Page 8 of Forever Finds Us (Wisper Dreams #7)

Chapter Six

Brand

Following behind Roxanne, watching her long, limber legs eat up the trail was some kind of punishment.

I had no clue what I’d done to piss off the fates or God or whoever was in charge of my destiny, but it seemed I’d ticked somebody off well and good because I couldn’t seem to focus on anything else besides getting my hands on them and possibly my mouth.

Roxanne Fitts was utterly distracting.

But the statuesque beauty was nothing but business now as she charged forward, occasionally looking over her shoulder to make sure her followers stayed in tow, but she never stopped moving.

Up until this very moment, I had considered myself in extremely good shape, but Roxanne was proving me wrong with each sure step she took while I stumbled to keep up.

Time to focus.

The beams of our flashlights crisscrossed each other, searching the woods and ground for any sign of Natalie Manning.

Occasionally, we stopped to drink water and catch our breath, but the mood between the four of us was serious.

The darker the night became and the lower the temperature dropped, the more intense it got.

If we hadn’t been moving and working up a sweat, we would’ve been freezing.

Rocks and tree roots tried to trip me, but I’d taken Roxanne’s advice to heart and kept my body loose as best as I could.

The way utter blackness clung to the tree trunks and how even the moon seemed to hide from it above the tops of their boughs was worrying.

Outside the glow from our torches, there was so much country we couldn’t see, but we called for Natalie over and over, hoping that if she was close, she’d hear us.

When we began, we’d heard the sloshing of the water against the shore and occasionally caught glimpses of Jenny Lake.

We’d seen other searchers’ flashlights. From far away, they looked almost like faint Christmas lights or glowbugs flitting through the trees, but we’d been searching for a while and were further away from the lake now, almost to where the Jenny Lake Trail connected to the Cascade Creek Trail.

Memories of hiking these trails with my brothers and sister when we were teenagers swarmed me as we walked, and a little bit of the belonging I used to feel to my home grew inside me.

Maybe I’d just been away too long. Maybe now that I’d come home, the feeling of knowing I was right where I needed to be would find me.

And it wasn’t lost on me that the circumstance entangling my hometown and what a month ago I would’ve referred to as drama, had cleared my mind of business.

Nothing mattered more than finding the lost girl.

I had no signal, but according to my phone, we’d been at it for more than two hours with nothing to show for it when Roxanne halted in front of me.

I almost ran right into her, but we stopped, and she shushed me when I tried to ask what was wrong.

She closed her eyes, trying to hear something in the night.

Tipping her head the slightest bit to her left, she let out some kind of high-pitched, two-syllable whistle, and a responding “Hey-oh” floated back to us from deep in the trees.

Roxanne shined her light in the same direction.

She veered off our trail, and Bax, Bea, and I followed closely.

Soon we came upon a man and woman dressed in Search and Rescue gear, their yellow jackets glaring under the moon’s elusive glow, and I immediately recognized the man crouching and studying something near the ground.

“Evan? Evan Moran?”

Evan turned his head and looked up at me, squinting. It had been years, but he still looked like the same cowboy I’d known in high school, except instead of a cowboy hat, tonight he’d swapped it for a Teton County SAR beanie. “Yeah? Who’s that?”

“Brand Lee, man. Long time no see.”

He stood, trying to see me in the dark without flashing his light in my face. “Brand Lee? Shit, ain’t you a blast from the past. How you been?”

“Good—”

“I’m sorry for interruptin’ this heartfelt reunion,” Roxanne said, exasperated with us both, “but Evan, why were you down in the dirt? Did you find somethin’?”

The woman with Evan hadn’t yet spoken, but she shined her light on a low bush and I saw a flash of purple—a shoelace.

“The girl’s been here,” Evan said, “or near enough.”

Bax and Bea rushed forward to look, and my heart kicked into overdrive.

Evan and Bax shook hands, nodding familiarity toward one another, and Roxanne crouched to get a closer look. “Did you radio it in?”

“Yeah,” the woman said. “They’re bringin’ the dogs this way. Should be here soon.”

“While we wait,” Roxanne said as she stood, the sound of her voice tight but hopeful, “fan out. We’ll go in pairs but call out every few minutes so we can hear each other. Evan and—” She waited for the woman to provide her name.

“Misty. Misty Summers.”

Roxanne smiled at Misty. “I’m Roxi and this is Brand, Bax, and Bea.” She motioned toward me, my brother, and Bea. “Okay, so Evan and Misty, you stay here, and we’ll work our way around your position, see if we can find anything else.”

“Good plan,” Evan said. “If y’all find somethin’”—he looked at Bax, Bea, and me one at a time—“don’t touch anything . Just stay with the evidence and call it out to us.”

Bax and Bea took off, and Roxanne and I followed, staying several yards behind and to the right of their path.

After about twenty minutes of traversing around trees, knocking low branches out of our faces, getting scratched and dirty, and trying not to get tangled up in bushes, we couldn’t see Bax and Bea anymore and could barely hear them.

I moved closer to Roxanne. “How are you holdin’ up?” She’d been eerily silent, and I felt the need to hear her voice again.

“I’m okay,” she said. “I just really hope we f—” She stopped fast, and this time I did smack into her back, and my breath punched out and whispered over her neck.

“What is it?” I asked quietly, my hands on Roxanne’s hips to steady her, but I realized I needed the connection just as much.

“A wolf.”

She shined her light ahead of us, and I peered over her shoulder toward the huge bases of two trees standing next to each other.

The roots of one tree had grown over the other’s, like the tentacles of a hungry octopus, and they’d created a basin between the tree trunks.

Low to the ground at the end of our flashlights’ glare, two unblinking eyes glowed in the dark, and we heard the hair-raising warning growl of the animal.

Tucked behind it, a person lay curled into a ball in the basin.

The wolf was guarding Natalie.

“Shit,” Roxanne breathed. “I really don’t wanna have to shoot that animal.”

“Here,” I said, and I pulled the bear spray still tucked inside my jacket pocket. She probably had some strapped to her belt or her vest, but mine was readily available.

I handed the canister to her slowly, and she flipped the safety up with her thumb easily, obviously practiced with bear spray. The natural capsaicin wouldn’t hurt the wolf, but it would annoy the shit out of its sensitive olfactory receptors.

“Oh God.” Roxanne looked up to the sky for a second, like she was pleading with it. “ Please don’t let this girl be dead.”

But before she could disperse the spray, the wolf rose carefully from the dirt.

Not taking its eyes off us, it shifted closer to Natalie still lying motionless behind it and moved its head in her direction, scenting the air.

It let out another low growl and then loped off suddenly and disappeared into the trees.

We rushed to Natalie, and Roxanne searched her body for any signs of injury or bloody wolf bites, and she checked her pulse with two fingers on the girl’s wrist.

“Thank God,” she whispered. “She’s alive.”

Roxanne pulled the radio transmitter from her shoulder and called in that we’d found Natalie and that the medics should get the exact coordinates from Evan.

“Natalie,” she urged, caressing the girl’s dark, tangled hair out of her face.

Leaves and twigs had been embedded in it, and she was covered in smudges of dirt.

Her sweatshirt and jeans had been ripped and torn, like maybe she’d fallen at some point and got caught on trees or rocks, and one of her tennis shoes was missing. “Can you hear me?”

I stood guard in case the wolf came back, but I had a feeling it had run away from us pesky humans as fast as it could.

Natalie moaned when Roxanne said her name again. “C-cold,” she stammered. “Fell. My ankle. Couldn’t go further. S-so tired.”

“I’m Deputy Roxanne Fitts with the Teton County Sheriff’s Department. A lot of people have been lookin’ for you.”

“Where’s m-my mom and dad?” Natalie asked meekly, her teeth chattering.

“They’re gonna be so mad at me.” She barely looked like the same girl I’d met and eaten breakfast with yesterday.

Her face was flushed from the cold but looked a little gaunt, and she had dark circles under her eyes and a long, angry scrape across the side of her face.

“They’re waitin’ for you,” Roxanne assured her, “and they’re gonna be ecstatic that we found you. We’ll get you back to your family soon, but try to stay still, okay? The paramedics are on their way.”

Natalie began to sob, her whole body shaking with the force of her relief, and if I wasn’t wrong, Roxanne was trying to blink back tears, too, but I didn’t think she’d let them fall.

I had learned quickly that Deputy Roxanne Fitts took pride in her job. She would always do it to the best of her ability, and she didn’t joke around when it came to public safety.

I removed my jacket and handed it to her, and she draped it over Natalie, and then she pulled a plastic packet from an inside pocket lining her own jacket.

She ripped the packet open with her teeth and pulled out a square that looked like folded aluminum foil, unfolded it, and tucked the mylar blanket around Natalie to keep her body heat in.

Just then, we heard the rush of barking search dogs in the distance, and within twenty minutes, the area was crawling with SAR volunteers and law enforcement.

Medics assessed Natalie, and they loaded her onto a stretcher.

She screamed when they stabilized her broken ankle, but they had to before they attempted to carry her from the woods.

Her parents were notified that Natalie had been found alive, and we heard her mother over the sheriff’s radio, sobbing as relief washed through her.

As the teams headed off to reunite Natalie with her family and get her to the hospital in Jackson, Roxanne and I stood motionless, staring at each other.

“That wolf,” I whispered.

“That was…”

“Crazy,” we said at the same time.

“It was probably Edwina,” Evan said as he, Misty, Bax, and Bea joined us. “She’s an old, deaf wolf people have reported seein’ around here this fall. The older she gets, the more often she strays from her pack.”

“She’s deaf?” Roxanne said. “That’s why she didn’t run until she saw us. She didn’t hear us.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “I’ve never seen anything like that. She was protectin’ that girl.”

“It’s unusual,” Evan said, shrugging, “but not unheard of. The animal could sense that Natalie was injured and weak. Edwina could relate.”

“C’mon, ya’ll,” Misty said, swinging her arm behind her when she turned. “You’re gonna have to relay that story fifty more times tonight. We better get back so you can get started.”