“It’s a pretty awesome tree,” Marcie said, growing a little melancholy. She really wanted to find Ian before Christmas. For some reason, that seem crucial.
As she was leaving, the sun was lowering and the bar was starting to fill with locals. It was already getting too dark to venture into the back woods to check out the few cabins Mike had told her about. It was time for her to find a place to park for the night, somewhere safe and not too far from a service station for her morning rituals of peeing, face washing, teeth brushing. She’d start again in the morning, though she wasn’t feeling optimistic she’d find her guy. She’d been disappointed so many times. At this point in her search, crossing all the places off her list meant as much as striking pay dirt.
But before going to her car, she approached the tree, partially decorated to about twelve feet. She got up close and looked at some of the ornaments. Between red, white and blue balls and gold stars were patches—the kind you’d wear on a uniform—from various Marine and other military commands. She touched one reverently; 1st Battalion, 8th Marines; 2nd Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment; 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion, all laminated to protect them against the outdoor elements. Airborne Division, Sniper Squad, 41st Infantry Battalion. Her throat got tight; her eyes blurred.
This was exactly why she was determined to find Ian Buchanan—because these men never forgot, never walked away. There had to be powerful reasons for him to leave his military brothers, his Corps, his family, his town. You don’t save a comrade’s life and then ignore him. Ian Buchanan was given both the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for carrying Bobby through sniper fire to medical transport. He took two bullets and kept going. He was not a man who gave up. So why? Why give up now?
Two
M arcie’s thirty bucks—$28.87, to be exact—lasted another thirty-six hours. Twenty-five of them went in the gas tank; she could hardly afford the gas even with the great mileage she got in her little green bug. Three dollars for a loaf of bread and two apples and she finished off the peanut butter. Then she went back to that little Virgin River bar and asked if she could use the phone to make a call to her sister—she’d almost exhausted the phone cards because she wasn’t supposed to be gone this long, but there was a little time left on one. Erin, seven years older than Marcie, had taken charge of the family long ago, and she was growing extremely irritable by Marcie’s time away.
The cook, a guy they all called Preacher, let her into the kitchen. Marcie called Erin and, though it made her stomach clench, she asked for money. “Call it a loan,” she said. She lied and said she was getting so close, that Ian had been seen.
“We had a deal, Marcie,” Erin said. “You promised you’d only be gone a couple of weeks and it’s been a month. You didn’t even come home for Thanksgiving.”
“I couldn’t. I explained about that. I had a tip—”
“It’s time for you to come home now and think about another way to find him.”
“No. I’m not stopping. I’m not giving up,” Marcie said resolutely.
“Okay, but come back to Chico and we’ll try it my way—we’ll get a professional to find him for you—then you can go from there. Really, the only way I know to get you home and through with this madness is to say no. No money, Marcie, for your own good. The only money I’ll wire you is enough to get home. Come home now. Right now. This is scaring me to death.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not done!”
Marcie then called her younger brother, Drew, who might not agree with what she was doing any more than Erin did, but he was a softer touch. He said, “Marcie, I can’t. Erin’s right, this has gone on too long. You have to give this up now. Come on, I can’t stand to think about what you’re doing. You’re going after a friggin’ lunatic, by yourself!”
“Please,” she whimpered. “We don’t know he’s a lunatic—he could be perfectly normal. Or maybe just sad. Please, just a few more days. Please. I’m so close.”
Drew let out a breath, defeated. “I’ll wire you a hundred bucks, then you come back, you hear me? And don’t you dare tell Erin what I did.”
“I won’t tell,” she said, wiping at her cheeks, smiling into the phone. “Thank you, Drew. I love you so much.”
“Yeah, well, I’m afraid I’m not showing you how much I care by doing this. I worry about you.”