Vella Munn - The Return of Cord Navarro

When the radio squawked to life, she momentarily resented the intrusion, then watched intently as Cord picked it up. It was Kevin’s dad reporting that he’d been in contact with the sheriff during the night and that Dale, who was off doing something Hallem didn’t explain, wanted Cord to know that he would be getting in touch with him as soon as possible.

“What is that about?” she asked after Hallem and Cord had. spoken for several minutes. “What’s Dale up to? Are you thinking about bringing in more help? I thought-”

Cord barely glanced at her, making her wonder if he was really aware of her presence. “Even if they could be of assistance, it’d take them too long to get here. Damn. I wish Dale had been there.”

“Why? Was there something the two of you needed to talk about?” She rolled her bag into a tight bundle and secured it, then stuffed it into her pack.

“What? Nothing important.”

“If it isn’t important, why are you so upset?”

By way of answer, not that it was one, he pushed himself to his feet and stared out at his surroundings. She wanted to concentrate on the conversation and try to force him to tell her everything, but high above the tops of the trees she spotted an eagle silhouetted against the morning sky. For reasons she couldn’t pretend to understand, the eagle distracted her from the need for confrontation. “What do we do now?” she asked. “Where do we go?”

Still taking in his quiet, clean world, he pointed in the direction they’d been heading when it got too dark to travel last night. She waited for him to say something, but he seemed caught within his own thoughts, as far from her as if he’d been in another state. She’d seen that look on him before and felt helpless to transcend it. In the past she’d believed he was deliberately holding himself apart from her. Now she knew it was more complicated than that.

“Are you ready to start?” he asked after nearly a minute of silence.

By way of answer, she walked over to him and gave her pack a final shrug. She supposed she could have asked him for help in getting into it, but then she’d feel compelled to do the same for him and right now touching him wasn’t wise; maybe it never would be. He hadn’t asked whether she was up to another long day of walking and looking, but then he didn’t need to. Surely he knew that as long as there was life in her, she’d search for Matt.

His pace bothered her. She’d picked up enough from watching him in the past few days to know how much work it took to find a faint mark in the dirt. She admired his patience and tenacity, but today there seemed to be a new sense of urgency to what he was doing. As she concentrated on both keeping up with him and not distracting him, she fought off the persistent question of whether he knew something about Matt’s condition he wasn’t willing to tell her. Again and again she teetered on the brink of asking him what he was thinking, demand he leave nothing locked up inside him, but each time she held back. If he gave weight to her worst fears, she might panic.

And she didn’t dare. If she did, she would be no good to him. Or to their son.

Shannon stepped on a loose section of shale. When the rock broke apart and skittered down the slope away from them, Cord stopped long enough to assure himself that she hadn’t injured herself.

From the sun’s position, he knew they’d been traveling, without rest, for nearly four hours. Heat pressed down on him and taunted him to surrender to lethargy, but he fought it just as he fought the distraction of elk sign, floating hawks, the song of insects. With each step they were getting closer to Matt, but that gave him scant comfort. Matt’s prints had begun to smear, proof that he was occasionally dragging his feet. Still, there was a fierce determination to the way his son walked that said overtaking him wouldn’t be easy.

He was proud of Matt, so proud that his heart ached with the need to tell the boy that. Matt hadn’t given up, hadn’t let weariness or hunger or fear, if he was afraid, get the upper hand. Obviously he was determined to prove he didn’t need rescuing; maybe it hadn’t so much as occurred to him that he couldn’t get back home, eventually, without help. But if Matt went without listening to his body’s needs for much longer, he could set himself up for injury or accident.

That wasn’t the worst of it. Just after he woke up this morning and looked across the space that separated him from Shannon, he had once again heard the one sound capable of chilling him. He’d listened again a little later, unsuccessfully this time, which had only drawn Shannon’s attention to him.

The hunters were still out there, still engaged in their deadly sport. And with the way the rifle shot bounced off the peaks, he could only guess at where they were. For all he knew, they could have found their prey-or Matt.

Ignoring the sun that beat down on the back of his neck, he leaned forward, briefly confused. Part of his confusion came, he knew, because he couldn’t dismiss the father in him who wanted nothing more in life than to have his son back again. But it was more complex than that. For the past half hour Matt had been traveling as directly northeast as the terrain would allow. Now, suddenly, he’d changed directions. To make sure he hadn’t misinterpreted the sign, he made a slow circle while Shannon waited off to one side.

“I don’t know what he’s doing,” he muttered.

“What do you mean?”

Her question startled him. He didn’t remember speaking out loud. “The way he was going, I thought he’d made a decision. But he’s lost confidence in himself again.”

“Oh, no. The poor boy.”

“It happens,” he told her without risking the distraction of looking at her. He’d seen her in her undershirt this morning, and although he’d already gone four hours trying to shake off the memory of her long, tanned legs, it hadn’t been enough. “Lost people sometimes convince themselves that they know what they’re doing. Then they see or don’t see something and it throws them off balance.”

“Does he know he’s lost? Can you tell?”

“No, I don’t think he does.”

“How… how do you know?”

“Most lost children stay where they are, especially if they’ve been going as long as he has.”

“In other words, Matt’s trying to convince himself that he knows what he’s doing.”

“Yes.”

“Because…” Even when her voice trailed off, he didn’t look at her. Still, because of the years they’d spent together, he knew what he’d see in her eyes. “Because he’s Cord Navarro’s son and any son of his couldn’t possibly be in this much trouble.”

“I can’t help it, Shannon! Don’t you think I’d change this if I could?”

She didn’t say anything, and although he regretted his outburst, maybe it was better that they’d gotten this out in the open even if it drove yet another wedge between them. Still, as he reassured himself that he’d properly read his son’s tracks, he made a vow not to react to anything else she said. She needed him to find their son, nothing more. He’d done this before, and he could do it again.

“I hate this. absolutely hate this.”

He’d glanced over his shoulder at her before he’d had time to warn himself of the folly of such a move. Her cheeks looked slightly wind-chapped, her shirt wrinkled. He wanted to wrap her in silk and give her a rainbow. “The walking?”

“No. Of course not. If I thought it would help, I’d walk until I came to the end of the world. It’s the damn stuff that keeps going through my head. I know you know what I’m talking about. You’re going through the same thing.”

“Yes. I am,” be said, although his thoughts, compounded by past experiences of failed rescues and his knowledge of who else they shared the mountain with, made it even harder. “There’s only one thing we can do, Shannon. Follow him until we find him.”