The Return of Cord Navarro

sanity. At least, she hoped it had.

Cord wondered if Shannon fully understood what he was doing when, occasionally, he stopped and retraced his steps before marking a rectangle left and right, front and back. He could have told her that he’d momentarily lost sight of Matt’s and Pawnee’s tracks and was picking them up again the way Gray Cloud had taught him. Other times when what he wanted eluded him, he went back to the last print and circled it slowly, concentrating. It didn’t matter which method he used as long as he kept picking up the trail. When he did that, Shannon remained where she was so her tracks wouldn’t confuse him.

Had she learned that from him? He couldn’t remember telling her what her role during a search would have to be. He hadn’t often taken her into the wilderness with him, especially not after they’d gotten married and work and school and then a baby took up so much of her time.

Maybe that was when they began losing each other.

Maybe they’d only believed they had something in common because they were so young and in love, so overwhelmed by the exploration of each other’s bodies.

He couldn’t believe that, not after seeing her standing raw and exposed in front of him when he showed her where their son had stood. Knowing how much of himself he’d handed her.

The emotions wouldn’t be so strong if they weren’t in some way tapped into each other, would they?

He wouldn’t allow himself to be distracted by further thoughts of what he and Shannon once had. His self- preservation depended on it.

Suddenly he stopped, leaned over, then indicated the ground. “He rested here.”

“How can you tell?” Shannon asked as she pressed closer.

To him, the signs were as plain as any written message, but he pointed to the broad area of flattened grass that indicated Matt had sat here for a while. Beyond that were a number of heel marks, proof that Matt had scraped his feet over the ground while he rested. Good. There had been energy in his legs.

Shannon squatted in front of the marks and ran her fingers gently over them. “If I touch where he’s been, can he tell? Does he know we’re here, that…that I love him?”

She shouldn’t utter those words. When she did, her whispers dug at him and made it nearly impossible for him to concentrate on what he had to do. Still, insanely, he wanted to hold and comfort her, to erase the lost years.

But he couldn’t. He didn’t know how, and knew better than to try.

“If you believe he can sense you, then maybe he will. Shannon, if you need to cry-”

“Cry? No, Cord. I’ve done all I’m ever going to do of that.”

He tried to touch her because her rough words left him with no choice, but she jerked away. “You don’t understand, do you?” She all but threw the words at him. The tears she’d just denied sounded dangerously close to the surface. “The kind of vulnerability I felt when Summer was born and we knew she wasn’t going to live-I’m never going to cry alone again.”

“Never cry? No one knows what life is going to bring, Shannon. What emotions will build up inside and need release.”

She could have pointed out that her exact words were that she wasn’t going to cry alone, but she didn’t because he was right. Although she might wish with all her heart that life wouldn’t kick her in the gut again the way it had when Summer died and again when their marriage had ended, no one could look into the future. “What kinds of things build up inside you, Cord? Maybe I should know, but I don’t.”

“Nothing anyone else doesn’t experience.”

“I’m not so sure. I’d like to hear about it.” Instead of saying anything more, she simply continued to meet his gaze, challenging him to step away from what they’d begun with this conversation.

He started slowly. “I’ve worked with so many people, seen them go through so much. Sometimes it turns out right, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

“When it doesn’t, who do you talk to about it?”

He didn’t answer her, but then, he didn’t have to. She knew he had no one. He’d had her for a brief while, and he had Matt; he needed more than that. She wished she’d allowed herself to acknowledge that before now, but there’d always been distance between them. “Cord, I was scared to death when I started my business. Sometimes I’m still scared. If I can tell you that, can’t you do the same?”

His body rocked slightly, away from her and then closer again. She heard a rustling in a tree to her left and guessed that there were birds in there. As before, she waited.

“Something happened to me last year,” he said. “Something that…”

“Something that what?”

“I was in northern Idaho teaching advanced life support to a group of paramedics when we got a call about a sports car that had run into a truck. There were kids in the car, two of them the daughters of the man who’d organized the class.”

“Oh, no.”

“I worked beside him for hours cutting those kids out, getting them stabilized and into helicopters to be air- lifted to the nearest trauma center. Doug couldn’t go with his daughters-I drove him the ninety miles.” Cord ran his fingers through his hair, grabbing still-damp chunks and holding on to them. “Doug told me about their births, his divorce from their mother, how he’d finally gotten custody of them. The whole time, we didn’t know whether the youngest one would live or whether his seventeen-year-old would keep her leg.”

Shannon’s heart went out to him.

“By the time we got there, both girls were out of danger. But they had to have surgery that night. It was just Doug and me until morning when his sister got there. The longest night of Doug’s life.”

And one of the longest of yours, too, she suspected. “I’m glad you were there for him, that he wasn’t alone.”

“So am I,” he said on the tail of a long, slow blink. “When it was over and we knew his daughters would come out of it in one piece, I left Doug with his sister, went outside, walked right past my car in the hospital parking lot, and kept on going.”

She held her breath, every piece of her being focused on Cord. “You walked…” she prompted when he simply stood with his eyes now locked on the horizon. Don’t stop now, please! she begged.

“For miles, hours. And I cried. Relief. Exhaustion. Everything that had boiled up inside me. Sometimes, Shannon, there’s nothing to do but cry.”

He had cried, this man who hadn’t shed a tear at their daughter’s death; at least, she hadn’t seen him give way to the grief that had consumed her. “It helps,” she whispered despite the hard, hot knot in her throat.

“Yeah. It does.”

She couldn’t think of anything to say after that. Yes, Cord’s career brought him in constant contact with life- and-death struggles. He’d seen more of what was raw and basic in the world than most people ever would, but he wouldn’t be human if he didn’t have some response to those struggles-a response she’d never truly considered before now. Why? Had he been that careful to keep his emotions from her, or hadn’t she known how to read the signs?

Too late, a voice inside her head mocked.

Afternoon.

Cord had known that the storm was dying long before the clouds began breaking up. Shannon had cheered when a weak, brief ray of sunlight touched her, but he couldn’t share her excitement.

He couldn’t sense his son’s presence.

True, the trail Matt and Pawnee had left behind was clear enough that he was in no danger of losing it, but the tracks told him that Matt had been walking with the determination of youth, while Cord was hampered by ground that sometimes briefly held secrets and made the search for answers tedious.

Matt would have to spend at least another night on the mountain. If he’d taken his son with him or given him the knowledge he’d already had at that age-

For maybe the fourth time today, Cord tried to shake himself free of the pounding inside his head. He knew how to be a bloodhound, how to walk and work and sacrifice and think of nothing except his goal.