Hannah Alexander - Last Resort

Noelle turned and glanced over her shoulder at the field to the south as the sound of an all-terrain vehicle reached them. “That’s Carissa’s favorite place to ride Gypsy,” she said.

“It’s where we loved to ride, too,” he reminded her. “The field is level with amazingly few rocks to trip the horses.” He and Noelle had often played in the field and along the creek when they were growing up.

“Why do some things stay the same, when other things change so drastically?” Noelle murmured.

“I’ve asked that enough times myself,” Nathan said. “Remember how many times we walked down this lane when we were kids?”

“Or rode our bikes.”

“And tried to hide from my little sisters.”

“And my big sister.” Noelle chuckled. “I felt so secure, so protected then. I mean, I had family all around me, and my best friend lived right down the road.” She glanced sideways at Nathan.

He nodded. How many times in the past few years he had thought about those days, wondering if he would have done things differently, given the chance.

“Two thousand acres of Cooper property, joined by Trask property,” Noelle said. “The searchers couldn’t have covered everything yet, could they?”

“Not every inch, of course, but—”

“But Carissa knows this hollow so well. All she has to do is find Willow Creek and follow it down.”

Nathan glanced at Noelle. “Maybe Carissa’s done just that. She might be home by the time we get to the house.”

“You don’t sound convinced.” Noelle pulled the cell phone from her pocket, punched numbers again, asked whoever answered about the status of the search without identifying herself, and then expressed thanks. “Not yet,” she reported to Nathan, kicking a rock to the side of the track. “Carissa knows this land as well as we did at her age.”

“That’s true, but everything looks different in the dark. My friend Taylor Jackson thinks it’s possible she got lost, and he’s working on that premise while others are searching farther afield.”

“Taylor’s the ranger who’s dating Karah Lee Fletcher at the clinic?”

“Yes. He’s been helping coordinate the search. The sheriff suggested Carissa might have run away for some reason.”

“Ridiculous. Greg should know better.”

“That’s what Cecil and Melva keep insisting,” Nathan said. “But you know Carissa can be headstrong, and she and her parents did have a little confrontation yesterday.”

“What about?”

“Gladys.”

Noelle’s steps slowed. “What about her?” she asked quietly.

“She wants to see Justin and Carissa again.” Gladys had given up any right to see her children when she had abandoned them and their father. Her lack of concern for their suffering had outraged the whole community. “Carissa wants to see her, and Melva’s pitching a major fit.”

Noelle stepped around a mud puddle and ducked beneath a tree limb. “Does Gladys think she can just suddenly walk back into their lives and stir everything up again? When she left, Carissa was devastated. For at least a year, I think she continued to hope her mother would come back to them.”

“As you said, Carissa’s strong-willed,” Nathan said. “So it could be possible that she’s in hiding somewhere, maybe protesting.”

“No.”

“But if she were hiding, where do you think she’d hide?” He gestured around him, indicating the expanse of ground they would have to cover. “Where would you hide?”

“Not around here, and no, I’m not feeling any kind of leading.”

“But just for the sake of a place to look, where would you hide?”

“Does that old dirt track still wind through the woods to the national forest a couple of miles back?” she asked.

“I think so. I heard Pearl complaining about people trespassing on Cooper land from the logging trail in national forest land. Why? Do you—”

She turned and looked up at him, and he glimpsed an interested quickening in those intelligent eyes. “Where did we go when we were kids? You know, when we got in trouble.”

“The caves?” he asked. There were at least four in the vicinity that ranged from mere indentations in the rock to caverns that cut deeply into the hillside.

She gave him a look of approval. “Exactly. Is Bobcat Cave still sealed?”

“I think it is. At least, I hope it is.”

She bent over and tucked the cuffs of her jeans into her socks. “We may be beating some brush. Still ticks and chiggers here, I suppose.”

“Not in this section, there ain’t.” A deep, strong female voice suddenly spoke from the trees a few yards ahead.

Pearl Cooper’s tall, rawboned figure emerged from the woods along one of the wildlife trails that intersected the lane. Her hand patted her chest in a long-familiar gesture—Aunt Pearl had claimed heart palpitations for as long as Noelle could remember. The family affectionately accused her of using sympathy to get what she wanted. She never denied it. Aunt Pearl could always charm people into giving in to her, and when she couldn’t charm them, she pulled rank—though Cecil and Jill had incorporated the business to save on taxes, Pearl owned the property and everything on it. It had passed to her through the Cooper family trust.

Pearl’s iron-gray hair stuck out in haphazard tufts, straggling over her forehead to frame deep-blue eyes—Cooper eyes that saw more, sometimes, than one wanted them to see. She seldom wore anything other than jeans and old plaid flannel shirts, even in summer, and now she had the legs of her jeans tucked into a pair of well-used hiking shoes—she’d been the one to teach Noelle this practical trick for warding off tiny, biting varmints.

“Can’t swear to it,” she said as she neared them, “but I think the geese running free and the pennyroyal I planted did the trick. No ticks in the yard or this part of the woods all summer. Of course, you’ve gotta watch close or you’ll be ankle-deep in goose poop, but it’s better than ticks, to my notion. The backwoods are another problem, though. That where you’re headed?” Without pausing, she grabbed Noelle in a fierce hug, wrapping her in the pungent aroma of rosemary that always clung to Pearl from her herb garden.

Noelle’s great-aunt Pearl lived in the same house she’d been born in, a sturdy, sprawling rock dwelling that had changed little since it had been built in the early nineteen-hundreds. For as long as anyone in the area could remember, Pearl Cooper had gathered herbs and made her old-time medicines, distributing them to anyone who needed them. She’d protested loudly when the general store in Hideaway had opened a pharmacy, and she’d been only slightly mollified when she discovered Nathan would be the pharmacist.

“Good to see you, girl,” she said to Noelle now. “I’ve been expecting you. Come to search for Carissa?”

“Yes, but I don’t know what I’ll find that others haven’t.” Noelle gave Nathan a look of caution over Pearl’s shoulder, and was reassured by his small nod of understanding.

“I thought since Carissa and Noelle are such good friends,” Nathan said, “that Noelle might have some fresh insight.”

Pearl was frowning when she stepped back from Noelle’s embrace. “All those searchers probably turned up the same rocks and looked behind the same trees two or three times. Seems this holler’s been scoured from top to bottom and end to end. If she’s any where near here, a feller’d think we’d’ve found something.”

“It seems that way, Aunt Pearl,” Noelle said. “You haven’t seen any strangers hanging around out on the property lately, have you?”

Pearl shook her head. “There’s strangers and tourists swelling the town to three or four times its normal size, but nobody ever wanders this far from the fun.”