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Rowan sat under the canopy that covered the center of camp. He poked at the fire, staring into the flame. His face was a reflection of the desperate panic in his heart.
Jean-René watched him for a moment before sitting down across from him. “Let’s hope this is the worst of it.” Thunder answered him, and lightning cast a brilliant glow on his equally troubled face.
“Probably not.” Rowan’s voice was heavy with exhaustion. Everyone else had retired to their tents. They were too tired to do much else. Since Lauren disappeared, there had been no mournful calls from the trees, no new footprints, no rock-throwing. It was as if the monster had disappeared with her.
“She tries so hard to hide it, but ... we all know.” Jean-René lowered his voice. “You realize that, right?”
Rowan blanched. “She wouldn’t let me say anything.” He managed a dour laugh. He hung his head, fighting back tears.
“You never had to.” Jean-René studied his boss. He looked exhausted. “Her eyes say it all. Every time she looks at you—even how she gets mad at you—how she tries not to let the rest of us see how she smiles at you.” There was a long silence between them. “When I saw that, I envied you. Did you know that?”
“Really?” Rowan ran his hand over his face.
“Well, I am French. Eh, French-Canadian. Whatever.” He chuckled. “A beautiful woman like her? How could you blame me? But then I realized she wouldn’t even give me a moment’s consideration. She didn’t see me. She saw only you.”
“I asked her to marry me.” Rowan managed a small laugh, but his brow knit and his smile faltered, his voice cracking. “More than once but ... she said no.” He pursed his lips. “She said she didn’t need it ... didn’t want it.”
Jean-René shook his head sadly, empathetically putting a hand on Rowan’s arm. “She’s an independent woman. She’s afraid to admit she might need a partner to rely on. She doesn’t realize that there’s more to marriage.”
“And you’re the expert?”
“I was married for twelve years.”
“You were?” Rowan sat up straight. He had never known about this side of his co-worker.
“Catherine died in a car crash,” he said. “It was a long time ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Rowan looked up at him. There was a long pause. “You must have married young.”
“We did. I was twenty, she was eighteen.”
“That’s too bad,” Rowan said. “I can see you miss her.”
“I do. Some days, I am still very sad.”
“Is that why you’ve never re-married?”
“No. I just haven’t found another woman who captured my soul like Catherine did. She was everything to me.”
“That’s how I feel about Lauren, but ... I just don’t think she sees it.”
Jean-René chuckled. “Believe me, she sees it.”
“I just hope we can find her. So I can tell her.”
“We’ll find her.”
* * *
The weather continued to deteriorate through the night. The temperature dropped even more. Rain turned to sleet, tapping on the top of the tent where Rowan lay fretting. Sleep eluded him.
When he crawled out of his tent the next morning, there was an inch of ice on the tents and the tarps over the center of the camp. The trees bent under the strain. The tents bowed under the weight. Only the heat from the bodies inside had kept them from collapsing.
The team milled around camp, distraught and helpless. Rowan rummaged through the equipment, finding the walkie-talkie. He radioed the Park Service team in charge of the search, only to learn it had been called off until the weather passed and it was safe to resume.
“I’m going out.” Rowan stood abruptly; swaying with exhaustion.
Jean-René put a hand in the middle of his chest to steady him. “You can’t,” he said. “It’s too dangerous. The ground is slick, and you’ll freeze to death.”
Rowan hesitated. He glowered at Jean-René when one of the camera crew reached for a camera, as if this were the time to get some footage for the episode. One icy look from Rowan, was enough to prompt the tech to retract his hand.
“I have a coat.” Rowan turned back to Jean-René. “Lauren doesn’t. She’s going to freeze to death if I don’t find her.”
Bahati caught his elbow and put herself between him and the trail. “Look, you are no good to Lauren like this. You need to rest. I know you haven’t been sleeping. It’s affecting your judgment. You know you can’t go out in this.”
“I have to find her,” he said.
“Look at me,” she said, softly. She took him by the shoulder and turned him. “You can’t do anything for Lauren now. You know that. Rest now. When the weather breaks, we will go find her.”
Rowan nodded. “You’re right,” he said. He clenched his jaw. Turning, he ducked into his tent and zipped it up behind him.
* * *
The rain turned to snow just after noon. It was heavy, large wet flakes that clung to the branches of trees and drifted high against their tents. No one had expected it to get so cold so late in the spring. But the weather in the Pacific Northwest was unpredictable, especially at these elevations. At least the volcano was sleeping peacefully ... for now.
Rowan glanced up at the peak of Mount Saint Helens that loomed over the horizon. It was barely visible for the snow that swirled around him. It had been quiet for most of the past 20 or so years. In the last six months, there had been signs of recurrent activity in the mountain, and researchers were monitoring it closely to see if it was going to erupt again. Several times over the last year, USGS reported an eruption was imminent, but the data hadn’t been proven, yet. Volcanic eruptions had never been predicted with any kind of accuracy. Not yet, anyway. His emergency evacuation plan for the expedition took possible eruptions into account. He’d trained the team on terrain traps, to avoid the canyons and riverbeds like the ones that had been flooded by pyroclastic flows back in 1980. His plan assumed they’d be together if something happened. He’d never expected them to be separated. No one could have anticipated a scenario like this. He could only pray the mountain would sleep for many more years before it woke.
* * *
The mood among the searchers remained overcast as hope for finding Lauren waned. Temperatures now hovered just above freezing as the sun began to undo all the work Mother Nature had put into the past few days. With the Park Service team taking the lead, the search party blazed a trail along the northern path toward Climbers’ Bivouac. It was an area they had slated to investigate, but search teams hadn’t been able to get to before the weather had gone foul.
“How much farther?” Rowan asked. The trail was muddy and icy even where the sun was nearing its zenith as they topped the ridge. Rowan was anxious to get there.
“Maybe thirty minutes that way, if we keep at this pace,” the ranger said.
A broad meadow lay ahead. Rowan stopped. He scanned the scene, noticing that a large briar trembled, and a shadow moved behind it. The figure rose slowly, turning in their direction before calmly moving off into the trees.
Rowan looked at the rest of the team. Their aghast expressions told him they saw it too.
“What was that?” Bahati asked. “Who got that on film?”
Jean-René seemed to turn to marble, his features locked. The camera on his shoulder drooped at an angle. Rowan turned and slugged him in the shoulder, snapping him out of the stupor. “What?” Jean-René demanded. He fumbled with the camera, righting it on his shoulder.
“Did you see it?” Rowan turned to the ranger.
“I saw something,” he said. “Was it a bear?”
“That was no bear,” Rowan said. Turning back to Jean-René who was fumbling with the replay on the camera. “Did you get it?”
Jean-René gulped. “I got something.”
While they were standing around the camera, trying to get a good look at the replay, Bahati glanced up. “Lauren?”
Rowan looked up. His heart quavered in his chest when he realized it was her. She staggered awkwardly towards them in the same direction in which they saw the figure. He tossed down his gear and dashed across the expanse towards her. Halfway across the clearing, he skidded on a patch of ice. He righted himself. Sprinting across the wide meadow he reached her. She looked like a zombie, her hair wild about her head. Her clothes were torn, her face bruised. He caught her by the arms as she stumbled toward him.
A gut-wrenching yelp echoed across the valley. “A’yo!” Her gaze went down to her right arm. She looked back at him, then her eyes rolled back, and she went limp in his arms.