Chapter Thirty-Three
Petra
When Cooper got his order to “find it,” things happened fast.
Hawkeye was crashing through the foliage, heading after his dog.
Petra didn’t know how these things worked, but she got the general impression that this was not it. She tried to recall what she’d learned about K9 searches. It seemed to her that the dogs would go out sniffing around as a K9 handler walked in the general direction.
If the dog found something, they’d hustle back to their person and signal them. Then they’d track to the spot.
But that was a scent, wasn’t it?
Was there a different technique if a dog was going after a sound?
To be fair, Hawkeye didn’t hear it.
And Petra wasn’t sure what it was she’d heard. Injured animal? Local bird?
She’d never heard that sound before. The cry was unmusical. It didn’t repeat in the same way any of the three times she heard it.
And there was that essence to it—that quality of “call to the universe.”
Melissa had done that yesterday when she’d stood on the rocks. She’d been holding hands with Terry one moment, a wave came and snatched him from her the next. She saw his head in the sea. Then he was gone. She was sure that gone meant gone .
And Melissa’s calling to his soul was what brought Petra to the scene.
That event reminded Petra of the time she was in Hawaii on a perfectly beautiful day. She was looking over the cliff. The Pacific was like a lapis lazuli below her. Gorgeous.
When the group was called over to eat, Petra turned and as she stepped forward, she knew something unexpected was happening, but didn’t have time for her brain to process. It felt like a water giant reached out its wave hand and tried to snatch her off the cliff. Her then-husband reached out and grabbed the camera strap that was around her neck, and that was enough of a counterbalance that Petra didn’t plunge backward over the cliff to her death.
So even though he was a shithead, he did ostensibly save her life. Yes, she was glad to be alive, but still, she wished that wasn’t part of their shared history.
She didn’t really want to remember that day.
Or her ex.
But after yesterday, it was inevitable.
Not every relationship was like her marriage. Sometimes people could be mutually respectful and caring.
She certainly didn’t have to think that if she tried for a relationship with Hawkeye, it would be destined for pain and grief.
What did he call her? Amazing. Remarkable.
That had been her experience with him. I mean, here he is chasing through the dense rainforest with no clue what he’s going after because I heard a noise.
“Oh shit,” Hawkeye said, coming to an abrupt stop. “Petra, maybe you need to—”
He stepped out of the way, reaching for Petra and guiding her forward.
There, on the ground, lay a little girl. Curled into a ball, she used an exposed root as a pillow of sorts. There on her neck was a bright red welt. The same welt Petra had seen at the tidepool when the child had yanked her necklace off and tossed it seaward. This was the Johnsons’s daughter.
This was not one of the scenarios Petra had envisioned and offered to Rowan, who was probably about to land in St. Croix with two fellow FBI special agents all because of the picture of that necklace.
Petra swallowed down her emotions. “Hello, sweetheart. Do you remember me? I met you the other day when you and your mommy were at the tidepool.”
The child didn’t turn toward Petra but scowled ferociously at Hawkeye. Anger and fear filled her eyes. Her body was fierce. She was a tiny warrior in a mud-covered bathing suit.
“My name is Petra. What’s your name?” She took a step closer.
The child focused on Cooper who stretched out as a barricade between her and Petra.
Petra thought Cooper was using his body to give the child a sense of safety from the adults. But he was doing it strategically. He wasn’t guarding her. If Petra reached for the child, it would be allowed.
Cooper’s origin story came to mind, how he stopped Hawkeye’s truck and kept the baby on the blanket. Cooper seemed to know what a youngling needed.
Petra would defer to Cooper and stay on this side of his body barricade.
“Where are your brothers?” Petra slowly lowered herself until her butt was on the ground.
“She has brothers? How many children are we talking about?” Hawkeye handed Petra his water bottle.
“It was a family of five,” she said as she unscrewed the top. “And older brother maybe six or seven. And younger brother maybe three or four?” Petra showed the bottle to Cooper, then stretched it past him to set it down beside the child. “Parents in their mid-to-late-thirties.”
Hawkeye shifted to the side and started inspecting the foliage and the dirt. Petra assumed he was looking for tracks.
Petra pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs, and, in this position, remained perfectly still.
Just like earlier with the Rotti, Petra wanted to give this child a moment to acclimate. After all, two adults and a dog had burst through the foliage.
Something traumatic had obviously happened to this child between this moment and the last time Petra had seen her without her necklace on the cliff.
Did this have something to do with her necklace being missing?
Petra looked through her lashes as she scanned the child’s body. There were no marks or bruises that looked like blows. Mostly, she was filthy, and her hair was wild with debris.
She had two white rivulets where her tears had cut through the dirt on her face, and her eyes were red and swollen from crying.
“What are we doing, Petra?” Hawkeye asked, his voice warm and low. He stood away from them, seeming to have taken the “who do you want in the woods, a man or a bear” responses from women quite seriously as he kept his distance.
“Did you find tracks?” she asked in return.
“They’re single barefooted tracks that go on for a short distance. I don’t want to go farther right now.”
Petra pulled out her phone but before she looked, Hawkeye said, “No bars, no satellite.”
She turned back to the child and showed her the photo from the day before. “That’s you at the tidepool. There’s your little brother. Did you hike out here with your brothers?”
The child glanced at the phone with disinterest. There was no spark of recognition. No “Where is my daddy?” Instead, she scooted closer to Cooper and threw a leg over him as she clung to his ear.
A thumb went into her mouth.
Call-back to self-soothing as a baby?
“You’re out in the woods. Can you tell me how you got here?”
Nothing.
Petra was done pestering the child. These questions obviously weren’t going to give her the answers she wanted. The child needed a hospital. The authorities needed to track down her parents.
Could the parents have left her behind purposefully if they were leaving the country?
Wow, that was a dark thought.
Sure, if Petra was making up a story about that, the family could have decided this was the throw-away child. They left her to be found, dead or alive, to further the story that the family had succumbed to some terrible event. No reason to look for their live happy bodies doing the rumba in South America.
That was how they’d treated her, like a black sheep. Kind of the outcast. And looking back, that could be why the child looked at her mom with abhorrence and why she’d dragged off the necklace.
Another crazy idea was that the child pulling off her necklace meant she was going outside of some teachings of “the bigger family’ the mother had talked about. And so, she was dismissed from the fold.
But Petra would quickly admit these scenarios, while possible, were probably outlandish.
She, in fact, had no idea what was going on.
Petra slowly stood and moved toward Hawkeye. “I think she’s in shock. Her brain should have had her drinking that water I set out without thought. Her skin is obviously dehydrated. She needs medical attention. I’d pick her up and take her to the SUV, but I’m worried about the brothers. If we take her, are we leaving them?”
Hawkeye crouched down, posting a knee and sitting on his heel. He pulled out the map. “We’re right about here.” He pointed to the map. “Another hundred yards, and I could come out by the sea here. If I don’t have cell reception, I have my sat phone. Do we move her with us is the question.”
“We’d be moving her farther from the shelter and supplies at the cabin as well as from your SUV if we need to transport.” Petra turned her head from left to right. “The boys might be around here somewhere.”
“Do you feel comfortable staying with her if Cooper is here to guard the situation? I can get orders.”
“I think orders would be very helpful here. So would getting some medical personnel involved. I don’t know what’s going on right now, but her body responses are not normal.”
Hawkeye slid the map into his ruck, “Let’s be clear here, Petra. Nothing about this is normal.”