The Return of Cord Navarro

nothing locked up inside him, but each time she held back. If he gave weight to her worst fears, she might panic.

And she didn’t dare. If she did, she would be no good to him. Or to their son.

Shannon stepped on a loose section of shale. When the rock broke apart and skittered down the slope away from them, Cord stopped long enough to assure himself that she hadn’t injured herself.

From the sun’s position, he knew they’d been traveling, without rest, for nearly four hours. Heat pressed down on him and taunted him to surrender to lethargy, but he fought it just as he fought the distraction of elk sign, floating hawks, the song of insects. With each step they were getting closer to Matt, but that gave him scant comfort. Matt’s prints had begun to smear, proof that he was occasionally dragging his feet. Still, there was a fierce determination to the way his son walked that said overtaking him wouldn’t be easy.

He was proud of Matt, so proud that his heart ached with the need to tell the boy that. Matt hadn’t given up, hadn’t let weariness or hunger or fear, if he was afraid, get the upper hand. Obviously he was determined to prove he didn’t need rescuing; maybe it hadn’t so much as occurred to him that he couldn’t get back home, eventually, without help. But if Matt went without listening to his body’s needs for much longer, he could set himself up for injury or accident.

That wasn’t the worst of it. Just after he woke up this morning and looked across the space that separated him from Shannon, he had once again heard the one sound capable of chilling him. He’d listened again a little later, unsuccessfully this time, which had only drawn Shannon’s attention to him.

The hunters were still out there, still engaged in their deadly sport. And with the way the rifle shot bounced off the peaks, he could only guess at where they were. For all he knew, they could have found their prey-or Matt.

Ignoring the sun that beat down on the back of his neck, he leaned forward, briefly confused. Part of his confusion came, he knew, because he couldn’t dismiss the father in him who wanted nothing more in life than to have his son back again. But it was more complex than that. For the past half hour Matt had been traveling as directly northeast as the terrain would allow. Now, suddenly, he’d changed directions. To make sure he hadn’t misinterpreted the sign, he made a slow circle while Shannon waited off to one side.

“I don’t know what he’s doing,” he muttered.

“What do you mean?”

Her question startled him. He didn’t remember speaking out loud. “The way he was going, I thought he’d made a decision. But he’s lost confidence in himself again.”

“Oh, no. The poor boy.”

“It happens,” he told her without risking the distraction of looking at her. He’d seen her in her undershirt this morning, and although he’d already gone four hours trying to shake off the memory of her long, tanned legs, it hadn’t been enough. “Lost people sometimes convince themselves that they know what they’re doing. Then they see or don’t see something and it throws them off balance.”

“Does he know he’s lost? Can you tell?”

“No, I don’t think he does.”

“How… how do you know?”

“Most lost children stay where they are, especially if they’ve been going as long as he has.”

“In other words, Matt’s trying to convince himself that he knows what he’s doing.”

“Yes.”

“Because…” Even when her voice trailed off, he didn’t look at her. Still, because of the years they’d spent together, he knew what he’d see in her eyes. “Because he’s Cord Navarro’s son and any son of his couldn’t possibly be in this much trouble.”

“I can’t help it, Shannon! Don’t you think I’d change this if I could?”

She didn’t say anything, and although he regretted his outburst, maybe it was better that they’d gotten this out in the open even if it drove yet another wedge between them. Still, as he reassured himself that he’d properly read his son’s tracks, he made a vow not to react to anything else she said. She needed him to find their son, nothing more. He’d done this before, and he could do it again.

“I hate this. absolutely hate this.”

He’d glanced over his shoulder at her before he’d had time to warn himself of the folly of such a move. Her cheeks looked slightly wind-chapped, her shirt wrinkled. He wanted to wrap her in silk and give her a rainbow. “The walking?”

“No. Of course not. If I thought it would help, I’d walk until I came to the end of the world. It’s the damn stuff that keeps going through my head. I know you know what I’m talking about. You’re going through the same thing.”

“Yes. I am,” be said, although his thoughts, compounded by past experiences of failed rescues and his knowledge of who else they shared the mountain with, made it even harder. “There’s only one thing we can do, Shannon. Follow him until we find him.”

“We’ve been looking for days. What the hell good has it done us?”

Shannon never swore. Now she’d done it twice in less than a minute. The words were enough to swing him back around toward her.

Her eyes said it all. They were sunken deeper into their sockets and the flesh there was now shadowed almost as if she’d bruised herself. There were lines at the corners of her mouth he’d never noticed before and her shoulders seemed to sag a little.

Still, determination ruled her.

“I didn’t mean to say that,” she apologized. “I’m just giving in to frustration, that’s all. Please don’t stop for me. No matter where you go or how fast, I’ll keep up.”

“This isn’t a race.”

“Yes, it is. A race to save our son. I lost one child, Cord. I can’t do it again.”

She’d spoken the words as if they meant no more to her than a million other words had, but her eyes gave her away. She wasn’t crying. He sensed how fiercely she’d guarded against letting that happen. But for reasons she might not fully understand, everything had boiled over for her and the only thing she could do was fight her way around a mother’s worst fears, a father’s nightmare.

“He’s all right,” he told her.

“You don’t know that. Don’t fill me with false hope.”

“I’m telling you the truth.” At least it was when he walked this way. “It’s in his signs.”

That took the fight out of her; he didn’t know he was capable of hurting her so deeply with a few words. Anger-at her tears, at the wilderness that defied them-had whipped through her and met head-on with fear and defeat.

“Shannon, listen to me, please. The Taos Indians have a saying, a prayer. There’s a lot of wisdom in it. Maybe it’ll help you. I know it does me.”

“Does it?”

“Yes,” he said, although he knew she was simply going through the gestures of keeping the conversation going. “They believe that the Mother of us all is earth, the Father is the sun, the Grandfather, the creator who bathed us with his mind and gave life to all things. Our Brother is the beasts and trees, Sister is that with wings.”

She stared, blinked, stared.

“We, the Taos believe, are the children of earth. That’s what Matt is. A, child of the earth.” And so is Summer.

“Of the earth? Safe?”

“Safe,” he told her, believing, at least for the moment.

She held out a trembling hand, and he took it, pulled her to him, embraced both her and her pack. She’d again attempted to braid her hair this morning but hadn’t been able to capture all the strands. Now one teased the corner of his mouth. Barely aware of what he was doing, he gave her his chest to cry into if that’s what she needed, fought the thousand emotions that had built and then splintered inside him. Fought more than that.

“It’s all right to be afraid,” he whispered.