Chapter 3 #3
The FBI guys left the lights on in the Suburban, which lit up the conifers that edged the clearing. Snow on the ground backlit the parking area so it was easy to see.
She opened the side door. Her hand trembled as she reached for the bag that contained Summer Eastman’s small, white tennis shoe that SAR Coordinator Max Pasdeckie had provided.
She’d had one exactly like it as a child.
Exactly like it.
It thrust her back in time for a moment, and panic wedged itself at the back of her throat, threatened to choke her. Chance gave a little yip of concern. She swallowed. Forced the breath out slowly and found her center.
Nope.
Not here.
Not today.
She was not going to crumble. Not in front of this macho guy and his macho buddy. She closed the door. Walked around to the back of the Jeep. Looked at the operators.
“Don’t pet the dog when he’s working. He’ll sniff you, but don’t distract him with too much attention.”
The smiling man turned serious and stepped forward with his hand outstretched. “Operator Cas Demarco, Ranger Deacon. I’ll try not to distract your dog, but I’m a bit of a sucker for labs.”
“Call me Nora.” She shook his hand.
Sebastian continued to watch her, expressionless.
Chance loved people, and he especially loved SAR people, but he loved the work more. He wouldn’t get distracted from the search if he was wearing his jacket. However, she wanted to instill boundaries, to keep these Feds at arm’s length where they belonged.
She opened the rear cargo door and despite the circumstances and the audience, couldn’t resist smiling at her beloved canine partner. “Stay.”
She pulled out Chance’s work harness and long lead.
He eyed it with bright eyes and a doggy grin, even though they’d only recently come off another search.
She placed the harness over Chance’s head and fastened it around his ribs, felt his body quiver beneath her fingers for a few seconds before her beautiful dog assumed his calm, focused work persona.
She put protective booties on his feet since the forecast indicated snow.
He flicked a look of curiosity at the two men in uniform but held his stay.
She took out her flashlight and gloves and placed them on the ground. This was probably a waste of time.
Her mood sank.
She’d wanted to check this out alone because she didn’t want to look like an idiot or someone out for attention. They wouldn’t have missed her at the staging area, and she was in no more danger today than she had been yesterday.
Where was the FBI then? Where were they two decades ago?
She shut down her thoughts and attached Chance’s long leash, then bade him out of the car and locked it. Placed the key in a zippered pocket where it wouldn’t get lost or fall out on the trail miles from here.
Followed her routine, the one that kept her grounded and focused and sane.
“Sit. Stay.”
She carefully opened the plastic bag, let Chance insert his nose into it and sort through a billion different scent particles in one long sniff.
She always wondered what he thought when he smelled something.
How did he differentiate between the plastic and the human?
How did he filter the main scent from that of other secondary scents Summer would have picked up along the way?
His nose was like an olfactory supercomputer, and it fascinated her to watch him work.
She carefully closed the bag and stuffed it in her side pocket.
Chance sat obediently, nose scenting the air, body wired for action.
She wouldn’t risk him running too far ahead when the victim might be the hostage of someone who probably wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a dog.
But in the unlikely event that Eastman had been here yesterday, he’d be long gone by now, and Chance worked best when he had the ability to move fast.
The problem was Nora’s being able to keep up with him.
It was early, and she’d hear any vehicles that approached, so she dropped the lead. “Find.”
Chance immediately put his nose to the ground and weaved back and forth in ever wider figures of eight. She picked up the flashlight and followed the dog’s path with the powerful beam of light.
It hadn’t started to snow yet, but that was only a few hours away. She could smell it in the air. See it in the color and shape and movement of the clouds.
The two men moved closer behind her even as they held their silence. She ignored them, or tried to.
Chance milled at the opposite side of the clearing near the woods then whirled back as if his nose had been hooked on a fishing line. He made a beeline for the trail they’d hiked yesterday and sat with his head high and tail pumping.
Oh, hell.
Dread iced along her spine even as she hurried over to reward him. She gave him a big hug and kiss and then a biscuit. “Good boy.”
“What’s that mean?” Sebastian growled.
She straightened. “It means he found the scent I asked him to find, here, and marked the direction of travel.”
“How do you know he’s not alerting on the fact the two of you hiked here yesterday?”
“Perhaps the fact that we’ve trained for thousands of hours and know what we’re doing?”
“You’re absolutely certain?” His expression was focused. Intense.
“I’d stake my life on it.” She held his gaze in the half light. She couldn’t read the dark depths of his eyes.
“You’re staking Summer Eastman’s life on it, so you better be sure.”
Dammit. What if Chance had made a mistake? What if he’d smelled someone else on that shoe—a classmate, a teacher? She looked at her dog as he stared determinedly up the trail that he loved to hike, and for a second she doubted him, doubted them both.
But she knew her dog. She trusted her dog. A thousand times more than she trusted these strangers who’d come rushing into town to “save” Summer.
“Chance told me Summer was here recently.” She frowned and looked around. “Another question is how did she get here?”
Her brain flashed back to a memory. Musty, suffocating blankets. Overwhelming drowsiness and lingering nausea.
It startled her.
That was new.
A detail she hadn’t remembered before.
For so long, the story of her own abduction had been just that.
A story. A tale told as if about another person.
She’d blocked out the reality—that’s what her therapist had told her and the detectives investigating the case.
Walled it up. Erased it. But it turned out those memories weren’t erased.
They’d been suppressed, sure, but they were coming back now, more and more frequently.
Nothing concrete. Nothing clear. Vague and disjointed like a puzzle with missing pieces.
But those missing pieces had started to crowd into her dreams and turn them into nightmares.
Her heart raced.
She didn’t know why they were coming back now, but she pushed them aside. She didn’t have time to deal with her own past. Not when another young girl was at risk.
“Perhaps someone dropped them off?” Sebastian Black’s voice held reluctant interest now, but he was far from convinced.
“Maybe.” She looked over to where Chance had initially started his search. She picked up her dog’s leash. “Let’s see.”
She headed toward the far woods, dog at her side, the two men close behind. She held up her forearm to push past the branches of the first few trees, the scent of pine filling the air as her boots sank deeper into the snow.
She almost tripped and felt a strong hand steady her arm. Couldn’t see his face, but knew it was Sebastian Black.
“Careful.”
She swallowed the knot that had formed in her throat. Turned back to her dog. Trusted him to do the work much faster than they could. Unclipped his leash.
“Find.”
Chance dashed off to search for rafts of scent that would have fallen off the girl if she’d walked here.
He headed back to the trailhead for a brief moment, and she squeezed her fingers into fists.
She didn’t want to influence his behavior or direction.
She trusted him to work out that she wanted to follow the trail in the other direction now.
He came back toward them, weaving across the ground in front of her before settling on a direction—where a furrow had been carved in the snow by humans or wildlife, or both.
She strode forward, and the men followed. Chance looked back at them regularly to make sure they were still with him.
Keep up. He seemed to say. Keep up.
She tried. Really, she did. And Chance was well trained enough not to go too far ahead.
Lack of an assistant meant she had to look out for obstacles as well as follow her dog, and she was slower than she wanted to be, especially as she was cutting a new trail parallel to the other one to preserve evidence if Chance discovered something.
“Is he tracking her footsteps?”
“No.” She ran her flashlight beam through the trees and mentally assessed the area.
If she remembered correctly, there was an old logging road in this direction and a couple of houses not too far away with driveways down to the main road.
A mile was a long way in deep snow, and she was already tired.
She wasn’t sure she had the energy reserves to go too far without fueling up, but she had to keep going.
Chance showed no such ill effects.
How would a nine-year-old child cope?
Chance stood firm about twenty feet away, wagged his tail and once again waited for them to catch up.
She shone her flashlight and spotted a reflection deep in the shadows. Glass or metal. A vehicle.
Sebastian thrust her flashlight down, and she flicked it off.
She felt the tension rise in the two men as they eased silently ahead of her.