Page 16 of Forever Finds Us
But I nudged him back.
“You got the right shoes for a midnight hike,” I said, looking down at his worn, tan work boots. I imagined him wearing them with a pair of roughed-in jeans and a dirty white T-shirt on a construction site somewhere, sweat running down his neck as he lifted raw lumber, and a tingle sparked between my legs.
And when he turned his ball cap backwards and nodded, I practically groaned out loud. “Just keep your ankles loose, and if you get scared in the dark, you can hold my hand.”
Chapter Six
Brand
Following behind Roxanne, watching her long, limber legs eat up the trail was some kind of punishment.
I had no clue what I’d done to piss off the fates or God or whoever was in charge of my destiny, but it seemed I’d ticked somebody off well and good because I couldn’t seem to focus on anything else besides getting my hands on them and possibly my mouth.
Roxanne Fitts was utterly distracting.
But the statuesque beauty was nothing but business now as she charged forward, occasionally looking over her shoulder to make sure her followers stayed in tow, but she never stopped moving. Up until this very moment, I had considered myself in extremely good shape, but Roxanne was proving me wrong with each sure step she took while I stumbled to keep up.
Time to focus.
The beams of our flashlights crisscrossed each other, searching the woods and ground for any sign of Natalie Manning. Occasionally, we stopped to drink water and catch our breath, but the mood between the four of us was serious. The darker the night became and the lower the temperature dropped, the more intense it got. If we hadn’t been moving and working up a sweat, we would’ve been freezing.
Rocks and tree roots tried to trip me, but I’d taken Roxanne’s advice to heart and kept my body loose as best as I could. The way utter blackness clung to the tree trunks and how even the moon seemed to hide from it above the tops of their boughs was worrying. Outside the glow from our torches, there was so much country we couldn’t see, but we called for Natalie over and over, hoping that if she was close, she’d hear us.
When we began, we’d heard the sloshing of the water against the shore and occasionally caught glimpses of Jenny Lake. We’d seen other searchers’ flashlights. From far away, they looked almost like faint Christmas lights or glowbugs flitting through the trees, but we’d been searching for a while and were further away from the lake now, almost to where the Jenny Lake Trail connected to the Cascade Creek Trail.
Memories of hiking these trails with my brothers and sister when we were teenagers swarmed me as we walked, and a little bit of the belonging I used to feel to my home grew inside me. Maybe I’d just been away too long. Maybe now that I’d come home, the feeling of knowing I was right where I needed to be would find me. And it wasn’t lost on me that the circumstance entangling my hometown and what a month ago I would’ve referred to as drama, had cleared my mind of business.
Nothing mattered more than finding the lost girl.
I had no signal, but according to my phone, we’d been at it for more than two hours with nothing to show for it when Roxanne halted in front of me. I almost ran right into her, but we stopped, and she shushed me when I tried to ask what was wrong. She closed her eyes, trying to hear something in the night.
Tipping her head the slightest bit to her left, she let out some kind of high-pitched, two-syllable whistle, and a responding “Hey-oh” floated back to us from deep in the trees.
Roxanne shined her light in the same direction. She veered off our trail, and Bax, Bea, and I followed closely. Soon we came upon a man and woman dressed in Search and Rescue gear, their yellow jackets glaring under the moon’s elusive glow, and I immediately recognized the man crouching and studying something near the ground.
“Evan? Evan Moran?”
Evan turned his head and looked up at me, squinting. It had been years, but he still looked like the same cowboy I’d known in high school, except instead of a cowboy hat, tonight he’d swapped it for a Teton County SAR beanie. “Yeah? Who’s that?”
“Brand Lee, man. Long time no see.”
He stood, trying to see me in the dark without flashing his light in my face. “Brand Lee? Shit, ain’t you a blast from the past. How you been?”
“Good—”
“I’m sorry for interruptin’ this heartfelt reunion,” Roxanne said, exasperated with us both, “but Evan, why were you down in the dirt? Did you find somethin’?”
The woman with Evan hadn’t yet spoken, but she shined her light on a low bush and I saw a flash of purple—a shoelace.
“The girl’s been here,” Evan said, “or near enough.”
Bax and Bea rushed forward to look, and my heart kicked into overdrive.
Evan and Bax shook hands, nodding familiarity toward one another, and Roxanne crouched to get a closer look. “Did you radio it in?”
“Yeah,” the woman said. “They’re bringin’ the dogs this way. Should be here soon.”
“While we wait,” Roxanne said as she stood, the sound of her voice tight but hopeful, “fan out. We’ll go in pairs but call out every few minutes so we can hear each other. Evan and—” She waited for the woman to provide her name.
