Page 40 of Matched

Chapter Sixteen

Inara

The air whips my face and stings my skin. We’ve been out here for hours and my muscles are starting to exhaust themselves. The weather has turned quicker than I anticipated. Though the rain is gentle, my clothes are already heavier from the water, and I’m having difficulty keeping myself warm now that the winds have picked up.

Every moment we don’t find the missing girl means she’s one step closer to being gone for good, especially since teams have been searching for a couple of days now with no success But I can’t think like that, I can’t even consider it. So instead, I focus on my last conversation with Tony, which only makes my chest ache and doesn’t push me any closer to having a positive mental attitude. Given his entire career path, I figured he would have been a hell of a lot more understanding than he was. But I haven’t needed anyone to worry about me... ever. Well, maybe Bennett. But once Mami divorced him, I was back to taking care of myself since she was too busy dating. I jog to catch up to Taya ahead, but keep my eye on the ground as it’s slippery as fuck.

Taya looks over her shoulder at me. “I swear it’s as if I can hear Jim telling me I shouldn’t be out here.”

“Tony would literally swoop in, pick me up, and drag me back home if he could.” The thought of him swinging me over his shoulder, though very caveman-ish, does cause some excitement to twinge between my legs. I’d give up a lot to see that side of him. However, given how upset he was on the phone, I’m not sure I’ll ever get the chance.

“How are things going with him?”

The stubborn part of me refuses to admit my husband plans to bail in nine months when we go in for our one-year meeting with the IPP committee. Taya wouldn’t judge me, but I just can’t bring myself to say it. Like if I admit it aloud, I’m only a few steps away from being the same as my mom, first divorce in the making. I grab a low-hanging branch and pull myself up the small hill. “The man drives me nuts. If he was the Tony I met last year, I’d be able to definitively say things suck. But he has this whole other side to him I never would have guessed existed, and it puts us in this gray area. One where I’m not sure what to think and it’s driving me crazy.”

Taya waves a dismissive hand in the air as she trudges through thick brush. “I went through the same crap with Jim. Took him forever to open up. But in the end, it was worth it. It’s like you told me, the whole experience is one big, ass-awkward date, except you knew who walked through your door.”

I snort. “Tell me about it.”

We finally get out of the thick brush and hike along a deer path. The rain is coming down harder, and the wind is whipping through the trees. In the distance, thunder rumbles, but we haven’t seen any lightning, so we keep going. I pull out the radio and check in with command as Taya studies the topographic map of the area.

After I tuck the radio back into my chest harness, I sidle up to Taya and glance over the map. “We’ve pretty much covered the area. Let’s double back and hang to the west a bit.”

Taya nods.

I quirk an eyebrow at her. “You know Jim and Tony must be shitting bricks that we’re out here.”

She smiles and tucks away the map. “There will be hell to pay, especially since both of them have such an innate fear of losing people they love.”

My mouth hangs open and I blink rapidly.

Taya catches my confused expression and huffs. “Let me guess, Tony hasn’t shared with you that his mom died of cancer when he was in high school.”

“What? No.”

Taya grimaces. “Figured he would’ve told you by now. Jim mentioned it to me when I was recovering. Tony had been a bit overprotective, and I thought Jim told him to be. But turns out, it was all Tony.”

I shake my head as we turn west in silence while I digest this shocking bit of information. “That sort of makes sense, because I caught him talking on the phone with his dad one day, and he was super-uncomfortable. Then he clammed up afterward.”

I keep lingering on the idea Tony has this whole life I don’t know about. I take a deep, centering breath. It’s not like I expected him to tell me everything, but I wish he would have told me this. At the end of the day, if he isn’t willing to open up to me, then I can’t force him, no matter how much it makes me ache in a way I had long forgotten was possible.

The clouds above are swirling a deeper gray, and I curse under my breath. Shenandoah National Park is huge and the more time that passes, the more concerned I become the girl won’t be found alive. My stomach twists and I clench my hands into fists. I still don’t understand how a school could leave one of their students behind. But the girl has some basic survival knowledge, according to her parents, so I hope we can find her before the storm really hits.

Bennett is the one who introduced me to camping and who sparked my interest in search and rescue. The first time we went, I’d been super-excited to spend time in nature, hoping it would be some kind of cool, spiritual experience. It definitely wasn’t. I returned home with probably a thousand mosquito bites, blisters on my toes, and very sore calves. But I fell in love with the outdoors to the point some days it is hard to convince myself not to run away and live off the grid in Alaska.

The sky lights up, and the woods vibrate with the loud crack that follows the lightning. Taya looks up and then back at me. “Shit, it’s about to come down on us.”

“We should return to the staging area. It’s becoming too dangerous to be out here.”

Taya nods and we turn to head back. After a few meters, my foot slips at one point on a too-smooth rock, but Taya catches my arm. Lightning continues to streak through the sky, and we quicken our pace. Instead of cutting back through the thick brush, we wander outside of our assigned area and hop on another deer path.

We’re only twenty feet away from the falls when I hear it. A soft whimper. At first I stop and think it might be the wind, or a bird of some kind hiding from the storm. But then I hear it again, followed by sniffling.

I whip my head around and walk in a widening circle. “Julia? Is that you?”

“Yes! Yes, I’m over here.”

At first I don’t see anyone, but then the girl emerges from a forest-green tent a couple of meters to my left.

“Taya! Taya! Over here.”

Taya runs over as thunder bursts overhead. Julia is a little sunburnt, badly bitten by mosquitos, and her lips are blistered. But she can walk, and more important than any other detail, she’s alive. She hugs us, then pulls away and wipes her eyes. “I was so scared being out here. I tried to find my way back to a trail but couldn’t. Everything looks the same. When the storm started, I thought I’d never see my family again.”

“You’re okay. We’ve got you.” I hug her once more as Taya radios in that we found Julia and that we are heading back down.

After grabbing some of Julia’s belongings and making sure she is well enough to walk, we make our way back to the staging area. The poor girl finishes a granola bar Taya hands her in two bites. When we hit the edge of the tree line, the medical staff rushes over to Julia and takes over while Taya and I go to debrief.

To know that Julia will go home and be with her family after this experience because Taya and I and the rest of our team were willing to work hard means everything to me. When the girl gets into the ambulance and leaves, I turn to Taya and start bawling. Taya joins in immediately. With all the chaos in my life, everything with Tony and with my mom, it’s just such a relief to know I can still do good in the world.

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