Brody and I were both sixteen. His hair was golden brown and his eyes were sky blue. He looked like he could be president one day, like he would grow up and do something important like John F. Kennedy, wear a coat and tie, talk to important people. We didn’t know sex yet. We were good kids, the kind who would do what was right for the rest of their lives. He was already six foot three, and would probably grow another inch or two before we were finished with high school.
It was fall of our sophomore year. I’d been a runner for what felt like my whole life. I ran through the fields behind the house, ran after the chickens, ran the two miles to Brody’s house, ran on the cross-country team at school. Classes had ended for the day. Brody had gone home, was working on the farm, driving the combine. I had dressed for practice and had met my teammates outside. We were going to run trails that day. I could smell the soil and leaves. We hit the pavement first, down a street, across another. I watched the guys take off. The girls were farther behind. I ran with a girl named Julie. There was an opening in some trees between the two houses. We left the pavement. My legs felt lithe and strong. We could no longer hear the boys. And the other girls, about five of them, had dropped far behind. We were now running downhill. I decided to sprint. My left ankle turned out. My leg buckled beneath me.
Julie came up from behind. “I’ll get help,” she said. She ran ahead. I lay back on the ground, pulled my left knee to my chest.
I heard the other girls approaching. “Julie’s gone to get help,” I told them. They moved on.
Time passed. I heard Julie’s voice. I heard Brody’s. He knelt next to me, scooped me up, his T-shirt damp with sweat. How did she find him, I wanted to know.
“I can walk,” I said.
“I’ll carry you,” he said.
—
I wanted to make it back for Joseph’s game, but I knew that would be unlikely if the search was still going on. That morning, before Joseph had left for school, I’d told him about the missing hunter. Told him I’d probably be called on the search. I’d asked him if he could spend the night at Corey’s if I wasn’t back. “I hope she’s okay,” Joseph had said. He’d understand if I couldn’t make the game.
Climbing the final stretch to where Amy Raye Latour had left the truck was tricky in the dark, and the surface of snow and rock was freezing together into a precarious conglomerate, causing the Tahoe’s wheels to slide just enough for me to grip the wheel tightly and straighten them out.
I parked the Tahoe in the same area as the other teams’ ATVs and the black Ford. One of the deputies would be driving the Ford back to the sheriff’s station that night and canvassing it for evidence before releasing it to its owner. I wondered how long the other hunters would stay on, and hoped to God they wouldn’t be making the four-hour drive back to Evergreen without their friend.
I opened up the back of the Tahoe, letting Kona out. This time I left the tracking harness in the truck. He already knew he was there to work.
Jeff and I secured our headlamps and turned them onto high beam. We each carried a large flashlight and backpacks with basic first-aid gear, water, food, extra batteries for our radios, and pouches of air-activated warmers for our hands and feet. I opened up the plastic bag with the hunter’s mittens and held it to Kona’s nose. His tail wagged as eagerly as before. He yipped a couple of times. “Let’s go find,” I said. He took off through the woods that lined the elliptical edge of the draw, this time heading north along the ridge of the bluffs. I wondered how he had missed this scent earlier in the day, but then realized the wind had changed directions, and though we were heading north, we were now moving downwind. Jeff and I followed Kona’s lead.
Even with our flashlights it was slow going in the dark. Deadfall and rocks lined our pathway, not to mention the slick snow covering. About eighty yards into the woods, we came upon a wall of boulders, steep yet passable. “Climb,” I said to Kona. He jumped and made switchbacks, and jumped again until he was at the top. Jeff and I looked for handholds—roots of juniper, tightly wedged rock points, or cracks, in which case we removed our gloves and dug our fingers into the tight crevices for support. Most of the climbing was legwork. Once at the top, we spotted the helicopter and another team’s set of lights.
“If she were conscious, she’d hear the chopper,” I said.
“Maybe not,” Jeff said. “Sounds can fool a person out here. Especially if you’re in one of the canyons or ravines.”
Something moved about fifty feet to our left. I turned. The light from my headlamp caught the glowing eyes and white horns of a buck. Then the small male, with no more than two points on each side of his rack, turned and ran in the opposite direction, his feet tapping against the frozen ground, his body sweeping through the branches and oak brush. Jeff and I moved on.
Our night continued much the same, with occasional crackles over the radio and voices from other team members checking in with Colm.
“Search Two, Command,” came a voice from one of the volunteers.
“Command, go ahead,” Colm said.
“We’re over a mile in. Negative on any prints or signs of the subject.”