Page 82 of South of Nowhere

—North of 50 percent.

And the Bear risk, capitalB?

Had he noticed the bright blue car and flagged her down?

The odds?

—Unknowable.

Consequences if he did?

Not good.

They returned to the main tent. He asked Starr, “TC have eyes on Bear?”

She called and Shaw could tell from the conversation that he was at the mine but could not locate the man.

The officer said, “You want me to tell him anything?”

“If he does spot him and he leaves, text me right away. I need to know where he is.”

She relayed the information.

Shaw told Dorion, Tolifson and Starr he was going to look for the woman.

No one objected, which he’d half expected. Then again he was here, risking his life, as a volunteer—and hehadsaved the Garveys. There could be no problem with him saving someone else.

If he could.

He told Millwood, “I’m going to start where she was last seen, after she got off the levee.” He nodded to the pile of sand and the burlap bags on the far edge of the levee. “I’ll go south from there.”

“I’m coming with you,” the man said firmly.

Shaw said that wasn’t necessary. He would do the initial search and then decide if Millwood and a search party would be of any help.

“It’s my fiancée. I’m going with you. I’ll just follow you if you don’t agree.”

Shaw had a rule that offerors never accompany him.

It added unnecessary complications to the search.

Shaw looked into the man’s eyes. The worddesperationdidn’t come close to describing what he saw.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s go find her.”

35.

Colter Shaw was speeding toward the other side of Hinowah, with the shadow of the levee on his left.

Shadowwas figurative, as the rain clouds had excised every bit of sunlight from the village. But the earthworks nonetheless cast the presence of an ominous dark force.

He glanced up at the towering mass, rising close to a hundred feet above him, covered with the sheen of flowing water, gray and glistening like fish skin.

He tugged the throttle a little higher.

And then he was on the other side of the spillway bridge and shooting up the steep road to Route 13. He caught a bit of air, then skidded to a stop near a pile of sand, going perpendicular to the direction of travel, which afforded a good view of the waterfall from a different perspective. Looking north—in the direction of the command post and his Winnebago—was a far more dramatic perspective. The levee seemed particularly fragile, the Never Summer particularly hostile.

The sand truck was gone and so were Sergeant Tamara Olsen’s corporals. He’d learned from Dorion that the trio had rooms at amotel in Fort Pleasant, and Williams and McPherson had gone there to change into dry uniforms.

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