She wasn’t wrong. “Let’s go,” he said.
She slid into the driver’s seat and buckled her safety belt. Shelby arranged herself on the back seat next to Hunter. “Have you heard anything from the sheriff?” she asked as he settled into the passenger seat.
“No. I called Doug last night and he said a couple of agents from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation interviewed him, but they wouldn’t say anything about the case.”
She started the car and backed out of her parking space. “I called the Endicott house last night,” she said. “The man who answered said they weren’t taking calls and there was no news. I didn’t recognize his voice, so I thought maybe he was a cop.”
“We may get to Pandora and find the place crawling with cops,” Scott said.
“What are we going to tell them if they ask what we’re doing?” She turned onto the road that led to the back country.
“We tell them we came to ski,” he said. “Plead ignorance.”
She chuckled softly.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“You don’t look that clueless.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everything about your screams ‘competent and informed.’ I mean that as a compliment, but no cop is going to believe you live in a cave and haven’t heard a thing about a boy being kidnapped. You can’t help looking like you know exactly what you’re doing.”
“Then I’ve fooled you,” he said. “I have no idea if we’ll find Jackson or not, but I have a hard time sitting around doing nothing.”
“Then you and Shelby have a lot in common.”
There she went, making him the butt of a joke again. “I’m glad you find me so entertaining,” he said.
“Would you rather I be intimidated?” She sipped her tea.
“I’m not trying to intimidate anyone.”
“When I first started work here, you were pretty forbidding,” she said. “Until I figured you out.”
“Oh, you figured me out, did you?” Whereas she confounded him more every minute.
“You’re like a lot of guys I’ve met—cool and detached on the outside, but inside you care deeply about things. I think it frustrates you when other people don’t care as much, like with the avalanche dog program.”
The assessment hit him like a punch in the gut—he didn’t like being so transparent. “Were you a psychology major?” he asked.
“No, but I pay attention to people.” Another sip of tea. “It’s my superpower.”
“Too bad your superpower can’t tell us what happened to Jackson.”
She sighed. “Yeah. Too bad.”
They both grew quiet, though he was aware of her, only a few inches away, focused on her driving. He had seldom been around someone so self-contained, content with silence.
She turned the car onto the snow-packed Forest Service road that led to the trail they wanted. “Have you been here before?” he asked.
“No. I looked up the directions last night online. And I read about Pandora. Apparently, it used to be a gold mining town.”
“Right. There are half a dozen log buildings still standing, some of them in pretty good shape. It’s a popular destination for hikers in the summer, and there are a few more modern summer cabins near the town site that are still kept up, but hardly anyone comes up here in winter, except occasional cross-country skiers.”
At the end of the road, she parked at a locked gate. “It looks like a lot of people were parked here recently,” she said, pointing to the packed snow on either side of the road.
They let the dogs out to run around while they collected their gear. They both donned packs, boots and skis. “It’s about two hours, maybe a little less, to Pandora from here,” he said.
