The Return of Cord Navarro

climb, she understood that Cord first had to determine what route Matt had taken. Until he’d done that, she could only watch and wait and pray.

Because she carried the memory of Cord rocking his son, she was convinced that this search was more than just another job for him. Still, she would have given a great deal-anything-for him to tell her that his insides, like hers, felt as if they had been ripped open and then put back together a little, simply because they now knew where to begin looking for their son.

Although she now regretted lashing out at him, his reaction had told her things she didn’t want to know about the man she’d once loved. Everything had fallen apart for them at Summer’s death because for the first time in her life she hadn’t been able to express herself. She hadn’t been able to reach beyond her own grief, and he had had no idea what was happening inside her. Because he hadn’t tried to understand.

Or if he had, she hadn’t known.

Today it looked as if the intervening years hadn’t changed anything. He was still bottled up inside himself, either holding himself apart from his emotions or, even worse, lacking in that most essential of human qualities.

She could say something to him about what she was feeling and thinking, reveal her still-frightened heart. But if she did, fear might overwhelm her.

“What do you want to do with the horses once we get to where they can’t travel?” she asked around the lump caught firmly in her throat. “If you think we’re going to need them when we get back down, I’ll tether them so they can feed but not get away.”

“No.” He straightened and looked at her, saying the word slowly as if he’d given it considerable thought. “When and if we need horses, we’ll let your folks know. I don’t like the idea of these having to wait until who knows when.”

Who knows when. The words filled her with dismay. “All right,” she said.

“There’s something you need to be aware of. It’s slow going now. Unfortunately, I can’t do anything about that. But when I find where Matt started, it’s going to get even slower.”

“It is?” She swallowed and wondered how much of her emotions she’d given away. “Why?”

“The rain. Also, he isn’t marking his way. He doesn’t want or expect to be followed. At least, he didn’t when he started.”

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