The woman sat up. “I’m coming with you! My car is just outside...”
“How about you and I go up together,” Teri said to her. “Maybe we could have a radio...?” She looked at Cal. “I’ll hold onto it. We’ll only listen, we won’t say anything.”
There was a brief pause while Cal thought this over, and then he glanced over at Jeff. “Get her a radio.” He turned back to Teri. “You stay with her, make sure she’s all right, find her husband and wait at the campsite until we get back. Got it?”
“Got it.” Teri took the radio Jeff handed her. “We’ll stay put, don’t worry.”
“Thank you,” Zach said quietly to her. “You figured it out.”
Teri blushed. “It was nothing. I didn’t do anything but ask a question or two.”
Teri had quickly and confidently gotten a distraught mother to calm down and provide exactly the information they needed. “It wasn’t nothing,” Zach assured her, but he didn’t have time to say anything more—they were heading out. “I’ll see you up there.”
Teri nodded with absolute conviction. “You’ll find him.”
And somehow, when she said it, he believed her.
***
Teri prepared herself to spend a couple of extremely nerve-wracking hours with Jean and David Morrison, Andy’s parents.
Jean had driven the family car white-knuckled behind the rangers’ Jeep, and when they’d parked at the end of the drivable road, Jean had wanted to follow the rangers. Teri had had to hold her back.
“We can’t distract them,” she reminded her. “They have a job to do, and they can do it better if we aren’t looking over their shoulders. They have training that we don’t, and we might get in trouble up there on the mountain, especially if there’s dangerous terrain.”
Jean had sobbed at the idea of her son up somewhere dangerous overnight, but she’d agreed to take Teri back to her campsite.
“This is Teri,” Jean said to her husband when they got there. “She works for the Park, she’s keeping track of what’s going on with the radio while the rangers look for Andy.”
Teri decided not to correct that little mistake. Jean and David would probably feel safer with her if they thought she worked for the Park than if she were a random woman who’d happened to be standing in the office when Jean had come in.
“While the rangers look for Andy?” David demanded. He was a heavyset man with a thick beard, and his cheeks were red with cold and anger. “A ranger came by to look for him last night! Where’s that ranger? Why hasn’t he reported in?”
“Mr. Morrison, I know the ranger who went looking for your son,” Teri said soothingly. She didn’t feel like she was lying, even though she’d only just met Joel the night before. Zach had talked about him enough that she felt like she knew him. “He’s very experienced with wilderness survival. He’s skilled, reliable, and I know he’s doing everything he possibly can to make sure your son is safe. There’s a whole team out there looking right now. They’re going to find your son.”
Teri just hoped they found him alive and well, and that Joel was alive and well alongside him. If this couple lost their child...if Zach lost his brother...
She summoned a smile for Jean and David. “Our job is to wait here in case Andy finds his way back,” she said firmly. “I have a radio so I’ll know when the rangers find something. Meanwhile, we’ve got to stay calm and be prepared in case anyone needs first aid when they get here.”
She set the Morrisons to preparing in case there was some kind of emergency, although she was fairly certain that in that case, the injured person would be transported all the way back to a ranger station and then to the hospital. It was important to keep worried relatives busy so that they wouldn’t work themselves into a panic.
Teri had a lot of experience with worried relatives. This was the first time she’d had the opportunity to put that experience into practice outside her own family, though. She was learning that being the calm, experienced outsider was a lot easier, and a lot more gratifying, than being the person everyone was worried about.
***
The crevasse was up where the mountains were still snowy, and steep enough to be treacherous. Zach pictured an eight-year-old boy running around among the rocks, and felt sick at all the possibilities for injury or worse.
The rangers had taken their Jeep up as far as it would go, and now they were hiking. Each of them had a backpack of emergency supplies and rescue equipment. They were as ready as they could be to save Joel and the little boy. Andy, Zach reminded himself; the boy’s mother had called him Andy.
He wished Teri were here with them.
Logically, he knew that there was enough manpower and wilderness expertise in this group to take care of any situation as efficiently and skillfully as possible. But both his human brain and his leopard’s instincts were in agreement: if Teri were here, she’d help them. She’d keep Zach calmer, she’d project cheerful confidence that everything would be all right...and she’d probably have some practical ideas to help find Joel and the kid herself.
But she was with the parents now. Zach didn’t doubt that she was keeping them calm and focused, preventing them from running off to do anything headstrong or get in the rangers’ way. It was selfish to want her here when she was taking care of other necessary things off by herself.
He still wished she was by his side, though. It was a strange feeling, to want someone else’s help and support. He was used to being the person who offered help and support. But Teri had changed that, made him see that they could support each other as equals.
Still, hiking up alongside Cal, Jeff, Grey, and Tyson, he knew that if Joel was there to be found, these men would find him.