“I never used to think about it, but… There’s a place in California’s Saline Valley where the Shoshone Indians once had a winter camp. Their civilization may have been over six thousand years old when the white man came. Six thousand years.” Wonder painted his tone. “I was there once on a search and stayed an extra week talking to BLM archaeologists about Shoshone art and religious beliefs.”
“A week? It must have made quite an impression to keep you in one place that long.”
“It did. And it made me aware of how little I know about a great deal of my own heritage. Since then I’ve been intrigued by what ancient civilizations left behind. Nevada, southeastern Oregon, the four corners area, all that and more is rich with remnants of the past, if people who know what they’re looking for can get to it before vandals do.”
“I hope that happens. I mean it, I’ve never heard you talk about this kind of thing before.”
“I think, until just a while ago, I was too young to be interested in the past. Really interested.”
And now he was. Circumstances had taken him to part of the country and an experience that excited him and opened him up to interests he’d never expected. Would that continue throughout his life, or was he reaching into the past because his present felt incomplete?
With a silent groan, she shook off the heavy thought. “I love looking at stars.” She was barely aware of what she was saying. “There’s an endlessness about them. A permanence. And yet they’re so illusive, so mysterious. I know it’s been said a million times, but I feel as if I could reach out and touch one.”
“What would you do if you could?”
The question was so totally unlike Cord to ask that it turned her toward him. He waited in dark as old and enduring as the stars. This mountain was his place, the night with its stars and moon created for him. “Do?”
“I’m trying to picture you standing on the top of a mountain holding a star in your hand.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why? Being here with you…”
She didn’t want him to say anything that might make her feel even more off balance than she already did. Another word, a whisper, a touch, and she’d spin off into eternity. Stil-“What about our being here together?”
“I think you know.”
He’d sounded unsure of himself a few heartbeats ago. Now he was once again the strong, confident man she’d fallen in love with and-in many ways-still loved. She wanted to be like him, to have control over her emotions, but how could she if they were alone, together, and the night had them in its embrace?
“Do you?” he pressed.
He rocked forward slightly and then back. The movement did beautiful and mysterious things to his features as the moon caressed him. He looked unreal, a mountain man created from wilderness and wind. She didn’t know how to stop her reaction or even if she wanted to. But to tell him?
Only an insane woman would try to touch a bolt of lightning.
Chapter 11
Feeling more peaceful than she had since the ordeal had begun, Shannon watched the early morning sun touch the sky and turn it from black to a soft gold. It was going to be warm, summer’s promise seeping through deeply shaded valleys and touching them with life-heating their son’s body.
“He’s all right,” she said, her voice still filled with sleep. “I’d know it if he wasn’t.”
She fully expected Cord to tell her she couldn’t possibly be sure about what she’d just said. If he did, she wouldn’t argue with him because it was nothing except her mother’s heart speaking. Instead, he nodded, stretched, and began rolling up his sleeping bag. He’d worn only briefs to sleep in. Although they’d settled down some ten feet from each other, she plainly saw the dark dusting of hair that covered his thighs and calves. Once she’d run her fingers, toes, lips over his legs, lost in wonder at the belief that he loved her.
Now all she could do was look and remember.
When he stepped into his jeans and sat to put on his boots, she tried to eat a few bites of dried apple, but her stomach seemed to have lost all interest in food. Maybe she was becoming more and more like Cord. As long as she searched for their son, she wouldn’t be aware of her body.
Only, that wasn’t it. At least, not all of it. She didn’t even have to be near Cord for her body to pick up signals from him.
He seemed unnaturally quiet this morning. Maybe it was only her need to be diverted from the disjointed and disturbing thoughts flitting through her that made her ache for conversation, but she didn’t think so. Giving up on her breakfast, she reached for her own jeans. She wondered if his attention might be drawn to her legs, but he’d stopped what he was doing and was sitting with his head cocked to one side, his fingers clamped tightly over his knees. She felt as if she could reach out and touch the tension in him, and struggled to hear anything except the stiff breeze, the way the birds welcomed the morning. Cord had exceptional hearing; she’d been impressed by it from the beginning. She longed to ask if he might be able to hear Matt, but if that had been the case, he surely would have told her.
When the radio squawked to life, she momentarily resented the intrusion, then watched intently as Cord picked it up. It was Kevin’s dad reporting that he’d been in contact with the sheriff during the night and that Dale, who was off doing something Hallem didn’t explain, wanted Cord to know that he would be getting in touch with him as soon as possible.
“What is that about?” she asked after Hallem and Cord had. spoken for several minutes. “What’s Dale up to? Are you thinking about bringing in more help? I thought-”
Cord barely glanced at her, making her wonder if he was really aware of her presence. “Even if they could be of assistance, it’d take them too long to get here. Damn. I wish Dale had been there.”
“Why? Was there something the two of you needed to talk about?” She rolled her bag into a tight bundle and secured it, then stuffed it into her pack.
“What? Nothing important.”
“If it isn’t important, why are you so upset?”
By way of answer, not that it was one, he pushed himself to his feet and stared out at his surroundings. She wanted to concentrate on the conversation and try to force him to tell her everything, but high above the tops of the trees she spotted an eagle silhouetted against the morning sky. For reasons she couldn’t pretend to understand, the eagle distracted her from the need for confrontation. “What do we do now?” she asked. “Where do we go?”
Still taking in his quiet, clean world, he pointed in the direction they’d been heading when it got too dark to travel last night. She waited for him to say something, but he seemed caught within his own thoughts, as far from her as if he’d been in another state. She’d seen that look on him before and felt helpless to transcend it. In the past she’d believed he was deliberately holding himself apart from her. Now she knew it was more complicated than that.
“Are you ready to start?” he asked after nearly a minute of silence.
By way of answer, she walked over to him and gave her pack a final shrug. She supposed she could have asked him for help in getting into it, but then she’d feel compelled to do the same for him and right now touching him wasn’t wise; maybe it never would be. He hadn’t asked whether she was up to another long day of walking and looking, but then he didn’t need to. Surely he knew that as long as there was life in her, she’d search for Matt.
His pace bothered her. She’d picked up enough from watching him in the past few days to know how much work it took to find a faint mark in the dirt. She admired his patience and tenacity, but today there seemed to be a new sense of urgency to what he was doing. As she concentrated on both keeping up with him and not distracting him, she fought off the persistent question of whether he knew something about Matt’s condition he wasn’t willing to tell her. Again and again she teetered on the brink of asking him what he was thinking, demand he leave
