Montana Hero

by Debra Salonen

  He saw the selfie of two boys acting like young boys—tongues out, goofy faces. He tried to feel relieved but the concern in her neighbor’s voice lingered. “Then he had your permission to go somewhere with Robby and his dad?”

  She ran a hand through her wet hair. “What? No. They’re playing in Robby’s room. Right now. As we speak.”

  He shook his head. “No. They’re not. Robby is with his dad. The last time Robby’s mom saw Brady he was walking toward the bus stop.”

  All the color in her beautiful face drained away and she sank to the end of the bed. “That can’t be. We talked. He said he was having fun, but his battery was dying and he forgot his charger. He…” She looked at him, her eyes slightly out of focus as she tried to remember everything that happened and in what order. “Where? Why would he…? I have to find him.”

  She jumped to her feet but would have crumpled to the floor if Flynn hadn’t been there to catch her. He pulled her into a tight hug and kissed her wet head. “I’ll start making calls. You get dressed. Walking shoes. Layers. There’s a storm moving in.” He turned to leave but paused to ask, “Is it okay if I check his room?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is his tablet password protected?”

  “No. The iPad is mine. He uses it for school projects. He has an iPod Touch. He can send messages but he doesn’t have a phone line. I didn’t think he’d need it since I’m the only person he knows with a phone.”

  “Does it have a locator app?”

  “I…I don’t know.” She looked like she might be sick.

  “Katherine, focus on the now. Don’t let your imagination run away with you. We’ll find him.”

  She took a deep breath and nodded before racing to her closet. Flynn turned and hurried to her son’s room. He needed to follow his own advice.

  He switched on the iPad and waited the few seconds it took to load. This was an older generation. He knew because Tucker always had to have the best and the newest, and Flynn often inherited his buddy’s castoffs. He quickly searched the most recent entries.

  “Oh, crap.”

  “What? What did you find?” Kat asked, hurrying toward him as she pulled on the Remember The Alamo T-shirt he remembered from their first night together.

  “A letter to you. He’s doing this to get his grandfather’s attention.”

  “Where is he?”

  The bad feeling in Flynn’s gut turned to lead. “He’s in the mountains, playing hide and seek. We’re it.”

  “He what?” Kat cried, flying to his side. “How could he get to the mountains? Surely he couldn’t walk all that way. Someone would have noticed a little boy on the road, wouldn’t they?” Her eyes went huge with panic. “What if someone picked him up? And…”

  Flynn grabbed her by both shoulders. “No. That didn’t happen. Brady is a smart kid.” Maybe too smart for his own good. “My brother used to do this all the time. He’d take off and return hours later—just when Mom was on the phone calling out a search party. He’d shrug off her worry by saying, ‘I knew where I was.’ Brady knows where he is. Try texting him.”

  Her hands were shaking too badly to enter the letters so Flynn typed: Where are you? Short and sweet.

  He didn’t expect an immediate reply, but since he had the phone in his hands, he looked to see if she had the Find My iPhone app. Hope flared when an image of her second phone came up, but the spinning wheel never stopped spinning. He didn’t know what that meant. Was Brady out of range or was his battery dead?

  “Keep trying. Cell service is sketchy up there at best. But Brady may have turned off the phone to conserve power. Unless the storm hits sooner than predicted, we’ve got a couple of hours of light. If we don’t find him before the storm, he’s going to be one miserable little kid, unless he’s got a waterproof tent and sleeping bag. Hopefully, this is going to get old fast and he’ll contact you to come and get him.”

  “Do you think so? My son can be very stubborn.”

  Why did that not surprise him? “Does he have a sleeping bag?”

  She nodded. “Just a regular kid’s one. Not the kind…” She looked toward the dull gray sky outside her son’s window. Tears flooded her eyes and her voice cracked. “It…it’s in his closet.”

  Flynn pulled her tight to his chest and let her cry. He’d consoled others over the years who had lost loved ones, but this was the first time the fear felt personal. His chest tightened and his throat closed, but he forced himself to be the calm, efficient rescuer she needed.

  After a minute, he pulled back and handed her a tissue from a box beside Brady’s bed. “Okay. No more tears until we find him. I need you to shift from mom-mode to search-and-rescue mode. Can you do that for me? For Brady?”

  She nodded tentatively as she blew her nose and wiped her eyes.

  “Good. Look around and make a list of what you think he took with him. If we have an idea how well prepared he is, we’ll have a better grasp on how well he’ll handle the weather.” He ran a hand through is hair. “What we really need is a clue to where he went.”

  Kat started with the drawers of the dresser beside the desk. “His heavy sweater is gone. And his black hoodie.”

  She reached for a piece of paper to make a list.

  “Oh.”

  Flynn looked up from the tablet where he was checking past text messages. “What?”

  She turned toward him, hand extended. The white paper shook, revealing how well she was trying to hide her panic. “Maybe this will help.”

  He looked at the flier and stifled a groan. The other night at dinner Justin had mentioned his plan to recruit high school kids to help with some of the grunt work at the zip line. At the time, Flynn called it a brilliant idea. Of course, he’d pictured high school students, not fifth graders.

  “I’m going to hire a local church bus to pick up willing workers along the regular school route as if they were going to school,” Justin had said. “Smart, huh?”

  Flynn pointed to the list of bus stops. “That explains why your neighbor saw Brady headed to the bus stop.”

  Kat peered over his shoulder. “But how could he get on the bus? He’s just a kid.”

  “Who is tall for his age and knows how to communicate with adults,” Flynn said. “He also knows Tucker. I could see him playing the ‘Hey, I’m-a-friend-of-Tucker’s card’, can’t you?”

  She nodded, reluctantly.

  “Since he’s been to the area, he probably felt comfortable using the zip line grounds as a starting point. Unfortunately, Tucker picked this location for a reason—the change in elevation will make for some exciting runs.”

  Flynn knew the peaks and gullies also meant searching for a small boy who could have set out in any direction would be difficult—to say the least.

  “Finish making that list while I call this in so we can get our teams mobilized.”

  “Teams? Plural?”

  He nodded. “Weather permitting, we’re going to need horses, ATVs, and air support. Everything we’ve got.” She swallowed hard but nodded. “At least, the zip line gives us a built-in staging area with a generator, sanitation and some cell service.”

  He picked up his phone and left the room. The facts weren’t good. At some level, Kat knew how bad this looked, but Brady’s mom didn’t need to hear him say that even with a starting point, this search was going to be the proverbial needle in a haystack covering twenty or thirty square miles of rugged wilderness.

  *

  In the three hours that followed the painful shock of learning her son was gone, Kat did the impossible—her job. She mobilized the Search and Rescue team and set up a command center, coordinating with all the parties involved. Janet was in the office when Kat and Flynn arrived—in separate cars.

  Kat had had to convince Flynn she wasn’t too upset to drive, but since he knew he’d be taking off for the mountain and had no way of knowing when he’d be back, he’d agreed to follow her in.

  “I’m so sorry, Kat,” Janet said. �
��But don’t worry. We’ll find your boy safe and sound. It’s what we do.”

  Kat wanted to believe that with all her heart, but the mother in her felt every bit of fear clawing at her mind like a wild animal, which could be hunting her son at this very moment. She isolated the image and stuffed it out of sight.

  Focus. Focus on what we can do. For Brady’s sake.

  She’d used the hands-free device in her car to call Greg to tell him their son was missing.

  “Holy crap. He took off on his own to get the attention of his supposed grandfather? That’s messed up, Kat. When you find him—and I have to believe you will, you need to take a serious look at what you’re doing and why? Maybe it’s time for you to move back home. I could try spending more quality time with him.”

  “Not the right time for this argument, Greg. This is about Brady, not you. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Should I fly up there?”

  “No. By the time you find a flight, we should have him back home. Brady’s smart. He may not think like other kids, but he’s resourceful. Like I told Flynn, he’s the kind of kid who would leave cookie crumbs for searchers. We just have to find them.”

  “Who’s Flynn?”

  My lover. The forever man I can’t have because I don’t have a forever.

  “My boss. He’s on the mountain leading the search.”

  He didn’t speak for a moment. “I hope he’s good.”

  “The best. I have to go. I’m at the office and I’ll be manning the phones. We’re hoping to get a couple of planes in the air before nightfall.” She brushed a tear from the corner of her eye. “The weather report has a storm moving this way. If you want to help…pray for our son.” Her throat tightened making it too hard to speak. “’Bye.”

  “The pilots are here,” Janet said drawing Kat’s attention back to the present. “Do you have the aerial maps ready?”

  Both of Flynn’s close friends, Justin and Tucker, had jumped into rescue mode the minute Flynn called them. Justin, who was still on the job site, finishing up some details, went through the consent forms and time cards of the young volunteers. Sure enough, Brady’s name was in the pile.

  When Justin tracked down the driver of the bus who had already returned from dropping off kids at their respective stops, the guy confirmed he’d questioned the kid who was significantly smaller than the jocks he’d picked up earlier.

  “The kid said he was a friend of Tucker’s. I figured he was Tucker’s girlfriend’s son or something.”

  Justin had faxed over the site map he had of the zip line and adventure course layout, as well as a Forest Service topo map of the surrounding area. Kat had circled a relatively small search zone in red that Tucker, who arrived at the office on crutches about ten minutes after she got there, had calculated as the distance a typical ten-year-old could cover in the lapsed time based on the bus’s arrival on the construction site.

  The nickel-sized circle was deceptively reassuring. Kat surmised this by the look Tucker and Flynn exchanged.

  The two men talked behind the closed door of Flynn’s office before Flynn left for a meeting with the Sheriff. The call had gone out to all SAR volunteers to meet at the zip line staging area. Flynn would lead one of the search parties. Justin would handle another.

  Unfortunately, as Kat had mentioned to Greg, time and weather were not on their side. Darkness would arrive all too soon, with temperatures expected to drop significantly. And, worse, a front was moving in, bringing rain and strong winds. There could even be snow at the higher elevations.

  If they didn’t find him tonight, Brady’s chances of survival dropped significantly. Kat crossed her fingers and prayed like she’d never prayed before. Let Flynn find him. Please, God. Please, keep my baby safe.

  Ten seconds later, she got a sign that Somebody up there was listening when Paul Zabrinski burst through the front door of the office dressed in chaps, boots, an all-weather polished cotton slicker and a black cowboy hat. He had gloves in one hand and a cell phone in the other.

  “Roger that,” he said into the phone, which apparently was set to speaker mode. “I just left the ranch. Serena helped me load up Skipper. Austen and Stu Briggs and a couple of hands from the Flying Z are already on their way up. Mia’s at the airport fueling the plane. Dad’s meeting me here to get the search coordinates. They’re hoping to squeeze in a couple of passes.”

  “But the storm…it getting windy.”

  Kat recognized Bailey’s voice but shock kept her from responding.

  Paul looked at Kat, his expression grim. “They know what they’re doing. I’ll call you as soon as I get to the staging area. We’re going to hit it hard at first light, unless Flynn’s people find him before then.”

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “You and Mom coordinate the food. Ryker will pick up anything you need.”

  “Food. Me? I hate you. But, since I can’t ride with the baby, I’ll do it.”

  “Gotta go. I’ll text you Kat’s number as soon as I have it. I love you.”

  “Be safe and find him.”

  “We will.”

  Paul tapped his screen then looked at Kat. He hesitated less than a heartbeat before walking to her and enveloping her in a big, horsy-smelling hug. “We’ll find him. I know in my heart we will. He’ll be okay.”

  She blinked back tears, forcing her brain to stay focused on the job ahead of them. “You’re riding in?”

  “Yes. I’m joining my brother and a dozen or so others on site to leave at the butt crack of dawn.”

  “Weather permitting.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Damn the weather. We go in no matter what.”

  His bravado lifted her spirits for a moment. She looked at Janet and Rebecca who gave her thumbs up. Before she could say anything, the door opened again and Robert Zabrinski walked in. He marched to Kat’s desk where she and Paul were standing.

  His inscrutable blue eyes didn’t blink when he told her, “I have time for one—maybe two—passes. I want to make this count. What’s he wearing? Is he carrying anything with color?”

  She’d written out the list of clothing Flynn asked her to make. “His backpack is Spiderman colors, so some red, yes, but his jacket is black and the only hoodie I couldn’t find is dark green. I assume he’s wearing blue jeans and he has lined snow boots that have yellow reflective stripes on a black background.”

  He folded the list after reading it and tucked it into his vest pocket. His silver hair glistened in the overhead lights, but the color didn’t detract in any way from his virility and power. His eyes narrowed. “We have a lot to talk about later. Right now, we have a little boy to find.”

  Kat’s heart thudded hard against her chest. She didn’t know what he planned to say on the matter, but the fact the entire Zabrinski clan had rallied to help touched her deeply. “Thank you.”

  He nodded, and then motioned to his son. “According to OC, that terrain is nothing but trees, gullies and fast-moving creeks. Brady’s too smart to get caught in one of those, but it’s damn easy to get turned around—especially when you lose the sun. With any luck he’ll know to start a fire and I can spot the smoke before dark. I’m not expecting a miracle, but we can hope for one.” He glanced back at Kat. “Keep the faith and pray.”

  *

  Brady looked around. How come the trees and rocks all looked the same?

  He hadn’t planned to get so far away from the work area. Some of the kids on the bus had been talking about a storm that was coming. Brady figured as long as he could hear noises from the construction site he’d be safe. Just in case he got turned around, he’d started building little piles of rocks as guideposts. Ducks, he remembered his mother calling them when they went for a hike last fall. But rocks weren’t that plentiful in some places and a few of his efforts toppled over so they looked like all the other rock piles. After a while, he gave up and just kept walking.

  When the wind shifted, the direction of the sound f
rom the tractors and power saws changed, too. Brady tried backtracking but got turned around. He knew he was lost when he came to a fast-moving stream he’d heard once or twice but hadn’t seen.

  The water didn’t appear to be deep, but when he touched it, the cold felt like liquid fire on his fingers. Somehow, he must have walked downhill from the zip line. The bus trip had taken forever over a really rough road so there was no way he could walk all the way back to the highway. He’d have to climb to higher ground if he had any hope of getting a signal on his phone.

  He looked around trying to decide which way to go. His stomach growled. He’d burned through his granola bars hours ago. His water supply was running low, but he’d heard horror stories of getting sick from drinking water from streams.

  Worst of all…his feet hurt. Badly. He could feel blisters on several toes. As tempted as he was to put his bare feet in the icy water, Brady was afraid if he took off his boots he wouldn’t be able to get them back on.

  Heaving a sigh, he started upward following what was most likely a deer trail.

  Deer not bear, he thought.

  Or mountain lions.

  He gulped. Hard. Why hadn’t he thought about wild animals before this? And wolves.

  His class had read about the re-introduction of wolves to Yellowstone and how wolves didn’t pay any attention to the human boundaries. A pack could be hunting him right now and he wouldn’t know it. They were cagey. He remembered that word because it made for an interesting image in his brain.

  He only made it a hundred feet or so up before he was out of breath. He scrambled to the top of a big flat rock that seemed to have retained a bit of heat. The sun had disappeared hours ago behind thin, fast-moving clouds that made him dizzy when he looked up.

  Brady had to admit things weren’t going the way he’d pictured.

  Maybe it was time to give up and call his mother. She’d have realized he was gone by now and would be worried. The thought made his stomach hurt.

  He reached into the side pocket of his backpack for his phone. He poked in the shallow pocket but found nothing.

  “Where is it?” he cried, drawing the pack to his lap. “I know I put it there.”