by Katie Ruggle
After a moment, Marnie gave a reluctant nod. “Go find those little girls then.”
“Thanks, Marn.” Artie moved down the steps as she spoke, pushed by the urgent need to find Maya and Zoe before they were lost in the oncoming storm. “And we will.”
The confidence in her voice surprised her. If only her heart was as sure.
* * *
The sheriff had barely managed to get two words out before a battered pickup came flying into the parking lot, almost sideswiping a fire truck as it fishtailed to a crooked halt. Before the pickup had completely stopped, the driver had the door open and was charging toward the group of rescue workers.
“Frantic father incoming,” Derek warned, and everyone turned toward Steve Springfield.
“Where are my girls?” Steve was demanding when he reached them. “How long have they been missing? Where’ve you looked so far? Did you check the ice? Could they have gone under? How could they have wandered off? Why wasn’t someone watching?”
Derek blinked at the torrent of words coming from the mouth of a normally quiet Steve. Ian Walsh, another fireman, put a hand on Springfield’s back.
“We’ll find them,” Ian soothed, but Steve stepped out of the other man’s reach.
“Why’s everyone standing around? Why isn’t anyone looking for my baby girls?” He threw an arm toward the western sky, where the clouds looked even darker and more ominous than just a few minutes earlier. “It’s about to snow, and they’ll be out there, alone and cold and scared—” The final word ended abruptly, as if it had choked him.
“Steve.” Rob’s clipped voice swung the agitated firefighter’s attention around to him. “We were waiting for you to start the search. Did you bring something that smells like the girls?”
Either the commanding tone or the question seemed to settle Steve a little. “Yes. I…yes.” He dug in his coat pocket and pulled out two freezer bags, each with what looked like a shirt inside. The smallness of the items made Derek’s chest hurt, and he couldn’t help a glance at the western sky. If those tiny girls were caught in a blizzard… He gritted his teeth, forcing back the mental image. Panic would just make him useless.
Janelle took the bags from Steve with a gentle smile. “Where were the girls last seen?”
“I’ll show you,” Artie said, hurrying the last few strides to join their group. The school bus rumbled to life behind her. Artie, Janelle, and the dog headed for the area where the girls had been standing when Chase had fallen into the reservoir. Steve started to follow, but Rob grabbed his arm.
“Stay here,” he ordered. When Steve turned furiously toward him, Rob let go and raised his hands to chest level, palms out. “We’re working on our plan of action. I figured you’d want to be part of the search.”
With a final glance at the women and dog, Steve gave a grudging nod.
“Okay,” Rob said. “We have about two and a half hours of daylight left, but that storm’s coming in faster than expected. Let’s see how far the dog gets. Best case, he’ll lead us right to them. Worst case, well, George here is almost as good at picking up a trail.” He gave the huge bearded man to his right a slap on the shoulder. If George hadn’t been George, Derek would’ve thought he rolled his eyes. Derek couldn’t blame him. After all, Rob had just compared him—unfavorably—to a dog.
A shout from Janelle caught their attention, and Derek looked over to see Puck plunging toward the east, the twenty-foot lead fully extended between the dog’s harness and Janelle, who was working to keep up. Artie was a few feet behind the handler. Derek knew Artie, with her long legs and love of running, could easily outpace Janelle, so he assumed she was staying back to keep out of the way.
The whole group rushed after them, their excitement almost a physical presence. Ian kept Steve from passing Janelle and distracting the dog. It only took a couple of body checks before Steve fell in behind Janelle, still simmering but resigned to the controlled pace.
Derek caught up to Artie, running just behind her and to her right. She threw him a grin that glowed with anticipation and relief. It was impossible not to smile back, although he wasn’t counting his missing chicks until they were back in their dad’s arms.
Sure enough, Puck lost the trail at the first line of trees. After a few aborted attempts at picking it up again, he started spinning in circles.
“Sorry, guys,” Janelle said with an apologetic grimace as she reeled in the extra line until he was next to her. “He’s done.”
“He gave us a direction,” Rob told her. “That reduces our search area by about seventy-five percent. Not bad for a puppy in training. George? Any sign?”
While Puck had been trying to find the lost trail, George had been hunting for footprints or broken twigs—any indication of which way the girls had gone. Without pausing in his search, the big man shook his head.
“Shoot,” Artie muttered. “I’d already been picturing the magical reunion scene with the girls, Steve, and the dog.”
Derek squeezed her shoulder and then reluctantly let his hand drop. He couldn’t help touching her whenever an opportunity presented itself. “Nothing’s ever easy, is it?”
“Since we don’t have a trail, let’s start a grid search.” As the sheriff unfolded a map, the wind snapped at it, almost ripping it from his fingers. He looked up, taking in the descending clouds that were swallowing the tops of the evergreens. “Pair up. With this weather coming, I don’t want anyone out there alone.”
Taking a half step closer to Artie, Derek bumped her with his shoulder. “Partners?” he mouthed, feeling like a junior high kid teaming up in gym class. He felt a surge of pleasure when Artie nodded.
Rob divided the search area on the map into four squares.
“How does he know how big to make it?” Artie whispered.
“He estimated how fast the girls could travel and multiplied that by how long they’ve been missing.”
She made a face. “Oh. Sorry for the stupid question.”
Although Derek had a joke about being used to her stupid questions hovering at the tip of his tongue, he swallowed it back and just smiled at her. It felt too soon to start teasing her like that again, especially in the current situation.
When Janelle returned after putting Puck in her SUV, she had four more people with her.
“Chief and the rest of the guys’ll be here as soon as they can,” one of them said, giving Steve a sympathetic clap on the upper arm. “Another arson.”
The rest of the firefighters groaned.
“That little shit, whoever he is, picked a hell of a day to play with matches again,” Ian grumbled.
“The chief’s wife went to your house,” the first firefighter told Steve. “She’ll watch the boys and be there in case the girls circled around and managed to get home.”
“Good.” Steve’s voice was rusty, and he couldn’t quite manage a smile of thanks.
The sheriff cleared his throat, drawing everyone’s attention back to him. “Let’s get started. We’ll divide into four groups, each one led by a Search and Rescue member. I’ll be staying at base camp, heading up command.”
Derek and Artie ended up in group three, along with Callum and Lou—an odd couple pairing that Derek made a mental note to mock as soon as the crisis was over. Judging by the frequent bewildered glances Cal was shooting the newest dive-team member, he was well on his way to being smitten. Steve and Ian rounded out their group, with George in the lead.
“Shouldn’t you have a partner?” Artie asked George as the seven of them headed to the start point of their quadrant. The burly man just gave her a look and walked between two trees, forcing her to drop behind him or run face-first into a trunk. Derek held back a laugh at her expression.
“I don’t think George Holloway does the whole partner thing,” he whispered once he caught up with her.
“Or the whole talking thing,” she muttered back, making it even harder not to snicker.
“Zoe!” Steve called. “Maya!” The crac
k in his voice erased any desire to laugh. Derek focused on looking around him as he walked, trying to pick up any movement or color that was out of place, which might possibly belong to one of the missing girls. There was a dusting of snow, although not enough to hold a boot print, and the ground was more rocks than dirt. It felt as if they were on a slight upward incline as they made their way between the thickening trees.
At George’s grunt, they stopped. Derek assumed that they were at the eastern border of their quadrant. Between billows of wind, he could hear the other groups calling the girls’ names.
George lined them up by pointing at each pair and then at the spot where he wanted them. The big guy acted like every word cost him a million bucks. The three couples were spread far enough apart that Derek could see only an occasional flash of purple from Lou’s coat, and he couldn’t make out Steve and Ian at all. The clouds had fully descended, draping them in a gray fog, and Derek suddenly felt isolated. He took a step closer to Artie.
“You okay?” she asked without looking at him. She was concentrating on the compass in her hand.
“Fine.” His voice sounded tense even to his own ears as he looked around at their rapidly decreasing circle of visibility. “Just don’t like this weather.”
A high-pitched, crooning howl pierced the fog, joined by several other animal voices and ending with a series of yips.
“The coyotes aren’t helping either,” Artie grumbled. “We’re supposed to walk directly west, right?”
“Right.” Derek released the breath he’d been holding. It was nice to have Artie there, breaking the uneasy eeriness with her practical questions. “George will use the radio to give us a shout when we reach the western border of our quadrant. Then we’ll head south fifty feet before going east, searching the next strip of our section.”
“Got it.” She started walking, and Derek followed. Although he tried to keep his attention focused, calling out the girls’ names every so often, he couldn’t help but notice that Artie’s pants cupped her ass in a very distracting way. It didn’t help that her down jacket was not long enough to fall much past her waist. Shit. Now was not the time. He jerked his gaze off her posterior for the hundredth time and scoured the area for any hints of the kids.
It had been easier to look for Maya and Zoe by the shore, where the scrub and small rocks didn’t provide any kind of concealment. Now, it seemed like every tree could hide a small body, and the wind competed with him in volume each time he tried to yell for the girls.
He and Artie scrambled over a couple of good-size boulders before stopping abruptly. A rocky crevice divided the path like a wedge.
“Which way?” Artie shouted over the growing wind, tipping her face to protect it from the ice and dirt particles carried in the gusts.
Turning so his back was to the wind, Derek pulled his radio off his belt and held it close to his face. When they’d divided into groups, everyone had turned their portables to the channel dedicated to the search.
“Warner to Holloway.”
Instead of George, the dispatcher answered. “Unit calling, you’re unreadable.”
Mentally swearing at the wind, Derek hunched his shoulders, trying to shelter the radio as much as possible. Artie shuffled to stand in front of him, so close that Derek had to clear his throat before he could try talking on the radio again.
“Warner to Holloway!”
“Holloway,” George’s raspy bass responded, making Derek’s shoulders dip in relief.
“There’s a ravine in our path. Do you want us to go around it to the north or south?” Without climbing equipment, there was no way they could go directly through. They’d need to shift fifty feet either north or south before they could head west again.
The radio was silent for a moment, and Derek prayed that George had been able to understand the question. To his relief, the radio crackled before George’s clipped, “South.”
“Copy.”
As they moved left to skirt the yawning hole, Derek saw Artie shoot an anxious glance toward the direction of the rest of their group. He couldn’t blame her. It felt wrong to be moving away from their team, but they weren’t really that far apart. It was just the low-lying clouds and the wind and those damn coyotes that were making it seem as if he and Artie were the only two people left alive.
* * *
The snow started, icy flakes peppering Derek’s face. Twisting away from the blasting wind, he turned to check on Artie. She was obviously fighting to keep her head up so she could look for the girls, despite the pummeling ice crystals. He’d never seen her look so miserable.
Impulsively wrapping an arm around her shoulders, Derek curled her in so she faced his chest with only a bare inch separating them. It was unnervingly too close and too far at the same time. She tilted her face to give him a questioning look.
“Let’s give it a minute. Maybe the wind will settle down.” He took a couple of steps back until they were semi-sheltered by the broad, twisted trunk of a bristlecone pine.
“But we need to keep looking,” she protested, trying to crane her neck to see over her shoulder. An especially fierce gust shot tiny pellets of snow at them, and she quickly turned back to bury her face in Derek’s neck.
He sighed. It was nice having her pressed against him…really nice. Her tall body was a perfect fit to his, with the top of her head not quite reaching his chin. “We can’t find the girls if we’re getting smacked in the eyeballs with snowflakes.”
Her small laugh puffed against his throat, sending a rush of pleasure across his skin. Flushing with heat, he fought the urge to fidget.
“Fine. But just for a few minutes.”
“Just until this wind goes from sixty miles an hour to something more reasonable. Like fifty-five.” Artie rewarded his lame joke with another shiver-inducing laugh. Since she seemed okay with using him for a wind block, he inched a little closer and wrapped his other arm around her back. Although he’d braced for her reaction, half-expecting her to shove him away, she didn’t seem to mind. Instead, she settled more securely against him.
It was like the past four years hadn’t happened. The press of Artie’s body against his, even with the multiple layers of clothes separating them, brought back all the times he’d held her. His world had revolved around Artie—when he wasn’t with her, he was thinking of her or dreaming of her. Until the day he’d sent her away.
“What happened between you and Randy?”
She stiffened and pulled away. “We should look for the girls.”
He forced himself to let her go. Each time, it got harder.
* * *
“Maya! Zoe!” Her voice was growing hoarse, the air rubbing painfully against her throat each time she shouted. Artie accepted it as part of her punishment for being an inattentive chaperone. No, she hadn’t been inattentive—she’d just been attending to the wrong things, like how broad Derek’s shoulders were and how great his legs looked in neoprene.
She wasn’t sure how much use her calls were, anyway, since the wind had increased in volume to a wailing roar. Her boot slid on a loose rock, and she stumbled. Derek caught her upper arm before she could fall. Grimacing at her clumsiness, Artie gave him a tight smile of thanks. All they needed was for her to sprain her ankle and have to be carried out of there.
After dropping south, they’d turned west again and followed the edge of the crevice for a while. Now their course was taking them through a thickly wooded area. The trees swayed and thrashed in the wind, turning the usual tranquil scenery into something nightmarish. The clouds and fog had darkened the afternoon to dusk, and Artie couldn’t stop herself from thinking of how scared the lost girls must be.
Although the radio had chirped a few times, no one had announced that they’d found the missing kids yet. Despite the sandblasting effect of the wind, Artie forced herself to keep her head lifted so she could look for any glimpse of the girls. It got harder when they moved into an area that had been ravaged by the previous summer’s fire
, the black skeletons of the pines stripped bare of any green needles that might’ve helped block some of the wind.
“Zoe! Maya!” Cupping her hands around her mouth, she screamed the names, trying to make them heard above the howling gusts. It was pointless. Her throat ached from yelling and the wind snatched away her voice. It was as if nature itself was against her. Now that the forest had the girls, it wasn’t about to give them back without a fight.
A flash of movement in her peripheral vision caught her attention. Her heart pounding, she grabbed Derek’s arm.
“What?” he shouted.
“There!” Artie pointed in the direction where she’d seen something move, already jogging toward it. “Zoe! Is that you? Come on out! You’re not in trouble, I promise!”
Derek wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her to a stop.
“Derek, let go!” Artie strained against his hold. “I saw something moving over there!”
“Wait,” he ordered, his mouth so close to her ear that his hot breath warmed her skin, even through the knit of her hat. “Go slowly. The girls aren’t the only living things in these mountains.”
The sense of his words penetrated, and she stopped fighting his hold. As soon as her struggling ceased, he released her. Continuing more cautiously toward the spot where she’d seen the motion, Artie scanned the trees and brush, desperately hoping to get a glimpse of one of the girls. There was nothing there, though, and her shoulders slumped.
“Sorry.” She turned toward Derek. There was a lull in the wind, so she didn’t have to scream to be heard. “I must have imagined it.”
Each disappointment—not finding the girls hiding by the reservoir, the dog losing their trail, this latest false alarm—was harder to take, especially as the snow began to swirl again as the wind resumed its howling. Her feet stopped moving as frustration and worry settled heavily on her shoulders.
Derek brushed past her, his eyes on the ground. He moved through the trees, apparently searching for something.
“What?” She was back to yelling. Her abused throat complained, making her wince.