Kaleidoscope Eyes

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Kaleidoscope Eyes Page 25

by Karen Ball


  Kodi came loping into the kitchen, a wide doggy grin on her face.

  “Annie, do you think he’s hiding anything?”

  Jayce caught the question as he came in. “Who’s hiding something?”

  “No one.” Annie ignored the suspicious look in her brother’s eyes, letting her tone scold him for even thinking what she knew he was thinking—that Jed might be the one sending the threatening e-mails.

  “How well do you really know this guy?”

  “What guy?” Jayce stared from Annie to his dad. “What are you—you mean Jed? You think he’s not who he says he is?”

  Great. Now her nephew was getting all protective. “Stop it, you two. Jed is exactly who he says he is.”

  Kyla pushed at Kodi, who was leaning against her leg and staring up at her with wide, adoring eyes. “But you just told us he hasn’t really said much of anything about himself, right?”

  Annie pierced Kyla with a glare. “Don’t you start now. Try to remember I haven’t known Jed that long. I don’t think he’s hiding anything so much as he’s careful.”

  Dan was not mollified. “Careful? What’s that mean?”

  Annie shrugged. “I can’t explain it exactly but I get the feeling things maybe weren’t great when he was a kid. That there are some issues he still needs to deal with.”

  “Oooh. Issues.” Shelby looked at Dan. “Nobody here knows anything about dealing with issues.”

  “But being an issue.” Kyla directed a smirk at her brother. “Now that someone here knows intimately, doesn’t he, Avidan?”

  Dan went to wrap his older sister in a bear hug. “Oh, Kyla, I’m so glad to hear you admit you’re an issue.”

  “You know, Auntie K,” Jayce joined in, a wicked gleam in his eyes, “that’s the first step to getting help. Admitting the problem.”

  Annie watched her family, loving the way each one’s color blended with the others. Dan’s marigold provided the perfect complement to Shelby’s clear emerald. Kyla’s deep pink added a flare of playful contrast, even as Jayce’s raspberry tinged her color, deepening it a fraction.

  It was like having a living palette right here in her kitchen.

  Of course, the palette was exceedingly vocal.

  Kodi padded over, sitting beside her, leaning her solid body against Annie’s leg. She caressed the dog’s ears, listening as the music that was her family’s laughter flowed around them, pouring into her heart, filling it with joy Peace. And anticipation.

  Soon.

  The promise whispered through her.

  Soon another voice would join the chorus. A deep voice. One that made her smile every time she heard it.

  One that she couldn’t wait to hear again.

  THIRTY-SIX

  “There is much in the world to make us afraid.

  There is much more in our faith to make us unafraid.”

  FREDERICK W. CROPP

  “And so, Lord, where do I put my hope? My only hope is in you.”

  PSALM 39:7

  OCTOBER 13

  11:00 p.m.

  She couldn’t wait any longer. She had to admit the truth.

  Her child was missing.

  Brianna looked through her despair at her husband’s ashen face. She knew he wanted to comfort her, but fear kept him silent. She ran a hand through her hair. “We’ve been looking for hours. It’s going to be cold soon. Really cold.” Had Amberly taken her jacket with her?

  Bree blinked back tears. “We have to accept it—” the words caught in her throat, but she forced them out—“our baby is lost. We need to call the police.”

  Mark nodded. He reached for the cell phone and dialed. Then, with a muffled oath, threw the phone. “What good does it do to have these stupid things when they don’t have service?”

  Ernie stepped forward to lay a steadying hand on Mark’s shoulder. “I’ll take you to the ranger station down the road.”

  Mark nodded again, started to follow his friend, then stopped. He turned back to Brianna … and held out his arms. She went to him, let his strong arms enclose her.

  “Well find her, Bree. I promise you, well find her.”

  She prayed he was right.

  11:45 p.m.

  Beep! Beep! Beep!

  The sound cut through Annie’s living room, and several things happened at once. Kyla almost jumped out of her skin; Kodi bounded up, ears cocked; Dan was on his feet, heading for the phone; and Shelby and Annie both reached to pull their pagers from their pockets.

  “It’s not mine.” Shelby glanced at Dan.

  He held his pager high. “It’s mine.”

  “Mine too.” Annie headed for her purse and her cell phone, since Dan was on her phone.

  Kyla frowned at Annie. “You’ve got to be kidding. A callout? Now?” She craned her neck to see the clock on the wall. “It’s almost midnight.”

  Annie brought her cell phone back into the living room. “Which is when most calls come.” She rolled her shoulders, working out the fatigue, starting to get herself into working mode. “You know the drill, sis. People think they’ll find whoever is lost, so they keep looking until it’s late. Then they get scared and call us.”

  She dialed the number on her pager and waited for someone to answer.

  “Station Seven.”

  “Hi, it’s Annie Justice.”

  “We’ve got a callout for the Diamond Lake area. Can you respond?”

  Annie looked down at her watch. “We’ll be there.” She hung up, and Jayce jumped off the couch.

  “So what’s the callout for?”

  “Don’t know.” Annie dropped the phone back in her purse. “We don’t get the details until we reach Station Seven.”

  “It’s like a mystery, huh?” Jayce’s eyes were wide. This was the first time he’d been there for an actual callout. “That’s kinda cool.”

  “Ridiculous, is what it is.” Kyla settled back on the couch with a huff. “Going out this time of night, traipsing around heaven knows where—”

  “Diamond Lake, is where.”

  They all turned to Dan, coming back into the room.

  Well, this was a definite perk to having a brother who was a sheriff’s deputy: getting the details of the callout right away Annie tipped her head. “Lost hiker?”

  Dan’s somber gaze rested on her. “Lost child.”

  Annie stopped. Her two least favorite words. “How old?”

  The look on Dan’s face said it all. “Five. A little girl.”

  Lord …

  Kyla’s entire demeanor changed. “Oh, Annie. A child.”

  Her sister had heard Annie talk about searches often enough to understand the implications. Finding a lost child could be one of the hardest things to do. With most lost people, there was a kind of pattern to how they wandered. That made them at least somewhat predictable. But with children, there was seldom a pattern. To make matters worse, children younger than six often were too scared to answer a stranger when called.

  Seldom anything to help the searchers find the lost before …

  Annie laid her hand on Kodi’s soft head. Five years old. In the Diamond Lake wilderness. She glanced out at the darkness. Five years old and out there alone … cold … probably terrified …

  A moist nudge at her hand pulled her from her thoughts. She met Kodi’s brown eyes. “Okay, girl. You’re right. Time to get to work.” She glanced at Dan. The Diamond Lake area fell in his jurisdiction. “You ready to go?”

  He nodded.

  “Give me five minutes to change.” She was halfway down the hall when she realized Dan was right behind her. She turned to him, taking in the troubled crease on his brow. “What’s up?”

  “Are you sure you should be doing this?”

  Annie cocked her head. “Doing what? Changing clothes? It’s cold out there.”

  “No, Annie. Search and rescue. Are you sure, with what’s been going on, that you should respond to this one?”

  “Dan … ”

  “It’s not
like there aren’t other K-9 teams. You guys can sit this one out. Just to be sure.”

  Annie leaned against the wall. “And what about the next callout? Do we sit that one out too? Do we just hide out here from now on, just in case there’s someone out there who isn’t content with just writing mean-spirited notes and e-mails?” She shook her head. “No, Dan. I won’t do it. I can’t. God called us to this, me and Kodi. And unless He releases us from that call, we’ll keep doing it.”

  He stared at the floor, then nodded. “You’re right. I just—”

  “You’re worried about me.”

  His shrug was sheepish. “What can I say? You’re my little sister.” He gave a gruff sigh. “So what are you waiting for? Go change already Time’s.”

  It actually only took four and a half minutes before she was back at the front door, pulling Kodi’s lead from the hook. She looked at her brother. “Ready?”

  He planted a quick kiss on Shelby’s lips, then joined Annie. “Ready” He looked back at the others. “Wish us luck, everyone.”

  “We’ll do better than that.” Shelby slipped her arms around Kyla and Jayce. “We’ll pray.”

  OCTOBER 14—AN ELDERBERRY BLACK BEAUTY DAY (BLACK AND ROSE)

  3:30 a.m.

  Annie lay stretched out in her tent, one hand resting on Kodi as the dog snored at her side.

  When Annie and Kodi first arrived at the point last seen with the crew from SAR, Dan was on-site already. He’d seen Annie’s Jeep pull up, and when she stepped from the vehicle, he signaled for her to come over. As Annie drew close, she heard a cry and suddenly found herself engulfed in a fierce hug.

  “Oh! I’m so glad you’re here!”

  Brianna Heller and her husband, Mark, filled in Annie and the other SAR personnel. When they’d gathered all the information they could, they went back to the command post—a large van equipped with maps, communication equipment, and phones to manage the search on the scene—and waited while the search manager determined the next step.

  The search manager pinpointed the different areas for the teams to grid, and everyone who was there headed out. With any luck, they’d find the girl in the next few hours. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way Annie and Kodi had trudged back to camp hours later, set up their tent, and tried to grab some shut-eye. But sleep was proving elusive. This was Bree’s daughter out there, and that fact ate at her. Hard enough when a child was lost, but to have to look a friend in the face, tell her that her little girl wasn’t coming home …

  No. Don’t go there.

  Annie closed her eyes. She might not be able to sleep, but she could do the one thing that would help most of all.

  She could pray.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  “There seemed to be endless obstacles …

  it seemed that the root cause of them all was fear.”

  JOANNA FIELD

  “Give your burdens to the LORD,

  and he will take care of you.

  He will not permit the godly to slip and fall.”

  PSALM 55:12

  OCTOBER 21—A BLACKJACK IRIS DAY (GREEN AND BLACK)

  1:00 p.m.

  The heat beat down, as relentless as time.

  Unfortunately neither the weather nor the clock offered an ounce of mercy Normally, in weather this arid and hot, Annie wouldn’t be out here. Wouldn’t let Kodi keep working.

  But the dog was as reluctant as she to leave the search area.

  Eight days.

  How could fifty search and rescue members have searched for eight days and seven nights with no sign of the lost girl? Not one sign?

  Well, that wasn’t quite true. Kodi had alerted three times. The odd thing about the alerts, though, was that they were in entirely different search grids. Amberly would have had to travel some serious distance to be in each of those grids. Annie thought maybe Kodi was alerting on a hunter or a hiker. Air scenting dogs were looking for any human scent, not just the scent specific to the subject.

  But each time Kodi led Annie to a location, no one was there. No hunter. No hiker. No lost child.

  No sign of any human.

  It was as though whoever had been there—and somebody had been for Kodi to alert—had erased all her tracks. And done a very good job of it.

  The first time it happened Dan was with her and Kodi. Normally her backup would have been a second SAR member. On that particular morning, however, Dan pulled rank, informing Annie and the incident commander that he would be his sister’s backup. It would be a waste of breath—and time—to argue.

  “Kodi doesn’t do false alerts often, does she?”

  Annie pulled her attention from her dog to her brother. “She’s never done one.”

  “So … ”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea what happened” In fact, after the third false alert, Annie wanted to tear her hair out. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she was sure of this much: Something was rotten in Denmark.

  The thought sent a pang through her. Amazing how any hint of Shakespeare brought Jed to mind.

  She missed him. How she’d love to just talk with him, to vent her frustration over the way the search was going. Or, to be more accurate, wasn’t going. He’d been gone what, over a week?

  Yes, he left the night the callout came.

  “Been gone a long time.”

  Annie blinked. Had Dan been reading her mind? “What? Who?”

  “Kodi.” He scrutinized her. “You with us here, sis?”

  She was about to inform her brother she was always “with it” on a search when the jingling of Kodi’s bell sounded. Annie punched her brother’s shoulder, just for principle, then turned and watched for the shepherd to appear.

  “It’s not an alert, is it?”

  Annie shook her head. “Ringing’s too relaxed. I’m betting she’s coming back for water.”

  Bingo.

  The dog trotted out of the woods and came to nudge the water dish at Annie’s belt. She filled it and set it down, then pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and tipped the water bottle again, wetting the cloth, and wiping her face.

  Dan held out his handkerchief as well. “Man, it’s hot!”

  Annie stood. “Can you remember the last time it was this hot in October? Especially up here, in the mountains?”

  “I remember a few times we hit seventy, even eighty, this time of year. But close to ninety? No way.”

  Of course, it was better searching conditions—and survival conditions—than October usually offered. “At least we don’t have to worry about Amberly dealing with snow.”

  “Always a silver lining, eh, sis?”

  Might as well try to find one. Triple digits were no longer cause for exclamation but rather the norm. During the day, that was. No sooner did the sun set than thermometers decided that, yes, it was autumn, and so they plummeted, dipping low enough to coax almost forgotten jackets out of the backs of closets.

  Annie glanced at the brutally blue sky Two of the elder members of SAR had compared notes on the weather as they ate breakfast that morning. Wilma, who looked as rugged as the mountains around them, commented on the unusual heat. Jasper, a man who had to be in this seventies and yet walked the wilderness with the energy of a teenager, snorted.

  “You think this is hot? Eighty-nine degrees ain’t nothin’! You shoulda been here summer of ’46 when we hit 115. Yessir, now that was hot.”

  “You are dreamin’, old man. It never hit that up here. In the valley, maybe, but not up here.”

  Jasper helped himself to more eggs. “Alls I know is there’s only one thing you can count on with Oregon weather.”

  “That you can’t count on it.”

  “Darn you, woman. Stop stealing my lines!”

  Annie had laughed along with the rest of the unit. They knew what the two elder members said was true. That was part of the region’s appeal. People who lived in Oregon relished its unpredictability.

  Most days, Annie counted herself in the relish camp. Esp
ecially when she was in the mountains. Nothing like a hike in the woods to refresh the spirit.

  Today, though, she hated it.

  Hot. Dry. No wind. Conditions custom-tailored to hamper a search. And that’s exactly what they were doing.

  A soft whine drew Annie’s attention, and she put a comforting hand on Kodi’s broad head. The German shepherd studied her, a slight wrinkle between those intelligent brown eyes.

  “Hey, you’re supposed to read the air, girl, not me.”

  Dan held the ends of his damp handkerchief and twirled it, then tied it around his neck. “You ask me, she’s as tuned in to you as anything else around her. Sometimes more so.”

  He was right, of course. She and Kodi were bonded, big time. They needed to be for what they did.

  Besides, Annie loved the big moose. With all her heart.

  But that connection could be a problem if Annie’s mood was bad. As it was on days like today, when she let her frustration build.

  Shake it off, Annie. So you haven’t found Amberly yet. It’ll happen.

  She pushed her damp bangs back off her warm face. “This is going to sound weird … ”

  “So what else is new.”

  Annie gave Dan the sister face and went on. “I’ve just been thinking. I mean, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear someone was working against us. You know, planting scent, misleading, moving the girl … ”

  Dan looked like he was holding something back. Annie planted her feet and stared at him. “Come on, big brother. Let’s have it.”

  “I don’t want to frustrate you.”

  “So why should today be any different?”

  It was his turn to give her the brother face. “I’m just wondering, are you sure that’s not just sour grapes talking because you haven’t found Amberly yet?”

  She lifted one shoulder. “I thought about that too. I mean, it’s been really frustrating. But I’m telling you, Dan, two of the times Kodi alerted, we were close. I’m sure of it. Kodi was just too excited, too definite, for there not to have been some one there.”

  “And?”

 

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