The radio came to life with a query from his brother Wade. “How long are we going to look?”
His brother Will said, “I was just at the firehouse. The parents are hysterical. All they could talk about was how they’re good kids—on the honor roll, varsity athletes. We gotta keep going.”
Landon had known someone was going to say it. They never gave up before they found the people they were looking for. Most of the time, they were alive, if half frozen and suffering from exposure. It’d been a few years since they lost someone on the mountain. He’d like to keep that record intact and knew his brothers, cousins and friends felt the same way.
The kids they were looking for were someone’s sons, grandsons, brothers, friends. Whenever they looked for missing people, Landon tried to imagine it was one of his siblings or cousins, and he tried to give strangers the same effort he’d give his own family.
He continued on, powering through the wet, heavy mud as he blazed a trail in the direction where the teens were last seen. No one knew how far they could’ve gotten before the storm intensified, so they were basically looking for needles in the proverbial haystack.
“Connor! Jeremy! Michael!”
He’d called for them so many times by now, his voice was nearly shot. But he kept going, kept yelling out the names every few feet, while trying not to think about the situation at home. Easier said than done. He liked thinking about her, loved having her living in his cabin, even though he hated the reason she needed shelter, and was upset to see her so undone for days now. Landon wouldn’t wish getting caught in a fire on anyone. It was terrifying, even when you were wearing fire-retardant equipment and equipped with oxygen.
He wouldn’t soon forget realizing the roof had fallen in on the room where Lucas had gone to rescue Amanda. Knowing two people he cared about were in mortal danger had been one of the most frightening experiences of Landon’s life.
His identical twin was his best friend. The thought of even a day without Lucas was unfathomable. A week after the fire, Landon still felt sick when he considered the magnitude of what he’d nearly lost that night, especially since things between him and Lucas had been tense after they both went out with Amanda.
She’d tried to be nice to them when they’d asked her out at the same time, but had ended up in a bad situation when both brothers had a great time with her.
Lucas had been so upset about the situation with Amanda, he’d left town to get away from it all. On that trip, he’d rescued Dani and her baby girl, Savannah, and had fallen for both of them.
With Lucas now out of the Amanda picture, Landon had been trying to figure out his next move, while also trying to get a read on her and whether she wanted to hang out again as more than just platonic roommates.
Before the fire, Amanda had stayed in Butler to work on a rewrite of her company’s catalog. Lucas had pointed out that she could’ve done that anywhere and had made the choice to stay in Butler, probably because of Landon.
Landon had been skeptical about that and had planned to talk to her about what, if anything, was going on between them, but then the fire had happened, and they’d had far bigger things to worry about ever since. So he still had no clue what she was thinking where he was concerned, but she was staying in his cabin, so that gave him an advantage he hadn’t had before.
For all the good that’d done him. In between her bouts of weeping, they’d barely exchanged more than ten sentences per day as they discussed what they wanted to heat up for dinner from the ton of food his family had made for them.
With her feeling so fragile, this was no time to push her in any direction. However, he was miserable from wanting something more substantial with a woman for the first time in his adult life and having no earthly idea how to make it happen.
He was jolted out of his thoughts by a noise that had him stopping to listen more closely. When he didn’t hear anything, he called out again for the boys.
The weak sound of “help” came from his right.
Landon set off in that direction while keying his radio to report in. “I might have something.” He pushed hard through the mud, mindful of staying on the path so he wouldn’t fall down the side of an embankment. Their team knew this mountain so well they rarely had to worry about falling. However, situational awareness was critical so they didn’t end up needing to be rescued themselves.
“Are you out there? Let me hear you!”
“Help! Over here!”
“I’ve got them,” Landon reported.
The team would use his coordinates to send in backup.
One of the boys was standing, waving to him as he battled his way through brush to reach them. “Are all three of you here?” Landon asked.
“Yeah, but Michael… He stopped talking an hour ago.”
Landon pulled his backpack off and moved quickly to withdraw thermal blankets for each of them. “Help me get him wrapped up.”
The boys had created a bunker of sorts under a grove of trees, and from the indentations in the mud, he could tell they’d been huddled together to share body heat, a smart move that had kept them warmer than they would’ve been on their own. “Which one of you is Connor?”
“Me.” They wore sweatshirts and jeans that were completely soaked through. Even in late spring, hypothermia was a real concern in the mountains, especially under these conditions.
“That means you’re Jeremy?”
“Yeah.”
Landon gave them protein bars and bottles of Gatorade to start getting them rehydrated and then reported in. “All three are alive. Michael is unresponsive, possibly hypothermic. We need to get him out of here.”
“On the way,” Landon’s eldest brother, Hunter, replied. “Five minutes out.”
“Can you two still walk?” Landon asked the other boys.
“I can,” Connor said.
Jeremy’s teeth chattered so hard he could barely speak. “I-I th-think s-so.”
With Hunter’s help, Landon could carry Michael out.
“We’ve got a two-mile hike to get out of here. We’re going to have to move fast for Michael.”
“We can do that,” Connor said, glancing at Jeremy.
Jeremy nodded.
“We’re really sorry,” Connor said, sounding tearful. “We never should’ve left the hotel. We didn’t mean to go so far.”
“Let’s not worry about that right now. Let’s stay focused on getting you guys warmed up.”
“N-never b-be w-warm a-again,” Jeremy said, shivering.
“Yes, you will. I promise.”
Hunter arrived on the scene, and between the two of them, they hoisted Michael up and headed for the trail, following it for two long miles before they reached a clearing where a fire department SUV waited to transport the boys. They loaded Michael into the back, while the other two boys got into the back seat.
“Let’s go with him,” Landon said.
Hunter got into the front seat with one of the other searchers driving, and Landon crawled into the back with Michael. On the way to the hospital, he removed Michael’s soaking-wet sweatshirt and used the supplies in his pack to start an IV to pump some fluid into the boy. He was grateful to feel a regular, though shallow, pulse.
“Is he going to be all right?” Connor asked, looking over the seat, his face muddy.