Gabriel raised a hand to indicate he’d heard and understood, but Whiskey was moving at a fair clip, and the terrain needed his attention.
A twisted ankle out here, and he’d require assistance, pulling searchers off their tasks to save his sorry ass.
He decided right then that no matter how far out they got, he’d crawl back to the vehicle rather than take any eyes off saving the kids.
Could the kids have survived the night in only pajamas?
Even though he could see his breath, his exertion was making him warm in his jacket. Unzipping and pulling his arms out, he left it trapped between his back and pack. He’d put it away at their first rest stop.
Gabriel remembered the many nights he and his fellow Rangers had survived the drastic dips in temperature that happen in the desert, where there’s no vegetation to hold the heat to the ground. They’d spooned under their woobies—the warm liners that attached to their ponchos—to help keep them warm.
A woobie could only do so much. Shared body heat plus woobie made things survivable.
So that there were two kids in the woods, it might be better than one.
On the way up to the Sweet Gum—so named for the tree and not a candy—Reaper had said that kids under seven had almost a 100% chance of surviving if they were found within the first 24 hours. But anything more than twenty-four hours dropped their survival to around thirty-five percent. Statistics were about zero after seventy-two hours.
Whiskey, I believe in you. You’ve got this.
ChapterThirteen
Sommer
Bobbing along with their glowing red lights, half of their team looking to the right, half to the left, they had only one job: to figure out if the kids were wandering near the trail.
It was a good trail, one Sommer liked.
Wide and clean, there were no trees to step over; some service group had come through and made sure all the roots were flush with the path.
The incline was a challenge on a day hike.
Adrenaline had run through her system for the first hour. But Sommer knew that with an adrenaline spike came the unintended crash. It would be better for Sommer’s already taxed system to ease the sense of immediate threat to the children. She did that by focusing on her task at hand and winging out the magical manifestation thoughts that Abbie liked to talk about.
For Sommer, she threw out thoughts of yummy food, nice warm drinks, cozy blankets, and loving hugs, and then she called the children to put themselves in front of searchers’ eyes. It didn’t have to be her team, but some team. On the way home, when she was in private, Sommer would ask Abhie about that strategy.
Was Sommer a woo-woo person?
She wasn’t against it.
For fun, she might sprinkle some salt over her threshold under the next full moon. After all, she hung bells at her front door, stirred her pots clockwise, and had a collection of rocks that she’d picked up on trails and brought home because she thought they felt friendly.
Now that she lived in a storybook witch’s cottage in the woods, maybe she’d embrace a little intentionality and symbolism to manifest a bit of good magic in her life.
All the way up, the rhythmic trudge of feet and the whisper of wind through the evergreens had been the only sound.
Wendy had called their assignment a “hasty,” and maybe in daylight that meant a certain speed. At night, they had moved slowly. And they needed to, since they were searching for children who might have curled up in the leaves to sleep. Their team’s eyes needed enough time to focus in the shadows.
They were diligent hour after hour, stopping when Wendy stopped to sit, snack, and rehydrate.
Throughout the night, no hand went up in the air.
Wendy had said that a service club had been up that trail a week ago and cleaned along the route. She said that any piece of wrapper or bottle might be a clue that the children had been through that area.
But they found nothing.
It felt wrong.
All the walking, all the looking, all the silent prayers that the good angels nudge the kids onto the path so they’d be seen and cared for … it felt empty.
