A Cry In The Night

Wrapping the rope once around her leather-clad knuckles, she backed to the ledge, then stepped down into the ravine. Instantly she realized the darkness was going to make her descent infinitely more difficult. But knowing she didn’t have a choice, she slid her feet inches at a time. First her right foot, then her left. Branches poked at her back and legs as she broke through the brush. Adrenaline spiked through her when her hiking boots slipped on the slick granite. She dangled for an instant before swinging her legs forward then pushing off against the rock face.

By the time she reached the ravine floor, every muscle in her body quivered with exertion.

“You okay?” Buzz shouted down to her.

“Fine.” Stepping out of the harness, she slipped off the gloves and tied them to the harness. “Go ahead and pull the harness back up.”

An instant later, the harness bumped back up the rock face.

Slipping the flashlight from her fanny pack, Kelly flicked it on and shone it down on the ground. Her heart turned over when she saw the barely discernable sneaker print in the dust. Small circles with an arrow pointing toward the toe. Buzz had been right. Eddie had been here. Guilt nipped at her that she’d missed it earlier. If she’d seen it and searched the ravine, she might have been holding him safe in her arms right now.

Needing to be close to him, Kelly dropped to her knees and pressed her fingers into the dust. “Oh, sweetheart. Mommy’s coming for you.” Bowing her head, she whispered a prayer for the good Lord to keep her son safe until she reached him.

She was still kneeling when Buzz slid the last few feet down the ravine wall. “Kel?”

The first tinges of exhaustion pressed into her as she got to her feet. Kelly looked up at him, surprised to see the raw concern in his expression.

“You okay?”

She nodded. “I’m fine. I just need to find him.”

Tugging the radio from his belt, Buzz jerked out the antenna, adjusted the squelch and barked into it, “This is Tango Two Niner, RMSAR Homer One, do you read? Clear.”

“Hey, Tango, this is Dispatch. Any luck?”

“I’ve got tracks, and I’m wondering if Eagle is out and about. Clear.”

“National Weather Service issued a wind advisory. Eagle went back to her nest. Sighting negative. What’s your twenty?”

“I’m three miles from remote camping. East ridge of White Water.”

“It’s oh one hundred, Buzz. Dogs will be there at oh six. Please advise.”

Kelly listened to the exchange. She’d always known that Buzz was the kind of man who would be good at what he did, no matter what it was. He was competitive and driven and a perfectionist to the extreme. But somehow, the breadth and width of what he did—and how good he was at it—hadn’t fully penetrated until now. At that moment, she knew she’d done the right thing by going to him. He was the best of the best. He loved what he did, he chose his team wisely, and she knew if it was the last thing he did, he would find her son.

“Advise Lake and Chaffee counties of our twenty. Let them know we found tracks. We’re going to camp for the night. Over and out.” Buzz switched off the radio and shoved it back into his belt.

Kelly just stood there a moment before realizing she was staring at him and that he was staring back. “I’m not camping,” she said.

“You’re dead on your feet,” he returned evenly.

It was true, but that didn’t mean she was going to admit it. It sure as hell didn’t mean she was going to sleep while her son wandered around lost. But Buzz was the kind of man who took care of things. The kind of man who liked to be in charge, liked to be in control. If he knew she was exhausted, he would make sure she got rest—even if that meant calling the search to a halt until morning. Kelly didn’t intend to let that happen. “I’m not tired,” she said.

“It’s 1:00 a.m.”

“I want to keep looking.”

“We need to find a place to camp for the night. Get a couple of hours of sleep—”

“Dammit, Buzz, I’m not going to stop! We just found his tracks, for Pete’s sake. If we keep going we could find him before morning.”

“If we don’t find him by morning, you’ll be about as much use to me as a broken rope.”

Kelly heard the logic in his words. She wasn’t a fool. She knew she had to pace herself. But the part of her that was a mother first couldn’t bear the thought of stopping to sleep when her little boy was huddled somewhere all alone, cold and hungry and afraid.

Shaking with the need to find him, she walked over to Buzz and met his gaze with an equally powerful one of her own. “Give me one more hour. Please. If we don’t find him, we’ll make camp and get some rest.”

Buzz sighed, his jaw flexing. “I’m going to hold you to it.”

“One hour. That’s all I’m asking.”

He looked past her, toward the small footprints in the dusty earth. “Is that where you came to after the fall?”

She nodded. “He must have come down the ravine to see if I was okay.”

He shone the spotlight over the area. “Let’s see if we can pick up a trail.”

Re-energized now that they had found a tangible clue, Kelly nodded and slipped her flashlight back into her fanny pack to conserve the batteries. She’d only gone a few steps when Buzz’s voice stopped her.

“He went this way.”

Kelly watched his spotlight play over tall grass and sparse trees where the terrain sloped gently. She could see how a young child would think the slope led down the mountain. But the fact of the matter was that the downward incline had taken him in the wrong direction, away from the campground to a higher elevation and some of the most rugged high country in the state.

“You can barely see it, but there’s a path in the grass.” Buzz shone the spotlight over the meadow.

Kelly squinted, trying not to think of how scared he must have been. “He thought the downward slope would take him back to the campground,” she said.

“Smart little kid.”

He takes after his father. The words almost slipped out, but Kelly stopped herself just in time. Now wasn’t the time to tell Buzz how many times Eddie had reminded her of him. She couldn’t talk to this man at all about the child she had chosen to keep a secret. The child he’d never wanted. She had a pretty good idea how Buzz felt about that—angry and betrayed and justifiably so.

When they were married, Buzz had made it clear he didn’t want children. She understood why. Though he’d never revealed the details, she knew about his own childhood. About the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of his father. She also knew about the four years of hell he’d gone through when he’d worked the Child Abuse Division of the Denver PD. He never talked about it, but she knew what those years had done to him. She had been there when he’d wakened in the dead of night, his hands shaking, his body slicked with sweat. In the end, Buzz had made his choice. He’d chosen the job over her, over family, and stuck like glue to his resolve never to bring a child into the world. Kelly hadn’t been able to live with that, and their marriage had slowly fallen apart.

She wondered how he would react when she told him she would be moving to Lake Tahoe next month. She wondered if he’d thought about whether or not he wanted to know his son. She wondered if he would travel to California to see him or settle for a two-week visit during summer vacation. She wondered if he would relinquish a relationship with his son for his own selfish peace of mind.

Without speaking, they started into the meadow, Buzz’s spotlight playing over the grass, sparse juniper and the ever-present rock from which the mountains had garnered their name. Lightning flickered on the horizon to the northwest. Kelly tried not to think of Eddie out there all by himself and facing the threat of a thunderstorm.

“Why didn’t you tell me about him?” Buzz asked after a moment.

Kelly thought she had been prepared for the question. Since Eddie’s birth, she’d rehearsed her answer a thousand times. But all those carefully constructed responses withered on her tongue when she looked into Buzz’s eyes. Back at the cabin, she’d seen the emotions behind those eyes. Now those emotions were gone, replaced by ice, perhaps even a thin layer of contempt. But he was so hard to read, had always been hard to read, she couldn’t be sure. And whatever defenses she’d built around herself in the last hours nearly crumpled beneath the power of his gaze.

“You never wanted children,” she managed to say.

“You did.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I guess that could be translated as I’m wondering if you got pregnant on purpose. Maybe you figured you needed a baby, but you didn’t need me.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that.”

“That’s exactly what you did.”

Her temper jumped, like a big, wild cat hit with a jolt of electricity. Stopping abruptly, she turned to him. “Don’t you dare lay all the blame at my feet. In case it’s slipped your narrow mind, it takes two people to make a baby!”

“You were always…. I thought you were on the pill.”

“I went off the pill the day the divorce was finalized. You came to me twice after that. Twice! Both times we…. That last time….” She let the endings of both sentences hang, not wanting to think of the wrenching sadness and blinding, desperate passion they’d shared that final night. Buzz had made love to her with a desperation so powerful it scared her. It was the last time they’d been together, the last time she’d been with anyone, and she’d always known in her heart that was the night Eddie had been conceived.

Buzz switched off the spotlight. Kelly wondered if it was to conserve the battery—or to keep her from seeing his expression.

“You kept him from me, Kel,” he said. “I didn’t think you were capable of something like that.”

“Because you didn’t want him. Because you didn’t want me.”

“Did you come to this conclusion before or after you decided to walk?”

“You’re the one who made the decision,” she said breathlessly. “You made your choice. I merely followed through.”

“I had a job to do, and I did it the best way I knew how.”

Kelly struggled to pull oxygen into her lungs. Her heart bucked and stomped in her chest. She hated fighting like this. Hated opening up those painful old wounds. It had been bad enough when they were married. But with her son lost and the fear pounding like a drum inside her this was infinitely worse.

“It’s not that simple,” she said after a moment. “There was nothing simple about our marriage.”

“Marriage is cut and dried. Either you stay and try to work things out. Or you walk away and don’t look back. We both know which choice you made.”

Her temper rose like hot mercury. Memories rained down on her, pieces of her life that had gone up in smoke, fluttering down like smoldering ash, burning her. “I walked out because I know what men like you do to the people who love them.”

“Now I guess we’re getting to the heart of the matter, aren’t we?”

“You put me through three years of hell, Buzz.”

“Oh, for chrissake!”

“I saw you the night they brought you in on that stretcher. You had a bullet in your back. You were bleeding internally. You couldn’t even breathe on your own, for God’s sake! You nearly died that night. The doctors didn’t know if you’d ever walk again.”

“I was a cop, Kel. Cops get hurt sometimes. It goes with the territory. I couldn’t stop doing my job just because you didn’t like it.”

She didn’t tell him those were the same words her father had used to placate her mother. The same words her brother had used the last time she’d seen him alive. They’d scoffed at her worry. She couldn’t tell him that she would rather lose him on her terms than on the more vicious terms set forth by fate. “You had a choice.”

“I made the only choice I could,” he snapped.

“Yes, you did. And that was when I knew it wasn’t going to work.”

“That’s when you realized you didn’t have the guts to stick by me.”

“Don’t lecture me about guts!” The anger came with such force that her voice shook with it. “You turned down that corporate security position for the job with Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue. This could have turned out differently.”

“Don’t blame what happened between us on fate, Kel. Maybe it wouldn’t have worked out no matter what I did for a living.”

She stared at him, speechless, not sure how to disagree without opening doors she knew were better left closed and locked.

“You made a conscious decision and stuck by it,” he said.

“I stuck by it because I don’t want my son to have his heart ripped out by a man who doesn’t have the good sense to know when to retire. A man who would eventually draw the short straw. And I know Eddie will never have to see his father die before he’s old enough to understand how exactly final death is.”

“I guess you think it’s better that he doesn’t have a father at all?”

She thought back to when she’d lost her own father and brother. She’d only been a teenager, but she’d never forgotten the agony of that day or the dark months that had followed. Her mother had never been the same, and had quietly faded away until she was nothing more than a shell of the vibrant woman she’d once been. While her sister, Kim, had gone away to college, Kelly had cared for their mother, and she’d sworn she would never let her own children suffer the same fate.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I do.”

Buzz remained silent, but his eyes never left hers.

Shaken by the exchange, by the truths on both sides and the echoes of pain clanging through her heart, Kelly tugged the flashlight out of her fanny pack and moved ahead of him, shining it over the tall grass. “I’m not going to discuss this with you now.”

Not waiting for a reply, she found the subtle trail in the grass and followed it. A moment later, she heard Buzz behind her. She knew eventually they would have to talk about how they were going to handle this. About whether Buzz wanted to be part of his son’s life. About whether Kelly could accept Eddie bonding with a man who spent his days jumping out of helicopters and rappelling down sheer cliffs and putting his life on the line day in and day out. Just as her father and brother had all those years ago.

Kelly knew that before this was all said and done she would have to decide if she could live with the very real possibility that she might one day have to watch her son have his heart ripped out by a man who thought he was immortal.

Chapter 4

Buzz was too angry to talk, so he lagged behind a few feet. He’d promised to give her an hour before stopping for the night, but an hour came and went and he didn’t mention it. He knew she was exhausted and running on little more than nerves and that steel determination he saw in her eyes every time he looked at her. But the truth of the matter was he didn’t want to have to sit down and look into her eyes and see all that pain or, God forbid, talk about how they were going to handle their having a son.

He knew that’s what would happen if they made camp. He simply wasn’t up to talking. He was too angry. Too off-kilter. Too damn…everything to do anything but make the situation infinitely worse. He figured they may as well keep walking until they were both too tired to talk.

The three-quarter moon was sinking low in the west when he finally spoke. “Kel, let’s pack it in for the night.”

He’d expected her to argue, felt a sharp retort sizzle on the tip of his tongue in preparation. But surprising him, she stopped and just stood there, staring into the darkness as if listening for a cry in the night that never came.

Her face glowed pale in the dim moonlight, her eyes dark and troubled. When he stepped closer, he saw the exhaustion and defeat and the tired remnants of fear in her eyes and a pang of compassion gripped him despite his efforts to remain distant.

“We’ll sleep for a few hours and start again first light,” he said.

“It’s so cold,” she said tonelessly. “I wish it wasn’t so damn cold.”

For a moment, Buzz thought she was referring to herself, then realized her own physical comforts were the last thing on her mind. She was worried about Eddie. The night was uncomfortably cold, but it wasn’t harsh enough to cause hypothermia to a child with a jacket. As long as he wasn’t wet.

Because Buzz didn’t know what else to do to comfort her, he dropped his pack and stooped to dig out one of two compact thermal sleeping bags he’d packed. Rising, he handed one to her. “Unzip this and put it around your shoulders.”

She obeyed without objection. Then, huddled within the blanket, she just stood there, staring into the darkness, listening, waiting.

Buzz had been through some intense moments with Kelly. But in all the years he’d known her, he’d never seen her like this. Bleak and filled with despair and utter hopelessness.

At a loss as to what to do next, he looked around and spotted a semi-protected area where they would be out of the wind. Picking up his backpack, he walked over to it and began unpacking. He removed the stove first and lit the wick. The flame cast yellow light on the surrounding trees and nearby outcropping of rock. A few feet away, Kelly sank down on a fallen log and put her face in her hands. She didn’t make a sound, but Buzz saw her shoulders shaking, and he knew she was crying. Jesus, he hated seeing that. He’d seen plenty of women cry over the years. He’d long since grown used to female tears. But to see this strong, stubborn woman reduced to tears tore at him like a sharp-fanged little animal.

“We’ve got to believe he’s going to be all right, Kel. Don’t let your mind get away from you,” he said after a moment.

When she raised her head and looked at him, tears shimmered like wet diamonds on her cheeks. “I ache inside. I’ve never hurt like this before. If something happens to him, I’ll never—”

“Don’t go there, damn it,” he interjected harshly. “Don’t say it. Don’t even think it.”

“I’m sorry I’m such a basket case.”

“Don’t apologize. This isn’t easy. For either of us.”

Rather than upset her, his harsh tone seemed to bolster her control. Rising, she approached him and knelt in front of the stove to warm her hands. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Buzz passed her his backpack. “I brought some protein bars. Get out a couple, so we can eat. Put down the tarp.” He could have very well done those things himself, but he knew Kelly well enough to know that she functioned better if she was busy, no matter how minute the chore.

While she did that, Buzz pulled the first-aid kit from his pack and set it atop a relatively flat rock. “Come here,” he said.

“That’s not—”

“I’m the EMT,” he said. “Let me worry about the first aid, all right?”

She handed him one of the protein bars. “I’m too tired to argue with you.”

“Well, that’s a first.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Keep that blanket around your shoulders and sit down.”

Relief slipped through him when she sat down without an argument. Buzz removed an antiseptic cleansing pad, some antibiotic cream and a large square bandage. “Any headache or blurred vision?” he asked.

“No.”

“Nausea?”

She shook her head.

He cut her a hard look. “The truth, Kelly.”

She sighed. “A little bit of a headache, but it’s only because I’ve been crying.”

He wasn’t sure why it was so hard to look at her. Wasn’t sure if it was her beauty or the grief he saw in the depths of her gaze. But as he knelt in front of her to get a look at the cut on her temple, he found himself barely able to meet her eyes.

“I’m going to check your pupils.” Without giving her time to respond he put his hand gently against her crown, then flashed the light first in her left eye, then in her right. “As far as I can tell, you don’t appear to have a concussion.”

“I could have told you that.”

“Well, after we find Eddie tomorrow, I’m going to personally haul you into Lake County Hospital and make sure you get a CT run.”

Her gaze met his, the play of emotions in her eyes touching him despite his staunch resistance. “Thank you for saying that. I mean, about finding him.”

Realizing it was probably best not to talk to her when he was this close, Buzz disinfected his hands then applied a thin layer of antibiotic cream to the cut. He tried not to notice the sweet scent of her hair that rose up with her body heat into the cold night. He damn well ignored the fact that his heart rate was up, and that it didn’t have anything to do with high altitude or physical exertion—or even a lost little boy.

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