Page 44 of Torch Songs

Guthrie stared at her. “Who’s us?”

Maureen laughed a little. “That’s another story, and you don’t look like you’d care. But if you and your friend—”

“I’m Guthrie, and this is April,” he said, realizing she was about to do something really generous, and she didn’t even know their names.

“Nice to meet you. So, if don’t mind waiting for the medical supplies—”

“And here they are!” Annie said happily, taking the soft-shelled cooler from a young Black man who was already running back to wherever he’d sprung from. “Thanks, Jed. Here you go, Maureen.” She gave Guthrie and April a sympathetic look. “I’d follow Maureen if I were you. Her father is the undersheriff, and he’s stuck down in the canyon too. If they’re sending down care packages, there’s got to be somebody at the rescue site who can give you an explanation, okay?”

Guthrie nodded and turned to April. “Did you still need to pee?”

“It just crawled back up,” she said, her eyes huge. “One more place? Guthrie, I’mhungry.”

“We’re stopping for burgers. The guys in the canyon arealsostarving.” Maureen George was so perky Guthrie almost wanted to smack her.

Guthrie took a deep breath instead. Yes, it had been alongassedday. Yes, this was one more destination in the scavenger hunt that had become their search for Tad. But this nice girl seemed to have a line on the rescue operation, and if nothing else, she knew where to findfood.

He was weary to every molecule of his being. His joints ached. His head was pounding. His stomach churned. And here they were, one more chase. One more destination. One more motherfucking lead.

“Lead the way,” he said.

“Awesome.” This Maureen George person seemed to be made out of puppy dog tails because she was perky like it was morning and she was coffee.

“Here,” Guthrie told her, reaching his hand for the pack. “Let me take that. Least I could do.”

GUTHRIETHOUGHThe was tired, but ten minutes later he had to admit the very pregnant woman now sitting shotgun in the pickup seemed to have him beat.

When they’d gotten out to the vehicles, it had seemed logical to split up; Guthrie and his very convenient pickup truck were going to get sleeping bags and warm clothes for the people stranded in the canyon, and the people Maureen had come with were going to get burgers. They’d all meet at someone’s house (Guthrie was a little fuzzy onwhosehouse) and plan from there. April was exhausted and, he was pretty sure, about done with his fucking noisy, bouncy pickup truck, so he’d suggested she ride with Maureen, because compared to the last eight hours, a minivan seemed the height of comfort.

Maureen had surprised him then by picking up on April’s mood. The young man behind the wheel had a crooked nose and a crooked jaw… and wide, fathomless brown eyes that had taken in April’s pinched, on-the-edge-of-the-cliff features with one sweep and had nodded her to the back seat, with a sort of mute promise to stay off her last nerve.

And that left Guthrie with Olivia Larkin-McDaniels, his guide through the darkened land of no streetlights, no city lights, and a whole lot of stars.

And also an amazing font of information about what in the hell had happened to Tad.

When she was done giving her snarky,pithyexplanation, Guthrie wanted to shake her and yell, “Are youfuckingkidding me?” but he couldn’t. Besides the fact that this whole situation wasnother fault, two people she loved were down in the canyon with Tad, and she and Maureen, and even the quiet Berto, were all working really hard to hold on to their shit.

Tad and Chris had been called up to help the Sheriff of Colton County, Eamon Mills. Thursday morning, after the local high school had graduated and a freaked-out parent had realizedhis son wasn’t at the ceremony. Sheriff Mills—with the help of Olivia’s father, the principal of the high school—had tracked the kid to a local meth house that backed up against Daffodil Canyon. Maureen’s father—the Undersheriff of Colton County—hadn’t been able to help in the search, because he and Olivia’s father were hosting a giant to-do for the graduating class.

Guthrie had grown up in a small town. He knew high school graduation was a big fucking deal. To have a party hosted by the undersheriff and the principal wasn’t something either one of those people could walk away from. But Sheriff Mills hadn’t trusted all his men, either, so he’d called in Tad’s partner and more backup.

Which hadn’t stopped him from getting shot. Eamon Mills was apparently out of surgery and expected to make a full recovery, but in the meantime, the undersheriff had gone to the scene of the shooting along with Tad and some of the borrows from SAC PD to investigate further. Somebody had shot at them, and Tad and Undersheriff George had gone sliding down into the canyon, or “the giant fucking gravel pit” as Olivia referred to it, bitterness in her voice. The place was an ecological disaster. The surface was loose shale and scree, and while trees grew upright, that was because they had taproots that punched through the granite, so the canyon was pretty inhospitable.

Soinhospitable that when Olivia’s father had gone driving down on a service road to see if he could reach Tad and Undersheriff George, the road had collapsed under his car wheels, andhe’dgone sliding down to a lower level than the other two people trapped in the pit in the first place.

Getting them out was next to impossible. Like the news blog had reported, a helicopter would shoot up the gravel and loose rock in the rotor wash, and that was too dangerous to risk. The lip of the “canyon” was crumbling; any rope or rescue harness lowered to the injured had the potential to bring half the canyonwalls tumbling down on their heads. And there were injuries all around. Maureen’s dad had a still-bleeding cut on his leg. Larx—Olivia’s dad—had a massive concussion. And Tad apparently had a bullet in his ass.

Oh, and the kid they’d been looking for was under a tree, although whether that was voluntary or the tree hadfallenon him, Olivia didn’t know.

All of that—allof it—and Guthrie’s big takeaway still seemed to be “Wait, so your dad and Maureen’s dad are together?”

They were a couple. The whole town knew. He’d asked her if that was just…okay,and her response?

“It’s had its moments.”

And that was all. But Olivia and Maureen weren’t only upset about their respectivefathers,they were upset about theirparents, as a team, and as Guthrie piloted the pickup truck through the darkness to Olivia’sfathers’house, he had to swallow against a lump in his throat.

Sure. Apparently, some people got shitty about it—Guthrie knew all about that on a gut level. But just like in Seth and Kelly’s family, some people had family rooting for them.

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