Montana Hero (23 page)

The nickel-sized circle was deceptively reassuring. Kat surmised this by the look Tucker and Flynn exchanged.

The two men talked behind the closed door of Flynn’s office before Flynn left for a meeting with the Sheriff. The call had gone out to all SAR volunteers to meet at the zip line staging area. Flynn would lead one of the search parties. Justin would handle another.

Unfortunately, as Kat had mentioned to Greg, time and weather were not on their side. Darkness would arrive all too soon, with temperatures expected to drop significantly. And, worse, a front was moving in, bringing rain and strong winds. There could even be snow at the higher elevations.

If they didn’t find him tonight, Brady’s chances of survival dropped significantly. Kat crossed her fingers and prayed like she’d never prayed before.
Let Flynn find him. Please, God. Please, keep my baby safe.

Ten seconds later, she got a sign that Somebody up there was listening when Paul Zabrinski burst through the front door of the office dressed in chaps, boots, an all-weather polished cotton slicker and a black cowboy hat. He had gloves in one hand and a cell phone in the other.

“Roger that,” he said into the phone, which apparently was set to speaker mode. “I just left the ranch. Serena helped me load up Skipper. Austen and Stu Briggs and a couple of hands from the Flying Z are already on their way up. Mia’s at the airport fueling the plane. Dad’s meeting me here to get the search coordinates. They’re hoping to squeeze in a couple of passes.”

“But the storm…it getting windy.”

Kat recognized Bailey’s voice but shock kept her from responding.

Paul looked at Kat, his expression grim. “They know what they’re doing. I’ll call you as soon as I get to the staging area. We’re going to hit it hard at first light, unless Flynn’s people find him before then.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“You and Mom coordinate the food. Ryker will pick up anything you need.”

“Food. Me? I hate you. But, since I can’t ride with the baby, I’ll do it.”

“Gotta go. I’ll text you Kat’s number as soon as I have it. I love you.”

“Be safe and find him.”

“We will.”

Paul tapped his screen then looked at Kat. He hesitated less than a heartbeat before walking to her and enveloping her in a big, horsy-smelling hug. “We’ll find him. I know in my heart we will. He’ll be okay.”

She blinked back tears, forcing her brain to stay focused on the job ahead of them. “You’re riding in?”

“Yes. I’m joining my brother and a dozen or so others on site to leave at the butt crack of dawn.”

“Weather permitting.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Damn the weather. We go in no matter what.”

His bravado lifted her spirits for a moment. She looked at Janet and Rebecca who gave her thumbs up. Before she could say anything, the door opened again and Robert Zabrinski walked in. He marched to Kat’s desk where she and Paul were standing.

His inscrutable blue eyes didn’t blink when he told her, “I have time for one—maybe two—passes. I want to make this count. What’s he wearing? Is he carrying anything with color?”

She’d written out the list of clothing Flynn asked her to make. “His backpack is Spiderman colors, so some red, yes, but his jacket is black and the only hoodie I couldn’t find is dark green. I assume he’s wearing blue jeans and he has lined snow boots that have yellow reflective stripes on a black background.”

He folded the list after reading it and tucked it into his vest pocket. His silver hair glistened in the overhead lights, but the color didn’t detract in any way from his virility and power. His eyes narrowed. “We have a lot to talk about later. Right now, we have a little boy to find.”

Kat’s heart thudded hard against her chest. She didn’t know what he planned to say on the matter, but the fact the entire Zabrinski clan had rallied to help touched her deeply. “Thank you.”

He nodded, and then motioned to his son. “According to OC, that terrain is nothing but trees, gullies and fast-moving creeks. Brady’s too smart to get caught in one of those, but it’s damn easy to get turned around—especially when you lose the sun. With any luck he’ll know to start a fire and I can spot the smoke before dark. I’m not expecting a miracle, but we can hope for one.” He glanced back at Kat. “Keep the faith and pray.”

*

Brady looked around.
How come the trees and rocks all looked the same?

He hadn’t planned to get so far away from the work area. Some of the kids on the bus had been talking about a storm that was coming. Brady figured as long as he could hear noises from the construction site he’d be safe. Just in case he got turned around, he’d started building little piles of rocks as guideposts. Ducks, he remembered his mother calling them when they went for a hike last fall. But rocks weren’t that plentiful in some places and a few of his efforts toppled over so they looked like all the other rock piles. After a while, he gave up and just kept walking.

When the wind shifted, the direction of the sound from the tractors and power saws changed, too. Brady tried backtracking but got turned around. He knew he was lost when he came to a fast-moving stream he’d heard once or twice but hadn’t seen.

The water didn’t appear to be deep, but when he touched it, the cold felt like liquid fire on his fingers. Somehow, he must have walked downhill from the zip line. The bus trip had taken forever over a really rough road so there was no way he could walk all the way back to the highway. He’d have to climb to higher ground if he had any hope of getting a signal on his phone.

He looked around trying to decide which way to go. His stomach growled. He’d burned through his granola bars hours ago. His water supply was running low, but he’d heard horror stories of getting sick from drinking water from streams.

Worst of all…his feet hurt. Badly. He could feel blisters on several toes. As tempted as he was to put his bare feet in the icy water, Brady was afraid if he took off his boots he wouldn’t be able to get them back on.

Heaving a sigh, he started upward following what was most likely a deer trail.

Deer not bear,
he thought.

Or mountain lions.

He gulped. Hard. Why hadn’t he thought about wild animals before this? And wolves.

His class had read about the re-introduction of wolves to Yellowstone and how wolves didn’t pay any attention to the human boundaries. A pack could be hunting him right now and he wouldn’t know it. They were cagey. He remembered that word because it made for an interesting image in his brain.

He only made it a hundred feet or so up before he was out of breath. He scrambled to the top of a big flat rock that seemed to have retained a bit of heat. The sun had disappeared hours ago behind thin, fast-moving clouds that made him dizzy when he looked up.

Brady had to admit things weren’t going the way he’d pictured.

Maybe it was time to give up and call his mother. She’d have realized he was gone by now and would be worried. The thought made his stomach hurt.

He reached into the side pocket of his backpack for his phone. He poked in the shallow pocket but found nothing.

“Where is it?” he cried, drawing the pack to his lap. “I know I put it there.”

The built-in snap had become mangled from getting caught in the car door a few months back and didn’t always stay closed. Had his phone fallen out? Where?

He popped to his feet and stumbled a few yards in the direction he’d come, but the burning pain in his toes made every step a torment. Tears clustered in his eyes and his bottom lip started to quiver.

“Crying never changes anything,” GG used to say. “But sometimes you just gotta give into it.”

He sank to the ground, oblivious to his surroundings—the dirt, the loose shale, the brush, and the precarious drop-off straight to a stream below. Sobbing his heart out, he curled into a ball, his backpack clutched to his belly. His sobs were the only sound in all the mountains.

‡

K
at stared out
the window at the thunderheads roiling in purple and black glory as they approached. How was it possible for a day to go so completely upside down and wonky in a few short hours? Would life ever be the same?

Not if they couldn’t find Brady.

She knew everyone was doing everything possible. She could hear her friends and fellow SAR members working frantically in the background. They’d gently shooed her away from the radio when something froze inside and she couldn’t remember the right words to say, let alone the correct codes.

All she could think about was the moment she first held her son after his birth. He didn’t squall and cry. No, his wizened little face appeared scrunched up in puzzlement, as if certain someone had made a mistake and he should have been at a conference on Mars delivering the keynote speech about interstellar travel, not repeating a life in a time and place that would never understand his gifts.

From the first instant she became aware of him growing in her womb, Kat had loved her son with every fiber of her being. And that had never changed.

The smell of coffee brought her back to the present.

She turned, expecting to see Janet, but the woman offering her a steaming mug was not a member of their team. “I brought food,” Sarah Zabrinski said. “And coffee. Lots of coffee. Janet said you take it black.”

Kat accepted the mug because that was the thing to do. The rational part of her mind knew this calamity was not Sarah and Robert Zabrinski’s fault, but the frantic mother part of her wanted to cry and yell, “If you’d listened to Brady, he wouldn’t have run away.”

The lump in her throat made swallowing nearly impossible.

“You blame us, don’t you?”

Before Kat could answer, the woman put a hand on Kat’s shoulder and said, “You’d be part saint if you didn’t. When Paul called to tell us Brady was missing, Bob and I both asked ourselves the same thing. Children make assumptions. They’re egocentric. They assume everything that is happening or isn’t happening as fast as they think it should be is due to them.”

Kat finally managed to swallow. “Brady thinks too much sometimes. I knew he’d been fretting about what he said at the play and how everyone reacted. I honestly didn’t know my mother shared her personal history with Brady. When I suggested we move to Montana, I mostly wanted to escape from the sadness of the past few years. I remembered Mom saying the happiest she’d ever been was in Marietta. But other than that, Mom barely told me anything about her past.”

“Why?”

Kat shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Can’t you ask her?”

Kat looked out the window again. “She passed away going on two years ago. But the last ten years—ever since my stepfather died—were a steady decline.”

At Sarah’s questioning look, Kat added, “Mom was diagnosed with Early-Onset Alzheimer’s—some call it Younger-Onset Alzheimer’s—shortly after Brady was born, although she’d been aware of the problem long before that. Lloyd, my stepfather, helped her hide the truth until they couldn’t anymore.”

Kat took a sip of coffee—strong and hot, exactly what she needed. “They tried experimental treatments in Mexico, Brazil, and Greece. Told everyone they were on vacation.” Since her hands were full, Kat couldn’t make air quotes, but she could tell Sarah got the message.

“Nothing helped. And, unfortunately, denial cost my stepfather his life. Mom was behind the wheel when she turned the wrong way on a one-way street. Lloyd died instantly. Mom walked away without a scratch. But she was never the same.”

“I’m so sorry.” Sarah’s tone sounded sincere.

She picked up a grocery-bag-sized leather purse adorned with vibrantly colored rhinestones and silver studs arranged in an intricate western-style design. Kat had never seen anything like it. “I’ve tried to place her—your mother. We’ve had so many employees over the years…”

She shook her head in a helpless manner, but Kat wasn’t buying it. The woman seemed fit and very sharp. Her casually styled short gray-blonde hair framed her lined, but lovely face. “I was busy with kids during the years you’re talking about. If my math is correct, your mother worked for us the summer and fall after Paul was born. The twins were four and Meg was almost seven. It was a hectic time.”