And Ian’s father said, “You are no son to me if you quit. If you run away.”
Ian said, “I never was a son to you.”
Talk about a standoff.
He scanned the ground, looking for any sign of the boy—broken shrubs or tree limbs showing that someone had passed, marks on the ground including drops of blood, recent footprints in the snow.
He also thought about Marcie. When she’d infiltrated his life, his first thought hadn’t been that she was beautiful and sexy. In fact, his twentieth thought wasn’t even that—she was sick, pale, listless…frankly, homely as a duck. Vulnerable and anything but pretty. Still, it wasn’t the pretty that got to him when she started to get a little color on her face—it was the pure contrariness. The fight in her—he’d always appreciated anyone with that kind of gumption.
She was just about well in less than a week and her eyes had started to regain that little spark that said she’d have her way, speak her mind and damn the consequences. How more like him could she be? He was able to appreciate her and give her credit—though not out loud—without getting captured by her.
Then slowly, he began to like her. No matter she fully intended to get in his business and mess up his life, she had a kind of drive that he couldn’t help but admire. She wasn’t doing any of it just for herself, but for herself and everyone from her dead husband to his family to Ian…to his cranky, isolated father whom Ian had been absolutely determined not to be like…but was.
It was when she defied her classy big sister and came back to his dusty little cabin that he fell. Aw, damn, what determination she had to be with him, to see it through, whatever it was she felt she had to do. Even she didn’t seem entirely sure what she was doing there—but she wasn’t ready to give up on him. And she had this insane idea that everything could be all right! Somehow, she was going to pull him back into the man he’d been to her dead husband; the brave leader, the fearless and committed man. Not someone who just dropped out of sight and isolated himself out of a kind of self-hatred. Into the man his father had never had the sense to be proud of.
Oh, God, I can’t have turned into my father so soon!
He forced his mind back to Travis Goesel, scanning the ground, the shrubs, the lower branches of the trees. He looked at the old watch that still worked. He’d been trekking without a sound from Jack for two hours and it was approaching four o’clock. They only had two more hours of daylight at the most, so he called, “Travis! Travis! Make a sound! Move something!”
He walked a little faster, scanned the terrain with concentration, and it came to him that it was good to belong to something. Even though Jack was out of sight and the other men where on the west side of the farm, he felt as if he was a part of a unit of men who had a purpose again and, until Jack piled in the truck with him, he hadn’t felt that in a long time. He’d been so anxious to sever himself from the pain of war, he’d forgotten how much the pleasure of brotherhood filled his soul. This, he had to admit, had all occurred because this feisty little redhead had come into his life. She forced the issue. She pushed him out of his cocoon while he was still raw, growing new skin.
If she’d left her disabled husband in the hands of his family three years ago to come after him, would she have succeeded in pulling him up out of his self-indulgent withdrawal any sooner? Probably not. He’d licked his wounds for such a long time that he got used to the taste of his self-pity.
Ian grew wearily cold, craving long underwear. He’d been out in the woods for hours. He ate snow rather than drink the bottled water, in case he found the boy and needed it for him.
Then he saw a smear of blood and some tracks, partially covered by a new blanket of snow. By the width and weight of the trail, it was the cat, wounded. He followed the trail just a short distance, realizing the cat was dragging itself heavily. A moment later Ian realized that Travis would have intelligently gone in the opposite direction to this bloodied trail. So Ian did also.
Ian made it to the river and was looking left and right along the edge as night fell. He’d have to head back to the truck soon, at least to confer with Jack and discuss the plan for searching at night. Part of such a plan would have to include long underwear and dry socks. But he just couldn’t make himself stop.
Darkness fell in earnest. He shone the flashlight on his watch and saw it was nearly six o’clock and he yelled for the millionth time. “Travis! Travis!”
Then as the light from his flashlight fell upon the snow, he noticed a drop of blood here, a drop there. Travis was hurt and doing just what Ian expected a smart kid to do—he was following the river home. Using the flashlight to scan the ground as darkness thickened around him Ian saw something. Not far away from the river’s edge was a pile of dead pine needles and brush, covered with a little new snow. A mound. It didn’t look like much, but he gave it a slight kick with his boot and when some of the debris fell away, he saw a sleeve. He was instantly down on his knees, digging. In mere moments he uncovered a boy, his face white, his lips blue, his eyes closed. Ian shook him vigorously, not knowing if the boy was dead or alive.