Chapter 3
WHIT
Waking up in my childhood bedroom made me think of a simpler time before I enlisted. Back then, I’d thought I was such hot shit. That nothing could touch me, no matter where the Army sent me. I had been so damn young and dumb back then.
Boot camp had been one hell of a wake-up call, but it was my first deployment that had shown me just how vulnerable I really was.
One of the guys in our squad took a bullet and died while we were trying to get him back to base for medical treatment.
He’d only been nineteen—same as me. Seeing the light go out of his eyes sure as fuck had taught me that I wasn’t invincible.
As I rolled off the queen-sized mattress and my side protested the movement, I groaned, “Not sure about wiser, but I’m definitely older now.”
After a hot shower loosened my muscles and the over-the-counter pain reliever I swallowed dry kicked in, I felt a fuck of a lot better.
When I padded into the kitchen, I found my mom standing in front of the stove. She was cooking up a storm, with all four burners in use. As I headed over to the coffee pot, which was already full, I asked, “Did you invite half the town over for breakfast?”
“Nope.” She flashed me a grin over her shoulder. “Hopefully, you’re hungry. Or else I’m going to have a heck of a lot of leftovers.”
After I poured a cup of coffee, I walked over to get a better look at what she was making. “Bacon and sausage links? You’re going to spoil me.”
“Darn straight.” She flipped the hash browns before cracking three eggs into the only pan that was still empty. “My baby’s home. Of course, I’m going to cook up a storm.”
I chuckled and shook my head as I grabbed a couple of plates from the cabinet. “I’m hardly a baby anymore, Mom. I’ll be thirty-five on my next birthday.”
“I know exactly how old you are.” She pulled the pan with the bacon off the stove and set the pieces onto a paper towel–lined plate. “I was there the day you were born, after all.”
She’d shared the story of my birth with me many times over the years. I didn’t need to hear about how she’d been in labor for more than twenty-four hours again. “Your mom radar is working great. I woke up hungry this morning.”
“Good.” She beamed another smile my way before placing the sausage links next to the bacon. “As much as I love leftovers, they’re just not the same when it’s breakfast food.”
I’d eaten my fair share of MREs, but my nose still wrinkled at the thought of trying to choke down a rubbery, reheated over-easy egg. “I’ll do my best to make sure there isn’t a speck of food left.”
Ten minutes later, I had made good on my promise as I pushed my empty plate away and patted my stomach. “If you keep cooking for me like this, I’m going to gain ten pounds before I head back home.”
“Good, you lost too much weight after you got shot.” She reached across the table to pat my hand. “I think I’ll make cookies-and-cream pancakes for breakfast tomorrow.”
I hated how much my injury had scared her and vowed to tolerate her hovering without complaining too much. She’d certainly earned it with what I’d put her through. “Nobody cooks like you do.”
She wagged her brows with a mischievous grin. “Find me a daughter-in-law, and I’ll teach her all your favorites.”
My mom had been on my ass to settle down for a decade.
Each time one of my team members got married, she amped up her efforts.
She’d even tried setting me up with one of the nurses while I’d been flat on my back in the hospital.
Luckily, the woman had nipped my mom’s matchmaking in the bud when she’d told her she was already in a serious relationship, so my mom couldn’t guilt-trip me into a date when I was vulnerable.
I wouldn’t have put it past my mom to take advantage of my drugged-up state in her quest for grandkids.
“Sure, Mom.” I heaved a deep sigh as I got up to clear the table. “How about I bring home the next woman I meet so you can get to work on that?”
My mom ignored my sarcasm and happily agreed, “Please do.”
Reminding myself of the promise I’d made myself only minutes earlier, I held back my retort and focused on helping her clean up the kitchen.
While I dried the last pan, she mumbled something about turning on one of her shows and headed into the living room.
When I followed about a minute later, the television wasn’t on and she was staring out the front window with her hand pressed against her chest. “Oh, dear.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, moving across the room so I could look outside to see what had spooked her.
“The sheriff’s here.” I spotted his car in the driveway as she answered.
“Stay here,” I instructed, giving her shoulder a quick squeeze. “I’ll go see what he wants.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be silly. Invite the sheriff in while I get him some hot coffee.”
I went over and opened the front door while she headed back into the kitchen. “Morning, Sheriff. Everything okay?”
Robert Halston had been voted in as the town’s sheriff while I’d been in the Army. But he’d grown up here, same as me, so we knew each other. “I wish I could say I stopped by to say hello, but I need your help with the search and rescue, Whit.”
“I’m home for vacation.” I patted my side as I made room for him to step into the house. “Still not back to one-hundred-percent after my injury.”
“I heard about the shooting.” His eyes were assessing as he scanned me from head to toe.
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was necessary.
You know this mountain better than most of the men in my department, and the kind of experience you have could be the difference between finding the woman alive and dead. ”
“Oh, no,” my mom cried from behind me. “Someone’s missing on the mountain?”
The sheriff accepted the travel mug she handed him. “Sorry to interrupt your visit with Whit, Mrs. Baker.”
She waved off his concern. “No apologies needed.”
“How long has she been missing?” I asked.
The sheriff scrubbed his hands down his face. “Could be anywhere from one to twenty-four hours.”
When a person went missing outdoors, finding them became a fuck ton more difficult after the first twenty-four hours. “Why such a wide timeframe?”
“The woman is some fancy wildlife photographer. She set up camp five days ago. Missed her daily check-in with her dad this morning.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and tapped at the screen as he added, “Since she stayed in town the night before she went up the mountain, he called my office to file a missing person’s report. ”
“You call the troopers?” The state police were normally in charge of search and rescue missions since they had the manpower and equipment needed to cover a large amount of terrain.
The sheriff nodded. “Yup, they’re sending down a couple of helicopters and about twenty people, but that’s all they can spare at the moment since they’ve got a missing hiker situation they’re already dealing with.”
“Damn.” The few searches I’d helped with in the past had more than double the manpower. “Do we at least have a good starting point for where she might’ve gone missing?”
“Yes, her dad had the coordinates for where she planned to set up camp. She confirmed that’s where she was and didn’t mention moving locations in her texts or when he talked to her again yesterday morning.
” He tapped his cell phone screen a couple of times.
“Just sent you an email with the information he shared, as well as a recent picture.”
My cell phone dinged with a notification, and I felt as though I’d been punched in the solar plexus when I opened his message.
The missing woman, Victoria Ashe, was drop-dead gorgeous with honey-blond hair, brown eyes, a heart-shaped face, and full lips.
I didn’t know her, but the thought of her lost on the mountain shook me to my core.
Turning to my mom, I said, “I want to help look for her.”
“Of course, you’re going to join the search.” She gave me a hug. “Just be careful out there.”
“Always.” I brushed a kiss against her cheek before shooting a look at the sheriff. “I’ll be ready to go in five minutes.”
The first thing I did when I was back in my room was call Brecken and put the phone on speaker mode so we could talk while I changed. He picked up on the first ring, but I was the first to talk. “I’m heading out to help with a search and rescue operation.”
“Someone went missing on the mountain?” he asked.
“Yeah, a wildlife photographer. Her dad called the sheriff when she missed checking in with him this morning.”
“It’s a woman, huh?” I pictured his shit-eating grin in my head as he teased, “Don’t forget what happened the last time we went searching for a woman in a forest.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if my mom had recruited him in her matchmaking efforts since he was talking about how he and his wife had met. “The situations are completely different.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Hadley was in the jungle, not on the mountain I grew up on. And Victoria is missing, not kidnapped. People get lost in the wilderness all the time. We aren’t going to be stuck together in the wilderness running from guys with guns,” I muttered as I shoved supplies into the pockets of my cargo pants.
He laughed and murmured, “Famous last words.”
“I just wanted to give you a heads-up in case shit goes sideways.” A quick scan of the room confirmed I had everything I needed.
“Keep me in the loop. I’ll have your back if anything goes wrong,” he promised.
My team couldn’t do much from halfway across the country, but I felt better with them aware of what I was about to do as the sheriff and I joined the search-and-rescue team in the parking lot where Victoria had last been seen. “Any sign of the woman?”
One of the deputies answered, “No, her car isn’t where the witness said they’d seen it last, and her campsite was empty. Maybe she decided to leave?”
“I don’t think so.” One of the volunteers shook his head.
“From what you told us about the missing woman, she’s an experienced camper.
But the embers were still burning down on her fire?
There was a stream nearby and plenty of dirt if she didn’t want to carry water back to her campsite.
No reason she couldn’t put the fire out properly. ”
“There’s another weird thing,” another deputy added. “The state troopers have two helicopters in the air, and one spotted wreckage from a recent crash about fifteen miles south of her campsite. They said it looked like it went down recently, but we didn’t get any reports about a plane crash.”
I wasn’t a big believer in coincidences and wondered how the two situations were connected...and if Brecken might’ve been right about famous last words.