated like balloons, the wind carrying them out of reach.
He tried to call to Deena; she’d know the answers, she’d save him. But all that emerged was a primal grunt.
Memory crept into his awareness, like a ghostly fog, easily blown away and scattered into nothing. An electrical shock. His heart stopping then racing, thudding against his chest. Weightless, flying, falling. Muscles locked, spasming, no chance to breathe, to stop, to catch himself… limbs flailing, scraping against scree and shards of granite… something snapping, more pain, the crunch of bone, the thud of unprotected soft parts… God, this headache! If it would just stop for a minute, let him think, let him remember…
He lay there for a long moment, fighting his way clear of the tangled skein of half-formed memories. Then his training took over. If the past was a blur, no matter, forget about it; he needed to focus on the now.
Take inventory. He wasn’t falling, not any more. That was good. He lay twisted, could feel rock pressing against his head—which still pounded like a howitzer—his back, his right side, his legs… His legs, his legs!
He didn’t even have words to describe the agony radiating from his legs. Worse than his head—no, not worse, just different. And wet; they felt wet. Had he pissed himself? Was he lying in water? His face was wet, too. Was he drowning?
Fear overwhelmed the pain, and his one good eye popped open. He was lying in shadow, wedged between a large boulder and the cliff wall, but beyond was the night sky with a moon bright enough to make him blink. ABC, he told himself. Airway; yeah, that was working. Breathing; hurt like a sonofabitch, but he was doing it. Circulation and C-spine. Lie still in case his back was broken? His right arm was pinned beneath him, and he couldn’t feel it at all. His left was free. He wiggled his fingers; they worked, that was good. He inched his hand to his face, skimming his body as if afraid if he let his hand drift out of his sight it might vanish altogether. Every movement, every touch no matter how light, hurt. He touched his face. Right cheek caved in, eye swollen and sticky with blood that was still flowing.
The effort exhausted him and he closed his good eye, his good hand resting on his chest, making sure he didn’t forget to keep breathing. A stray memory from Denver drifted past slowly enough for him to catch it: a skydiver, whose chute failed, broke most every bone in her body but still lived to tell the tale.
He hadn’t fallen a tenth as far as she had, he chided himself. And no one was coming to help, not anytime soon. God helps them that helps themselves, a man’s voice—Dad?—scolded him.
Bill struggled to open his eye again. He felt exhausted and cold; why was it so cold? The sun had set but the temperature had to still be in the sixties at least. His head felt too heavy for his body; he’d never be able to sit up. But his legs felt wet, more than water, and numb like two dead logs attached to his hips. Even the pain had fled, chased away by the cold gray creeping damp.
Phone? He flapped his left hand against his shirt pocket. No phone. It was gone. He’d have to do this the hard way.
He braced his good arm against the boulder and slowly, his breath coming in gasps that were daggers stabbing through his ribs, he untwisted his torso, raising his head and chest enough to prop himself against the stone wall. His right hand was white, the blood squeezed out by the weight of his body on it. Pins and needles and then a sharper pain that brought a hoarse scream when he tried to place any weight on it. Worse than the pain was the feeling of bone scraping against bone.
Bad, but it wouldn’t kill him. Focus, focus. His vision wavered, trying to recreate the illusion of depth perception with one eye, and he shifted his attention to his legs. Nausea roiled through him, his entire body chilling at the sight. His left shin was deformed, both bones obviously broken, with his kneecap aimed one way and the toes of his boot aimed another. Even worse was the large puddle of blood oozing from a deep puncture wound on the thigh of his other leg. His entire right leg felt shortened and was hopelessly skewed at an unnatural angle, the hip bone no longer properly connected to the thigh bone.
Somewhere in the black recesses of his mind, he knew he should be feeling a lot—a hell of a lot—more pain, but that creeping chill numbness was even more frightening. Shock. Shock will kill you. Fast. Move, move, move.
No matter how much he screamed commands inside his head, he only had one working hand, and it wasn’t the one his belt was designed to accommodate. It took several efforts to remove his belt—thankfully it wasn’t a complicated patrol officer’s duty belt, just a normal man’s belt, since all he carried on most calls were his service weapon and a pair of handcuffs. His holster was empty—Lord only knew where his gun had landed—but the leather pouch with the cuffs was there; he was lucky it hadn’t jammed into his spine, caused any damage. With fingers fumbling with urgency and shock, he slid the handcuff pouch free and wrapped the belt twice around his thigh above the break and the bleeding. It took three tries to thread the end through the buckle.
Then he yanked it tight. As tight as he could. A shriek of pain escaped him, echoing across the canyon and ricocheting from the cliff walls, hurtling right back at him.
He never heard it, the tsunami of pain pulling him back into the void.
Chapter Six
Because of their late bookings, Lucy spent all three of their flights on opposite ends of the plane from Nick. Which, in a way, was a bit of a relief. She still hadn’t told him about what the surgeon wanted to do—mainly because she still wasn’t sure what she wanted to do or how she felt about what the surgeon wanted to do. Every time she tried to think about it, her mind blurred with frustration, fear, and an overwhelming sense of failure. She’d worked so hard after losing her job with the FBI, she’d almost convinced herself that her new life was everything she wanted, that she was back to normal.
What did Nick always say? Denial, it’s not just a river in Egypt…
If she had the amputation, she had a better chance of being able to stay in the field, and would be almost fully functional again. And one thing she was certain of was that she didn’t want to give up fieldwork.
But it came at a price. Not just losing a part of herself; the price her family paid for her continuing her job. Maybe getting her life back to normal wasn’t the best thing for them.
Except…who was she then? A forty-year-old woman starting over…as what? A desk jockey reviewing cases? That wasn’t her; she’d go crazy within a week.
Maybe what she needed to decide wasn’t whether or not she wanted the surgery, but how much was she willing to sacrifice to keep doing the job she loved.
Instead of trying to solve her own life, she focused on the search for Bill. Using the planes’ Wi-Fi, she downloaded maps of Magruder County. What a crazy patchwork of jurisdictions! Poet Springs sat literally at the end of the only paved highway leading into Magruder County—if you could call what Google Earth revealed to be a narrow, twisting two-lane road a “highway.” The county seat was virtually surrounded on all sides by federal lands: the Nez Perce National Forest, Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, Bitterroot National Forest, and Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. When she zoomed in on the map, she saw traces of dirt roads through the national forest, including a route that ran west to east, bisecting the two wilderness areas. Magruder Corridor it was labeled on some maps, Nez Perce Trail on others.
Bill was responsible for patrolling and maintaining order on what was basically an old pioneer stagecoach trail, Lucy realized. Knowing Bill, he loved that idea. She could see the appeal—and the challenge for a law enforcement officer.
Deena had said Bill’s patrol SUV, an ancient Jeep Cherokee, was too old to have GPS, and the county was too poor to upgrade the three official sheriff’s department vehicles.
“The nearest cell tower is Elk City, so that didn’t narrow things much as far as a search radius. Bill wants to get satellite phones for the department, but that’s in next year’s budget,” Deena told Lucy when she called from the Salt Lake City airport while Nick found them lunch.
“What about his phone’s GPS? That should work even without cell reception.”
“The last place it registered was near the Holmstead ranch, his last call. I guess his phone must have died. He’d never have turned it off.”
Unless he didn’t want to be tracked—or someone else didn’t want him found. Lucy frowned at what Nick called her “catastrophic thinking.” It was a bad habit, all her pessimism and negative thoughts bordering on paranoia, so she was trying her best to be more positive. “He didn’t radio in a location?”
“Not after he left the Holmsteads. They were the last people to see him.” Her voice broke, but she pulled herself together. “The forest service is helping to coordinate the ground search. The civil air patrol is already out. The K9 team from Missoula will be here later today, and more volunteers are coming from all over.”
“Sounds like everything possible is being done.” The words sounded lame as soon as Lucy said them. Nick approached with two bags of fast food just as the gate agent announced that boarding was starting. “I have to go. We’ll be there soon, so whatever you need. Did your mom and sister get there yet?”
Deena gave a laugh that was half a sigh. “If you were here, you’d smell the tea and the sage and the laundry and the floor wax and the baking. I actually brought the phone out to the deck; I can’t take their hustling and hovering. It’s worse than when I was sick. It’s like they’re trying to scrub out any trace of him, prepare me for him not coming back.” A sob escaped her.
Lucy was half tempted to hand the phone off to Nick. “Deena—”
“No, no. I’m okay. Catch your flight, and I’ll see you soon.” She hung up.
A few minutes later, she and Nick were on another plane—their third of the day, each one smaller than the last. This one was a tiny twelve-row commuter, with two seats to one side of the aisle and a single seat on the other. Which meant Lucy was alone as she poured over her maps, trying to memorize landmarks, orient herself, figure out the best way to search for Bill.
Ever since she was a kid, Lucy had been fascinated by maps. Growing up, her bedroom had been decorated by large NOAA maps her father had found at a yard sale. And back when Lucy was on the Critical Incident Response Team at the FBI Academy in Quantico, she’d done research on Geographic Information Systems and had developed a way to use them to track serial offenders. It was what had helped her catch Clinton Caine, the sadistic serial killer, when until then his crimes had never been connected to one man. A friend of hers with the US Marshal Service had even adapted her algorithm to use in searches for escaped fugitives.
But now as she stared at screen after screen of maps of Magruder County, she worried that she couldn’t be of any help at all in the search for Bill. He wasn’t hiding, wasn’t on the run, wasn’t obscuring his tracks. Yet it had been almost twenty-four hours and no one had found his patrol vehicle or any trace of him.
Her eyes blurred as she zoomed in on a topographical map, noting how densely stacked the lines indicating a change in altitude were. This was steep, rugged country. She zoomed out and was quickly lost in a sea of green: light green for national forest, dark green for the designated wilderness areas. A few scattered islands of white for private land. A ribbon of blue for the Salmon River and its major forks—surrounded by black topo lines. Bill had told her that the canyon the river formed was even deeper than the Grand Canyon.
It was no better when she switched to satellite and photographic views. In fact, it was worse. These Bitterroot mountains weren’t anything like her Alleghenies, gentle and as well-worn as an old quilt. No, these mountains climbed to snow and stone-capped peaks sharp as daggers piercing the sky. Despite hundreds of years of human trespass pillaging their gold and logs and other natural treasures, they refused to be tamed. This wasn’t the Idaho of potato farms and cattle ranches. This was a wild frontier.
And somewhere in that unrelenting sea of green, Bill was lost or hurt or being held against his will… or dead.
Chapter Seven
Once Nick and Lucy arrived in Lewiston, Nick headed in search of a car rental while Lucy stood in line with burly men claiming rifle cases and fishing poles from the special luggage office. Before he got far, he spotted a woman holding a sign with Lucy’s name on it. She was in her mid to late fifties with copper-red hair pulled back in a youthful ponytail.
“Mr. Guardino?” she asked as Nick approached. Under other circumstances, he would have corrected her: because of Lucy’s work, she used her maiden name, and technically Nick was Dr. Callahan. But under these circumstances, he really didn’t care what anyone called him.
“Yes, hello. I’m Nick, Lucy’s husband.”
“Judith Keenan.” She extended her hand and he shook it.
This was Judith? The veterinarian slash county coroner? What was she doing here? “Did you find Bill? Is he okay?”
“I’ll be flying you to Poet Springs.”
“Flying?” Lucy asked as she joined him, her suitcase with her guns at her side.
“Lucy, this is Judith. Judith Keenan, Bill’s friend.” Nick made introductions. He turned back to Judith. “Shouldn’t you be out helping to search for Bill?”
Lucy shushed Nick with a glance, and he realized that if the search had progressed to where it didn’t need every pilot available, then it was no longer a rescue mission, but a recovery.
“Where did they find his body?” Lucy asked.
The woman did a double-take. “No, I’m sorry. I have my own plane, a little Cessna 206, but it doesn’t have thermal tracking like some of the charter pilots, so I volunteered to pick up two of their clients, and thought I’d save you time as well. Is that a problem?”
Nick recovered first, as Lucy exhaled and closed her eyes for a long moment. “Yes, thank you, Judith. That was very thoughtful of you. Didn’t Deena tell me you were the county coroner? I guess it’s a good thing they don’t need you back home.” He winced at his own feeble attempt at humor.
Judith didn’t seem to notice. She led the way out to the tarmac where several small planes were waiting. In front of one paced two men, both in their late thirties, one broad-shouldered with a pock-marked face and the other thin with clothes that hung too large from his frame as he clutched a large black Pelican case on wheels.
Nick took their suitcase from Lucy and joined the men while Judith opened the plane’s clam-shell doors. There were large canisters labeled “Pro-min Llama Mineral Supplements” along with bags of herbivore and omnivore pellets already stacked in the narrow cargo area. Nick glanced at the other passengers’ luggage, assessing if it would fit. The large Pelican case had the insignia of a North Dakota mining company and was labeled “Ground Penetrating Radar, Portable Unit” above a tracking barcode. GPR—Lucy used that when she was with the FBI to find old graves. What were these men looking for? he wondered.
Judith was obviously used to loading her tiny plane, because she packed all their luggage in the rear except for the bulky GPR unit, which she strapped into one of the four passenger seats in the middle compartment. “One of you will need to ride up front with me.”
“I will,” Lucy volunteered, as Nick and the two men climbed into the back.
“I’m Nick,” he said by way of introduction to his two fellow passengers.
“Davenport,” the thin man sitting across from him, one hand on the well-secured GPR unit. “That’s Martin.”
Martin took the seat beside Nick without even glancing in his direction.
“Ground penetrating radar.” Nick nodded to the case. “What are you looking for?”
“Nothing in particular. Just a geological survey.”
“You’re geologists?”
“Geological engineer
s,” Davenport corrected, sounding superior. “We don’t just study rocks, we figure out how to dig them out.”
Judith started the engine, and the noise drowned out any more conversation.
Once they had taken off, Nick settled into his seat, watching the landscape flow by beneath him. He’d never been in such a small plane before. It was noisy and rattled much more than a commercial jet. But somehow that made the whole experience feel intimate, as if he and his fellow travelers were sharing an unique experience, separate from the rest of the world. At first the ground rolled past in flat yellow-green ribbons. There were few clouds, and since they were headed east, the sun behind them cast their shadow ahead of them. As if there were two planes, one dark, one light, racing to catch up with each other.
In the cockpit, Judith finished speaking to the tower and took off her headset. As she adjusted her controls, she reached past Lucy. “FBI, huh?” Her voice was raised to carry over the noise of the engine. “You must have some stories.”
Lucy’s reply was muffled, but Nick was more interested in the two men sitting with him. The fellow beside him, the one with the beard, Martin, had flinched a little at Judith’s mention of the FBI, his hand pulling up to adjust his seatbelt. Almost as if he were reaching for a gun? Nonsense. They were engineers, not criminals. And everyone felt nervous around cops—especially FBI agents, even retired ones. He glanced at the man opposite, Davenport. The thin man’s face was a blank; but almost too blank. Huh. Usually Lucy’s former profession provoked interest at the very least.
“Geological survey,” he tried to start his own conversation. “Is that for the government? They’re not looking to start fracking or drilling for oil out here, are they?”
Martin glared at Nick, silently telling him to mind his own business. It was a look Nick got a lot from new clients when he pushed them past their comfort zone.