— TWENTY-ONE —
ZANDER landed at the Kitchener airport five-and-a-half painful hours later. Radio-silence had never been more torturous. He’d stayed on the phone with Faith until he boarded the plane and they pulled away from the gate.
Dean had promised to get good news to him through the airline if he could, so when he landed and had heard nothing, he was in beast mode and not in a mood to deal with a rental car company dick-around or anything else. As he sprinted down the hallway toward the arrivals door he read through the text messages spilling in. Update after update that said the same thing. No news.
And a message from each of his siblings, letting him know that their mother was waiting for him on the other side of the sliding doors in the arrival lounge.
Her face pinched in worry as she waved him down. She handed him the keys to her compact SUV as soon as he reached her. “Everyone else is searching,” she said, but he already knew that. His brothers, Dani…everyone would be looking for Eric. “I know you were going to get a rental, but this was something I could do, and I thought it best you weren’t alone for the drive.”
“It’s fine, thank you,” he said roughly. He appreciated the gesture, but nothing changed the fact that he wasn’t there and he couldn’t get over that feeling of uselessness.
He let his mother hug him, but he was moving them toward the exit at the same time. No time for comfort. No time for words.
“I’m parked in the priority pickup up row.” Her words whipped from her mouth as she spun, following him.
His pulse thudded with unhappy restraint as he tried not to run—his mother wouldn’t be able to keep up. “Any update beyond no update?”
Sometimes text messages were slow to filter in, and he was desperate for good news.
“Nothing yet.”
“Who’s with Faith?”
“Still Dean, I think. He doesn’t plan to leave her side until you arrive.”
He dialled Tom.
His brother answered on the first ring, out of breath. “You landed?”
Zander grunted an answer and hit the unlock button on the key fob. He gestured for his mother to get in. He threw his bag in the backseat and turned on the car as he started talking. “It’s been dark for an hour, Tom. How many teams have shown up?”
“Anyone who knows what they’re doing is here, and we’ve got a hundred volunteers out as well. We’ll find him.” Tom gave him an update on the search. Volunteers had been combing the fields and forest behind the school, and as more people joined the search, they were moving down the highway, on either side. “I’m nearly at Greta’s. That’s where we’ve set up a command post.”
“Faith’s still at home?”
“Yeah. Better that she’s not at the nerve centre.”
In case of bad news. “We’re hitting the road. Ma’s got my phone. I want updates every half hour. I’ll be there as soon as humanly possible.”
“Drive safe.”
That was a relative concept for Zander at the moment. Be mindful of the safety of others? Always. His mother was a passenger. Other vehicles and pedestrians didn’t know he was racing for his life here.
But he knew back roads where speed limits didn’t matter. He knew which highways were less populous than others.
He knew how to get to the tip of the peninsula faster than anyone else, and he was going to push himself to the limit to make that happen.
His mother let him drive in silence for a while. A half hour, at least, because Tom called with a terse, no-news update.
After she disconnected the call, she reached for something at her feet and quietly handed over a chocolate cookie.
And hot tears pricked the back of his eyelids. He grit his teeth. “Why cookies?” She always made them. Always had. She was a dragon lady in so many ways, but she’d always made them cookies when other mothers might have insisted on healthier snacks instead.
She didn’t answer right away, and when she did, her voice was uncharacteristically thoughtful. Anne Minelli was tough as nails and could do—did do—anything she set her mind to. She never set her mind to being soft and gentle.
“Because life is hard.” The last word wobbled off her tongue. Harder than ever today. But he was strong enough to hear it. “And the cookies always made you boys happy.” She took a deep, steadying breath. “Sometimes you would get so lost in your imaginary adventures. Dani would happily sit with me in the kitchen, but the only time I’d see your faces was when I’d pull something sweet out of the oven.”
Something started to pulse in Zander’s mind. He frowned into the darkness. What had just triggered that? “What did you say?”
“Sometimes you boys would be so lost in your adventures—”
His spy base.
“Call Tom back.” He told her the password to his phone and tried hard not to grab it from her hands.
“What is it?” she asked as she moved her fingers over the screen.
The dialling was faint at first, then she hit the speaker phone button and it was loud. Jarring. Answer, damn it.
“Zander?” Tom’s voice filled the interior of the car.
“There’s a path somewhere between the playground and Faith’s house. I don’t know which direction. Can you send me a picture of the search grid?”
“Hang on. Pull over, man.”
Zander jammed his foot against the gas and sped up instead.
— —
Faith perched on the edge of her couch. Someone had wrapped a blanket around her because she’d been shivering. Someone else had offered her a sedative and gotten a growly refusal for their effort.
Every few minutes, she replayed the call from the school in her head. Snapshots flashed in front of her eyes. Stumbling to the car, leaving the front door flapping open behind her.
Dean showing up while she was at the school, holding her to his chest while she sobbed into his uniform.
Zander calling. She desperately wanted to talk to him again, but he was driving and the last thing he needed to hear while speeding through the night was her being hysterical.
He’d sent proxies to take care of her, anyway. His best friend was now on the other side of her living room, listening to yet another phone call. He had two phones on him, and his police radio. She kept listening to the crackle, hoping to decipher something, but he kept the volume low enough that she couldn’t make out the words.
Dean glanced up, and when he saw her eyes on him, he hung up the phone and moved toward her.
“Who was that?” she asked hoarsely.
“I was just listening in to the command centre. Tom had me on speaker phone.” He dropped to his knees in front of her. “We’re going to find him. He’s wearing warm winter clothes, and he packed food. He’s a smart kid. Focus on that.”
That damn heavy backpack. She should have opened it up and asked him about it. She replayed their morning. How distracted she’d been. How weak her goodbye was. Did he know she loved him and missed him? Where had he gone and why?
Dean patted her knee and stood up.
She looked out the window at the darkness. She should be out there, looking. Maybe if Dean took a call again, she could excuse herself to the bathroom and sneak out.
A phone rang. Through the muzziness in her head it sounded far away, but Dean was lifting his hand to his ear. “What is it?” His eyebrows shot up. “Right. I’ll ask her.”
She was already on her feet. “Ask me what?”
“Did you and Eric go for a hike a few weeks ago? On a day that you met Dani in the park?”
She shook her head woodenly. That was the day she’d made up with Zander. They’d come straight home from the playground.
“Tom, she’s saying they didn’t.” He listened for a minute, his jaw flexed, then looked her way again. “He doesn’t see any marked trails between here and the park, but they’re taking a team into the woods now.”
That sounded terrifying. “Why there?”
He gave her a long, steady look. “Zander thinks Eric’s spy base might be in there. Get your coat on. Remember how I said you needed to be brave and strong and wait until it was time? Now it’s time.”
Time does funny things when you’re in the middle of a trauma. Faith remembered that from the night Greg died. Speed up. Slow down. Freeze on a moment and then zoom past others like they were nothing, just fragments in the wind. She was zipping up her jacket, then she was in Dean’s cruiser. Mittens and hat were on, but she didn’t remember grabbing them.
They didn’t go far, just around the corner.
An awful, ugly, heaviness settled in her gut. She started to cry as he pulled to a stop behind a Fire and Rescue SUV. In the brush at the side of the road, she could see flashlights moving.
“There’s an unmarked path here,” Dean said quietly as he closed her door behind her. “Have you ever been down it? Tom says it snakes in a bunch of directions.”
She started to shake her head, but maybe…
With a gasp, she took off running through the snow-covered grass. Scrabbly twigs slapped at her face as she ran into the brush, and she couldn’t really see anything, but she knew where she was going.
“Faith!” Dean yelled louder, right behind her, and then his hand was on her arm, twisting her around. “Stop.”
“Let go of me!” Her lungs were burning and her words tore out of her chest. “I know where he is.”
“Good. But you can’t see anything and you might hurt yourself. Take my flashlight.”
He pressed the large metal torch into her hand and she turned again, still fast, still uncaring about cuts and scrapes, but slower enough that she could breathe. How far was it? The other searchers had gone in the other direction. They didn’t know that she’d come here with Eric when he was….three? Maybe even two. God, it had been a while. And the brush didn’t look the same at all in the winter. Time had changed it, too. But she wasn’t looking for a familiar scene. She was looping the memory in her head.
Eric ducking around a tree, pretending to know where he was leading her. “This way, Mommy, this way.”
It had been their one and only hike in this direction. It wasn’t even a real path. But up ahead, hopefully not too far, there was a rocky outcrop, a shallow cave. If there was any justice in the world, if Fate had any decency, inside it would be her son.
— —
Zander made it to Wiarton in less than two hours, and when the shadow of a police cruiser pulled onto the highway behind their car, he swore under his breath. No way was he stopping, but it would be incredibly awkward to deal with one of his brother’s co-workers charging him with half the Highway Traffic Act if he didn’t. He turned to his mother to tell her to call Rafe, but before the words were formed, the lights lit up behind him.
But instead of pulling him over, the cruiser sped up, pulling alongside. Zander didn’t recognize the uniform inside, but the hand signal was clear. Follow me.
“Get an update from Rafe,” he said woodenly, not wanting to dwell on why he was getting an escort up the peninsula. But he needed to know before he got there. Needed to be strong.
His mother nodded, and this time she didn’t put the call on speaker phone. Zander listened to her side of the conversation as he watched his speedometer climb. The cop in front of him was going over a buck twenty. One thirty. Dark shadows and drifts of snow flitted by on either side of the car.
“Rafaelo, it’s your mother.”
“We’re in Wiarton.”
“Yes.”
“I understand.”
“Right.”
Zander knuckled the steering wheel. He couldn’t take the suspense. “Mother?”
She hesitated. “They haven’t found him yet.”
Fuck. He slammed his hand against the dash as his mother hung up the phone.
“They’ve just taken Faith into the woods, the area you suggested to Tom. Rafe says Tom’s team had a ten-minute head start on her, so hopefully we’ll hear something soon.”
The kilometres ticked by still too slowly, even though they were going nearly twice the speed limit, and as they streaked past the exit for Pine Harbour, his phone lit up again.
— —
Three sharp whistles pierced the air and stabbed Faith in the chest. She stopped still, spinning around. “Where did that come from?”
She remembered from her climbing days—that was a distress signal. And it was close by.
Dean curved his gloved hand around her arm and turned her. As they spun around, the whistle sounded again. She’d been a bit off course, she could see that now. The rise of the land was there, and at the top of it was another flashlight.
“Eric,” she called out, scrambling up through the brush faster now.
“We have him,” someone shouted, and it sounded like Zander so it must be Tom. “He’s breathing. And awake.”
Thank you, she silently said to the universe.
It didn’t slow her down any, knowing that he was alive. Her feet slipped and Dean helped her up, propelling her forward at the same time.
At the top of the hill, where the rocks rose up from the ground and made a shelter, she found Eric wrapped in a foil blanket and Tom Minelli quietly talking to him. Someone else she didn’t recognize was standing nearby, a human lamp as his headlamp clearly illuminated the two people on the ground.
Faith fell to her knees and pulled Eric into her lap. “Oh God, you’re okay.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
She swallowed the sob that begged for release and shook her head. “You’re okay. That’s all that matters.”
The blanket crinkled as she tried to get up, but her arms were shaking too much. Her legs, too.
“Hang on a minute,” Tom said, and she blinked over at him. “He’s okay. We’ve looked him over, and that’s one good quality coat you bought him. He’s warm enough for you both to catch your breath and have a hug before we head back to the road.”
“I need to call Zander,” she hiccupped. The sob might be stifled but the tears rolled down her face, not giving two fucks if she wanted to hold it together or not. Her body was done being stoic.
“He’ll be here soon,” Dean said, joining their little group on the ground.
“Not soon. I need to call him now.” She glared at both men. “Now.”
Tom nodded and pulled out his phone. He dialled Zander and then held the phone between them.
Zander’s mom answered. “Tom, we’re ten minutes away. Where should we go?”
“Ma, can you put Zander on the phone?”
“What is it, Tom?” Anne’s voice was careful, but concerned. In that instant, Faith had a sudden rush of kinship for her. She recognized that mama bear tone. They might parent completely differently, but once a mother, always a mother.
“Anne, it’s Faith. We’ve found Eric and he’s okay. Can you put Zander on?” Faith’s breath puffed in the space between their bodies and she shifted, suddenly realizing the ground was wet and cold beneath her. “Come on, baby, we’re standing up now.”
“Faith?” Zander’s voice rang strong. “Do you have him?”
“Hi Zander,” Eric said.
“Oh, bud.” Zander sighed. “I’m going to give you the biggest hug in like five minutes.”
“Okay.” Her son gave her a sad smile. “Zander, I think I’m in trouble.”
“Don’t worry. We’re just glad you’re okay. I’m just passing Greta’s now. Did you go to your spy base?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, you start walking back to the road with your mom and I’ll find you.”
Faith handed the phone back to Tom and took Eric’s hand. The forest that she’d run through blindly just a few minutes earlier now looked dark and foreboding.
“I’ll take the lead,” Tom said quietly.
Faith nodded, and Dean fell into step on the other side of Eric, reaching ahead of her son to block the twigs from snapping into his face.
They were nearly at the road when Zander called out for them. He shoved his way through the brush like a raging bull, only stopping once he’d swung Eric into his arms and pulled Faith close.
He stared at Eric, his chest rising and falling heavily even through his coat. He shook his head in obvious wonder, and in the light bouncing off Tom’s headlamp, his eyes were bright. “You’re okay?”
Eric nodded and touched Zander’s face with his gloved hand.
“Thank God.” Zander kissed Faith’s forehead. “Come on. Let’s go home.”