C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

“Not ‘Boss.’”

I smiled briefly. “Morrison. Whatever I call you, the truth is I don’t know how to find what’s up there, much less how to handle it.”

“I’m sure it’ll find us, Walker. The rest we can figure out.”

There was nothing better than having a handsome man completely confident in your abilities, except maybe having one who also intended to go into battle with you. I kissed him, then squeezed away before we did fall into Petite’s front seat and went searching for the shotgun I had carelessly tossed away. I was surprised Les hadn’t read me the riot act on that, too, when I found it half-under the Impala. I bent to scoop it up and my phone rang, making me clap my hip as I stood. Morrison straightened, his gaze watchful as I answered with a “Yeah?”

“You answered too fast to be driving back down here, and I don’t want to know why you’re not,” Sara said. “But belay those orders anyway, because Ada Monroe just came to the school. She says Aidan has gone missing.”

I didn’t know what my expression was, but Morrison came closer and put his hand at the small of my back. My heart’s tempo had picked up to an improbable degree, drowning out Sara’s voice. My face felt flushed and my fingers were freezing, but then those reversed while my stomach churned. Sara, distantly, was saying, “She says his bed hasn’t been slept in and the back door th anre was open. Their property backs up onto the mountains, Joanne.”

“He’s twelve,” I protested faintly. “How far could he have gotten in eight hours?” It was a stupid question. Even assuming he’d gone into the mountains at the very slow pace of a mile an hour, that made for a lot of square mileage to cover. Realistically he would know at least a few miles of the land well enough to move much, much faster than that, even at night. I stopped being able to extrapolate how much distance he could have covered. It was busywork anyway, my brain trying desperately to distract itself with numbers while adrenaline pumped through, urging me to move.

“The town is putting a search party together already, and he’s been reported missing in the NCIC and CUE, but—”

“But I’m already up here. CUE?” I knew the National Crime Information Center, but CUE was new to me and would give Sara something to talk about while I folded my hand around the phone and triggered the Sight. Petite herself flared reassuring, solid green, and Morrison had faint red tinges of concern dancing through his purple and blue aura. The mountains were brilliant with color, new leaves on trees burning electric blue, the sap running strong and bright. Bugs and larger animals made different-colored shadows against the blue pulsing life in the trees, but I was looking beyond that. Way beyond.

The Sight wasn’t exactly X-ray vision, but for my purposes it was close enough. I couldn’t track magic, but I could See it, and Aidan’s aura was brilliant and distinctive. Phone still folded in my hand, I turned my attention up into the hills, searching for the blaze of near-white blend that was Aidan Monroe’s presence.

Nothing. I gritted, “We’ll find him,” over Sara’s explanation about the Community United Effort, and hung up. “Horrible energy-sucking monsters have been moved into second place on the priority list. Aidan’s missing.”

“Your son.”

“Yeah. Ada’s son,” I said after a moment, because it was bizarre hearing someone else say those words aloud. I thought of Aidan as my son in the privacy of my head, but to the world outside my head, he was Ada’s. “Not that I’m trying to write him off. It’s just that she’s put all the time and effort in. All I did was give birth. A long time ago.” I wet my lips, then swallowed. I meant it, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t worried. Terrified, even. “I don’t want anything to happen to him, Morrison. He’s just a kid, and my screwed-up life is coming in to haunt him.”

“Your life...” Morrison paused long enough to make me give a hard little laugh.

“Isn’t screwed up, is that what you were going to say? Thanks, but it is. More than most.”

“Differently from most.” He thought about that, then exhaled and admitted, “More than most. Speaking of which, Walker, it’s a bad time, but how are you doing with the Patricia Raleigh incident?”

“Did she die?”

“No.”

“Then I’m fine.” I wasn’t certain it was true. Two weeks ago I’d shot a woman to keep her from killing my detective partner. I hadn’t shot to kill, and she’d survived, but shooting someone was a big deal all by itself. For me, though, it had also been the spark setting off two weeks of explosive, nonstop action. That kind of thing looked cool in movies, but was exhausting when it really happened. I was going to have a hell of a lot to work through when things slowed down.

At the rate I was goirat alsong, that would happen when I was about eighty. “I’ll be fine, anyway,” I amended. “Don’t worry about it right now. We have other problems. Aidan apparently knows these hills like the back of his hand, and he really wanted to go with me yesterday when it looked like I was going monster-hunting. If he’s gone hunting by himself....”

“He’ll be fine,” Morrison promised, and since, like George Washington, Morrison never told a lie, I accepted the reassurance gratefully. He edged me aside to pick up where I’d left off: packing the shotgun and other bits of the arsenal I’d put in Petite’s trunk over the past several months. “I’m glad no one stopped me for speeding. I had no idea what you had in the trunk. Is anything in here illegal?”

“I have permits for all of it. Were you really speeding? Of course you were.” I took a back holster for the sawed-off shotgun out of the trunk and slung it on, but I was trying to stare at Morrison over my shoulder while he slid the shotgun home. It had a comfortable weight to it, though I bet after a day’s hike it wouldn’t be so comfy. “You really just drove across the country in two days, Morrison? Did you sleep? ”

“Not much. I made good time through the Midwest and stopped at a motel for about six hours.”

I turned around to stare at him with my heart and my libido both speeding up. I’d driven that route when I was seventeen, all the way through South Dakota and into the speed-limit-free zone of Montana. I had a fair sense of what good time meant, in those regards, and I knew for damned sure what Petite’s upper speed range was. I had made it across the country, North Carolina to Seattle, and avoiding Ohio, which was lousy with cops, in about forty hours, including sleep, stopping for food, and climbing a mountain to look at the wild horse monument built there. My average speed had been around 75 miles an hour, and that took traffic jams into account. My top speed had been close to Petite’s nominal upper limit of 130, but I’d never quite pegged it. One of my goals in life was to bring her to Utah and let her rip on the salt flats.

The idea of Morrison tearing across the country at an average speed in excess of sixty miles an hour was one of the sexier images I’d been presented with lately. My cheeks flushed. Morrison looked amused. “You all right, Walker?”

I’d said it before, but it was worth repeating, except this time I said it in a lower, more throaty voice. “I didn’t know you drove that well.”

“Driving fast isn’t the same as driving well.” He gave Petite a sideways glance, then admitted, “She can move.”

My grin was big enough to split my head. I patted Petite proprietorially and beamed some more as Morrison put on his best official-cop face and went back to ransacking Petite’s trunk. He didn’t ask about the flask of holy water or the wooden stakes. Then he went around to the driver’s side, flipped the seat forward, and took out two more completely unexpected items from behind the seat.