Chapter 9 #2
“She attached herself to a small group hiking the Avalanche Trail.”
Avalanche Trail. Ethan pictured it instantly. Long, winding, dirt and gravel, steeper than it had any right to be for volunteer groups, and threaded too close to ravines for comfort.
“Have you seen her since then?” Ethan’s hand shook.
“That’s a negative,” Roberts said. “We saw the group later, but she wasn’t with them.”
Ethan’s chest tightened. “What time was it when you last saw her?”
“Around eleven,” Roberts said. “Right after we handed out the maps and the walkies.”
Eleven. That was a long time to be missing, especially with the weather turning. It was nearly six thirty now. Why on earth had she gone out there?
Ethan made a decision. “Here’s the plan. I’ll take the four-wheeler and meet you and Montgomery at your coordinates. We can search for her from there.”
“Copy,” Roberts and Montgomery said together.
Ethan refused to let his mind wander into what-ifs. What-ifs were poison. He needed action. He needed Aubrey alive.
“I’ll contact Deputy Marshal Kennedy.” Howard shifted into command mode. “Have her get a couple more people out here. I’ll man the command center.”
“That works.” Ethan shoved his phone into his pocket again and looked toward the mountain. Clouds rolled over the ridgeline, thick and black, swallowing what little light remained. “I don’t like the look of those clouds. Hopefully Aubrey didn’t go far.”
Howard nodded once. “I’ll contact EMS dispatch and have an ambulance waiting.”
Ethan checked his service weapon out of habit—mag seated, holster secure—then shoved the thought away. A firearm wouldn’t fix an exposed woman lost in a storm.
“I’m headed your way, Roberts.”
“Copy,” Roberts said.
The low rumble of thunder rolled through the valley like a predator coming to life. Ethan felt it down in the bones of his feet. He climbed onto the ATV, started the engine, and aimed the headlights toward the trailhead.
The deepening twilight cast long shadows across the well-worn dirt-and-gravel path. But it was the silence of the woods that unnerved him, the way the trees absorbed sound, the way the world narrowed to his beam of light and the growl of the engine.
He pushed the ATV as fast as he dared. The trailhead barely allowed the width of the vehicle. Pines crowded close, trunks thick and dark, branches whipping at his shoulders. Very little light pierced the canopy now.
God, I need Your help.
The prayer slipped free. Not polished. Not pretty. Just honest.
“Aubrey!” he called once, stopping briefly in the middle of the path to listen. He waited for the echo to die.
Nothing answered but the wind.
He started again, lights cutting forward. Lightning cracked somewhere to the north, sharp enough to make the fine hairs on his arms rise. Thunder followed almost immediately.
The storm was moving in fast.
At the edge of a small clearing, Roberts stood waving, his flashlight a jittering white slash.
Ethan braked and killed the engine. Silence rushed back in, heavy and watchful.
“That doesn’t look or sound good.” Roberts nodded toward the sky, where lightning threaded through deep-purple clouds.
“I know,” Ethan replied. “That’s why we’ve got to find Aubrey.”
Roberts jerked his chin toward the trees. “You’re going to have to leave the ATV here. It’s too dense.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” Ethan pulled the key, pocketed it, and swung his pack onto his shoulders. “Which way?”
Roberts pointed left, into thicker timber and a steeper incline. “Rough climb.”
“Let’s go.”
They moved fast, breathing hard almost immediately as the trail pitched upward. Dirt and gravel gave way to loose stone and damp leaf litter. Ethan’s boots slid and he adjusted, leaning forward. “Aubrey!”
No answer.
At a fork in the trail, Roberts stopped and lifted his light to reveal a ravine ahead, choked with shrubs and young pines. Farther down, Montgomery stood about twenty yards from something darker than shadow. The wreckage, tucked into foliage like a secret.
“Maybe she didn’t even reach the plane,” Roberts said. “We tried to get down there, but yesterday’s storm loosened a lot of rocks. It’s a bad slide.”
Montgomery climbed up toward them, face grim under the beam. At the top, he let out a breath. “We marked it as best we could. Photos and pins are already sent.”
Ethan swept the ravine with his light, seeing only broken angles and a hint of metal when lightning flickered.
“I can see why you didn’t find it at first.” He pulled out a strip of flagging tape from his kit and marked a nearby pine, pressing the adhesive hard so wind wouldn’t steal it. “Good work, both of you.”
But the plane could wait. The mountain had it contained, at least for the next hour.
Aubrey couldn’t.
Which direction would she have taken if she’d left the trail in a hurry?
Ethan shoved the question down and replaced it with action. “Spread out,” he said, already moving. “West sweep from here. Stay within visual range. Call anything that looks like her.”
The three marshals split west from the crash perimeter, backtracking with their boots grinding dirt, loose gravel shifting as the storm dimmed the last wash of light.
Their flashlights carved shallow, bouncing arcs through pines and wind-whipped dust. Branches hissed overhead, and thunder rolled like a countdown.
“I found a sneaker!” Adam’s voice carried through the trees from upslope, where he’d cut a wider angle. He lifted a white-and-pink shoe into his beam.
Ethan angled toward him long enough to glance. Too small. Too bright. “Not hers. Keep going.”
The team advanced another fifty yards, spacing themselves to cover as much ground as possible without losing each other. Ethan kept his light low, sweeping the packed dirt and gravel, searching for any type of disturbance. A scraped stone, snapped twigs, scuffed prints.
He stopped at a fork. The main trail angled north, but the other path continued west, narrower and looser, edged with gravel and sliding shale that cascaded toward ravine country.
Something snagged his beam beneath a low, broken branch.
Teal.
He crouched, fingers brushing fabric half buried under pine needles and stone. He lifted it carefully.
A hoodie. Mud-dusted and torn.
His throat tightened. “Aubrey.” Certainty settled heavy in his gut. “She went this way.”
He waved Montgomery and Roberts over, holding the hoodie up in the light.
Roberts’s face tightened. “Yeah. I remember her wearing that this morning.”
Montgomery whistled under his breath. “Oh man.” His gaze tracked into dark timber. “She’s headed the wrong way.”
The statement landed like a weight. Wrong way meant rough terrain. Wrong way meant ravines and loose shale. Wrong way meant a person could get disoriented fast, especially if they weren’t an experienced hiker.
The ground was torn up—a warning sign Ethan would heed in any other circumstances.
Shoe prints skidded along the dirt in a frantic, uneven pattern, deep in the heel, shallow in the toe, like someone fighting for balance.
Pebbles were scattered downhill in a fan.
Freshly broken twigs dotted the slope, snapped mid-stride, not intentionally cleared aside.
The disturbance was short but violent, ending at a drop no more than six feet down the ridge.
A fall, not a detour.
Ethan knelt, studying the scuffed trench. No hesitation prints. No doubled-back drag. Just momentum and collapse.
His stomach tightened. “Of course you’d push yourself.” He muttered the statement into the wind. He pulled evidence tape and marked the pine beside the fork, pressing it firmly as gusts tried to peel it away. “Trail. Down there.”
He angled down the ridge, boots slipping in loose gravel, each step tested before he trusted it.
The descent wasn’t long, but it was steep enough to punish speed.
Rocks shifted under his weight. Dry soil skittered toward the trees below.
He kept his light low, scanning the ground like he’d been taught—read first, run second.
Halfway down, the scuff marks resumed.
The slope leveled into a narrow basin choked with pine shadows. Wind hissed through branches overhead. Thunder growled again, louder now. Raindrops began to fall, fat and cold, peppering his bare arms and turning the dust into paste.
Then Roberts’s voice cut through the wind.
“Butler! Over here!”
Ethan pivoted and hurried toward the beam of Roberts’s light. Roberts was crouched near what looked like a shallow pile of leaves mounded unnaturally against a log. It looked like someone had tried to disappear by dragging the forest over themselves.
Ethan knelt, studying it.
The dirt beneath was disturbed in an oval shape.
“She hid,” Ethan said quietly. “Right here.”
Montgomery stepped closer, scanning the perimeter. “Smart.”
“Desperate,” Ethan corrected, eyes tracking the trail ahead.
Roberts whistled low.
Ethan’s jaw clenched. The wrong way wasn’t just geography now. It was time. It was weather. It was risk.
A ball of dread settled in his gut, but he shoved it down and forced his mind to stay calm. “She’s still walking, so that’s good.”
Roberts didn’t look convinced.
“But we don’t know how far she’s traveled,” Ethan continued, voice tightening. “And now the storm’s coming in hard. Visibility’s dropping. Sound carries weird. If she’s disoriented, if she’s scared, she’ll keep moving.”
Montgomery lifted his light, scanning the dark timber ahead. “This way.” He took off into the underbrush.
Ethan and Roberts followed immediately, boots sliding on damp, leaf-covered ground. The rain picked up, cold needles against Ethan’s skin. Wind whipped through the trees, smaller branches bending low, swiping at their shoulders and catching their lights.
Ethan shivered. Not from cold, but from the sick certainty settling deeper with every step.
If he didn’t find Aubrey soon, this excursion of hers would end badly.
For her.
For him.
For everyone involved.
And somewhere beyond the trees, thunder cracked like the mountain’s warning…or its promise.