Last Resort

by Hannah Alexander

  Pearl was right. The past couldn’t hurt her if she stayed away from it.

  She navigated around a puddle the circumference of a small car, in which the mud had been churned up into a slick mess with tire tracks. Obviously, there had been dozens of cars in and out of this place since last night, and Noelle glimpsed several vehicles still parked out in the cleared hayfield behind the house.

  In addition to the number of automobiles that she and Nathan had seen parked at the sawmill, she judged there might be as many as sixty or eighty people currently searching the place. In the field she counted three pale-green Jeeps with ranger insignias, and seven white police cruisers, all splattered with mud.

  “I don’t suppose there was a chance to check for strange footprints before the searchers arrived?” she asked, gesturing toward the mud puddle.

  “The police looked, but they found nothing out of the ordinary.” Nathan skirted the puddle on the other side. “Cecil needs to get some gravel in here before someone loses a car.”

  Noelle’s steps slowed as they drew near the white picket fence that encircled the house and yard. There was a rumble of growls, and two black and white Australian sheepdogs came running from the backyard, barking as if a herd of cattle had suddenly descended on them.

  Noelle groaned. “Just great. I’d hoped to slip past the house without stopping.”

  “Not with Butch and Sundance on high alert. You haven’t been around often enough for them to be familiar with your scent or the sound of your voice. They only bark at strangers.”

  “We can visit later, after we’ve found Carissa.”

  Nathan tapped her on the shoulder and she looked up at him. “Relax, grumpy. It’ll only take a few minutes. Your family needs you.”

  “Sorry,” she muttered.

  The racket of the dogs set off the geese at the pond below the house, and the honking commenced.

  Noelle gave Nathan a look of exasperation. “And I thought we’d sneak in? What could I have been thinking?”

  He grinned at her.

  “Speaking of dogs, is the search-and-rescue unit bringing any search dogs in?” she asked.

  “They’ve got three already out in the field, more on the way, but the ones they’ve got are new, not very experienced.”

  They reached the white fence that circled the yard around a big, two-story white house. The dogs finally recognized her, and their barking turned to excited whines of welcome. Noelle reached through the slats of fence to pet the animals and quiet them.

  The front screen door opened, and Jill, eight years older than Noelle, stepped out onto the broad concrete porch. Jill was a couple of inches taller than Noelle, with stronger features and a more voluptuous figure—and a familiar, piercing blue gaze.

  “Noelle Cooper, what on earth?”

  “Hi, sis.”

  Jill glanced at Nathan, disapproval—annoyance? irritation?—sharpening her gaze.

  “I came to help search.” Noelle followed Nathan through the front gate and braced herself for the rambunctious dogs as they leapt forward in welcome. “Any more word about Carissa?”

  Jill shook her head, shading her eyes from the warm October sun. Her thick brown brows almost met in the middle as she squinted, and Noelle noticed the shadows of fatigue around Jill’s eyes as she stepped into her sister’s tight embrace.

  Jill held her for a long moment. “This is like a nightmare, sis. I didn’t want to drag you down here. You’ve already got so much on your plate right now.”

  “I didn’t come down here to cause you worry, I came to help with the search.”

  Unfamiliar voices spilled from the house as Jill released Noelle. The aroma of frying bacon drifted through the screen door. Apparently some of the weary searchers were taking a much-needed break.

  “So tell me,” Noelle said, “what have they found?”

  “One of the sheriff’s deputies found fresh horseshoe prints in the mud at the edge of the lane,” Jill said.

  “Maybe one of the horses jumped the fence,” Nathan said.

  “None of the horses are even on the front forty right now,” Jill said. “They’re pastured half a mile in the other direction. That means someone may have come onto the property last night, because we had a lot of rain yesterday, and the print would’ve been washed away if they’d come earlier.”

  “Surely they can’t think someone carried Carissa away by horse,” Nathan exclaimed.

  “Can you think of a better way to carry someone through miles of wilderness trails without making a lot of noise?” Jill asked. “The fact that the dogs haven’t found Carissa yet probably means she was taken elsewhere, and it’s unlikely she walked there herself. They could have followed her scent.”

  “What else did the searchers find?” Noelle asked.

  Jill closed her eyes for half a second, then opened them and held Noelle’s gaze. Sorrowful. Suddenly gentle. “Taylor Jackson, one of the rangers, he found blood on the sawmill floor. Looks like someone was injured.”

  “Maybe one of the employees was injured yesterday,” Noelle said.

  “Taylor asked all of them, and no one was.”

  “Okay, but that doesn’t automatically mean it was Carissa,” Noelle said.

  “We’ll find out before long.” Jill lifted her hair from her neck and stretched her muscles. “I know we can’t go jumping to conclusions.” She said the words quickly, as if she’d been repeating them over and over to the others. “We can’t let ourselves get discouraged and stop searching.”

  “Speaking of which,” Noelle said, “that’s what I came here to do. I’d better get to it.”

  “Okay, but first will you let Melva know you’re here?” Jill asked. “She’s been wanting to call you since last night—as if one more person searching would make any difference.” The lines around Jill’s shadowed blue eyes deepened with concern. She touched Noelle’s shoulder. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. I just wish you’d called me last night.”

  “We kept thinking we’d find her quickly. I didn’t want to upset you over nothing.” Jill frowned and pushed at her short brown hair—which had grown out a couple of inches, and no longer resembled a hard hat as much as it did a lion’s mane. “Cecil’s still blaming himself for sending her out for the ledger. Silly, I know, but I’ve struggled with the same problem. We let her go out there after dark.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Noelle said. “Nathan told me she was going out there anyway. She’s twelve years old, not a little child. Where were you when she disappeared?”

  “I’d gone up to our old house to find some other ledgers upstairs.” Jill glanced over her shoulder through the screen door, lowering her voice. “We’ve been entering this year’s records on computer and trying to justify them with the records from the accountant—you knew he died, didn’t you? Anyway, there’s a discrepancy of fifteen thousand dollars, and we can’t seem to find it. That’s why we asked Carissa to get the ledger from the office at the sawmill. Turns out she had the wrong one, anyway. It was from ten years ago.”

  “I’ll go have a word with Melva, then hit the trail.” Noelle gave her sister’s shoulder another squeeze, then opened the screen door and stepped inside.

  Nathan leaned against the porch railing, arms folded across his chest in an automatic gesture of self-protection as he watched Jill pace the length of the porch. The chilled morning air hung heavy and thick in the sunlight that gleamed on her dark hair.

  “You didn’t tell me you were going to get Noelle,” she said at last.

  He glanced toward the Coopers’ open front door. “I wasn’t sure she could get away from the store, but I felt she needed to know about Carissa.”

  Jill’s boots made little noise on the concrete porch. She turned to face Nathan across the half width of the house. “I had reasons for not wanting her here. She had a bad time right after the accident.”

  “Of course she did. The whole family did. Why single out Noelle?” Nathan had to struggle to
keep his voice low. “She’s a grown woman, and she needs to be treated like one.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, I know that, but why should she have to trudge all the way down here when half of Hideaway’s already out looking for the child?”

  “Noelle is family. She needs to be treated like family, or you’ll be wasting your time trying to get her to move back here and work at the clinic.”

  Jill paused, gazing down the lane again. “Maybe she shouldn’t come back here,” she said slowly.

  This was a drastic about-face. “But I thought you were trying to—”

  “Never mind what I was trying to do.” Jill stepped to the end of the porch, away from the screen door, and gestured, with a jerk of her head for him to join her.

  He obeyed.

  “After the sawmill accident, the grief almost killed her,” Jill said softly.

  “Of course it did. We were all stricken.”

  “But it was worse for Noelle. She went into a deep depression, had awful nightmares, told me she woke up screaming every night for the first month after the funerals.”

  “She had a lot of other things on her mind at the time, and besides, she’s not the same person she was ten years ago.” He hesitated. “Did she say what the dreams were about?”

  “She kept reliving the accident, as if she were one of the victims watching the logs tumble onto her. She had to quit her job, which really threw that ex-husband of hers into a tizzy, because at the time they were dependent on her income to support them—and his drug habit.” Jill’s voice dripped with disdain.

  “Did she get professional help?”

  “Oh, she went to her family doctor, and he prescribed an antidepressant. She took it for three weeks, then flushed the rest down the toilet. She said it made her ears ring. You know how independent she can be.”

  “She takes after her sister.”

  Jill gave him a half-hearted scowl.

  “Did the antidepressant help her at all?” he asked.

  “Are you kidding? After just three weeks?” Jill snorted. “I even got some of that herbal stuff Pearl’s always trying to push off on everyone. Noelle still had the nightmares for a long time afterward.”

  “She told me a little about that time,” Nathan said.

  “Now it’ll start all over. What’s she going to do when she wakes up in the middle of the night and finds herself alone?”

  “Jill, Noelle is a big girl. She can take care of herself.” He studied Jill’s expression for a moment. She didn’t look at him, but kept her gaze focused on the trees across the road.

  There was something about her behavior that caught his attention. She stood with her shoulders hunched forward, arms crossed, head bowed slightly. What wasn’t she telling him? He knew better than to ask.

  “You can’t shield her from pain by building a wall around her,” he said.

  “I’m not building a wall, I’m just—”

  “You’re still trying to be her mother. Stop it, or you’ll smother her completely. Let her handle her own problems.”

  She sighed and shook her head, then turned away from him. “Fine, then you be there for her when her nightmares return.”

  “She’s told me a little about Joel and her marriage.”

  “Yes, but how much did she tell you? She has a tendency to downplay certain aspects of her life so no one will worry.”

  “Maybe that’s because she knows we tend to worry too much,” he said gently. “Jill, you knew Joel a lot better than I did. Do you think his return could in any way be connected to Carissa’s disappearance?”

  She didn’t react, which meant she’d already considered the possibility. “I don’t know. As crazy as he got sometimes, I wouldn’t put it past him.” She turned and looked up at Nathan, arms still folded over her chest. “Maybe we should tell the sheriff to check him out.”

  “Maybe we should.”

  Chapter Seven

  Noelle felt suddenly overwhelmed. Neighbors and people from the search-and-rescue team filled the Cooper living room and kitchen, occupying every available chair. Most of them had obviously been out all night, searching through the mud and brush.

  Noelle waved at several familiar faces as she passed through the living room to the kitchen in the back of the house. She recognized Dane Gideon, the mayor of Hideaway, who also owned the general store and ran a boy’s ranch across the lake from town. He sat on the sofa beside some teenaged boys, who looked grimy and disheartened. Perched across from them on a love seat was Taylor Jackson, a tall man with rusty-brown hair, wearing a mud-spattered ranger uniform. Beside him

  sat Karah Lee Fletcher, a striking redhead, almost as tall as the ranger. She was the newest doctor at Hideaway’s clinic.

  Noelle had met Karah Lee and Taylor last month at the Hideaway Festival, when Dane Gideon and Dr. Cheyenne Allison had exchanged marriage vows in the park.

  Several people called out a greeting to Noelle as she passed, and the evidence of such overwhelming support once again brought tears to her eyes. Here was the real meaning of community. She’d missed that.

  She entered the warm, fragrant kitchen to find several locals, including Bertie Meyer and the newlywed doctor, Cheyenne Gideon, preparing breakfast for the searchers. Melva stood with her generous backside to the room, scraping dishes. Bertie and Cheyenne called a greeting to Noelle, and Melva swung around, water dripping from her spatula.

  “You came.” Her voice trembled; her chin was quivering. Melva’s Ozark accent always became more pronounced when she was upset. She dropped her spatula in the sink and grabbed a dish towel as she crossed the room to Noelle. “Jill said not to call you because we were going to find Carissa any minute, but we…didn’t.” Melva’s pretty face reddened with an obvious effort to keep tears at bay, and her short golden lashes, uncharacteristically devoid of makeup, glistened, attesting to the fact that she had recently lost the battle.

  “Nathan drove to Springfield this morning and picked me up.” Noelle wrapped her arms around Melva’s plump shoulders and held her, glad, at last, that she’d stopped at the house.

  “Tell me she’s going to be okay,” Melva whispered.

  “She is.” For that moment she was sure of it. She only wished the moment would last.

  Bertie Meyer crossed the kitchen floor and caught them both in a loving hug. “Honey,” she said to Melva, “you know how much we’re praying, and I know you believe in the power of prayer.”

  “I keep trying to believe in it, Bertie.” Melva disentangled herself from the two pairs of comforting arms and reached for a tissue to dab at her nose. “I was so sure Carissa was just lost out there in the dark, but now they’re talking about horse tracks that shouldn’t be there and blood on the sawmill floor and somebody hauling her away.” She bowed her head and picked up the dish towel again. “I just don’t know.”

  Bertie shook her head sadly. “I felt the same way when Red turned up missing last year.” She paused for a moment, the smile lines around her eyes and mouth giving way to remembered grief for her late husband. “We’ve just got to give it more time. Melva, I wish you’d eat something. You need to keep up your strength.”

  Melva grabbed another tissue from the counter and blew her nose. She took a deep breath, visibly composing herself, then patted her ample derriere and glanced over her shoulder at Bertie. “Don’t you think I’ve got enough reserve to keep me going for a few days?”

  At least Melva hadn’t lost her self-deprecating humor.

  “How about you, Noelle?” Bertie asked. “I bet you didn’t have time for breakfast before you came down.”

  “I’ll grab something later, Bertie. Nathan and I want to check out a few of our favorite old haunts first, just in case someone’s missed something.”

  Bertie patted her arm. “The way you two young’uns traipsed over these hills and woods when you were growing up, you should be able to find her if anybody can.” She jerked her head toward Melva. “See if you can get her to sit down. I’m afraid
she’s going to keel over.”

  “I’m not going to keel over,” Melva said as she returned to her sink of dishes. She definitely didn’t look like her usual groomed self. Her auburn hair, customarily held in place with stiff mousse, fell about her neck and face in charming disarray. She still wore the jeans and long-sleeved man’s shirt she had obviously worn into the woods to search for Carissa. The jeans were probably the only pair she owned. Her typical attire was tailored dresses and suits to minimize her voluptuous curves. Now she stood in her stockinged feet, looking vulnerable and lost.

  Noelle gave Bertie another hug, then stepped up behind Melva. The way that Melva was plying the spatula revealed her frustration, and Noelle placed an arm around her old friend’s shoulders.

  “Melva, I heard Gladys has been trying to contact Justin and Carissa.” She felt Melva’s shoulders stiffen. “Could she have anything to do with all this?”

  Melva cast a warning glance toward the others, then placed a half-scraped plate back into the sink and dried her hands. “I wouldn’t put it past her.” Weary bitterness laced her voice. “Except I don’t think she cares enough about Carissa to go to the trouble. That sea turtle wouldn’t know a maternal instinct if it bit her nose off, and I wish it would.”

  Noelle bit her lip to keep from laughing at Melva’s-colorful phrasing. “Has anyone contacted Gladys about Carissa’s disappearance?”

  “Cecil tried, but couldn’t get through. She’s probably just ignoring his calls because she’s mad.” Again, she glanced toward the others, lowering her voice. “She got the kids all stirred up yesterday morning, calling before they left for school, promising them a cruise with her and her latest lover in the Caribbean. She wants to take them out of school, can you believe that? After she’s pretty much ignored them all these years, now she’s trying to bribe them like this? We told her no, of course.”

  “What was Carissa’s response?” Noelle asked.

  “Oh, she desperately wanted to go, and you know how that girl can wrap her daddy around her little finger. Cecil started to weaken, said maybe they could go on the cruise during Christmas break, and I said, ‘Cecil Hanson Cooper, are you crazy? Let our children traipse off halfway around the world with that woman and a stranger?’ And of course he had to remind me, real quick, that she was their mother.” Her light-brown eyes flashed, and the decibel of her voice increased with her words. “What he meant was she’s their real mother. Like what I wanted didn’t count now that Gladys is trying to wiggle her way back into the family and—” She stopped suddenly and glanced around the room.