the air heavy and difficult to breathe. Before long, perspiration was trickling down my forehead and the clothing beneath my backpack was damp and itchy.
I called out a warning to Chad, and we carefully skirted a spot where a narrow tower of limestone had sheered away from the face of the ravine. The rockfall had created an abrupt drop-off along the edge where we were walking and added tons of jagged rubble to the dangerous tangle of debris forty feet below us.
Even Possum would be feeling this heat, I thought to myself as we moved away from the shade of the tree canopy and back along the ravine’s edge. I was glad I hadn’t been tempted to bring him with us. Though I had the equipment to lower him down into the ravine with me, and Possum—like Highball—could negotiate the trails better than any human, today Chad and I were searching for objects, not people. Unless we were looking for tennis balls, I thought with a smile, Possum wouldn’t be any help in this kind of evidence search.
By necessity, our route was a meandering one, sometimes angling sharply away from the ravine and into the surer footing of the deeper forest. The last time Chad and I had passed this way, we’d been going in the opposite direction, carrying equipment back to the crime technician’s van. Then, we’d stopped along the way to remove the temporary trail markers that Chad had placed for the technicians’ safety. It was a strategy intended to discourage the curious or the ghoulish from visiting the murder site.
Now I noticed that much of our path was marked by plant life that had been broken or trampled underfoot on our previous visits. Easy enough, I feared, for someone to follow our trail straight to the crime scene. But then I told myself not to worry. That the weather predicted for tomorrow would take care of the problem. Rain and wind would cover any sign that we’d come this way and make the “easy” route along the edge of the ravine discouragingly slick.
Something about that thought made me stop in my tracks.
Chad, who was walking close behind me, misinterpreted my reason for stopping.
“By my reckoning, we’re just minutes away from the scene,” he said once he was beside me. “Probably as good a time as any to take a breather.”
He took a couple dozen steps away from the precipice, stopping in a small clearing beneath a clump of pines. There, with an audible sigh, he slipped the gear he carried from his back, dropping it to the soft, needle-covered ground. After rolling his shoulders and stretching, he sat down. With his backpack supporting his back, he stretched out his long legs in front of him, twisted the top off his canteen and took a long swig.
Almost absentmindedly, I followed his example. I dropped down beside him and, with my canteen in my hands, supported my elbows on my knees. As fresh air cooled the damp patch between my shoulder blades, I looked back in the direction we’d just come. I put my canteen to my lips, took tiny sips, and let the cool water trickle slowly down my throat as I tried to tease the edges of a thought into something more substantial.
Undoubtedly, this was the most direct way to get to the scene. No other marked trails or access roads were nearby, so any other approach meant hiking for many miles through the deepest part of the forest. Chad and I had encountered—and avoided—any number of natural hazards just to get safely to our resting spot. And we had a lot of advantages. Our overall fitness. Years of experience trekking in the forest. Sturdy hiking boots. Familiarity with this route. Dry weather. And daylight.
“What are you thinking, Brooke?” Chad said.
I shook my head, briefly postponing my reply as I tried to sort through a tangle of facts and emotions. None of them happy.
I put my canteen down beside my pack and shifted so that I was facing Chad. Within an easy arm’s length of him. In his clear, green eyes and relaxed expression, I saw nothing more than friendship and trust. And maybe a little curiosity.
Hope, I thought bleakly, had blinded us both to the obvious.
“Would you hike along this ravine at night?” I said.
He shook his head immediately.
“No way. Too dangerous. You’d have to be crazy, suicidal, or a pretty gal determined to find a lost kid.”
The beginning of a smile conveyed the teasing compliment