Chapter 10 – BEAU
BEAU
The first thing I smell is her. Closely followed by the distinctive tang of gunmetal.
I stop dead in the trees, hands going out at my sides with palms forward, as I step ahead slowly, squinting against the beam of her headlamp when it hits my face.
Her gun arm wavers as she lowers the weapon and exhales sharply.
“Jesus, Beau, you scared the life out of me.”
Immediately, my attention goes to the tall man at her side, his shoulder now slightly in front of hers protectively, even though thirty seconds ago, he was happy to sit back and let her handle business.
“You know this guy?” he asks quietly, never taking his eyes off me.
My bear surges forward inside my chest, claws scraping bone.
I have to grit my teeth to keep him there.
With a missing child somewhere on this mountain, there is nothing about this moment that has any business being about me or my disastrous love life.
And yet, the sight of this guy standing so close to her is driving me wild.
"What the hell are you doing up here?" She demands, and just like that, I’m reminded that as much as I want her, she’s not mine. In fact, we’re barely able to be civil to each other.
Hours in the cold have done their work. Her hair is escaping its ponytail in damp strands and there's mud caked up to the knees of her boots. Her skin is pale, and her eyes have that glassy unfocused quality of someone who’s running on adrenaline and very little else.
"Grey Ridge PD called me in to help." My voice comes out flat. "Like you should have."
She presses her lips together, but her search partner, eager to remind me of his presence, chimes in. "You can’t be out here wandering around on your own. This is a coordinated search. If you want to help, go down to Taylor."
With no interest in listening to this guy telling me what to do, I shake my head. "No time."
I'm already moving past Lisa, our gazes locked, when the other man gives me a hard look and scoffs.
“Fucking have a go then, hero. You’re going to get yourself hurt out here, and I have no interest in carrying your ass back down the mountain when we need everyone looking for Ivy.” He looks me up and down, eyes narrowing at my short sleeves. “I mean, you’re not even dressed for the weather.”
A low growl rumbles from me, my bear taking his criticism that’s spoken right in front of Lisa as a challenge. “Feel free to leave me to my fate if I get into trouble.”
He scoffs. “Come on Lisa, let’s go back. We can warn Taylor to request that members of the public stay out of the woods unless they’re with an official search team.”
I couldn’t care less what he does. While he’s bitching about me being out here alone, I’ll be finding the girl.
“No,” Lisa says behind me. "I'm not calling it a night. No way."
“For fuck’s sake, she’s not out here! We should be searching the creek again.”
Let them do whatever they want. Actually, the fewer people out here, the better. It’ll make locking onto the little girl’s scent much easier without so many people in the forest.
“Good idea. Go back with your friend, and I’ll see you around, Detective.”
I get six paces before her hand closes around my forearm, her fingers wrapping around the bare skin between my pushed-up sleeve and my wristwatch.
“I’m going with you,” she whispers.
I stop but don't turn, looking down at her hand because looking at her face would be a mistake.
“No. No way.” Shaking my head, I dismiss the idea out of hand.
I can cover more ground on my own. A child is missing, and that’s the only thing that matters.
Every minute I spend standing here is a minute that kid is sitting somewhere cold and frightened, maybe even badly hurt, hoping someone is coming.
Behind us, a deep voice crackles over Sheridan's radio. Rain’s coming. Everyone back to base. Search will resume at first light tomorrow morning.
"You heard the man," I say, low. "Go. You can't stay out here on your own, and I’m not slowing down for you."
She doesn’t like that.
Lifting her chin, she narrows her eyes at me. "I'm not alone. We'll be together, and you’ll need me in case you do find her. Your warm, sparkling personality will terrify her."
We.
“And I won’t slow you down,” she promises.
There's no version of this where I should let her come. The terrain ahead is dangerous in daylight. The forest being this dark when she’s already running on empty is an accident waiting to happen. She’s so delicate and fragile, and I don’t want her to get hurt.
Sheridan steps forward and puts a hand on her arm. "Lisa. Come back with me. Hopefully she’s hunkered down somewhere for the night, and we can come back in the morning, recharged."
I can’t stop staring at where his skin makes contact with hers. His touch is harmless, I know it's harmless, but it doesn’t stop my bear from wanting to rip off his fingers.
“Fine. If you’re coming, let’s go.”
Lisa’s eyes widen, as surprised as me, that I caved. I curse myself for being so weak and turn to go.
“This is fucking madness,” the man mutters, jaw tight, scarcely believing Lisa is about to ignore an order to return to base and wander off into the woods with a man he doesn’t trust.
“It’s okay, Sheridan. Beau knows these woods, and I trust him. We’ll be fine.”
When I'm two strides into the trees again, he hisses. “Beau fucking Lennox. Are you insane?”
She cuts him off with a flat, “I'm fine. We'll be fine.”
Then Sheridan again, lower this time, "Take this then."
I glance back as he unclips the radio from his belt and presses it into her hand. His eyes flick to me and stay there a beat longer than they need to, with a warning I'm meant to receive. Don’t let her get hurt.
He makes her promise to check in within the hour, and then he turns and starts back down the trail without looking at either of us again.
My senses are sharper at night, not duller, and the ground reads as easily to me as a page of text.
Lisa’s footsteps follow mine. Her breathing is rough and her steps are getting heavier, but every time I pause and pretend to check a sightline through the trees, she comes around the bend behind me without complaint.
When I come to a stop, pretending to need a break myself, her boot finds a patch of wet leaves over loose rock and skids out from under her.
I hear the gasp before I see her fall, and I'm already turning, one stride covering the distance between us, her jacket fisted in my hand before she goes down. With ease, I haul her upright and set her back on her feet while she stares.
She weighs nothing to me, even with a wet pack and boots, but I doubt anyone’s lifted her one handed before.
"Christ, Red." I snap, stunned by how much the idea of her slipping and falling has affected me. My heart is pounding now, and my bear is angry that she’s here, stumbling through the dangerous terrain, even though it was his possessiveness that got us into this mess to begin with. "Pay attention."
"I am paying attention," she barks back. “You’re the one who stopped dead on the path.”
I let my hand stay curled into the front of her coat, feeling her warmth through the jacket, before reluctantly letting go.
“Thank you,” she whispers, and my shoulders drop as the jolt of adrenaline and concern at seeing her slip starts to fade.
I give her a small smile and a nod.
For a moment, with her face turned up to mine and her breath fogging between us, the search recedes. Then she takes a small step back, and the moment passes. I’m about to start moving again when the scent of fresh blood reaches me.
I stop and look at her face that’s partly illuminated by her lamp, with a thin line of blood across her cheekbone.
The cut is shallow and already clotting, so it shouldn't make my hands twitch with the urge to drag her back down the mountain and sit her in front of a fire until I'm sure she's warm, fed and safe.
Tilting her chin up with one knuckle, I examine the scratch. Humans are so easily damaged. Why would any of them join law enforcement when they’re so easily hurt? “When did this happen?”
She shrugs. "I'm fine," she whispers. "It's just a scratch."
I brush my thumb across it anyway, then tuck a loose strand of hair back from her cheek.
Her eyes fall closed and she sighs, leaning into my touch.
Fuck, I want to stay here like this forever, but we’ve got a job to do. "Let’s keep moving."
I jerk my head, focusing up the trail where it steepens further and then thins out entirely as we cut off into unmarked terrain. Lisa's pace slows, she's having to use her hands now to climb sections that I'm taking in a stride, but she doesn't ask me to wait.
Just like I don’t tell her when I get the faint scent of humans far from where they should be.
Unsettled by the mixture of recent male smells, I find what I'm looking for as we search. First by ear, the faint creak of warped wood in the wind. A few minutes later, the practically dilapidated cabin is visible through the trees, lower than I expected and tucked into a fold of ground.
I stop abruptly and hold up a hand without turning around, then listen. Lisa freezes and doesn’t speak a word as we creep closer.
Nothing moves inside. The smells coming off the place are of old smoke, old beer, and the particularly sour note of male body odour, but it’s at least a week old. Nobody has been here tonight as far as I can tell.
I nod toward the cabin. "Stay behind me."
She draws her weapon without a word.
I approach from the side, soundless on the soft ground, and she follows, veering off to the other side to get a good vantage point as we near the rotting porch.
Climbing the stairs, I keep sniffing the air, but the closer I get, the more certain I am that she hasn’t been here.
The door is closed but not locked, so I push it open with one hand.
“Clear.” I curse, disappointed at not finding her curled in a corner despite my nose already telling me she wouldn’t be.
“Shit.” Lisa sweeps the room with her flashlight, the light falling on two camp chairs, beer cans on a battered table, and an ashtray heaped with cigarette butts. “Do you think she was here and left?”
I stand still in the middle of the room and let my nose do what my eyes can't. Half a dozen scents layer on top of each other, but none of them are children, just adult men who know each other well enough to share a cabin and not bother emptying ashtrays.
Hunters, trappers, the handful of off-grid types who run lines up in the high country would never leave a place like this. These men aren't any of them.
"She hasn't been here,” I grumble, ready to move on and find the next possible hiding place. “Let’s go.”
"How do you know that?" Lisa asks, brows furrowed and holding her hips in the middle of the room, scanning the small space for any signs someone’s sheltered here.
I take a beat too long to answer. “Because if she found shelter like this on a cold night, she’d have stayed.”
It's a reasonable answer.
I push past her, back out into the dark. "Come on."
“But…” She follows, her boots crossing the threshold behind me. She draws a breath to ask me something else, and I’m bracing for the question when the wind changes.
It comes from the east. A small shift, no more than a breath, but it carries something with it that stops me dead as every sense snaps to attention at once.
I turn my head into it. Inhale, slow and deep, with every bit of focus I have, while Lisa watches from the periphery of my vision.
There.
"Beau?"
Lisa steps closer, her sweet smell pulling my attention, but I force my bear to focus, to concentrate, when the wind shifts again. The scent fades. Returns then fades again.
East.
“Beau, what are you doing? What’s going on?”
I take one step in that direction, then another, as the world narrows to the thread of a scent in the air, before I take off at a sprint, trusting Lisa to be able to follow, afraid that the already faint trail will vanish with the next gust of wind or the rain that’s starting to fall around us.