The Return Of Cord Navarro

by Vella Munn

  “He doesn’t mind.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Yes,” Cord said softly. She thought he’d said something else but just then an owl let out with an indignant call that momentarily stopped all conversation.

  “Maybe we’re disturbing him,” she ventured a few seconds later. “After all, he was here first.”

  “He’s passing along information to other owls.”

  “What kind of information? That there are intruders around?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then—Cord, if the owls are talking about Matt as well as us, would you know?”

  “No. Not unless he was close.”

  She knew she’d been grasping at straws when she asked her question. Still, his denial depressed her more than it should.

  Unsure what to do with herself now, she made a move as if to turn back to her bed roll.

  “Shannon?”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s something...”

  “Something? What?” she prompted.

  “We aren’t... there are—does... does it bother you that it’s just us looking for him? You haven’t said.”

  That’s not what he’d started out to say. She knew that instinctively. But because she understood all too well the folly of pressing Cord to reveal something he didn’t want to, she told him she trusted his judgment in this. He was following Matt’s tracks. There wasn’t anything a hundred searchers could do that wasn’t being done by them.

  But what she felt went deeper than practical considerations. It was somehow fitting that they were the ones intent on bringing their son back where he belonged. In this world of complex organizations, rules and regulations, sometimes parents simply needed to be the ones doing the job that instinct and love and commitment had prepared them for. “I want us to find him, for us to be the first people he sees when he realizes he’s no longer lost. A kind of bonding.”

  “Bonding?”

  “Yes. No matter what you and I are to each other, we created a child. Two children. That’s precious.”

  When he didn’t say anything else and she couldn’t find a way around the emotion that clogged her entire being, she turned her attention to where she was going to spend the night. Although she stepped on a pinecone and felt a stab of pain in her instep, she managed to make her way back to her bed. She sat down, aware that her brain wasn’t nearly as tired as her body and that sleep might be hours away.

  They’d created a child. Two children.

  And Cord carried pictures of both of them.

  He’d left his shelter of darkness. She could hear him moving around. “Does it bother you, not having a fire?” he asked.

  “If I thought Matt would see it, I’d have already set the woods afire. But you’re sure he’s far enough away that he couldn’t see one, aren’t you?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The words were simple enough but there was nothing uncluttered in the emotion behind them. As if drawn to Cord by what was going on inside him, she got up and walked over to stand beside him. The moonlight had made its impact on his features. He was now a dark, brooding, silver-touched melody of shadow. She was unable to do more than guess at what was going on behind the dark center of his eyes, so she took her cue from what she knew about him.

  He was lost deep in that place he went when she’d never been able to reach him. Too many times she’d asked for an explanation of what he was thinking about and had to settle for what little he’d been willing or able to give her. Tonight she wouldn’t try, not because she didn’t care but because for once she didn’t need words from him.

  She’d simply stand beside him and share a little of herself. And she wouldn’t listen to her body’s restless hum. Somehow.

  “I think, if I wasn’t doing what I am, I might want to be an astronomer,” she told him. She was grasping at the first thing to come to mind. “I don’t know what qualifications I’d have to bring to the job—probably a lot more schooling. But I love the idea of discovering some unknown moon, maybe a whole galaxy. I’d engage in lofty discussions with other scientists about whether there’s more intelligent life out there.”

  “I hope there is.”

  “Because maybe they’ve come up with some solutions we haven’t?”

  “That’s part of it. And because I want to see if they have big heads and eyes and long, thin fingers.”

  His attempt at humor made her smile. “What about you? Are you at all interested in doing anything else?”

  “Archaeology.”

  “You’re serious? You’d really like to dig in the dirt for signs of ancient life?”

  “Yeah. I would.” He sounded pensive.

  “Why?” she prompted. She’d had to push him so many times in the past that it came instinctively.

  “Curiosity, I guess. Maybe I’m looking for my roots.”

  Gray Cloud had been his only roots. “You never told me that.”

  “I never used to think about it, but... There’s a place in California’s Saline Valley where the Shoshone Indians once had a winter camp. Their civilization may have been over six thousand years old when the white man came. Six thousand years.” Wonder painted his tone. “I was there once on a search and stayed an extra week talking to BLM archaeologists about Shoshone art and religious beliefs.”

  “A week? It must have made quite an impression to keep you in one place that long.”

  “It did. And it made me aware of how little I know about a great deal of my own heritage. Since then I’ve been intrigued by what ancient civilizations left behind. Nevada, southeastern Oregon, the four corners area, all that and more is rich with remnants of the past, if people who know what they’re looking for can get to it before vandals do.”

  “I hope that happens. I mean it, I’ve never heard you talk about this kind of thing before.”

  “I think, until just a while ago, I was too young to be interested in the past. Really interested.”

  And now he was. Circumstances had taken him to part of the country and an experience that excited him and opened him up to interests he’d never expected. Would that continue throughout his life, or was he reaching into the past because his present felt incomplete?

  With a silent groan, she shook off the heavy thought. “I love looking at stars.” She was barely aware of what she was saying. “There’s an endlessness about them. A permanence. And yet they’re so illusive, so mysterious. I know it’s been said a million times, but I feel as if I could reach out and touch one.”

  “What would you do if you could?”

  The question was so totally unlike Cord to ask that it turned her toward him. He waited in dark as old and enduring as the stars. This mountain was his place, the night with its stars and moon created for him. “Do?”

  “I’m trying to picture you standing on the top of a mountain holding a star in your hand.”

  Oh, Cord. “You are?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Being here with you...”

  She didn’t want him to say anything that might make her feel even more off balance than she already did. Another word, a whisper, a touch, and she’d spin off into eternity. Stil—“What about our being here together?”

  “I think you know.”

  He’d sounded unsure of himself a few heartbeats ago. Now he was once again the strong, confident man she’d fallen in love with and—in many ways—still loved. She wanted to be like him, to have control over her emotions, but how could she if they were alone, together, and the night had them in its embrace?

  “Do you?” he pressed.

  Do I what? Your voice—just your voice. “Cord? Cord, there isn’t enough of me left over to try to deal with anything except Matt.” Liar.

  He rocked forward slightly and then back. The movement did beautiful and mysterious things to his features as the moon caressed him. He looked unreal, a mountain man created from wilderness and wind. She didn’t know how to stop her reaction or even if
she wanted to. But to tell him?

  Only an insane woman would try to touch a bolt of lightning.

  Chapter 11

  Feeling more peaceful than she had since the ordeal had begun, Shannon watched the early morning sun touch the sky and turn it from black to a soft gold. It was going to be warm, summer’s promise seeping through deeply shaded valleys and touching them with life—heating their son’s body.

  “He’s all right,” she said, her voice still filled with sleep. “I’d know it if he wasn’t.”

  She fully expected Cord to tell her she couldn’t possibly be sure about what she’d just said. If he did, she wouldn’t argue with him because it was nothing except her mother’s heart speaking. Instead, he nodded, stretched, and began rolling up his sleeping bag. He’d worn only briefs to sleep in. Although they’d settled down some ten feet from each other, she plainly saw the dark dusting of hair that covered his thighs and calves. Once she’d run her fingers, toes, lips over his legs, lost in wonder at the belief that he loved her.

  Now all she could do was look and remember.

  When he stepped into his jeans and sat to put on his boots, she tried to eat a few bites of dried apple, but her stomach seemed to have lost all interest in food. Maybe she was becoming more and more like Cord. As long as she searched for their son, she wouldn’t be aware of her body.

  Only, that wasn’t it. At least, not all of it. She didn’t even have to be near Cord for her body to pick up signals from him.

  He seemed unnaturally quiet this morning. Maybe it was only her need to be diverted from the disjointed and disturbing thoughts flitting through her that made her ache for conversation, but she didn’t think so. Giving up on her breakfast, she reached for her own jeans. She wondered if his attention might be drawn to her legs, but he’d stopped what he was doing and was sitting with his head cocked to one side, his fingers clamped tightly over his knees. She felt as if she could reach out and touch the tension in him, and struggled to hear anything except the stiff breeze, the way the birds welcomed the morning. Cord had exceptional hearing; she’d been impressed by it from the beginning. She longed to ask if he might be able to hear Matt, but if that had been the case, he surely would have told her.

  When the radio squawked to life, she momentarily resented the intrusion, then watched intently as Cord picked it up. It was Kevin’s dad reporting that he’d been in contact with the sheriff during the night and that Dale, who was off doing something Hallem didn’t explain, wanted Cord to know that he would be getting in touch with him as soon as possible.

  “What is that about?” she asked after Hallem and Cord had. spoken for several minutes. “What’s Dale up to? Are you thinking about bringing in more help? I thought—”

  Cord barely glanced at her, making her wonder if he was really aware of her presence. “Even if they could be of assistance, it’d take them too long to get here. Damn. I wish Dale had been there.”

  “Why? Was there something the two of you needed to talk about?” She rolled her bag into a tight bundle and secured it, then stuffed it into her pack.

  “What? Nothing important.”

  “If it isn’t important, why are you so upset?”

  By way of answer, not that it was one, he pushed himself to his feet and stared out at his surroundings. She wanted to concentrate on the conversation and try to force him to tell her everything, but high above the tops of the trees she spotted an eagle silhouetted against the morning sky. For reasons she couldn’t pretend to understand, the eagle distracted her from the need for confrontation. “What do we do now?” she asked. “Where do we go?”

  Still taking in his quiet, clean world, he pointed in the direction they’d been heading when it got too dark to travel last night. She waited for him to say something, but he seemed caught within his own thoughts, as far from her as if he’d been in another state. She’d seen that look on him before and felt helpless to transcend it. In the past she’d believed he was deliberately holding himself apart from her. Now she knew it was more complicated than that.

  “Are you ready to start?” he asked after nearly a minute of silence.

  By way of answer, she walked over to him and gave her pack a final shrug. She supposed she could have asked him for help in getting into it, but then she’d feel compelled to do the same for him and right now touching him wasn’t wise; maybe it never would be. He hadn’t asked whether she was up to another long day of walking and looking, but then he didn’t need to. Surely he knew that as long as there was life in her, she’d search for Matt.

  His pace bothered her. She’d picked up enough from watching him in the past few days to know how much work it took to find a faint mark in the dirt. She admired his patience and tenacity, but today there seemed to be a new sense of urgency to what he was doing. As she concentrated on both keeping up with him and not distracting him, she fought off the persistent question of whether he knew something about Matt’s condition he wasn’t willing to tell her. Again and again she teetered on the brink of asking him what he was thinking, demand he leave nothing locked up inside him, but each time she held back. If he gave weight to her worst fears, she might panic.

  And she didn’t dare. If she did, she would be no good to him. Or to their son.

  Shannon stepped on a loose section of shale. When the rock broke apart and skittered down the slope away from them, Cord stopped long enough to assure himself that she hadn’t injured herself.

  From the sun’s position, he knew they’d been traveling, without rest, for nearly four hours. Heat pressed down on him and taunted him to surrender to lethargy, but he fought it just as he fought the distraction of elk sign, floating hawks, the song of insects. With each step they were getting closer to Matt, but that gave him scant comfort. Matt’s prints had begun to smear, proof that he was occasionally dragging his feet. Still, there was a fierce determination to the way his son walked that said overtaking him wouldn’t be easy.

  He was proud of Matt, so proud that his heart ached with the need to tell the boy that. Matt hadn’t given up, hadn’t let weariness or hunger or fear, if he was afraid, get the upper hand. Obviously he was determined to prove he didn’t need rescuing; maybe it hadn’t so much as occurred to him that he couldn’t get back home, eventually, without help. But if Matt went without listening to his body’s needs for much longer, he could set himself up for injury or accident.

  That wasn’t the worst of it. Just after he woke up this morning and looked across the space that separated him from Shannon, he had once again heard the one sound capable of chilling him. He’d listened again a little later, unsuccessfully this time, which had only drawn Shannon’s attention to him.

  The hunters were still out there, still engaged in their deadly sport. And with the way the rifle shot bounced off the peaks, he could only guess at where they were. For all he knew, they could have found their prey—or Matt.

  Ignoring the sun that beat down on the back of his neck, he leaned forward, briefly confused. Part of his confusion came, he knew, because he couldn’t dismiss the father in him who wanted nothing more in life than to have his son back again. But it was more complex than that. For the past half hour Matt had been traveling as directly northeast as the terrain would allow. Now, suddenly, he’d changed directions. To make sure he hadn’t misinterpreted the sign, he made a slow circle while Shannon waited off to one side.

  “I don’t know what he’s doing,” he muttered.

  “What do you mean?”

  Her question startled him. He didn’t remember speaking out loud. “The way he was going, I thought he’d made a decision. But he’s lost confidence in himself again.”

  “Oh, no. The poor boy.”

  “It happens,” he told her without risking the distraction of looking at her. He’d seen her in her undershirt this morning, and although he’d already gone four hours trying to shake off the memory of her long, tanned legs, it hadn’t been enough. “Lost people sometimes convince themselves that they know what
they’re doing. Then they see or don’t see something and it throws them off balance.”

  “Does he know he’s lost? Can you tell?”

  “No, I don’t think he does.”

  “How... how do you know?”

  “Most lost children stay where they are, especially if they’ve been going as long as he has.”

  “In other words, Matt’s trying to convince himself that he knows what he’s doing.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because...” Even when her voice trailed off, he didn’t look at her. Still, because of the years they’d spent together, he knew what he’d see in her eyes. “Because he’s Cord Navarro’s son and any son of his couldn’t possibly be in this much trouble.”

  “I can’t help it, Shannon! Don’t you think I’d change this if I could?”

  She didn’t say anything, and although he regretted his outburst, maybe it was better that they’d gotten this out in the open even if it drove yet another wedge between them. Still, as he reassured himself that he’d properly read his son’s tracks, he made a vow not to react to anything else she said. She needed him to find their son, nothing more. He’d done this before, and he could do it again.

  “I hate this. absolutely hate this.”

  He’d glanced over his shoulder at her before he’d had time to warn himself of the folly of such a move. Her cheeks looked slightly wind-chapped, her shirt wrinkled. He wanted to wrap her in silk and give her a rainbow. “The walking?”

  “No. Of course not. If I thought it would help, I’d walk until I came to the end of the world. It’s the damn stuff that keeps going through my head. I know you know what I’m talking about. You’re going through the same thing.”

  “Yes. I am,” be said, although his thoughts, compounded by past experiences of failed rescues and his knowledge of who else they shared the mountain with, made it even harder. “There’s only one thing we can do, Shannon. Follow him until we find him.”

  “We’ve been looking for days. What the hell good has it done us?”