Her foot touched a plank. But as she transferred weight, it slid out from under her so fast that she was flat on the dock and tumbling into the water before she could even register what happened. The cold lake stole her breath. Shock blinded her. She thrashed wildly at the brackish water, at the reeds, going under, gulping for air. A hand groped for her jacket. By her collar, she was hauled dripping out of the reeds and dragged up onto the dock. She sat on her butt, coughing and choking, terrified, her eyes filling with tears, her hair plastered to her face.
Stella bent down. “Are you okay?”
“I . . . I can’t swim. I can’t swim. I—”
“It’s all right, Deborah.” Stella reached for her arm. “You’re out—you’re safe now.” She helped Deborah up to her feet with Bart’s assistance.
Deborah shook like a leaf. Water poured from her clothes and squelched in her shoes. She could barely breathe from the shock and cold. She tried to take a step and gasped in pain, her left leg buckling under. “My ankle. I . . . I think I’ve hurt my ankle.”
They all stared at her. All shaken. White-faced. It made Deborah feel even more frightened. The wind gusted and the rain lashed at them.
“Monica and Nathan,” Stella said, taking command of the situation. “Can you guys help Deborah up to the lodge? I need to secure the aircraft to the dock. Bart, maybe you could check to see if there is actually a real spa around the bay, or another building somewhere?” She reached for a rope. “Jackie, can you give me a hand and hold fast on to this strut here while I moor the Beaver to the dock?”
Jackie acquiesced. Nathan and Monica put their arms around Deborah and helped her limp carefully along the canting dock, keeping the bulk of her weight off her ankle. Deborah was petrified of going into the brackish shallows again—utterly terrified—and great big palsied shudders took hold of her body. Steven just stood there glowering at them all, as if refusing to accept his lot, as if blaming them all for bringing him here. Katie quietly filmed the whole thing. Thunder rumbled.
With the assistance of Monica and Nathan, Deborah reached solid ground. As they began up the narrow and overgrown path toward the lodge, she heard Jackie’s and Stella’s voices rising in argument down on the dock. Jackie said something about calling for help on the radio again, and Stella cut her off angrily, then lowered her voice. Deborah glanced back over her shoulder.
Through the pelting rain she witnessed Stella pulling Jackie close, and they conversed in what appeared to be urgent tones. Jackie suddenly stilled and glanced at the plane.
“Easy, there’s a step coming up here,” Nathan said.
Deborah returned her focus to the ground as they limped through the rain up toward the looming lodge.
THE SEARCH
CALLIE
Saturday, October 31.
“You promised!” Benjamin whined in the passenger seat as Callie navigated her 4x4 along a rutted track toward the command post her SAR team was setting up near the river to search for the downed plane. She was late. It was past 9:00 a.m., but the sun had not yet risen above the mountains, and would not do so for at least another twenty minutes at this time of year. Not that a sunrise would change much on a bleak day like today. Clouds rolled low over the mountains, and sleety rain pelted the forest. Her wipers scraped muddy arcs across her windshield. She felt a bite of irritation toward the new cop who’d sent the aircraft into the water.
“I know, Ben, I know. I’m sorry.” She slowed down to steer through a pothole thick with mud. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” She flashed him a smile she couldn’t manage to feel in her heart. “And we’ll get a special dessert when we go visit your dad for dinner tonight, okay?”
Tears made Ben’s black eye makeup run, streaking gray tracks through the white pancake stuff smeared over his face as he was bounced around in his seat. The black trails leaked into the bloodred lipstick he’d used to paint a ghoulish smile around his mouth. His head bobbed under a spiky, psychedelic green wig that matched the green waistcoat beneath his purple coat. Her little eight-year-old Joker. And she’d let him down. Again.
Callie’s support system had failed her this morning. Just as she’d been ready to go out the door, Rachel—who always took care of Benjamin when Callie was on a SAR mission—had phoned to say her whole family was down with a terrible bout of flu. Callie had tried in vain to rustle up another caregiver on short notice, someone who’d be able to drive Ben to the Halloween party he’d been so excited about for weeks, but after a few calls Callie had been forced as a last resort to bundle Benjamin up into her truck along with his iPad and headphones and books. She’d had no choice but to bring him along.
“Everyone from my class is going, except me. I’m the loser again. There won’t be another Halloween party until next year,” he wailed. “You promised!” Anger showed in his little gloved fists. Guilt punched through Callie.
“I bet you won’t even find the plane in time! And we won’t even get to see Dad tonight. And we won’t get to see the movie. We won’t have the fried chicken or the dessert you promised. Because you don’t keep promises.”
Callie sucked in a deep breath. She felt torn. She reminded herself to stop using phrases like I promise. “Hopefully we will find the plane before it gets dark, Ben, and we’ll still go visit Dad.”
“Who’s on the stupid plane anyway? Why did it have to crash?”
“A woman pilot.” She took another sharp bend along the twisting track through the forest. Her tires slipped and spun in deep mud. She felt the four-wheel drive engage. “We don’t know who she is yet, or how or why her plane went down. But we have a good idea where it might have gotten hung up downriver.”
As the local SAR manager, Callie had officially initiated a group callout the night before, and she’d given her team of fourteen volunteers the coordinates for a rendezvous point not far from the Taheese River. It was as close as they could get with trucks. From that point the teams would need to go farther on foot, or use quads. An air search was not possible in this weather, and neither was using a drone. One of her team leaders was Oskar Johansson. She’d tasked Oskar with setting up the SAR command vehicle at the designated parking area. Callie would manage the search from the command van in concert with an RCMP member. As a group of civilian SAR volunteers, they worked under the direction of law enforcement. Always.
Legally, only the cops could task a SAR group for an operation, and it was Callie’s job once she got that call from the police to set the ball rolling by contacting the provincial Emergency Coordination Centre to receive an operational task number. Without the number there would be no insurance coverage for the volunteers, and no workers’ compensation for injuries incurred.
Callie had taken over the manager job from her husband, Peter. She’d agreed to do it temporarily—to keep his seat warm, so to speak. And she enjoyed it. She felt she was a good fit. She got on well with people in general, had decent leadership skills and a positive outlook, and had put in countless hours of training; plus she’d logged enough callouts to be considered a veteran of this rescue business. She’d also won the respect of her team. Yet on another level, they—including her—were all still waiting for Peter’s return to the helm. There was always this sense of a ticking clock, of time slipping away.