of her vision grew dark.
“Jimmy’s uncle found him!”
Sun practically jerked the radio out of Quincy’s hands, because whomever shouted that Jimmy had been found didn’t seem distressed.
“Did you find Jimmy?” she asked. “Or a body?”
She recognized Deputy Salazar’s feminine voice saying, “Um, both?”
“No,” Sun whispered. Quincy put a hand on her shoulder to steady her.
“We found Jimmy, but I guess they found a body, too?”
She slammed her eyes shut and braced herself. “Sybil?”
“Not a girl,” she said.
Sun almost dropped the radio. “Where are you? I need your location.”
“Okay, we are by the command center. Levi Ravinder just brought Jimmy down from the mountain. He’s half-frozen, so the EMTs are taking him now.”
Closing a hand over her mouth, Sun looked heavenward and let the light soak into her.
A male voice came over the radio then. Sun could hear dogs barking in the background. Cadaver dogs. “We have a body about half a mile north of Estrella Pond. Male. Decomposition would suggest it’s been here a long time. Possibly years.”
“What the hell?”
Sun shook out of it and nodded to Quincy. They sprinted back to the ATV, which, in the snow, was so much harder than it sounded. She had no signal, or she would have texted Auri that they’d found Jimmy. Then again, if he didn’t make it . . .
She decided to wait.
“Where to first?” Quincy asked.
“Let’s check on Jimmy first.” She gave orders to cordon off the area where the body was found, and they made it back to base camp in record time.
Sun spotted Levi accepting a blanket around his shoulders as an EMT checked his vitals. Or tried to. He was not being the most cooperative of patients. But he looked tired. His face raw from the elements. His lips cracked and bleeding. He’d been searching nonstop for almost forty-eight hours.
His cousin trudged down the mountain, gasping for air. Apparently, Levi had carried Jimmy down and left his cousin eating his dust. Or his snow flurries.
When Levi spotted her, he frowned, but that could have been because the EMT was trying to put an oxygen mask over his face. He looked like he’d lost ten pounds. In all honestly, he’d probably lost more than that.
Sun took a step toward him, but Quincy tapped her shoulder.
Outside of a second ambulance, Hailey had thrown her body over Jimmy’s as emergency personnel tried to load him into the vehicle. She wailed and kissed and hugged. He smiled back at her and tried to pat her face.
Sun almost cried. She walked over to them, very aware of the need to keep up appearances, but she had to question Jimmy. Time was running out.
She cleared her throat, then asked, “I’m glad you’re okay, Jimmy.”
Hailey looked up at her wearing the face of a banshee ready to attack.
Sun held up her hands. “I just have a couple of questions.”
“He almost died,” she said, her voice a hiss of emotion, and Sun knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was not acting this time. She was a pissed-off mama bear, and Sun was on the verge of taking one step too close to her cub, but she had no choice.
Making sure no one could see her face but Hailey, Sun offered the woman the best apology she could muster, infusing her expression with sympathy and remorse.
Hailey seemed to snap out of it. She turned away, but kept herself wrapped over him while the EMT got an IV started.
Sun stepped closer, gaining the interest of Jimmy’s uncle Levi, and not in a good way. “You are the bravest boy I’ve ever met,” she said to him.
He smiled from behind the mask and gave her a thumbs-up. The sixteen-year-old had blond hair like his mother, but darker. It was wet and plastered to his head, and his cheeks were bright red. That, along with the glassy eyes, had Sun worried he had a fever.
She could hardly blame Hailey. She wanted to throw herself over him, too. But for now, she needed to hurry.
“Jimmy, how on earth did you survive?”
With that, he flashed her a nuclear smile, and she finally saw a little of Levi in him. He pulled down the oxygen mask and said, “I made a snow cave. Like the rabbits.”
“Oh, my god, aren’t you the clever one? Can I ask you how you wandered so far out?”
“A deer,” Hailey said, shaking her head.
“It was hurt. I was trying to help it.”
“You were following an injured deer?”
Pride practically burst out of him when he