Denise didn’t respond.
“And you’ll be okay, too,” the attendant went on. “In a couple of days, you’ll be on your feet again.”
It was quiet for a minute. Denise continued to stare upward. The attendant began to take her pulse.
“Is there anyone you want me to call when you get to the hospital?”
“No,” she whispered. “There’s no one.”
Taylor and the others reached the spot where the blanket was found and began to fan out. Taylor, along with two other men, headed south, deeper into the swamp, while the rest of the search team headed east and west. The storm hadn’t let up at all, and visibility in the swamp-even with the flashlight-was only a few yards at most. Within minutes Taylor couldn’t see or hear anyone, and he felt a sinking sensation in his gut. Somehow lost in the adrenaline surge prior to the search-where anything seemed possible-was the reality of the situation.
Taylor had searched for lost people before, and he suddenly knew there weren’t enough men out here. The swamp at night, the storm, a child who wouldn’t answer when called . . . fifty people wouldn’t be enough. Maybe even a hundred. The most effective way to search for someone lost in the woods was to stay within sight of the person to the right and left, everyone moving in unison, almost like a marching band. By staying close, searchers could canvas an area thoroughly and quickly like a grid, without wondering whether something had been missed. With ten men that was simply impossible. Minutes after they’d split up, everyone involved with the search was on his own, completely separated from the others. They were reduced to simply wandering in the direction of their choosing, pointing the flashlights here and there-anywhere-the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. Finding Kyle had suddenly become a matter of luck, not skill.
Reminding himself not to lose faith, Taylor pressed forward, around trees, over the ever softening earth. Though he didn’t have any children himself, he was godfather to the children of his best friend, Mitch Johnson, and Taylor searched as though looking for one of them. Mitch was also a volunteer fireman, and Taylor wished fervently that he was out here searching as well. His main hunting partner for the past twenty years, Mitch knew the swamp almost as well as he did, and they could use his experience. But Mitch was out of town for a few days. Taylor hoped it wasn’t an omen.
As the distance from the highway lengthened, the swamp was becoming denser, darker, more remote and foreign with every few steps. Standing trees grew closer together, rotted trees lay strewn across the ground. Vines and branches tore at him as he moved, and he had to use his free hand to keep them away from his face. He pointed his flashlight at every clump of trees, at every stump, behind every bush, moving continually, looking for any sign of Kyle. Several minutes passed, then ten.
Then twenty.
Then thirty.
Now, deeper in the swamp, the water had risen past his ankles, making movement even more difficult. Taylor checked his watch: 10:56. Kyle had been gone for an hour and a half, maybe more. Time, initially on their side, was rapidly becoming an enemy. How long would it take before he got too cold? Or . . .
He shook his head, not wanting to think beyond that.
Lightning and thunder were regular occurrences now, the rain hard and stinging. It seemed to be coming from all directions. Taylor wiped his face every few seconds to clear his vision. Despite his mother’s insistence that Kyle wouldn’t answer him, Taylor nonetheless kept calling his name. For some reason it made him feel as if he were doing more than he actually was.
Damn.
They hadn’t had a storm like this in, what, six years? Seven? Why tonight? Why now, when a boy was lost? They couldn’t even use Jimmie Hicks’s dogs on a night like tonight, and they were the best in the county. The storm made it impossible to track anything at all. And simply wandering out here blindly wasn’t going to be enough.
Where would a kid go? A kid afraid of storms but not afraid of the woods? A kid who’d seen his mother after the accident, seen her injured and unconscious.
Think.
Taylor knew the swamp as well as, if not better than, anyone he knew. It was here that he’d shot his first deer at the age of twelve; every autumn he ventured forth to hunt ducks as well. He had an instinctive ability to track nearly anything, seldom returning from a hunt without something. The people of Edenton often joked that he had a nose like a wolf. He did have an unusual talent; even he admitted that. Sure, he knew what all hunters knew-footprints, droppings, broken branches indicating a trail a deer might have followed-but those things didn’t fully explain his success. When asked to explain his secret skill, he simply replied that he tried to think like a deer. People laughed at that, but Taylor always said it with a straight face, and they quickly realized he wasn’t trying to be funny. Think like a deer? What the hell did that mean?
They shook their heads. Perhaps only Taylor knew.
And now he was trying to do the same thing, only this time with much higher stakes.
He closed his eyes. Where would a four-year-old go? Which way would he head?
His eyes snapped open at the burst of the signal flare in the evening sky, indicating the turn of the hour. Eleven o’clock.
Think.
The emergency room in Elizabeth City was crowded. Not only those with serious injuries had come, but people who simply weren’t feeling that well. No doubt they could have waited until the following day but like a full moon, storms seemed to bring out an irrational streak in people. The larger the storm, the more irrational people became. On a night like this, heartburn was suddenly a heart attack in the making; a fever that had come on early in the day was suddenly too serious to ignore; a cramp in the leg might be a blood clot. The doctors and nurses knew it; nights like these were as predictable as the sunrise. The wait was at least two hours long.
Due to her head wound, Denise Holton, however, was taken in immediately. She was still conscious, though only partially. Her eyes were closed, but she was speaking in gibberish, repeating the same word over and over. Immediately she was taken in for an X-ray. From there the doctor would determine whether a CAT scan was necessary.
The word she kept repeating was “Kyle.”
Another thirty minutes passed, and Taylor McAden had moved into the deeper recesses of the swamp. It was incredibly dark now, like spelunking in a cave. Even with a flashlight, he felt the beginnings of claustrophobia. Trees and vines grew even closer together, and moving in a straight line was impossible. It was easy to wander in circles, and he couldn’t imagine what it was like for Kyle.
Neither the wind nor rain had let up at all. Lightning, however, was slowly lessening in its frequency. The water was now halfway up his shin, and he hadn’t seen anything. He’d checked in on his walkie-talkie a few minutes earlier-everyone else said the same thing.
Nothing. Not a sign of him anywhere.
Kyle had been gone now for two and a half hours.
Think.
Would he have made it this far? Would someone his size be able to wade through water this deep?
No, he decided. Kyle wouldn’t have gone this far, not in a T-shirt and jeans.
And if he did, they probably wouldn’t find him alive.
Taylor McAden pulled the compass from his pocket and pointed the flashlight at it, figuring his bearings. He decided to go back to where they’d first found the blanket, back to square one. Kyle had been there . . . that’s all they knew.
But which way had he gone?
The wind gusted and trees swayed above him. Rain stung his cheek as lightning flashed in the eastern sky. The worst of the storm was finally passing them by.
Kyle was small and afraid of lightning . . . stinging rain . . .
Taylor stared up at the sky, concentrating, and felt the shape of something there . . . something in the recesses of his mind slowly beginning to emerge. An idea? No, not quite that strong . . . but a possibility?
Gusting wind . . . stinging rain . . . afraid of lightning . . .
Those things would have mattered to Kyle-wouldn’t they?
Taylor grabbed his walkie-talkie and spoke, directing everyone back to the highway as quickly as possible. He would meet them there.
