The Return of Cord Navarro

Chapter 6

Copper. Although he’d climbed the well-known skiing mecca numerous times, today Cord thought of it not as one of the most popular winter sports centers in the state, but as untracked miles punctuated by steep climbs, uncertain footing and, maybe, men with killing on their minds.

“Why would he do that?” Shannon asked Hallem while Cord tried to clamp down on emotions that threatened to get in the way of what he needed to do.

“My guess is, he wants to prove himself, Shannon,” Hallem replied, his voice fading a little. “Apparently our sons had a heated disagreement about Matt’s ability to walk in his dad’s footsteps.”

The mountain extended twelve thousand feet above sea level and although it literally swarmed with people in the winter, this was summer. Except for the very occasional hiker, it would remain essentially deserted until the snows began to fall. Deserted except for those determined to take advantage of the isolation to bring down one or more of the wild animals that called the area their home. The need to get back in touch with the sheriff to share what he’d just learned pounded at Cord, but he forced himself to wait. He would protect her from knowing everything. He couldn’t give her her son, but he could do this.

“Did Kevin say any more about how much food Matt had with him?” he made himself ask.

“It sounded like a lot, at least it would be if he wasn’t expending so much energy. I wish I could tell you more than that, but I really think I’ve gotten everything out of Kevin this time. He did say that Matt had his determined look on.”

Cord knew that look. He’d seen it first when, at ten months, Matt had decided he’d had enough of crawling and was ready to walk. Matt’s commitment to his goals, whether they were wise or not, made Cord’s heart swell with pride. He walked a fine line between reminding Matt of life’s dangers and pitfalls and letting his son know he trusted him. Most of the time his trust in his son’s judgment was well placed.

However, there was no question that Matt was out of his element this time. Not only had the boy seriously underestimated the amount of time it would take him to climb Copper, but he hadn’t taken the weather into account. Nor had it occurred to him that he might not have the mountain to himself.

After thanking Hallem for his information, Cord turned, looking for Shannon, then stopped. She stood maybe a hundred feet away, her back to him. She’d finally put on a jacket. It followed the lines of her body nearly as faithfully as her blouse did. Her long, dark hair lay in a submissive coil along her spine. Her jeans seemed to have shrunk. They hugged her legs and hips, challenging him, nearly distracting him from what he’d just learned and what was ahead of them.

I’m sorry. I never wanted our son to try to prove himself this way. If anything happens to him-

“Shannon, it’s going to take us at least three hours just to reach Copper.”

She spun around. “I know. Damn it, I know,” she said, her fingers curled into fists. “And after that, we have to climb that damnable mountain because our son is so desperate and determined to win your approval that he’s willing to risk his life to do it.”

Her eyes threw fire at him, fire and fear and an anger he knew neither of them could control. There’d been no anger in her after Summer’s death, only grief and hopelessness. And isolation. He hadn’t known what to do with those emotions any more than he knew how to handle what she was feeling right now. Still, he bad to try. “What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing.” She stalked closer, holding her body as if it was a weapon she might launch at him. “Nothing at all.”

Pawnee nickered and bumped his nose against Matt’s shoulder in an effort to get at the apple. Matt took two more bites and then gave the core to the gelding.

“You’re doing pretty good,” he said, not because Pawnee needed to be told that but because he needed to hear a human voice, even if it was only his own. “This rain sucks. And it’s steeper than I thought it’d be. You’re going to have to go back after a while. You’ll go straight home, won’t you? Mom’ll have a fit if anything happens to you.”

He frowned as he tried to come to a conclusion that had eluded him earlier. Although it was impossible to see to the top from where he stood, he’d been high up on the mountain in a ski lift any number of times and it hadn’t been all that big a deal. The way he figured it, he would reach the top by evening even with the stupid rain. He’d have to spend the night there, but getting back down in the morning was no big deal. He’d be home right when he told Kevin he would be-if Pawnee was waiting where he left him. But he wasn’t sure of his ability to tie Pawnee right. If the gelding got loose and dragged his rope, he might hurt himself and he didn’t want that.

He decided to try out the binoculars his dad had given him. After pulling them out of his backpack, he climbed onto a rock and stood as tall as he could while he looked all around. In most directions, he couldn’t see anything except for trees that looked as if they were no more than a few inches away, but off to his right the hill turned into a valley and, beyond that, another distant slope so high that no trees grew at the top. He tried to decide how far away the slope was, but with all the ups and downs, it was impossible to know for sure.

In fact, he wasn’t all that sure where he was.

Uncomfortable with the thought, he peered through the binoculars again. Although he’d come across a couple of deer trails, he hadn’t seen so much as a single squirrel or chipmunk, let alone anything more interesting. Most likely they’d found a dry place to stay until it stopped raining.

Mist rose in puffs and waves just about everywhere he looked, and he told himself it was because the ground was heating, proof that the darn storm was over. The sun couldn’t come out soon enough to suit him. Besides, wet rocks were slippery, and he had a lot of climbing to do before he reached the top of Copper.

Wait a minute. Something didn’t look quite right out there. Bringing the binoculars back to what had caught his attention, he concentrated. For longer than he wanted to admit, he couldn’t figure out what it was, but then he did. Some of the mist or fog didn’t look the same as the rest. It was-yeah-darker.

He wanted to move closer, but that would mean leaving Pawnee here on level ground. He had to satisfy himself with simply watching the dark, thin stream of air.

Only it wasn’t air. It was smoke.

“That’s really dumb,” he told Pawnee. “Don’t those people know they’re not supposed to have fires up here? I ought to tell…” He’d been about to say that he should tell the forest service, but he couldn’t because for all he knew, there weren’t any on the mountain today.

Wondering at the stupidity of people who didn’t know enough to check in before taking off into the wilderness, he took one last look at what was unquestionably smoke. They were probably city slickers, so dumb they’d wind up getting lost and then have to be rescued. Rescued by his dad maybe.

“Wouldn’t that be something,” he mused. “Dad and me working together to help those people. I bet he’d like that even better than hearing that I got to the top of Copper all by myself. Mom, too. She’d be proud as anything.”

A sudden weight in the region of his heart stopped him. Ever since dawn when he’d tried to keep going in the rain, he’d hardly been able to remember why he’d come here. Now, thinking about the look of pride he’d see on his dad’s face, he could hardly wait for the climb to be over so he could see his dad again.

And his mom.

Copper Mountain. A place, an actual place. Where they had to go to retrieve their son. Thank God, they at least knew that.

Cord’s shirt had worked its way out of his jeans. It now bung down in front and bunched over his right hip. His wet hair lay dark and thick over his forehead like a living curtain. He was walking and leading his horse just as Shannon was, his eyes trained to the ground, his back gracefully bowed.

Because he worked and tracked and stared at what he needed to see, his journey taking him farther and farther emotionally from her, Shannon was unable to look into his eyes and, maybe, gauge what went on inside him. She’d seen dogs on a scent who were no more single-minded and admired his ability to dismiss all discomfort, all feeling while trained on his goal. She wished she could do the same.

They’d ridden their horses hard getting to the base of Copper, but although she was anxious to begin the long climb, she understood that Cord first had to determine what route Matt had taken. Until he’d done that, she could only watch and wait and pray.

Because she carried the memory of Cord rocking his son, she was convinced that this search was more than just another job for him. Still, she would have given a great deal-anything-for him to tell her that his insides, like hers, felt as if they had been ripped open and then put back together a little, simply because they now knew where to begin looking for their son.

Although she now regretted lashing out at him, his reaction had told her things she didn’t want to know about the man she’d once loved. Everything had fallen apart for them at Summer’s death because for the first time in her life she hadn’t been able to express herself. She hadn’t been able to reach beyond her own grief, and he had had no idea what was happening inside her. Because he hadn’t tried to understand.

Or if he had, she hadn’t known.

Today it looked as if the intervening years hadn’t changed anything. He was still bottled up inside himself, either holding himself apart from his emotions or, even worse, lacking in that most essential of human qualities.

She could say something to him about what she was feeling and thinking, reveal her still-frightened heart. But if she did, fear might overwhelm her.

“What do you want to do with the horses once we get to where they can’t travel?” she asked around the lump caught firmly in her throat. “If you think we’re going to need them when we get back down, I’ll tether them so they can feed but not get away.”

“No.” He straightened and looked at her, saying the word slowly as if he’d given it considerable thought. “When and if we need horses, we’ll let your folks know. I don’t like the idea of these having to wait until who knows when.”

Who knows when. The words filled her with dismay. “All right,” she said.

“There’s something you need to be aware of. It’s slow going now. Unfortunately, I can’t do anything about that. But when I find where Matt started, it’s going to get even slower.”

“It is?” She swallowed and wondered how much of her emotions she’d given away. “Why?”

“The rain. Also, he isn’t marking his way. He doesn’t want or expect to be followed. At least, he didn’t when he started.”

If this was the way Cord talked to other relatives of missing persons, it was a wonder he didn’t have them in hysterics. But what else could he do, lie to her? She had only to stare up at the traitorous clouds, look out at the trees that imprisoned them and defined the sum and substance of their world to understand the reality of their situation. “You-think that might be different now? Are you saying he wants to be found?”

“It probably hasn’t happened yet, but it’s going to sooner or later. Shannon, he doesn’t know what he’s let himself in for, but he will when he realizes he can’t come close to doing this in two days. I don’t think be has any idea how steep it gets in places. The air’s thinner up there. It’s going to sap his strength.”

She’d already told Cord that Matt might hide if he thought searchers were after him. Now, knowing her son as she did, she had no choice but to face the fact that youthful determination and pride would come before anything else. Those qualities could kill him.

“This kind of thing has to have happened before. What did you do then?”

“I didn’t give up.”

Cord’s answer wasn’t nearly complete enough and gave her nothing to hang hope or fear on. “No. You never would. But what I need to know is, what did you do to find whoever you were looking for? I can help more if I understand more.”

He came a step closer, then stopped. Despite the distance between them, she was sure she could smell still-damp cotton and denim. What did she need with other people when he took up her physical world? “You really want to know this?”

“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I’ve had it happen, a lot. Relatives who don’t really want to hear the details.”

“Don’t you know me any better than that?” Stop it, she admonished herself. There’re already enough walls between us. “Look, of course I don’t want to hear about Matt becoming lost or physically exhausted or hungry or maybe hurt, but those are possibilities, and not saying anything isn’t going to change reality. People say you’re so successful because you have a sixth sense about whoever you’re looking for. Is that it?”

“Maybe I outthink them. I don’t know how to explain it exactly. Maybe it is a sensing thing. I’ve found people a lot more determined to avoid me than Matt is.”

“Who?”

“A couple of escaped convicts. A man who’d shot his neighbor and then ran. Those were in Washington, in woods much thicker than these.”

She ran her fingers through her hair, long past caring how she looked. “But you had law enforcement with you during those times, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

He’d thrown up a barrier between what he knew and what she was trying to find out. How she knew that, she couldn’t say, but she had no doubt. She could try to break through to the truth, or she could respect his decision and let him do his job.

She half turned from him, then stopped. She didn’t have to look at Cord to know he’d come closer; her nerve endings told her that. When, finally, she faced him, he stood no more than two feet away, close enough for her to see the dark and roughened flesh on his lower arms. Mindless, dangerously, she touched him there with fingers so cool that the tips had become numb. Or at least they’d been that way before she stroked him. Now she felt rawly alive.

“I hate your having to go through this,” he whispered.

Oh Cord, thank you. “It’s…it has to be just as hard for you.”

He said nothing, indicated nothing.

“At least we’re not fighting right now, bringing up the past.” She glanced at her fingers on his forearm and desperately wanted the years and silences to melt into nothing. She wondered how long she’d be able to keep her tears, her fear, at bay. Wondered what, if anything, he was hiding. “I’ll get through this. So will you. After…after what we-”

“Don’t think back. Think only about today.”

“I’m trying.”

“I know you are. It’s in your eyes.”

Of course it was. Still, she wished she knew how much he truly sensed about her. There was so much heat contained within this man. Heat that came from the strong heart that pumped blood through his veins. Maybe heat he’d pulled down from the hidden sky and up from the earth’s core.

He was looking at her, his eyes gentle yet wary, older than the mountain looming above them. In that instant she no longer cared that he was nothing but flesh and blood; her need to embrace him in remembrance of everything they’d shared, to be embraced by him and given his courage, was stronger than any emotion she’d ever experienced.

Still, she fought herself, warned by her soul-deep vulnerability, her fear that once exposed she could never again be able to keep anything from him. She would not be the only one to lay herself open! Without saying a word, she gave him his freedom. But he didn’t step away. Instead, he glanced down at his arm and then met her eyes.

She felt gentled, calmed, by nothing more than his look.

Had they really been divorced seven years? It seemed much less; it seemed much longer.

Cord hadn’t been like the other kids she’d grown up with.

It wasn’t that anyone had tried to keep him out of the fun-loving bunch who thought they ruled the world because they had a championship basketball team. But he’d kept himself apart, seeming to need no one, his black, black eyes watching and appraising but never revealing what went on inside him. Then, somehow, he’d looked at her, and she’d looked at him, and something happened.

She ran her hand over her horse’s neck and lifted her head for a breath of pine-scented air. Even now the memory of that something remained. When the chasm between teenage dreams and grown-up reality became more than she could push aside, she’d usually jump on Pawnee’s back and give the young horse his head. But today her son had Pawnee and she couldn’t outrun her memories.

It really was too bad Cord hadn’t gone out for football, she thought as the ground again claimed his attention. With his solid five foot, eleven inch frame, he could have anchored any defensive line. His palms were so broad and solid that he could manage a revving chain saw one-handed. She knew; she’d seen him do it. And he was quick, the kind of quick that took a person by surprise.

Despite herself, she vividly remembered that windy autumn afternoon just after she turned seventeen when she saw him behind the local grocery store. He’d been squatting on his haunches carrying on a nonconversation with one of the stray cats that lived there. While she stood still and quiet, Cord inched toward a cat with a nasty-looking sore on its side. Suddenly, so fast that she remembered the change from crouch to lunge as nothing but a blur, he’d launched himself forward. Despite warning squalls and nails buried in his forearm, he’d hung on. When he realized she’d seen him, he’d shrugged and then explained he wanted the vet to look at the cat and couldn’t think of any other way to get his hands on the animal. That was the first time they’d spoken one on one. It wasn’t the last.

Maybe it should have been. If she hadn’t started running around with Cord-they didn’t date in the usual sense-she wouldn’t have been pulled so deeply into his ebony eyes that she would have lost the way out. They wouldn’t have gone for long drives in his grandfather’s old pickup. They wouldn’t have surrendered to the power of teenage hormones.

But they had and that was why they were here today.

Despite telling himself he wanted to turn his back on Shannon and get back to doing what he’d come here for, Cord couldn’t put thought into action-not yet, at least.

She stood near the horses, absently running her hand over her gelding’s neck. She was muttering something to it, probably some secret to be shared with no one except a big-eyed, big-hearted animal.

The rain had pressed down on her, flattened her hair, plastered her clothes to her until she became part of the environment. The bottom of her jeans hung soddenly down around her boots. She’d stepped on the hems with her boot heels when she walked, fraying the fabric. There were bright splotches of color on her cheeks. By contrast, her nose and mouth looked unnaturally colorless.

His heart went out to her. It went without saying that he didn’t want her to be out here looking for their son. But beyond that, he would have given anything to be able to take her back where it was warm and dry.

Maybe she’d put on a little makeup and a soft blouse and a bra that crumpled down to nothing when he held it in his hand. He’d press his lips to her throat and breathe in a hint of roses, a reminder that she was an outdoor woman and he an outdoor man.

That had been a thousand years ago.

A thousand silences ago.

Silent. That’s what he had to be today. He hoped she understood.

Forcing his attention away from her and his inability to get far enough away from her to call the sheriff, he again stared at the ground as he looked for indentations made from two shod hoofs. The small craters would be filled with water, but at least the rain hadn’t been heavy enough to wash away all of the necessary signs.

That’s all he needed. A starting place. Given time and patience, he’d find where his-their-son had spent the night, and then he’d turn into a bloodhound. He’d do the job he’d spent most of his life doing.

That’s all he wanted. A job to accomplish.

That and an end to thoughts of what Shannon’s hair once felt like against his cheek.

Finally Cord located a small, steeply blanketed clearing where, he said, someone had tethered a horse yesterday. All thoughts of the past quickly vanished from Shannon’s mind-all that mattered now was that they were on their way to finding Matt. Cord ran his hands over the ground and told her that the horse was wearing shoes on only its front hoofs. Pawnee!

“Gray Cloud taught me how to use all my senses,” Cord said in response to her question about what he was doing squatting on his haunches and staring at mud and rocks. “My eyes tell me most of what I need to know, but sometimes when I lay my hand over a track, I find out more.”

She waited for him to say what that was, but he’d straightened and was walking away, head down, once again looking like a bloodhound on a scent. He’d already told her to remain where she was until he’d found what he needed.

He moved as if he had all the time in the world and the patience of the ages, but Shannon knew his demeanor belied his determination.

For several minutes she stared in the direction Cord had gone, then slumped forward slightly, ineffectively trying to wipe the mud off her pants leg.

She understood that tracking required keen concentration, and that Cord was used to working alone. Undoubtedly he knew things he wasn’t telling her; he had to be thinking about other times when he’d done this, and the way those situations had turned out. Talk to me, Cord. Let me in!

When Cord returned, he simply stood a few feet away, unmoving and impassive, saying nothing. But because she understood at least a little about him, she knew he’d found what he needed.

Handling both horses, she followed after him as he led the way. They’d gone no more than a hundred yards when he stopped near a forked pine surrounded by saplings and pointed to the ground. At first she didn’t see anything. Then she made out indentations some six inches apart, one slightly ahead of the other. This was the message her son had left behind. Her knees felt weak; she fought to hold herself erect.

“He’s walking white man style,” Cord explained, his voice devoid of judgment.

“ ‘White man style.’ What does that mean?”

“With his toes pointing out and his feet cutting a wide path. A white man plows through the land. He invades far more space than he needs to.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“For tracking him, good. An Indian takes a narrow path, one foot in front of the other. He walks with his thighs and that uses less energy. The way Matt is walking, he’ll tire faster.”

“Then…maybe he won’t have gotten very far,” she said.

“Far enough.”

He was right, of course. “Do you have any idea how long ago he was here?”

“Yesterday.”

Yesterday was a lifetime ago. Not breathing, she wrapped her arms around her middle and took in her surroundings. Copper Mountain loomed over them, beckoning, standing in their way of returning to civilization. Her son was somewhere in that horrible vastness, and she wouldn’t leave this massive prison until she’d found him.

“I want to touch him.” The words came out a whimper; she couldn’t help it. “I need to touch him.”

“I know,” Cord whispered and stepped, surprisingly heavy-footed, toward her.

“It’s the same for both of us,” she managed, because that was what she desperately needed to believe. “Only-” She inched closer to him, then stopped, feeling too raw for anything except honest words. “Cord? Please tell me something. This has to be difficult for you, doesn’t it? You must have all those memories of times when…when you couldn’t do enough.”

“Yes.” He looked down at her. “It is.”

She wanted to weep, to hold and comfort Cord. To absorb his emotions through her senses as she’d never been able to do when they were so young and untested by life.

“Don’t think about that,” she said after a silence of her own making that went on for a long, long time. “It’ll only tie you in knots if you do. At least we now have a starting point. That’s what we have to concentrate on.”

“I know.”

She sucked in air and fought for control over something that threatened to swamp her like a giant wave. “From, uh, from what you can tell about the prints, how is he? I mean, does it look as if he has much energy?”

Cord ducked his head and slipped under a tree branch. His body telegraphed nothing except the message that he knew where he was going-at least for this moment. “A lot of energy.”