He kissed her cheek. “It’s good to see you, too, kiddo.”
The top-ranked female sports climber in the country, Sasha was the other A-list climbing celebrity on the Team. At only twenty-five, she’d won more championships than any woman in the history of sports climbing. Athletic, sunny, and blond, she had always seemed to Kenzie like the sort of woman Harrison would want.
Are you jealous?
No, she wasn’t. Okay, maybe a little.
Everyone adored Sasha, including Kenzie. She was always so bright and cheerful that it was impossiblenotto like her.
Ahearn walked up to them. “Hey, Kenzie. Conrad. Can we do the reunion at Knockers after we’re done here? We’ve got some people out there who might be in a world of hurt right now.”
Julia took over, bringing Kenzie up to speed. “We got a call this morning from a woman who said her son and daughter-in-law were supposed to have come to dinner after going for a hike on the Indian Peaks Trail. They never showed up, and they haven’t answered her calls. Cell service is patchy up here, of course, so that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. That Subaru Outback over there is theirs.”
“Can we get inside the vehicle, find some scent articles for Gizmo?” Kenzie had trained Gizmo to be a trailing dog, not an air-scent dog. He needed a way to scent the person or people he was supposed to find.
Julia nodded. “They didn’t lock the door.”
Which meant they probably hadn’t intended to be gone for long and likely weren’t prepared to be out overnight.
“Will you be staying here in the parking lot, Julia? I need someone to keep an eye on Gabby.” Kenzie had left the window open just a crack, but she didn’t want someone to come along and take the puppy.
Julia nodded. “I’m Incident Command, so I’ll be right here.”
“Perfect. Thanks.”
Julia, as the sheriff’s deputy, opened the door, and Kenzie let Gizmo hop inside, where he could pick up their scent. She bent down and looked in, relieved to find a pair of gloves in the back seat.
Kenzie took the gloves, drew Gizmo out of the vehicle and down to the trailhead, and then let him sniff the gloves. “Gizmo, go find!”
Gizmo took off, heading up the trail, Kenzie walking as fast as she could to keep up, Harrison beside her, the others following behind so as not to mess up the scent trail.
“It’s amazing to me that he can pick up a scent that’s more than twenty-four hours old and buried under three inches of snow.”
“The snow actually helps, especially if not many people passed by here after our couple. From the look of things, the storm kept most people away.”
They continued up the trail for a good half hour until Gizmo stopped. Kenzie watched his body language for negatives—a sign that he’d lost the scent. He searched an outcropping of rocks just off the trail, sniffing his way toward the edge.
“Careful, buddy.” She didn’t want him to slip.
Harrison looked to the west. “They might have stopped here to look at that view.”
It was a beautiful spot. Across the valley, Navajo, Apache, and Shoshoni peaks rose white against the sky.
Kenzie waited for Gizmo to give her some sense of what was going on, wondering whether she should backtrack with him and try this stretch of the trail again. Then he stepped off-trail and led her to a steep hillside.
From below came a cry. “Help! Help us! We’re down here!”
She let Gizmo go, following him down the hillside toward his quarry.
“Be careful.” Harrison walked beside her with long, sure strides. “It’s steeper here than it looks, and there are a lot of buried rocks. You might slip—”
“Oh!” Kenzie stepped on a hidden rock, which flipped beneath her boot.
“—and fall.” Harrison caught her, his gaze meeting hers.
Her pulse skipped. “Thanks.”
Nearby, she heard Gizmo bark, and she knew he’d found the hikers. They were huddled together in the shelter of a few boulders, wearing nothing but jeans, T-shirts, and light jackets.
