Page 2 of Twin Jeopardy

“Maybe a cub that didn’t make it through a hard winter,” Danny said.

Vince was dimly aware of their conversation. A bear. Not a little girl. Not Valerie.

“It really did look like a human from a distance.” Hannah hugged her elbows. “I can’t say I’m sorry we don’t have to try to transport a skeleton out of here.”

Danny dropped the skull. “That’s it, then. Let’s get away from here.” He pulled out his radio. “We’re headed back up,” he said. “The bones weren’t human, but a bear’s.”

Hannah started to move past Vince but stopped. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You look like you don’t feel so hot.”

“I’ll be okay.” He ran his hand over his face. “I guess I was trying to prepare myself for the worst, and now...”

Hannah’s eyes widened. She gripped his shoulder. “Oh my gosh, Vince. I didn’t even think! You thought this was Valerie, didn’t you?”

No sense lying about it. “I knew it probably wasn’t,” he said. “But our camp wasn’t that far from here, and after all these years, we’re still waiting for her to be found.”

Danny had ended his radio transmission and joined them. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

Hannah squeezed Vince’s arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have remembered.”

“No reason you should have,” he said. “It was a long time ago.” Fifteen years. Most of his life.

Danny was watching him, a puzzled look on his face. “Something I need to know about?” he asked.

“My sister.” Vince cleared his throat and focused on pulling himself together. After this long, he hadn’t expected to feel so emotional. “My twin sister. She disappeared on a family camping trip in the mountains the summer we were ten.” He looked past Danny, toward the mountains rising around them. “Not that far from here. She was never found, so when I heard bones had been spotted up here, I couldn’t help wondering...” His voice trailed away.

“That’s rough,” Danny said. “Do you have any idea what happened to her?”

“None. Maybe she fell or had some other kind of accident, but lots of people looked, for days, and we never found any sign of her.”

“I was a little older than you, but I still remember the posters around town and people volunteering to help search,” Hannah said. “It really is scary how someone can just vanish up here.”

“Sometimes they get found years later,” Danny said. “There was that woman about ten years ago. She had disappeared skiing three years before, and her remains were found in a bunch of avalanche debris.”

“You must think about Valerie every time you’re up here,” Hannah said.

“I do,” Vince said. “And pretty much every time I’m up here, I look for her.” Though that wasn’t the sole reason he had joined search and rescue, it had been one consideration.

“I hope someone finds your sister one day,” Hannah said. “I’m sorry it wasn’t today.”

“Really, I’m okay now. It was just kind of a shock.” He shrugged, trying to appear steadier than he felt. “Like you said, now we don’t have to haul a body bag up out of this gully.” He didn’t wait for them to answer, but turned and began retracing his steps. For a brief moment, when he had first looked down on those bones, a wave of dizziness washed over him, a mixture of profound relief that they would finally know Valerie’s fate and gut-wrenching grief at proof that she really was gone. No matter how improbable it would be for her to still be alive after all this time, as long as they didn’t have a body, they were able to cling to a sliver of hope that she was still walking around somewhere and maybe one day they would be reunited.

Finding out the bones weren’t even human resulted in the kind of nausea-inducing whiplash experienced on roller coasters and bungee jumps. A few deep breaths and a little physical exertion, and he’d be all right again. Valerie was still gone. Probably dead. They would likely never know what happened to her. It was a reality he had grown used to, even if he had never fully accepted it.

“IHAVEANidea for a series of articles I want to do.” Tammy Patterson, theEagleMountain Examiner’s only full-time reporter, stood in front of editor Russ Saunders’s desk, notepad in hand. Russ cast a jaundiced eye on anything he considered “too fluffy,” so she would have to pitch this right.

Russ removed the cigar from the corner of his mouth—he never smoked the things, just chewed them. Tammy suspected he had adopted the habit when he first took helm of the paper when he was fresh out of college, thinking it made him appear more mature and even jaded. Now he actually was mature—north of fifty—and definitely jaded. “What’s your idea?” he asked.

“This year is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Eagle Mountain Search and Rescue,” she said. “I want to run a series of articles that looks back on some of their most dramatic callouts and daring rescues.”

“Why would our readers care?” This was the question he always asked.

“People love reading about local heroism, not to mention danger, the outdoors and even unsolved mysteries.”

“How is this going to contribute to our bottom line?” This was Russ’s other favorite question, and one she had also anticipated.

“We’ll ask local businesses to buy space for messages or special ads that celebrate Eagle Mountain Search and Rescue’s anniversary. They get to advertise their business and support a favorite local organization.”

He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “How many articles are you talking about?” he asked.

---