Backcountry Read online

  She rested a hand on Justin’s shoulder. Her fingers were weak from adrenaline; but under her grip the boy felt like a solid knot of muscles. “I can understand why you feel that way, and you have reason to be mad. But you did insult him first. And what would beating up Nick accomplish?”

  He glared at her like she was a dimwit. “Respect.”

  “I know about your past, Justin. Do you want to end up in jail?”

  He bristled. “I can’t let anyone get away with—”

  “Justin, do you respect your father?”

  The teen scowled at her for a moment more, his eyes burning. Then he lowered his gaze to his lap. His pants had dark splashes of blood on the thighs. “Gex.”

  After a few minutes more, Nick and Maya were back, both uncertainly watching Justin. The smaller boy’s cheek and jaw were swollen, the blotchy redness already giving way to purple. Maya, her gaze fixed on Nick, jerked her chin toward Justin.

  “Sorry.” Nick’s voice was barely audible.

  “You should be,” Justin snarled. He stared over Nick’s head into the distance.

  “I wanted you to see that I can aim,” Nick said.

  Justin snorted and faced the other boy. “I was kidding, for chrissakes. Why the gex are you so sensitive?”

  Nick turned on his heel, shooting a look at Maya. “I’ll be in my tent.” He strode off.

  Sam pondered for a minute whether or not to insist that Justin apologize to Nick for punching him, but decided to leave the situation alone. After kicking apart the bocce ball court to keep the campsite as pristine as possible, the kids read or wrote in their journals and eventually went to bed.

  Sam fretted. Should she take away the two boys’ Navigator status? Would she be held liable for Justin’s and Nick’s injuries? Would Troy? The poor man had enough trouble. She didn’t want to tell him what had happened, but postponing the news could potentially get her in more trouble, so after asking Aidan to check on Justin during the night to be sure he wasn’t concussed and unconscious, she carried her phone into the woods to report in.

  “Don’t worry,” Troy reassured her. “As long as they’re ambulatory when we give them back, the parents are usually grateful. We had one who ended up in a sling after dislocating his shoulder.”

  “It all happened so fast. I never expected it.” She felt for the parents of these teens. “Nick is so quiet most of the time.”

  “You have to remember that they’re broken when we get them, Sam. And neither the parents nor the kids are ever totally honest about all their hot buttons.” There was a pause. “Kim was better at drawing them out than I’ll ever be.”

  Sam knew how he felt. The rock throwing incident would probably not have happened if Kyla had been in charge. “I never saw it coming, Troy. They were all getting along so well. And we’re so close to the end.”

  “Sometimes that’s when they’re the most self-destructive, Sam. Some of them don’t want to go home.”

  “Is it safe to do the final solo campout tomorrow night?”

  “That’s the program. Put Nick and Justin as far apart as you can. And then watch ‘em like a hawk.”

  Lovely, she thought. She stashed her cell phone back in her pocket and began the trudge back to camp. She studied the sky. The clouds had briefly risen during the evening, but now they’d lowered again. There would be no stars and no moon visible tonight. The dreariness matched her mood.

  She was a very weary hawk.

  Chapter 15

  Sporting multicolor bruises and scabs on swollen faces, Justin and Nick circled each other warily the next morning. Sam kept a close eye on them throughout the rainy day’s lessons on basic first aid. Feeling a bit like a first grade teacher, she assigned Olivia and Taylor to work with Justin on splinting and bandaging, and teamed Ashley and Gabriel and Nick.

  She had two real injured victims to use as patients, so she showed the crew how to dress the cut on Justin’s head with butterfly bandages and an overlying gauze pad, and how to check for concussions and brain injuries such as strokes. Justin clearly enjoyed the extra attention. Nick seemed embarrassed.

  “But if the person can’t hold both arms up,” Taylor asked, pressing down on Justin’s arms as he sat with his eyes closed, “what are you supposed to do with them?”

  Excellent question, and this was probably why these lessons weren’t part of the backcountry first aid course. Sam wasn’t sure what the answer was. “Give them aspirin and call for help,” she hedged. Or was that the recommendation for heart attack?

  “But we don’t have cell phones,” Gabriel reminded her.

  “If you can’t call, and there’s more than one of you who is still ambulatory, send one person for help and have one person stay with the victim to keep the victim warm and awake.”

  “What if something happens to the person who goes for help?” Ashley asked. “It would be just my luck to be stuck with you,” she complained to her victim, Nick. “While Gabriel got eaten by a bear on his way to get help.”

  “And they lived happily ever after, all alone in the deep woods,” Nick warbled in a high voice.

  “But seriously,” Olivia said, “what if there are only two of you left?”

  “Make the patient as comfortable as possible, and then save yourself and try to get help,” Sam said. “You just have to do the best you can.”

  “What if someone gets attacked by a bear?”

  “What about when someone gets shot?”

  Yeesh, the constant questioning was irritating. How did parents do this? By noon, she was eager to send her whole crew on their second and last solo campout.

  She and Aidan and Maya led the crew off one by one, careful to position Nick and Justin as far apart as possible. Which wasn’t far enough for Sam, plus it put Taylor and Ashley too close to Justin for comfort, but it couldn’t be helped. She reminded them all about the possibility of bears and mountain lions prowling after dark, hoping that would keep them from wandering. She and Aidan and Maya would just have to check on them several times during the twenty-four hour solo period instead of only once.

  * * * * *

  Chase Perez sprawled across the hotel bed to focus on Summer’s return call. As usual, earlier he had to leave her a text message. She didn’t call him back until it was nearly eleven his time.

  “Sorry,” she puffed in his ear. “I had to climb to the top of the ridge to get a signal. “Where are you?”

  “Kalispell, Montana. See, we’re getting closer, only one time zone apart tonight. I’ve got an interesting case, investigating drug smuggling from Canada down though the Flathead Reservation.

  “And you’re with your people.”

  “Drug smugglers?” He knew she was referring to his Lakota heritage, but Lakotas and Flatheads were as different as coyotes and wolves, and he couldn’t resist giving her a hard time.

  “Well, no, of course not! Sorry, Chase, I didn’t mean to imply...”

  “Stop apologizing, Summer, I’m just yanking your chain. It’s interesting to see how different tribes live and govern.” He wished he were more at ease on reservations. Having been raised in the suburbs of Boise with a Lakota mother and a Mexican father, visiting a “rez” made him feel like a pretend Indian. “How’s the Camping with Criminals program going?”

  “The kids are on their last solo campouts tonight. Then we’ve got one more night together, and I’m done. Last night one kid beaned another with a rock, but today is going better than I would have expected.”

  “Maybe you’ve found a new career,” he suggested.

  “No way. It gives me a headache just to think about that. And both Maya and Troy tell me I got a pretty easy bunch to deal with.”

  “No sign of Heigler?”

  “No.” They’d seen no hunters since moving. “I guess the relocation fixed that. If he was ever really here at all.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  She didn’t want to explain her suspicions about Aidan placing that note.


  “And Callahan? You’re getting along with him?”

  “He’s disappeared a couple of times, which pisses me off, but never for long. Probably talking to a girlfriend or something; he has a cell phone. And frankly, I’ve wanted to disappear more than once, too. This twenty-four hour togetherness grates on my nerves.”

  “Good to know,” he murmured. He’d had dinner this evening with the head of the resident FBI agency, Rueben Farmer, and his wife, Jenny. When Chase had remarked on the variety of places the Farmer family had been posted to, Reuben’s wife had smiled and patted her husband’s arm affectionately, saying, “That’s what I signed up for.”

  Her devotion to her husband and his agency career was depressing.

  On the other end of the phone conversation, Summer was apologizing again. “I didn’t mean togetherness with you, Chase. We both know how to give each other space.”

  “Yes, we’ve each got plenty of space.” She had the mountains and coastline and the mild weather and political climate she favored; he had a job that involved roaming over three states.

  “You’re scaring me,” she said. “I promise that I will come see you in Salt Lake as soon as I’m done here.”

  “That sounds good. When I’m home.” He wanted to see her every time he was home. He loved his job, but maybe there was some sort of equivalent, if not in Bellingham, at least in Washington State. He’d check the Homeland Security website; see if he could surreptitiously search for openings and not irritate his ASAC any further.

  “We’ll make it happen, Chase. Somehow. I’ve been thinking about it. Maybe we could do a trial run; maybe I could stay in Salt Lake for a few weeks and see.”

  “I don’t want you to sacrifice anything for me.” The words sounded a bit sarcastic, even to him, although he knew he meant them.

  After a pause, she said, “Te quiero, Chase. I mean that. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, querida. Stay safe.”

  * * * * *

  As she trudged her way back to her tent, Sam heard pebbles skittering behind her. She froze, turned, pushed up her headlamp to shine its beam into the distance. Another crack sounded in the trees off to her right, a branch breaking underfoot. She twisted sharply and saw a flash of movement in the woods, pale, then dark.

  Whatever it was vanished. She replayed the vision in her brain, but couldn’t bring it into focus. First dark hide, perhaps, then the flash of white. A deer she’d spooked, most likely. But cougars also had white bellies and fronts, tails with black tips. Not a bear, anyway. Something running. Fleeing from her. Running away from the humans, not toward the group camp. She hustled back to her tent.

  Sleep was hard to come by that night. Sam dreamed about looking for lost people: she’d snatch a glimpse of them but could never quite catch up to them. Disembodied voices shouted “Sam!”

  Waking up with a start, she stared at the green nylon overhead. What was that about? Teaching search techniques earlier today, or because she had recently lost friends, or because she was afraid she was going to lose Chase?

  “Sam!” the urgent voice murmured again.

  Maya was crouched outside her tent. Damn, she hadn’t dreamt it after all.

  Sam rolled over and peered out. “Yeah?”

  “Nick and Olivia are gone.”

  Chapter 16

  Alarm bells went off in Sam’s head. She quickly pulled on her clothes and scooted out into the damp morning. At four a.m., it was still dark. Dense fog snaking between the trees made it seem even darker.

  She walked with Maya to the solo camps. Olivia’s and Nick’s tents were empty. Olivia’s pack was gone, too.

  “Shit!” Sam cursed, staring at the vacant campsite. “Aidan said they were all in their tents when he checked at ten p.m. What made you get up and check, Maya?”

  The girl shrugged. “Just a feeling. The closer we get to the end, the less Olivia’s eating and the quieter she gets.”

  Sam had noticed that as well. “I’ve been worried about Nick, too.”

  “When I saw Olivia’s tent was empty, I went to the next, Nick’s. The others are all still there.”

  “We got runners?” Aidan’s voice came from behind them, startling them both.

  “How could they?” Sam couldn’t believe it. Troy and Maya had told her about other expeditions where kids hightailed it during the wee hours. She’d halfway expected escape attempts by Ashley and maybe Justin, but Nick and Olivia? And why now? Only one more one day and night remained in their expedition. They were so close to completing this journey. “I thought they were both preparing themselves.”

  “Guess they were.” Aidan scratched his beard. “You never know what they’re thinking.”

  Sam’s stomach was roiling. The dark. The fog. The teens could fall off a cliff; that happened to hikers walking in the dark in unfamiliar terrain. They could drown in a river or creek; every stream was swollen and swift after the storm, they were camped near several watercourses. They could meet that cougar from the lookout; they were probably still in its territory.

  “You’ve had runners before?” she asked Aidan and Maya.

  “Yeah,” Aidan said. “We usually call the rangers and the highway patrol and we catch up with them sooner or later, usually hitchhiking on the nearest road.”

  Sam groaned. “We’re a long way from any road.”

  “We’ve never lost anyone permanently,” he assured her.

  She couldn’t lose two kids. Kyla had never lost two kids, had she? And Nick and Olivia? They both seemed so responsible. They couldn’t be runners.

  “We’re not calling 9-1-1,” she told her peer counselors. “At least not yet.”

  She yanked at the cord around her neck, pulled the whistle up out of her shirt and blew it long and hard. “Aidan, go get Taylor and Gabriel. Maya, you get Ashley. I’ll take Justin.” He was camped in the closest solo site. “Make them dress appropriately and grab their headlamps and a water bottle, too. Make sure they have their whistles around their necks. Meet at the group site ASAP.”

  “What the gex is going on?” Justin’s voice was even deeper than usual as he crawled out of his tent.

  “Get your headlamp and water bottle. This is your chance to be a hero, Dragon Man.”

  “Can’t I do that later? Noon might work for me.” He yawned dramatically as he stuffed his shirt into his pants.

  “Put on your boots and jacket, and follow me.”

  As she was grabbing supplies and their remaining rope from the bear box in the group site, the rest of her crew emerged out of the mist. Ashley’s hair was wild, Gabriel hadn’t tied his boots and Taylor had jammed the zipper on her rain jacket. Sam handed them each a packet of granola bars.

  “What is this, a fire drill?” Justin yawned again.

  Gabriel guessed, “Alien invasion?”

  Taylor and Ashley shifted from foot to foot, chafing their arms to warm up.

  “This is not a drill,” she told them. “It’s a real search. Nick and Olivia are missing.”

  Justin raised both eyebrows. “Lightning and Martini ran away? Sweet.”

  “It’s not sweet, and we don’t know that they ran away,” Sam told them. “They might be in trouble somewhere.”

  “Oh, they’re in trouble all right,” Aidan said.

  “They need our help, crew. Gabriel, tie your boots; you’re with Aidan. Ash and Taylor, you’re with Maya. Justin, you’re with me. Aidan, Maya, carry your cell phones.”

  “What? They have cell phones, too?” Gabriel was astonished. “Didn’t you tell us only the captain could have electronic?”

  Sam ignored him. “Let’s go find them.”

  Unfortunately, they were camped near a T intersection where a side path met the main trail they’d taken the day before, so there were three options about which way the two escapees had fled. Sam assigned Aidan’s team and her own to head in opposite directions down the trail the kids had traveled for the last two days, reasoning the runaways might pick the most familiar route.
“Blow your whistles if you find them, and call me on my cell. Maya, you and Ashley and Taylor take the intersecting trail. We’ll search for an hour and a half, and then check in before going farther.”

  “Copy that,” Aidan said.

  Maya nodded. “Got it.”

  It took eighty minutes of stumbling around in the brush, darkness, and fog before Sam heard a whistle. Then two more whistles.

  Sam’s cell buzzed. “Got ‘em,” Maya said. “We’re at the creek.”

  “Are they okay?”

  “Mostly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’ll see. You’ve got the rope, right?” Maya asked.

  “In my pack. Call Aidan and keep blowing your whistles so we can all find each other.”

  “Roger that. Hurry.”

  It took nearly another hour for Sam and Justin to follow the whistles back to the creek. Maya stood with Taylor and Ashley on the crest of the river bank, gazing down into the narrow channel the river had carved.

  “Damn,” Sam said. “The trail’s completely gone.”

  The creek channel was known to be unstable, especially in periods after heavy rain. The soil was extremely soft and sandy here, ground into powder by ancient glaciers. Conditions shifted with the seasons. Most years, the trail had to be rebuilt to cross the creek. She had planned to take the long route around this area to their last campsite at a lake.

  Nick and Olivia were on all fours about fifty feet down the steep slope, their hands and feet invisible, buried in the soft earth. A boulder rested a few yards down the slope from them, perched on the edge of a sharp vertical bank that dumped into the raging creek. The water surged beneath them, as wide and deep as the main river now, carving out a huge chunk of the sandy bank as they watched. As the earth collapsed into the stream, the boulder slid further down the slope. So did Olivia. Shrieking, she reached for Nick’s ankle above her, and they both slid a foot closer to the roiling water.

  “Every time they move, they slide,” Maya said.

  Aidan and Gabriel arrived just as Sam was pulling the rope out of her pack.