Page 82 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
Which means he’s not telling us whether they have medical care. Just as we weren’t keen to tell him that we do. It’s one of the few things that could upset this delicate standoff. If they don’t have a doctor and we do, it’ll be a reason for them to come knocking on our door.
“Good,” I say. “Then I leave that to you. Our priority is getting our missing boy back.”
“I hope this didn’t happen to him, too,” Joe says, staring at Sandy’s body. He catches everyone’s looks and flushes, just a little. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bring that up.”
“But it’s obviously a concern, which heightens the urgency,” Rogers says. “Now, let us discuss how this will work.”
* * *
We let Rogers tell us how this will work. Then we tell him how it’s actually going to work.
We’ll accept his offer of extra men, and we’ll assign them areas to search. They will stay on their side of the boundary. Our searchers will stay on our side … except for us. Dalton and I are free to go anywhere the trail takes us. Also, Rogers’s men must stay where we put them—in their assigned search grid. We’re not taking the chance that one of them will mistake us for their wild man.
On that note, we want only his steadiest men out there. Absolutely no one who will get spooked and fire at our missing resident. Everyone who is searching must be willing to do it with their weapons holstered.
We then tell Rogers where we want his men searching … which is not here. We don’t want them finding that cabin or evidence of Max. We would allow it if we thought it could help, but the only thing they have to offer is extra eyes and feet. We’ll take that. We just don’t want them actually working alongside us. It would restrict what we can do and say and leave us open to slips, like the ones Joe has made.
We tell Rogers that we’re going to let Storm track from the murder scene, in hopes of tracking the killer. For that reason, we need them to remove their deceased employee as quickly as possible and stay out of this area, to avoid leaving more scent trails.
Rogers leaves after that, and we do what we didn’t have time to do last night—see whether Storm can pick up the killer’s trail. She can’t. Oh, she tries, but it isn’t long before she gets hopelessly confused, when the trails seem to all head back to Sandy’s body, as if the killer had paced around there, figuring out what to do next. The fact that animals have also been feeding complicates the scents, as does the nearly overpowering stink of decomposition.
When that fails, we take Storm to the ruined shack again. She picks up the trail easily, just as she did last night. She follows it … and she loses it at the creek. We spend more time trying to figure out where Max and his captor might have exited the creek but, again, we can’t.
We need to get back to Haven’s Rock. Anders knows not to worry if we’re gone overnight, but there’s a limit to how long before residents get nervous. Right now, we can’t give them any more reason to be on edge.
I hate to leave Max’s trail. I even try to come up with excuses for staying longer. I know we’ve reached the end of what we can do, but I absolutely dread going back to Dana and telling her we found Max’s trail and walked away.
Fear of telling Dana makes a good excuse, but the truth is that I don’t want to leave. We finally have tangible evidence that Max is alive, and it feels as if walking away is giving up.
That’s not me being too hard on myself. I think of what I’d feel if someone else came back to town, said they found Max’s trail and left. Oh, I’d tell them they did the right thing, but deep down there’d be whispers.
Did they give up too easily?
What if they kept trying a little longer?
What if they tried a little harder?
It’s as if we spotted him in the distance, spent a few minutes trying to find him again, and then gave up. Dalton feels the same. That’s why I can’t argue. Because if one of us wants to keep going, the other will agree, unwilling to accept the guilt of being the one who quit. This burden must be shared.
“We’ll bring others and search,” Dalton says as we walk. “Not rely on Storm’s nose, but just search.”
“Should we have let Mr. Rogers’s men help us? If we need more eyes on the ground…”
“Not yet. Yeah, I know he’s just doing his job, and breaking our balls is part of it. Hell, I’m doing the same thing. I didn’t tell him we have someone who can perform an autopsy. I sure as hell won’t let him near town searching for whoever killed his miner. If being an asshole protects Haven’s Rock, then I will be an asshole. I have lots of experience. So I don’t blame him for treating us like employees, but I don’t have to like it either. Mostly, in this case, I don’t trust his men. They’re gun-happy. We might say they need to keep their weapons holstered, but I don’t trust they will.”
“Good point. Yes, their help comes with a risk.” I glance at him. “How many security guys do you think they have? I’m having trouble telling them apart.”
“Having trouble distinguishing between white guys with crew cuts?” He runs a hand through his own short hair.
“Fit white guys with crew cuts and steely gazes. It’s a type.” I squint at him. “Wait. Remind me who you are again?”
He knows I’m joking. Well, half joking. I could never mistake Dalton for one of Rogers’s guys. Everything about them screams “Just following orders, ma’am,” and that is not my husband.
“Yeah, I can’t tell them apart either,” he says. “There seems to be one Black guy, and one Latinx. Otherwise?” He shrugs. “I know there are at least two white guys, and only because we’ve seen them together. I’ve seen an older white guy, too. Those two were both younger than us. No women, though.”
I nod. “Rogers said there aren’t any women, which would include the guards presumably.”
“So at least five security guards. Unless they’re flown in on rotations. In which case, it could be as few as three in camp at a time—we’ve seen three today.”
