Chapter 8
Cat woke sleepily, wondering what had pulled her from the perfect dream. Then she heard it. Someone was pounding on the door. She screamed as Mateo twisted so he was between her and the door.
“Is anybody in there? I see smoke!” a voice called.
She tried to get out of bed, but he just gave her a look and dove into a pair of pants before taking two steps and wrenching open the door.
“Who are you?” a man’s voice asked from outside.
“I have the same question for you,” Mateo said, and Cat frowned. She expected rage or power, but his voice got softer in the face of a threat.
“Never mind, it doesn’t matter; you’re not hiding teenagers in here, are you?”
“What?” Mateo asked.
Cat realized two things: the identity of the voice, Aaron Sawyers from Search and Rescue, and the reason she had gone out into the snow. She’d Seen this.
Well, not exactly this: lying in bed after the hottest sex of her life, only to be interrupted by Search and Rescue.
She’d seen the kids.
She jumped out of bed and wrapped a blanket around her, sparing a moment to think about the gossip this would cause, but she did not have time for that as she stepped to the door.
“Cat?” Aaron said.
Mateo bristled, but his voice got even softer. “You know him?”
“He finds lost people. I help. What happened?”
Aaron shook his head and scratched his chin. “Well, no one rightly knew until this morning when people got out and started talking. The twins—not your twins, the other ones—and the Banks boy, and the other one from up the street, I always forget—”
“Eliza?”
“Right. They were all separately missing, but all were supposed to be at somebody else’s house. Now that the snow is gone, we sorted out the fact that no one’s anywhere.”
“Dammit, I knew it.”
Aaron raised an eyebrow. “You knew they lied about a sleepover?”
In a series of snapshots, Cat envisioned explaining how she knew, or rather suspected, the children were not in their beds but gave up.
“Gary asked me to look into the shoplifting at the store. Some random items were missing, like fertilizer and toothpaste. I was on the trail.”
“How the hell is fertilizer supposed to help in December? And why did they want to go out in this weather?” Aaron asked.
She threw her hands wide. “I don’t know. And I don’t even know that it was them, but, um, that’s why I said I saw them.”
“Well, the last time somebody else saw them, Marta was heading back home from the grocery store as they were hiking out of town two days ago. She warned them about the weather, but they said they were prepared.”
“For a blizzard?”
“Hell, it wasn’t supposed to get that bad.
Nine times out of ten, the weather channel overestimates everything.
” He winked. “Makes for a better story. But this one took them all by surprise. We just have to hope they found a haven. When I saw the smoke, I thought we’d be home by lunch, but I guess that was too much to ask.
I’m going to head out. We’re going to start combing the side of the mountain.
There was a big avalanche a couple of days ago, and let’s pray they didn’t get caught up in that. ”
“They weren’t,” Cat said absently and then cringed as her eyes flew to Aaron’s and then Mateo’s.
“How about I just take your word for it?” Aaron said as he strolled away.
Cat immediately started to pace as Mateo closed the door. “I knew it. I knew it!”
“Was this a vision?” Mateo asked.
She nodded. I knew it.
Mateo pivoted toward the door with a frown. “And that dude knew you would know?”
She froze. “Not exactly? He didn’t know it was magic, but I have a reputation in town for finding lost things. And solving crimes.”
His fingers fumbled as he reached for a shirt. “Isn’t there police for that sort of thing?”
“One highway patrolman lives about a half hour away, and yeah, we’re in some kind of police district, I think out of one of the ski towns? But nobody can be bothered.”
She tried to think through the things her magic had shown her. Gary at the hardware store had come to her about missing inventory three weeks ago, and then there had been two more thefts, and now teenagers were missing.
“I should have Seen it!” Cat said and groaned. She paced the cabin, feeling angry and horrified.
Mateo caught her and rubbed her arms briskly. “This is not on you.”
“I had all the warning I should have needed,” she insisted
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s why I was out in the snow. There’s been some thefts.”
“You were searching for a thief in a snowstorm?”
“No! Yes. I Saw them out in the snow. Even now, I still See them out in the snow. They’re out in the snow!”
“Okay, slow down. Start from the beginning. And keep getting dressed.”
She pulled on pants. “If they’re still out there, we have to find them.”
“We will.” He put on the boots she had found, and she laughed.
“Not like that. Make sure your socks and your cuffs are tucked into the boots, or you might as well not be wearing them.”
He did as she said, stuffing the jeans that were still a little too big into the boots.
“Lumberjack chic,” he said with a shake of his head, and she remembered all over again that he was some fancy New York businessman who had probably never worn jeans in his life.
“New York has snow,” she said. She was 99% sure of that.
“Yes, and New York City has snowplows,” he said with a grin.
She rolled her eyes and began the laborious process of getting ready to go out in the weather.
Wordlessly, she also helped him get his gloves into the cuffs, and the scarf sealed around his neck.
He’d just wrapped it around like a fashion accessory and not the thing that would stop cold air from freezing a vulnerable part of his body.
“Walk me through what happened,” he said, sounding nothing like her lover in the night or a werewolf.
“There’s been three break-ins in the past month.”
“And Silver Spring will never recover from the shock,” he said dryly.
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t think they will. The first was at the hardware store, where Gary said some gold panning equipment, bleach, and fertilizer went missing.”
He took the hat out of her hand as she was lifting it toward his face and stuffed it on his head without comment. Then he held his arms wide. “Am I presentable, Mom?”
She made a face. “I didn’t think it could get worse than Patchouli.”
“What was the second break-in?”
“Right, the second break-in wasn’t a break-in, exactly. Some chemistry supplies at the high school went missing, which makes sense if it’s the Banks kid. Everyone knows he stole the janitor’s keys a year ago.”
“The bank had a child?”
She laughed, feeling a weird sort of grief that their time in this cabin was over. “No, the Banks family is the, well, you of Silver Spring.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The richest man in town.”
He laughed hysterically. “I am so far from being the richest man in New York.”
That genuinely horrified her. “Our country is completely messed up.”
She marched toward the door, and he caught her by the arm. “Hey, where are you going?”
“I’m going out to look for them!”
“Do you know where they are?”
She squinted at the visions she’d been getting all day. “I can See them. It’s driving me crazy. It’s snowing.” She tried to summon it, staring into the glass of the window, but she didn’t get anything else.
“Yes, but do you know where it is?”
She shook her head.
“So let’s figure this out. Keep talking.”
“How is it going to be useful to you to know that they stole outdoor equipment, a magnet, and chemicals?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“I don’t know yet. Which chemicals?”
“I don’t know what’s in fertilizer, but I know it was nitric acid from the high school.”
“What was the third break-in?” he asked.
“Oh yeah. The tax preparation front got hit.”
“Are you sure you know what your visions are about?” he asked, sounding as careful as he did talking to the stranger.
“Yes?”
“You’re saying a bunch of teenagers raided a tax preparation office in December?”
She crossed her arms. “I said a tax preparation front. They do do taxes for four months of the year, but the rest of the time, they’re a staging station for preppers.”
“For what?”
“Doomsday preppers. You know the ones who come to the mountains and think the end of the world is coming? 50-pound bags of rice? Dental equipment. I don’t know what all.”
“Guns?”
“Yes, but they didn’t steal those. Although this is second-hand information because the dude running it would obviously never confess to anyone, but I know someone who knows someone. You know how it goes.”
“I’m beginning to think I don’t have any idea how it goes,” he said and then opened the door.
“I still don’t know where to go,” she said.
“It is hot as hell in these garments.”
“Oh, yeah. They stole sleeping bags.”
“Okay,” he said with an odd tone.
“That just made sense to you?”
“I don’t know yet. And then they went out the day of the blizzard. But it wasn’t supposed to be quite as bad as it was. It was supposed to snow steadily.”
“Why does that matter?” she demanded.
“Where do you See them?” he asked.
“I just told you that I don’t know,” she said and threw up her hands.
“Are they outside?”
“They have to be!”
He shook his head. “No. That’s not what you said. You said you See them, but you don’t know where. Can you See around them at all? Are they out in the weather? Because chances are they wouldn’t be doing very well. Right? We’re not looking for bodies.”
She felt a surge of nausea. She closed her eyes and tried to think of the visions that she’d been dismissing, flashes of snow and fire. She thought she was looking at her own life, but it was the kids. She needed more.
She ran over to the sink and scrambled for a clear glass.
“Why did he only want pottery?” she asked, examining her options.
“What do you need?” he asked.
“Something clear.”
From his superior height, he glanced over the shelves of spices and pulled out what looked to be a recycled jam jar now full of nutmeg seeds.
“Aha!” she said and tipped them into the sink. As that musty, nutty flavor wafted through the room, she poured water into the glass and brought it up in front of her eyes. Then she closed her eyes and began to concentrate.
“So you need to look into a glass of water with closed eyes?”
She shook her head. “I need to focus first.”
“Sorry.”
She summoned her magic. It was so hard when she was so emotional and stressed, and she had to take four deep breaths until she had the smallest semblance of calm and opened her eyes.
She knew better than to ask where they were. Her magic was not that biddable. It was more like a slot machine. She pulled the handle and saw a few things related to her query.
Vague glimpses of a fire, a ring, and items stolen—now used—were coming into view, but it was all blurry.
“This isn’t helping,” she said, biting her lip.
Two hot, heavy hands landed on her shoulders, and he took a deep breath behind her. “Relax. You can do this.”
As his thumb brushed the skin of her neck, she gasped, and everything sharpened; she could feel a burst of magic within her.
They were making a fire. They barely had anything to burn. She watched fire bounce against rock.
She gasped and staggered away.
He looked equally gobsmacked as he shook out his fingers. “What the hell was that?”
“What was what?”
“It was like electricity. You didn’t feel that?”
Cat shook her head, unwilling to acknowledge what just happened. “They were indoors or under a rock. I don’t understand it.”
“They’re in a silver mine,” he said with a grin.
“How did you know that? You don’t know where you are. You’ve never been to the area, and you can’t even dress properly for winter!”
“They brought outdoor gear and mining equipment, and most importantly, they brought bleach, a strong magnet, and fertilizer and nitric acid, all of which can test for silver.”
She crossed her arms. “And the toothpaste?”
“Polishes it.”
“What are they thinking?” she asked, truly disturbed.
“And they headed out into what was supposed to be a serious but not insane snowstorm that would obscure any kind of surveillance cameras or alarms, and even if they went off, no one would come to look. So we’re looking for a modern site that isn’t currently being worked on. Somewhere behind a fence?”
“Argent Corp.,” she said with a start. Some corporation had bought land in the next valley over, intent on digging more silver out of the ground. There hadn’t been an active mine in the area since the 1920s, but they wanted to see if they could capitalize on the skyrocketing price of metals.
Except it was only a mile from the town center, and some things they were doing with the water had been affecting the aquifer, so they’d been tied up in legal challenges ever since, but they had cameras and fences protecting a hole in the ground.
“It has to be Argent Corp,” she said.
“The Latin word for silver.”
“How do you know this stuff?”
“I don’t know. It just sticks in my brain.”
“Come on, let’s go see.”
He froze at the threshold. “We don’t have to go searching. We found them.”
“I’m not calling in Search and Rescue based on a vision of mine plus your Jeopardy brain.”
“I’d be terrible at Jeopardy.”
“In the past five minutes, you’ve told me the Latin name for silver and how to detect it, and somehow deduced from a vision of a flickering flame on a rock and a stolen sleeping bag that I have local teenagers cosplaying as miners.
I am not taking that to the local authorities.
We are going to check ourselves. Besides, I have no way to contact them even if I did want to tell that story. ”
“Right. Let’s go.”