Page 7 of Lion Conquers All
“I can’t say for sure, Mr. Roberts. Your home doesn’t look disturbed. Did you and Sam fight about anything recently?”
“No. And we’ve left him for several days like this before. He likes having the house to himself. Usually he eats a bunch of junk food and stays up really late. Sometimes he’ll have friends over and when we get back the refrigerator is empty…but, we expect that. We never tell him he can’t have friends over. They don’t trash the place. They are all gamers. They sit around and play Fortnite and Need for Speed.”
They made their way up the staircase and turned to the right into a large bedroom. The walls were light grey. A red rug with some bean bag chairs sat in front of another TV.
“Anything out of place up here?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Roberts voice was shaking.
Aarav waited patiently for her to share.
She took another deep breath and pointed to the closet. “His backpack is missing. A pair of hiking boots. And his bow is gone. I would assume clothes are probably gone too, but it’s hard to say only looking at the drawers.”
He walked to the closet and opened the door. “How could you tell?”
She walked closer and pointed to an empty spot on a shelf. “The boots were there.” Then she pushed a section of clothes to the end of a rod on her right. The bow was back there in its case.” And then she pointed to the back of the door where several random things were hanging on hooks. “The backpack hung there. I haven’t seen it anywhere in the house and he really only used it when he was staying over at a friend’s place.”
“Good. This is helpful. Thank you, Mrs. Roberts.”
“What are you going to do to find him? We’ve already called his friends. No one has seen him.”
They shut the closet and Aarav moved back to the center of their son’s room. There was another scent in the room. So faint. But enough that he was quite sure it was female.
“I hadn’t asked yet, but does Sam have a girlfriend?”
Both the parents shook their heads at the same time. Mr. Roberts spoke quietly. “If he does, he hasn’t shared it with us.”
“You said his phone was still here?”
“No,” Mr. Roberts answered. “But it goes to voicemail. So it’s either dead or he’s turned it off. We assume it’s off, because when we run the locator app, it can’t pinpoint it.”
Aarav pressed his lips tight. This boy had run away. He had planned it. Taken supplies. Likely he knew he could be located with his phone and so had it off to avoid detection. Still, at least the boy had taken it for emergencies.
“I’m going to start by canvasing your neighbors and Sam’s friends. Sometimes people notice things they don’t think are important, but turn out to be. Since he’s been gone quite a while already…nearly forty-eight hours, depending on what I find out today, I will start organizing a search and rescue team.”
“Where are you going to look?” The mother’s voice was barely more than a whisper.
Aarav forced himself not to frown. Finding a boy in the wilderness of Alaska, especially if he didn’t want to be found, was not going to be easy. Mystery sat adjacent to Denali National Park. There were thousands of acres of land and mountains. And he couldn’t shift into his lion and track him.
Or send one of the wolves out to do the same.
The Tribe was staying off the radar. Nothing suspicious. No one shifted close to town. Ever. And they only shifted for a few hours each to hunt on the Tribe’s land in the dark with lookouts posted to watch for humans.
He couldn’t even bring one of the wolves in and pretend it was a search and rescue dog. Reylean wolves were huge. Bigger than the biggest “dog” varieties and bigger than the natural wolves that lived out here too.
“We will look everywhere. I’m going to see if I can get Anchorage Search and Rescue to come up ASAP to help.”
Aarav pulled a card from his front breast pocket and handed it to Mr. Roberts. “This has my cell on it. If you think of anything, or need anything, call me.”
“May I take a couple pieces of Sam’s clothes from his laundry?”
“Of course. Whatever you need.” Mrs. Roberts grabbed a couple of shirts from a hamper in the corner and handed them over. “Please find my son.”
“We are going to do everything we can, ma’am.”
Well, not everything.
Because we can’t use our biggest advantage in public.
