Page 17 of Forever Finds Us
“Misty. Misty Summers.”
Roxanne smiled at Misty. “I’m Roxi and this is Brand, Bax, and Bea.” She motioned toward me, my brother, and Bea. “Okay, so Evan and Misty, you stay here, and we’ll work our way around your position, see if we can find anything else.”
“Good plan,” Evan said. “If y’all find somethin’”—he looked at Bax, Bea, and me one at a time—“don’t touch anything. Just stay with the evidence and call it out to us.”
Bax and Bea took off, and Roxanne and I followed, staying several yards behind and to the right of their path. After about twenty minutes of traversing around trees, knocking low branches out of our faces, getting scratched and dirty, and trying not to get tangled up in bushes, we couldn’t see Bax and Bea anymore and could barely hear them.
I moved closer to Roxanne. “How are you holdin’ up?” She’d been eerily silent, and I felt the need to hear her voice again.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I just really hope we f—” She stopped fast, and this time I did smack into her back, and my breath punched out and whispered over her neck.
“What is it?” I asked quietly, my hands on Roxanne’s hips to steady her, but I realized I needed the connection just as much.
“A wolf.”
She shined her light ahead of us, and I peered over her shoulder toward the huge bases of two trees standing next to each other. The roots of one tree had grown over the other’s, like the tentacles of a hungry octopus, and they’d created a basin between the tree trunks. Low to the ground at the end of our flashlights’ glare, two unblinking eyes glowed in the dark, and we heard the hair-raising warning growl of the animal. Tucked behind it, a person lay curled into a ball in the basin.
The wolf was guarding Natalie.
“Shit,” Roxanne breathed. “I really don’t wanna have to shoot that animal.”
“Here,” I said, and I pulled the bear spray still tucked inside my jacket pocket. She probably had some strapped to her belt or her vest, but mine was readily available.
I handed the canister to her slowly, and she flipped the safety up with her thumb easily, obviously practiced with bear spray. The natural capsaicin wouldn’t hurt the wolf, but it would annoy the shit out of its sensitive olfactory receptors.
“Oh God.” Roxanne looked up to the sky for a second, like she was pleading with it. “Please don’t let this girl be dead.”
But before she could disperse the spray, the wolf rose carefully from the dirt. Not taking its eyes off us, it shifted closer to Natalie still lying motionless behind it and moved its head in her direction, scenting the air. It let out another low growl and then loped off suddenly and disappeared into the trees.
We rushed to Natalie, and Roxanne searched her body for any signs of injury or bloody wolf bites, and she checked her pulse with two fingers on the girl’s wrist.
“Thank God,” she whispered. “She’s alive.”
Roxanne pulled the radio transmitter from her shoulder and called in that we’d found Natalie and that the medics should get the exact coordinates from Evan.
“Natalie,” she urged, caressing the girl’s dark, tangled hair out of her face. Leaves and twigs had been embedded in it, and she was covered in smudges of dirt. Her sweatshirt and jeans had been ripped and torn, like maybe she’d fallen at some point and got caught on trees or rocks, and one of her tennis shoes was missing. “Can you hear me?”
I stood guard in case the wolf came back, but I had a feeling it had run away from us pesky humans as fast as it could.
Natalie moaned when Roxanne said her name again. “C-cold,” she stammered. “Fell. My ankle. Couldn’t go further. S-so tired.”
“I’m Deputy Roxanne Fitts with the Teton County Sheriff’s Department. A lot of people have been lookin’ for you.”
“Where’s m-my mom and dad?” Natalie asked meekly, her teeth chattering. “They’re gonna be so mad at me.” She barely looked like the same girl I’d met and eaten breakfast with yesterday. Her face was flushed from the cold but looked a little gaunt, and she had dark circles under her eyes and a long, angry scrape across the side of her face.
“They’re waitin’ for you,” Roxanne assured her, “and they’re gonna be ecstatic that we found you. We’ll get you back to your family soon, but try to stay still, okay? The paramedics are on their way.”
Natalie began to sob, her whole body shaking with the force of her relief, and if I wasn’t wrong, Roxanne was trying to blink back tears, too, but I didn’t think she’d let them fall.
I had learned quickly that Deputy Roxanne Fitts took pride in her job. She would always do it to the best of her ability, and she didn’t joke around when it came to public safety.
I removed my jacket and handed it to her, and she draped it over Natalie, and then she pulled a plastic packet from an inside pocket lining her own jacket. She ripped the packet open with her teeth and pulled out a square that looked like folded aluminum foil, unfolded it, and tucked the mylar blanket around Natalie to keep her body heat in.
Just then, we heard the rush of barking search dogs in the distance, and within twenty minutes, the area was crawling with SAR volunteers and law enforcement. Medics assessed Natalie, and they loaded her onto a stretcher. She screamed when they stabilized her broken ankle, but they had to before they attempted to carry her from the woods.
Her parents were notified that Natalie had been found alive, and we heard her mother over the sheriff’s radio, sobbing as relief washed through her.
As the teams headed off to reunite Natalie with her family and get her to the hospital in Jackson, Roxanne and I stood motionless, staring at each other.
