Page 52 of Asher

“There must be too much snow piled up around the entrance,” Zac consoles him. “Walking won’t kill us. Which cave?”

As Micah describes the location of the cave, I sidle up beside Garrett, who looks like he wants to cry. “What’s wrong?” I murmur. “We’re going to get him back.” I slide an arm around him.

He takes a shaky breath. “This might be my fault. I told him a story once about a dragon living in a cave…”

“Don’t be foolish.”

I blink and turn my head. Uncle Hal has come up beside us and obviously overheard Garrett’s comment.

“Uncle—”

“No. There will be no more apportioning of blame. Isaac knows not to leave the house without an adult. Hilda and I should have checked on him instead of just assuming he was in his room where he was supposed to be. Micah shouldn’t have shown him the caves, Garrett shouldn’t have told him a story… do you hear how ridiculous this all is? There is no fault. Children have imaginations and poor decision-making skills. That’s part of being children. Now let’s find him and take him home.”

On that loud, decisive note, he strides out of the relative shelter of the sparse trees, heading upward and to the left. We scramble to catch up, the wind shoving at us and making the whole thing very uncomfortable. This is why I’m an investment banker—to avoid the wind and snow.

Even with the weather hindering us, it doesn’t take long to find the cave Micah showed Isaac. We stumble inside with our torches, calling his name.

It’s empty.

He’s not there.

“No,” Micah breathes. “He has to be here. Isaac!”

My heart clutches at the thought that he’s lost somewhere out there. We’re grown men and we struggled in that wind—how did he manage? Is he even now lying in a snowbank somewhere?

Zac rubs the back of his neck. “We didn’t see any sign of him on the way,” he says. “But we were so sure he was here… and the wind and snow would have hidden them. So we retrace our steps and see where we lost his trail. Garrett—”

“I can’t smell him here,” Garrett affirms. “But I kept getting hints of him on the way. I think he might have gone off track slightly? It was hard to tell… the wind…” He’s still beating himself up despite what my uncle said, and I wish we had time for me to wrap him up in my arms and reassure him. But as long as Isaac is missing, he wouldn’t listen anyway.

“You take the lead,” Zac orders. Garrett shifts, and we follow him out of the cave back into the howling wind.

I keep my torch pointed at the ground, sweeping it from side to side, looking for any sign that Isaac came this way. For all that the wind and snow feel horrendous, we’re actually really lucky with the weather—it gets much worse up here in winter. Even in summer, the wind is like this. Garrett’s sniffing madly, and every once in a while, he pauses, but whatever he smells must be fleeting.

Then, suddenly, his head comes up and snaps around.

“Do you have something?” Micah asks desperately, and Garrett makes a sound that I can somehow tell means “shut the fuck up.” We stand there in silence, staring at him as the wind tears at our clothes and makes our eyes water.

When he goes from stock-still to running flat-out, it takes us a second to switch gears.

“What—”

I don’t know who said it, but it doesn’t matter; we all run after Garrett, hoping this is a good sign. He leaps up onto an outcropping from the solid wall of rock rising above us, then growls and jumps back down, sniffing around it.

“Garrett?” I approach him slowly, but he ignores me, still nosing around the rock.

Then I hear it. A child crying, the snatch of sound almost drowned out by the wind.

“Fuck! Isaac? Isaac!” Where is he? “Did you hear that?” I ask Zac.

He shakes his head. “No, but if you and Garrett did, that’s good enough for me. Let’s spread out along the rock face—”

Garrett howls triumphantly and disappears around the other side of the rock. I follow, tracking him with my torch… and watch him disappear into a crevice.

A crack in the rock face.

A fucking cave entrance, sheltered by the outcropping, small and narrow and almost hidden from sight. It would probably be tough to spot even on a clear, sunny day unless you were right up close.

“Here,” I call to the others, plunging after my husband. It’s a tight squeeze through the gap, especially with my winter gear padding me out, but then I’m inside, my light falling on the most gut-wrenchingly amazing sight: Isaac.

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