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.