Читать книгу A Cache of Trouble: A Cassidy Callahan Novel - Kelly Rysten - Страница 9

Chapter 3

Strict waited four days before calling me out again. I wondered how they did the searches when I wasn’t there. Did they still try to track the missing person? Or did they just send out a bunch of people to do a broad search of the area? That was one thing tracking was very good for, saving manpower. It narrowed the search down to one trail. I hadn’t lost a trail yet but if I ever did, tracking would still save time because there would be a more specific starting point to the search. This time the search worked the other way. They had searched until they found the last visible evidence and then I needed to figure out what had happened from there.

When I arrived at base camp Landon was there ready to take me in. He was in full backpacker and mountain climbing gear complete with harness, ropes and pitons. What had they been up to while I was gone? I put on my pack and pulled the shoulder pads down snug. I fastened the Fastex buckle and was ready to go. Rosco and Victor appeared with packs ready and side arms. I looked at Landon. He was armed too. I was used to these guys carrying but for some reason their attitudes clued me in that this was no ordinary track. Four officers joined the group and I became even more wary. Rosco, Victor and Landon were all EMTs. As long as they were in the group it was a rescue. Add the officers and it was now an apprehension involving possible injuries. I looked around for Strict. He stood with a group of men who were bent over studying a map. He glanced up and motioned me over.

“Cassidy, will you promise me to listen to the guys up there?”

“What’s up?”

“It started out as a simple traffic stop on the highway. Drugs were found, the driver was arrested. Two passengers took off into the forest. That was yesterday. Backup was called in and a search was started. It’s going to be a fast hike to the last visible sign. After that we are stumped. There’s tracks all over those hills. Two of them belong to our escapees.”

“Will I get a chance to see some examples of their real tracks before I get up there?”

“The guys will do anything they can to help you. Don’t try and be a hero. Find the end of the trail and back off.”

“Okay, I’ll try. Does Rusty know what you are doing up here?”

“I’m sure it’s made the rounds of the station by now.”

“Oh great, if he calls keep the answers nice and general.”

Strict laughed at me, “You’re more concerned about worrying Rusty than you are about getting shot at. Take care up there.”

“I will.”

I went back to the group. “Okay, first things first. I need to see these guys’ tracks. Anybody know where a good example of them can be found?”

We headed up the mountain cross-country. It was rough going. These mountains are pretty much all up and down. To get some place out in the middle of them by trail could take days on foot. I hoped there was a quick way to reach the last known sign. I didn’t want to spend the day hiking and then start the track.

The officers went first, fanning out in front of us. A mile and half from base camp they stopped. One of the officers approached me and he held out his hand.

“Kent Jacobsen,” he said. “In case you need to know, I’m your senior partner today.”

“Cassidy Callahan,” I said shaking his hand.

“Here’s the best set of tracks we can give you. They only hit this trail for about fifty feet but it’ll give you a feel for the chase.”

“Give me five minutes,” I said, getting out my sketchbook. I made a quick sketch of all four tracks and noted irregularities on the soles of their shoes, wear marks and general shape. The guys all waited patiently. Victor and Landon were used to this by now. The others paced nervously. I did a quick measurement of the men’s strides and made a mental note.

“Okay, let me read the trail and then you can take over again.”

I followed the trail absorbing as much information as I could in fifty feet. These were young men, lightweight and fast. They were running and in some haste. It wasn’t a panic run, I concluded. These men knew where they were going. When their tracks headed off trail I let the officers take over again. They led me up a steep canyon. The top of the canyon was lined with rocks. So that explained Landon’s climbing rope. The officers suddenly stopped and fanned out.

“Here’s where we lost them.”

“Did you have a visual?”

“Nope, look here.”

I followed and Jacobsen brought me to a spot where the men had scrambled up into the rocks. Shoot. Rock is the worst thing to track over. I went back to the footprints leading to the rocks. The two men were still together and definitely headed up the rocks just like Jacobsen said.

I stood at the spot where the last footprints were left and studied the rocks for the easiest way up. The guys stood in a knot talking amongst themselves about how best to tackle the rocks at the end of the canyon, which gave me space to work. I appreciated them backing off, but at the same time they weren’t aware of what I was likely to do if left to my own devices. I noticed Landon glance my way every once in a while, just keeping tabs. If any of them knew my tendency to take off on my own it was him.

If the men we were chasing were on the run, they wouldn’t attempt a difficult climb that could result in a fall. They’d look for the easiest way up. They didn’t have ropes, which meant I shouldn’t need ropes to track them. I chose a likely path and carefully examined the rock in the direction I thought they may have taken. I was looking for anything that confirmed my choice; scratched rocks, scraped lichen… I could see why the guys lost the trail, but it wasn’t hopeless. I pictured myself being chased up this canyon, looking in desperation at the rocks before me. It was a puzzle so I fiddled with the pieces until something clicked. Okay, I thought, if it was me I’d run straight for that crack, chimney climb it to the top and take off running. I walked up to the crack and began my ascent. Maybe there would be tracks at the top. I was nearly to the top when Landon noticed that I was climbing and rushed to the bottom of the rock.

“Cassidy, what are you doing?”

“I’m taking the easiest route. The guys we are after didn’t have ropes so they climbed out of here without them. If I find the trail up here I’ll let you know.”

I finished climbing the crack and paused, knees locked at the top to get a look at where the men would have come out. Bingo. I didn’t see tracks but I saw definite marks that looked like a person had scrambled up the loose dirt at the top. I looked down and spotted loose dirt on the rocks below. I was sure I could pick up a trail somewhere around the top of the canyon. I climbed over the top and found the first set of tracks. The gravely soil up here didn’t help at all. I looked closer. Damn. I cast around in a broad arc around the top of the rock. Oh damn it again. I could only find one set of tracks up here. I started around the side of the top of the canyon finding a spot where the other guy could have come up. I didn’t find any sign so I tried the other direction examining closely the dirt around the top of the canyon. No sign. These guys hadn’t tried to hide their tracks before so I doubted they would start now. Nope, only one guy had made it over the top. Should I follow him? Should I concentrate on the more present danger? I was just lowering myself into the crack to rejoin the group and get some advice when I saw a slight motion to the side of the canyon. I stayed up top, eyes glued to the spot. I didn’t know what to do, I needed some advice but Jacobsen would be put in line for a bullet if I asked him to climb up to me. And if I climbed down I could lose my visual.

“Jacobsen, 10-66, eight o’clock,” I called out. Suspicious person behind you at eight o’clock. I saw them all freeze and find Jacobsen’s eight o’clock. I had a clean view of everybody from up there. I felt the gun on my belt. Could I shoot the guy if I needed to? I knew I could hit him, but could I bring myself to shoot him? Shit yeah, I could do it. If I had to protect my team, I could do it. Please, I thought, please be unarmed. I found cover and aimed my gun at the suspect, ready in case I was needed. Jacobsen hadn’t spotted him yet. I saw the guy get up like he was going to run but he fell almost immediately. My mind was working a mile a minute piecing together his actions. Then I realized the guy was hurt and hiding out in the brush. He couldn’t climb the rocks and had been left behind. If he had been abandoned in the chase and was armed, he would be forced to shoot. No, I thought, please don’t! I changed my hiding place to keep the guy in sight. Jacobsen noted my movement and followed my line of site, down my arm, down the barrel of my pistol and down to the floor of the canyon. There was brush between the team and the suspect. They fanned out, surrounding the area. The suspect backed away, a desperate look in his eye. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a gray object. My vision narrowed to the object. Gun? Nope. If I didn’t know better I’d say that thing looked an awful lot like a hand grenade. What would a civilian be doing with a hand grenade? And what kind was it? There were all kinds of hand grenades these days. Teargas, stun grenades, explosive devices that sent shrapnel flying in every direction… He reached for the pin and instinct took over. I pulled the trigger and felt the gun jump in my hands. I saw the suspect jerk upwards and then fall backwards.

“Get back! Hit the dirt!” I yelled. I hit the dirt too. If the guy was going to blow himself up I sure as hell didn’t want to watch. After several seconds an explosion rocked the mountain and caused a couple of small rock slides around the little canyon.

After the noise subsided, the team stood warily. A stark silence told us our suspect was no longer a danger. Victor Gomez and Mike Townsend cautiously parted the branches and Victor signaled to the others that it was safe to move about.

“Cassidy, are you okay?” Landon called up the cliff.

“Yeah,” I replied, “I’m okay.”

“Get down here!” barked Jacobsen.

I lowered myself into the crack and worked my way back down.

“Discharging your firearm without permission?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I replied, “I’m glad you get to write it up. I didn’t want to have to do it for you.” A short pause. I really needed out of here. The thought of what I had just done was sneaking up on me. I needed action. I needed to put the scene in the canyon behind me and fast. “There’s a trail up top. Do you want me to follow it?”

I waited while everybody got their orders straightened out. We had to call in reinforcements to investigate the scene in the canyon, and that meant splitting up our group. Jacobsen and I, followed by Landon and the three other officers, set out. I climbed the crack again, a little shakier this time, and waited at the top for the group to catch up. I found the tracks and settled into tracking mode again. Our suspect definitely had a destination in mind.

The ground was hard in this part of the forest. I could see why the team had given up. Tracking was slow. I puzzled over the ground gathering all the clues I could find.

“Can you give me a description of our fugitive?” I asked, making conversation. “From the trail I know he’s young, slender, lightly built.”

“Latino, black hair, brown eyes, black t-shirt with a rock band logo on it, blue jeans, tennis shoes.”

“Skater shoes,” I corrected. “Any weapons?”

“We’re supposed to consider them armed but so far the grenade is the only confirmation of that.”

The tracks were puzzling. If we weren’t in a hurry I would have found them interesting. It would have been a fun challenge. With an armed fugitive out running us it was just plain frustrating to slow down.

“This guy could be home watching a ball game by the time we see where this trail goes,” I complained.

The forest thickened. The soil changed from rock and hard pack to something more porous. At the same time the vegetation in the area grew up and shed leaves and pine needles obscuring the ground completely. Large trees loomed overhead, blocking the light and making it even harder to distinguish tracks. We startled a deer resting in the underbrush and I wished I’d been alone so I could try stalking it. I’d rather stalk deer than fleeing suspects.

I kept to the trail until something cued me in to look at my surroundings. I couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Something triggered a memory. An almost forgotten memory and I looked around suspiciously. What it was, I still couldn’t say. It was so faint.

“What is it, Cassidy?” Landon asked.

“I don’t know. Something is familiar to me in a bad way. Something doesn’t feel right.”

I continued on, looking around more carefully while I tracked the footprints before me. Landon was wary. He’d never quite seen me like this but he seemed to trust my instincts.

The feeling came back. A smell? Was it a smell I was perceiving? I licked my finger and held it up to the breeze. The footprints were leading into the wind. I sniffed the breeze like an animal but I still couldn’t quite identify it. Something was niggling at the back of my mind.

“Cassidy,” Jacobsen said, drawing me from my thoughts.

“Wait,” Landon told him, “This could be important.”

Niggle, niggle, I could feel the thoughts churning but they were coming up empty. Then, with a disappointed, if silent, curse it fell into place. I looked at the land ahead.

“Guys, we need to proceed very carefully. Let me scout ahead. I can keep out of sight if I go by myself. If we have to stay as a group we could stumble on something we don’t want to stumble on. We have to see what we are getting into without being spotted.”

They all looked at me as if I was nuts. They weren’t going to let me go out there alone.

“Jacobsen? You can hold onto my gun if you want to. I’m just looking.”

He started to object.

“Landon, tell him I know how to stay out of sight. Tell him how it took a whole team hours to find me when Trent was after me. I could lose the whole lot of you in five minutes if I wanted to.”

“Cassidy, you’re serious, aren’t you?” Landon asked.

“One person can sometimes do what six people can’t. I know what I’m looking for. I’ve seen it before. I’ve observed it and kept out of sight before. I’ve dealt with the people before. We are close. We are close enough to smell it. Give me ten minutes.”

“Michaels wouldn’t give you two,” Kent Jacobsen said.

“He knows I can do it though. Who else thinks they can do it? Who knows what we are looking for? Who can stay out of sight, not leave a track and not make a sound? Anybody?”

They all thought they could stay out of sight but I knew I had them when it came to staying quiet. Tracking with them was like tracking with a herd of elephants behind me. Not one of them would bother hiding their tracks.

I shed my pack and started removing my pistol but Jacobsen shook his head. I took that as permission to use it if I needed to. I took off my boots, then turned and got a bearing on the trail. Heading quickly in the same direction the footprints led, I ducked into the trees and within a few steps I was invisible to the men behind me. I went into stealth mode hiding my tracks and creeping up to some unknown danger before me. I knew what I was looking for. I’d been in this situation before and was looking for cabins, or small buildings hidden by trees. I was looking for a field of marijuana plants, keeping a sharp eye out for movement of any kind.

Ten minutes wasn’t much time to scope out a drug lab. My main goal was to locate people. I needed to find our suspect.

I crouched low making myself small, and continued forward hiding from view, hiding my tracks. It all felt so natural. Like stalking deer except I was stalking people; unknown, unknowing people.

The field was just as I had remembered, and I was glad it confirmed the niggling in my head. I wasn’t imagining things and really had identified the smell correctly. Circling the small compound, I could identify two people at the site and made mental notes about their locations. I made sure to remember what each person looked like, cataloging their features like a list so I could recite it back if needed. Not liking what the guys would be walking into, I was careful to take special note of exactly where things were, to provide them with as much information as possible. Then I slipped silently back into the woods and circled around to my nervous team. I made sure I came back to the group silently and gently appeared beside them without startling anyone. It’s not wise to surprise a wary group of cops. They were all anxiously looking down the trail I’d taken until I stepped out of the brush beside them as if I’d been standing there all along.

Removing the sketchbook from my pack, I quickly made a map.

“Okay, listen up and listen fast. Here we are.” I drew an X. “If you go the direction you saw me head you will come to a field of cannabis. There’s a small building, almost a shed, on the far side of it. When I was there our suspect was standing just inside this building. Another man was over here.” I said drawing another X. “Short guy. Short black hair, very dark complexion, baggy oversized blue jeans, white muscle shirt. Tattoos. I only saw the two men. Of course they may have moved some since I was over there. I don’t like the looks of this. If we get one man the other will escape. We don’t have enough firepower to get both. I’m leaving the rest up to you. They are probably armed. They were last time I dealt with a group like this.”

“When did you deal with a group like this before?” Landon asked.

“When I tracked Kelly Green. I ran into a compound bigger than this one. This is a small operation, but it doesn’t mean it’s safer. I don’t like it. It’s going to take more than the six of us to get both these guys.”

“You’ve done your part, Cassidy. You’ve done more than you should. Michaels is going to lynch the whole lot of us when we get back.”

I sat down by my pack and started putting on my boots. The guys went into a huddle. I heard radio talk. We waited, the tension growing.

Jacobsen approached and watched me for a bit while I finished tying my boots. He then sat down on the ground beside me.

“How far is it to the fields?”

“Maybe a hundred yards. The field’s maybe a quarter acre. The building is on the far side.”

“Find a place where you can stay out of sight.”

“I can stay out of sight within six feet of these guys.”

“You know what I mean. I don’t want you in on the raid. I’m in deep enough as it is.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I’ll write up the report and I’ll tell the truth. I really did fire my weapon without permission. You won’t catch any flack because of me.”

“It’s not Schroeder I’m worried about.”

It was Rusty.

I heard a helicopter off in the distance and was relieved that the guys would have backup. Four officers wouldn’t have been able to surround that field and someone would have gotten away. I saw them spread out, covering the near side of the field in case the helicopter scared the suspects this way. They closed in.

“I’m going to try and get you a lift out with the copter. You scared of heights? Will you ride a cable up?”

“If I have to. And, no, I’m not afraid of heights. I’ve done the cable thing before.”

The helicopter clattered in closer. Jacobsen called the helicopter pilot over the radio and got me a lift. I started walking toward the helicopter, giving the compound a wide berth, stalking around it in stealth mode. The officers came rappelling down cables, unclipping their harnesses and fanning out to surround the field. One of the first down tossed me a harness and I worked my way into it. A cable was handed off to me and I clipped on grasping it tightly. Half of me was disappointed to be left out and the other half was relieved to be free of it. The place was going to turn into a war zone. I’d have been okay down there and would have done my job, but I could only get into trouble by staying and so far trouble had been nice to me lately. No sense in tempting it. When the cable reached the top I grabbed the handle and pulled myself to a place where I was able to stand. Unclipping the cable I let it go, then found a bench and made myself comfortable. I didn’t know where the helicopter was going, but I was sure it would be a quieter place than the one I had just left.

Tension filled my little niche in the helicopter as the realization of what I had just done began to expand, filling my head, starting the old memories and emotions to churning.

The helicopter came to rest a short distance from base camp. When the doors opened I sprang out like a caged animal, looking around. I then made my way over to see how things were progressing. Everybody was tense and focused. I picked up my packet of report forms from Strict, took them to a car, and sat quietly filling them out.

Trying to condense the scene at the canyon into a few sentences was eating at me. The more times I replayed the scene in my head the more it saddened me. It was an emotional rollercoaster ride that varied between tears and a sad acceptance. I’d killed somebody. So what if I had a good reason, I had still killed somebody. Strict walked up. I hadn’t intended for him to see me like this and I needed to vent. I needed a punching bag. I needed a four mile run. Anything to work off the feelings boiling inside me.

“Strict, I can’t do these runs without some warning. I have to prepare myself if there’s going to be violence. I have to. I can’t shoot someone without it leaving scars. I just can’t. You have to remember that. I can track. I can deal with things as they come up, but Strict, I killed somebody today. I’m never going to forget that. Never. I wasn’t put here to shoot people.”

I finished filling out my police report and shoved it through the open window. He read it.

“You’re good at covering your trail in the woods but you’re lousy at it on paper.”

“I told Jacobsen I’d tell the truth. I’m not going to lie.”

Strict looked worried. He jogged back to rejoin the others. I saw him pacing with the cell phone to his ear.

I got out of the car and did my own pacing. I wandered into the woods and wandered back. I found a game trail and followed it until I came to a place where deer had bed down. I sat in the spot letting my emotions wash over me. They rolled over me, beating at me, wearing me down and I lay in the bed of leaves trying to still them, trying to still myself. I pretended like I was waiting for the deer to come back, but I knew the deer wouldn’t come back if I was fretting. It would sense unease and stay away. I had to still myself for the deer to come. I tried, I really tried but it was no use. Nothing was helping. I got up and walked back to base camp. I was sorry I did. I could hear Rusty’s voice long before I could see him.

“…can’t do these things to her! She’s not a cop. She’s a tracker. And her heart is as big as the all outdoors. You can’t ask her to be a cop. Where’d she go?”

I couldn’t hear Strict’s answer.

“You called her out here on an apprehension, to fill in the gap between the bottom of a rock and the top?”

Strict’s calmer, quieter voice answered.

“It amounts to the same thing. Anybody could have climbed that rock. Even I know if the trail ends at the top of a canyon there’s bound to be a way up and there’s a trail somewhere up there.”

Another quiet response from Strict. Strict was good at self control; I’d give him that. He didn’t raise his voice to Rusty. He didn’t get defensive.

Rusty turned, running his hands through his hair in frustration.

Watching Rusty angry was like watching a big storm. I never wanted to get caught in that storm.

I moved and he caught the movement. Our eyes locked for a second and I ran. I didn’t know why I ran. I slipped into stealth mode. I just wasn’t ready to face him. I could hear him tromping around in the woods behind me.

“Cassidy?” he called.

I couldn’t answer him. Not yet. I stayed out of sight, dodging from tree to tree, silently. My emotions were so close to the surface. I could have wrestled a grizzly bear, but I couldn’t face Rusty like this. He searched and searched. I was never more than twenty feet from him but he couldn’t find me.

“Babe, please don’t do this to me.”

“I’m sorry.” He spun around and zeroed in on my voice.

“Come out and talk to me.”

A sob escaped. “I can’t. Not yet.”

“What did I do?”

“Nothing, it’s not something you did.”

“Cass, I know what happened on the search. Please come out.”

“No, I need to hit something. If I come out you’re going to stick me in the truck and take me home and I’m going to go nuts. I’m fine out here. I’ll run or clobber a tree or cry until I can’t cry anymore or maybe I’ll just wander until I need to come home.”

“You can’t beat yourself up over this. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Don’t! Don’t talk me through the logic of it. You think I haven’t done that a hundred times?”

“Okay, then come out. Let’s go to the station. You can take it out on the punching bag. You can cream it if you want to. It’s used to it. It’s had hundreds of cops in the same state you’re in beat it up.”

I was tired. I was frustrated and angry and sad. I couldn’t believe how miserable I felt. Finally, it all came crashing down on me and I couldn’t carry it by myself anymore. I sat down in the dirt and leaves and started crying. Rusty followed the sound through the trees and found me sitting at the base of the tree where I’d been hidden. He sat beside me and placed his arm around my shoulders. When my crying didn’t ease he picked me up and just placed me in his lap and held me like a child. I didn’t feel like a little child though. I felt dirty. I felt evil. I felt very guilty. But most of all I simply felt sad.

“Oh, babe, you had to do it. I know you had to. It would be worse if you hadn’t.” A long pause. “This is one of the reasons I love you so much. You have a big, kind heart. And people who have a heart get it broken a lot. It’ll mend. I promise.”

“No it won’t. It’ll never go away.”

“Shhh, but it’ll fade. You’ll do other things that’ll push it into the background and some day it’ll be almost gone. Maybe I can help put some good memories in there. Push all the bad ones away.”

The touch was helping. Having Rusty close always helped and his deep voice was relaxing. When the crying finally eased he still held me close.

“Okay, that’s better. Now, think of something more positive to talk about. If you can’t think of anything then tell me a story. I love to hear you talk about what you did as a kid.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.”

I thought for a minute. Nothing was coming to mind. I needed a little more calm. I waited for it, afraid the bad memory would show up first. Calm. Cass, think of a story, any silly little story. Finally, I said, “Remember the wood where I pinned down Peccati?”

“Yeah.”

“I used to track foxes in that wood. One day I tracked a fox and she led me to a den there. I came back later when the mother wasn’t there and she had three kits in the den. I was laying at the front of the den watching the kits. They would toddle up to the front and see me and fall over themselves trying to get to the back again. They were so cute, I wanted to hold one but I knew better than to try. They got scared and started a racket and the mother fox surprised me. She was afraid of me too, but in one big burst of bravery she rushed forward. I was still on my hands and knees and she rushed in right at my face. I thought I was going to lose my nose.”

“Did she bite you?”

“No, but it’s just because I was quick and she was scared. She was a terror! That’s when I learned to stay back from baby animals.”

He laughed, the sound of it easing the sadness.

“I wish I could see a baby fox.”

“If we go the ranch at the right time of year I’ll show you the den. Maybe that fox’s grandkits are using it now.”

“How old were you when that happened?”

“Oh, I’m guessing thirteen or fourteen. Foxes are not the easiest animals to track so I had some experience by then.”

“What age do you think would have given you the experience to find Kelly?”

“Do you mean, just follow his trail? Or do you mean, complete the track the way it really happened?”

“Either.”

“Well, I could have followed his trail by the time I was fifteen. He was hiding his tracks and that part would have given me trouble. As far as doing the whole trail, dealing with the bear and Peccati’s men, I would have died without my Marines training. The bear would have got me. And when Peccati’s men were after me I wouldn’t have shot back and so they would have brought me in.”

“I’m sorry, Cass, I didn’t mean to bring up those memories again. I was just wondering how young you were when you had learned enough to be a real tracker.”

“It’s okay. You just proved to me that what you said was right. The memories fade. I don’t even think of that as a bad experience anymore. There are parts of it I laugh at now.”

“You ready to go home?”

“No.” I stood reluctantly and offered him a hand up. We walked back to base camp. “What made you come up here?” I asked.

“Strict called.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Not much, then when I got here he was busy so he just handed me your report.”

“Guess I need to think about who might be reading my reports.”

“Cass, why did you go on such a dangerous call? Did you know what you were walking into?”

“Yeah, once I got up here, I knew it wasn’t a lost hiker. Strict sent the normal team, Rosco, Victor and Landon. I wondered about the search at that point. Three EMTs? It seemed excessive. When the four officers joined us I knew. And when Jacobsen introduced himself as my senior partner I knew I could be in for some police work.”

“And you went anyway.”

As we were walking back the helicopter took off again. Base camp was buzzing but the tension had eased. Strict noted our presence and walked over. He looked me up and down. He reminded me of a combination between a drill sergeant and my grandfather. He was in uniform so more of the drill sergeant showed through. I had trouble settling on a name for him. To most of the guys he was Strict, short for Strickland and a reflection of the drill sergeant half. With me he leaned more towards the grandfather side and when he did he was Lou. When he was on the job and all business he was Strict.

Lou asked, “You okay?”

“Will you remember what I told you?” I replied.

He nodded.

“Then I’m okay.”

That day bothered me for weeks afterward. I relived the incident night after night in my dreams. Sometimes my mind would play tricks on me and I’d find myself involved in a capture gone bad. It hurt to see the worry in Rusty’s eyes as night after night I woke up shaking either with sadness or fear. I wondered if he had called Strict, because I didn’t get a call to go out on a search for over a week. Part of me said that tourist season hadn’t really started yet, that a week was nothing unusual this time of year. The other part of me said Strict was giving me time to heal.

I spent the time doing happier things. I talked to Rhonda about being in the wedding. She was surprised that I would ask her because we didn’t know each other well. I explained how I really didn’t know any women in the area and I only had one sister. I also pointed out that Kelly was most likely going to be best man so she wouldn’t be sitting with him anyway. She agreed to it, so we pored over a bridal magazine for hours and marked a few pages of dresses that we both agreed would work for her. Then I emailed Jesse and asked her to go buy a magazine and choose one of the dresses that she liked.

I looked at wedding invitations, but I couldn’t buy any until I had a wedding date. They all looked too stiff and formal. In fact the whole wedding felt stiff and formal. I didn’t want it to feel that way. To me the wedding should feel like a natural extension to the relationship Rusty and I already had. We had grown closer so naturally and comfortably that I wanted our wedding to be the same, but I knew it was also a show of sorts. It had to be what people expected it to be. All the wedding invitations I saw had flowers and diamonds and lots of white. I wanted something more personal.

One day I sat down with paper and watercolor pencils and just started drawing. It was a simple landscape with pine trees and mist and a trail. I liked the effect so I then used real watercolor paper and tried again, more carefully, drawing pine trees and a few aspens and leaving the background in mist. I widened the trail and drew two sets of footprints that came together. I also used water to soften the lines and fill in open places with a little color. Then I wet down the misty center of the picture, where the words would go, to give it some texture and character and make the words easier to read once I added them on the computer. I left the painting on Rusty’s desk to dry and checked my email. Glancing down my list of messages one in particular caught my eye. Oh yay, I thought, Jesse chose a dress!

“Hey Cass! Please choose page 75. I went to a bridal shop and tried on page 75. Mom agrees, rule 642 applies. Let me know. Love ya, your sis.”

Rule 642 was in the Shopper’s Law. It said that, if you found a dress that was perfect for you, and somebody pointed that out, you had to buy it. Mom and Jesse adhered strictly to the Shopper’s Law. I tended to bend the rule a little bit. My version said that you only had to buy the dress if you were intentionally looking for it. If you accidentally stumbled on it you were exempt. I called Rhonda and arranged a shopping day

After dinner I went upstairs to see what Rusty was working on. He held up the painting I’d completed earlier.

“Did you do this?” he asked.

“I was just putting ideas down on paper. All the wedding invitations I find are so general. I was hoping for something that was more personal. I think that’s too simplistic, though. I should ask a real artist to do one for me.”

“No, it’s not. It’s great. I didn’t know you could paint.”

“I like to draw. I have a sketch book up in the hideout, but I was never much good at it.”

“Don’t put yourself down. Scan it and print out some copies in the right size and play with the pieces. You might find something that clicks.”

Creativity was not my strong suit but I promised to give it a try. I was glad I did because once I printed the picture on vellum it softened the look and made the picture appear more romantic and less childish. I put the vellum over parchment paper, added a ribbon to the side that matched the wedding colors and left the card on Rusty’s desk.

I never had a chance to hear Rusty’s opinion of the card or go shopping with Rhonda because trouble tracked me down on my next search. How many different ways could trouble find me, I wondered.