Part 4
They ran uphill as the dogs broke into full cry. Nora reached the granite first and slid into the seam. Stone caught her jacket and scraped her knuckles; behind her, Alex exhaled hard, turned one shoulder, and forced himself through.
The cleft opened into a shallow chamber floored with sand. They crawled behind a shelf of rock while white beams jumped across the entrance.
“Trail stops here,” a man said outside.
One dog whined. Another pulled downhill toward the creek, confused by water and rain. Nora pressed both hands over her mouth and felt Alex’s palm settle between her shoulder blades—not pushing, simply there.
“They headed for the road,” another man called. “Circle south.”
The voices faded, returned once, then moved away. Nora did not stir. Once, tracking a wounded deer with Grandpa, she had watched it break cover while they were still fifty yards away; the movement had given them its exact position. She kept her cheek against the sand.
They waited until gray light reached the sand. Alex’s face looked carved from fatigue. “South is finished,” he whispered.
“East,” Nora said. “The river bends toward Clear Fork.”
They left the cleft after dawn and moved across rock until the forest swallowed them. The storm had washed the air clean. By noon sunlight flashed through the cedars, and Nora heard the low, steady push of water.
The river was swollen but it gave them a trail. They followed it downstream, drinking through Grandpa’s metal filter canteen and eating the edible tips of spring plants Nora knew. Alex did not question anything she put in his hand.
His ankle worsened, and by midafternoon Nora had to shorten her stride. Once they heard an engine above the river and flattened beneath salal until a logging truck passed on a road they could not reach without climbing an open cut. Alex drew breath to shout. Nora looked at the exposed slope between them and the road, then at a cab too distant to identify. By the time either of them could know who was inside, the engine had faded. They stayed under cover and kept toward Clear Fork.
Late in the day, smoke lifted beyond a bend. A red roof appeared, then a white steeple and several houses gathered along a two-lane county road.
Alex laughed once, softly. “We made it.”
Nora stopped.
Clear Fork had perhaps forty houses, but after the mountain it looked crowded as a fair. A truck door slammed. A lawn mower started. People stood in yards where they could see one another, and Nora suddenly wanted the trees to close behind her.
Alex crouched despite the pain it cost him. “I’m staying beside you.”
“They’ll ask questions.”
“We’ll answer what we can.” He held out his hand. “Together was the bargain.”
She put her hand in his.
The first person they met was a woman in green scrubs hanging sheets behind a weathered house. She took in Alex’s bruises, Nora’s borrowed jacket, and their linked hands without wasting time on surprise.
“I’m Ann Mercer,” she said. “I’m the volunteer EMT. Come inside before either of you falls down.”
Ann’s husband, Steve, called the sheriff’s office while she cleaned Alex’s wrists and the cut at his temple. She gave Nora warm broth before solid food and checked her temperature twice. Family photographs covered one wall: school portraits, a wedding, a dog wearing antlers. Nora stared at them until Ann quietly turned the nearest frame so the glare left the faces.
After the broth came chicken soup, potatoes, and bread. Nora ate slowly, leaving half of each serving until Ann tilted the full pot toward her, packed the untouched portion into a container, and wrote NORA across the lid. “This will still be here tomorrow.” Alex ate as if his body had overruled his manners. When he apologized, Steve put another slice of bread on his plate.
When Alex told her about Grandpa, Ann set down the blood-pressure cuff. “Michael Hale from the east-slope homestead?”
Nora looked up.
“He came through every fall,” Ann said. “Never took more in trade than he thought his carvings were worth. Talked about you every single time. Said you could identify a track before most people noticed there was one.”
“He said that?”
“He was proud clear through. Just private about it.”
The broth became difficult to swallow.
A county deputy and an Idaho State Police investigator arrived before dark. Deputy Erin Cross spoke to Nora at the kitchen table, low and direct, while Investigator Matt Avery took Alex’s account in the next room. Search-and-rescue volunteers were sent toward the homestead and both shelters. An alert went out for the two armed men. No one told Nora that the danger was over merely because adults had arrived.
Deputy Cross photographed the rope burns only after Alex agreed and collected his torn coat in a paper evidence sack. Avery asked Nora to mark the shack, creek, dugout, and rock cleft on a topographic map. He did not correct her when her first mark landed where no printed trail existed. “The trail isn’t printed,” she said. Avery shifted the search grid to include her mark.
Investigator Avery later sat across from Alex. “Your company reported you missing five days ago. The report came from Victor Sloan.”
Alex’s mouth went flat. “He wanted to control the story.”
“That’s a possibility, not a finding. We’ll work the records and the people you can identify.” Avery glanced toward Nora. “For tonight, both of you need medical evaluations. She also needs child welfare.”
Nora gripped the cedar box under the table.
“I want to be considered for her placement, if she wants that,” Alex said.
Deputy Cross shook her head before Nora could breathe. “You can ask. You can’t take a child home because you survived something together.”
“Then tell me how to ask correctly.”
Dana Brooks, the on-call child-welfare caseworker, reached Clear Fork near midnight. The state would take temporary protective custody, and a shelter-care hearing would be held within forty-eight hours. Until then Nora could stay with Ann, who was certified for emergency foster care. Alex was not approved to take her anywhere.
“What happens at the hearing?” Nora asked.
“The judge decides where you stay while we search for your mother and any relatives,” Dana said. “Alex can ask about visits. A different decision would need a background check, a home study, and more time.”
“My mother knows where she left me.”
Dana wrote the sentence down exactly. “You can tell the judge. Alex will have to pass every check before you stay under his roof.”
Across the table, Alex looked more frightened than he had in the cave.
Nora asked, “If the judge says no, do I ever see him again?”
Dana followed her gaze. “You can ask for supervised visits. Nobody is deciding the rest tonight.”
Alex leaned forward, his bandaged wrists on the table. “Do you want me to ask?”
She looked at his bandaged wrists and remembered his hand closing around hers at the edge of town without pulling her forward.
“Try,” she said.
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