I followed Colm to the command post. Jeff was standing outside when we got there.
“Mornin’,” he said, with a slight tip of the head.
“Morning,” I said. “Sleep all right?”
“Not too bad. You?”
“I managed a few hours.”
“I don’t think the husband did.”
“Is he here?” I asked.
“Pretty sure he never left.”
Inside the metal housing, I saw Farrell sitting in a chair by the stove talking on a cell phone. He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on the night before.
About six of the team volunteers had already arrived and were waiting to get started. Colm motioned them to the command table where he would be making his assignments. I went over to check on the husband. He was now holding his phone down to his side.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked.
“No, I’m fine.” He glanced my way briefly before looking once again through a frost-covered window. His eyes were a soft blue like his daughter’s.
“I was thinking about this story Amy Raye would tell the kids, about a young Cherokee woman. She escaped from the Trail of Tears. Instead of moving to Oklahoma, she made her way across the Tennessee plateau and into the mountains. Amy Raye would tell the children stories of the woman living off the woods, making traps with her bare hands. She said Amadahy means Forest Water. That was the woman’s name. ‘Tell us another Forest Water story,’ Julia would say. And so Amy Raye would make up another adventure.”
Farrell was silent for a solid minute, and then he said, “Amadahy walked clear to the other side of the mountains, so the legend goes. She settled in North Carolina.”
I reached out and squeezed Farrell’s arm gently. “We’re not giving up,” I told him.
—
At the briefing, Colm assigned each team extended rays of operation from the truck’s location, or the subject’s point last seen. The members were to mark their tracks and radio back at measured points. Three volunteers would be arriving shortly from Mesa County with the electronic detection device. Colm had prepared area maps indicating snowdrift and high accumulation sites.
One of the reporters from the Sentinel stopped me on my way out. She asked me about Kona, how long had he been a search dog, was he avalanche certified as well. She wanted to know what my thoughts were on why we weren’t finding any more marking tape, and did I think the woman had gotten lost early in her hunt.
“The snow was coming down heavily,” I reminded her. “You get out in that kind of weather, you can’t see three feet in front of you. There was a lot of wind up here yesterday. Maybe she tied more markers and we’re just not seeing them,” I said.
By daybreak the snow had come to a stop and the winds had settled down to twenty miles per hour. If the visibility and change in wind speed continued to improve, Colm would be able to get a helicopter back on search. No one was prepared to scale back. If anything, we would push harder, prepared for twenty-hour shifts if the storm held back. This was all we had. Third day. Chances of Amy Raye’s survival were running out, as was Kona’s ability to pick up a trail. No one wanted to think of another day without any leads. The search team’s demeanor was all business.
I parked the truck at the base of the hill climb. Jeff loaded his .30-06 automatic. I strapped on my holster with my handgun and loaded my target rifle.
With the break in the storm, I’d told Colm I wanted to spend the first morning light glassing in a grid, the same strategy I’d used with Glade when canvassing an area for cultural sites. Had we missed any marking tape or some sort of flag of clothing? I might also be able to catch sight of the lion. It would be a long day, with us covering as much as seven miles by nightfall. We needed to make every step count.
I unlocked a box in the back of the Tahoe where I kept a high-powered spotting scope, two tripods, and oversized binoculars, 15×60mm. The higher-power lens would increase the magnification by fifteen times, and the sixty-millimeter lens diameter would adjust for the lower field of view. I fitted the optics, along with water and food, inside my pack. Jeff offered to carry the tripods. I used extra webbing to strap them onto the sides of his pack.