Page 8 of High Frequency

I’m just joining Ewing at the back of the ambulance where he’s talking with one of the EMTs, when I hear the distinct sounds of horses approaching. The light rattle of a bit, the creaking of a leather saddle, the soft thud of horses’ footfalls, and a distinct snort of alert as our presence is sensed.

Lucas Wolff is first to appear out of the trees. When I first started working as a sheriff’s deputy, he was still a federal agent with the FBI, but has since left the Bureau and joined the High Mountain Trackers’ team.

I’m not looking at him though, my eyes are focused on the pale, young girl slumped in front of him in the saddle. Her eyes are open but staring off in the distance. I get the sense she’s not even aware of her surroundings.

The EMTs have already removed the stretcher from the back of the rig and approach the lead horse. I watch as Wolff eases the girl down into the EMTs’ care. She barely even responds as she is strapped down on the stretcher and loaded into the ambulance.

“I want you to hop in there with her. See what you can find out,” Ewing instructs me in a low voice.

There’s a prickle at the back of my neck that has me whip my head around. My eyes slam into a pair of hazel ones, and in one instant it’s like the past eight years didn’t happen. He was angry then too. Seeing him is like a sledgehammer to the chest, stealing my breath.

He’s matured. His face is no longer clean-shaven but sports dark, scruffy facial hair. He has also filled out, his shoulders wider, and overall bulkier than I recall. Dan was always tall, but now he looks imposing, especially on the back of that big sorrel he’s riding.

The man has definitely not lost in appeal with age, and I feel my body responding.

Regret floods me, along with a wave of emotions I do not wish to put on display, so I straighten up, lift my chin proudly, and turn back to what I was brought out here to do.

For the sake of self-preservation, I resolutely push any thoughts of Dan from my mind.

In the back of the ambulance, Rick, the EMT, instructs me to sit on the bench by the girl’s feet while he starts an IV on her. She doesn’t seem to flinch with the poke of the needle, so I doubt she’ll be responsive to me, but we’ll see. One way or another, I’ll find out what happened to her.

I glance out the small back window when the ambulance takes off a minute or two later and catch sight of those same eyes, still scrutinizing me closely.

Dan

Thankfully the guys don’t razz me on the way back to the ranch, but every so often I catch a curious glance. I ignore those, needing a chance to recover from that blast from the past.

In the grand scope of things, eight years isn’t that long, but at times it almost feels like a former life and I was a different person. When I think back to the last time I actually saw Sloane, I almost don’t recognize myself.

I remember we were at the ranch, where Ama and Jonas’s wife, Alex, had prepared a light lunch for everyone after the funeral. Thomas, Jonas’s father, had brought out a bottle of twenty-year-old whiskey. I remember Ama having a fit, because the old man wasn’t supposed to be drinking alcohol or smoking his smuggled Cubans due to a heart condition, but that didn’t stop him.

I recall he ushered me out on the porch and into one of the rocking chairs, where he then proceeded to pour me about four fingers of the stuff in a tumbler. He handed me the glass, told me not to try and bury my pain, and left the bottle on the small table beside me. Then he went back inside, leaving me to grieve the loss of my mother who we’d just buried.

All I remember is putting a good dent in that bottle and then crying like a baby. At some point Sloane was there, pulling me out of the rocking chair before walking me back to my cabin and putting me to bed. I never saw her again.

“You doing okay?” Wolff asks when we walk our horses into the barn side by side. “I wasn’t expecting that,” he adds.

He briefly looks at me as he wraps his horse’s lead to the stall door.

“Me neither,” I confirm, instinctively knowing he’s referring to Sloane.

“Must be tough,” he probes.

I get along with all of my teammates but I’m probably closest with Lucas, even though he is a few years older. He lives in the cabin next to mine—the other guys all live elsewhere—and since neither of us are big on hanging out at one of the bars in town, we tend to stick around the ranch. We’ve spent quite a number of long, boring nights—especially during the winter—playing cards or watching movies.

We’ve also had some conversations, so I know a bit about him and he knows me better than most. It’s possible in one of those—often alcohol-infused—talks, I may have let on how much Sloane’s abrupt departure impacted me.

Which is why I’m inclined to answer instead of shutting him down.

“Harder than I’m comfortable admitting,” I confess.

I slide Will’s saddle off his back and drop it over the top of his stall door. Then I grab a handful of straw to rub him dry. On the other side of the aisle, Wolff does the same with his horse, Judge.

“You cared for her.”

I shrug. “I thought we were friends.”

I notice Wolff staring at me as he repeats, “You cared for her.”

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