Page 5 of From the Noblest Motives
The sun alloweda brief appearance the next morning, already wearing a sari of thick clouds. By the time they'd packed up after breakfast and were back in the cab, the clouds blanketed the sky completely, overburdened and dark. Blaze turned the headlights on as the first tentative drops hit the windshield.
Rain started hammering down not two minutes later. If they'd been following a dirt road or a physical trail, Blaze might have worried about any traces being washed away, but the rain had nothing to do with Damien's ability to track life trails. He gripped the steering wheel in grim determination as Damien guided them through the increasingly terrible visibility.
His confidence in Damien's abilities didn't prevent near collisions with stands of brush or large rocks suddenly looming out of the downpour, though. The obstacles forced him to drive slowly and take the truck up a few feet to try to avoid the worst of it. By noon, his hands were shaking.
"Five degrees to the left," Damien murmured before he glanced over. "Are you all right? Should we stop?"
"Ha." Blaze rolled both hands over the wheel. "That's supposed to be my line. I'm okay for now."
"You'll say? If you need to?" Damien fiddled with the hem of his T-shirt, giving away his growing anxiety.
"Yeah, yeah, Mom. I'll let you know."
Blaze had just convinced his shoulders to come down from around his ears when Damien bolted forward in his seat. "Stop! Blaze, stop!"
"Fuck!" His heart trying to leap out his throat, Blaze slammed the truck to a stop, the maglev calipers squealing. "What is it?"
Damien had already bailed out, though, boots splashing over the muddy ground, soaked to the bone before he'd gone four steps. Grumbling, Blaze secured the truck and plodded out after him, hoping the sudden stop didn't mean that the kids had died. Unlikely, since Damien became uneasy and ill well before coming to the end of a trail like that.
"Talk to me," Blaze called out, even his words battered and left ragged by the drenching rain.
A few yards ahead, Damien had halted, turning in a slow circle. Then he stood frozen, head cocked as if listening, and began to pace off an ever-widening square around that central point. Still silent, he strode past Blaze, back to the truck, hands held wide, fingers spread. From the truck, he started along his initial path again, this time one slow step at a time.
Blaze could only wait now, unwilling to ruin Damien's concentration.
When Damien reached the spot where he'd been turning in circles, he stopped again, dragged his shirt off over his head and spread his arms. Head thrown back, he might have been surrendering to the torrential rain, but Blaze knew better. Damien was searching, trying to feel his way along the life trails four kids had left. From the corded muscles in his neck and shoulders, it wasn't going well.
Slowly, Blaze made his way over, wiping the rain out of his eyes every couple of steps. He stopped behind Damien's right shoulder—his accustomed place. Damien would know he was there, even deep in concentration. His voice barely above a murmur, unsure if his words could be heard over the rain, Blaze whispered, "Damien? What the hell's wrong?"
Damien gasped, his eyes flying open as he whirled around. Instinctively, Blaze braced, but those dark eyes were sane enough, just anguished and confused. "They're gone."
"They're… dead? All of them?"
"No." Damien shook his head violently, water flying from his hair. "No. Gone. The trails… end. Just… How can that be?"
You're asking me?Blaze's shoes filled up with water while he tried to think of possibilities. "This never happened before?"
"Never."
"Could a helicopter have picked them up? If they leave the ground, does the trail end?"
Damien squinted at him. "No. Altitude doesn't change anything." Then he blew out a breath, shaking his head more slowly. "Maybe if they left the atmosphere?"
"Yeah, okay. 'Cause kids come across space-capable rockets in the desert all the time." Blaze took in the scrub and brush around them. "Even if they did, which would be ridiculous, since nobody makes the damn things anymore, we'd see crushed plants. Maybe burn marks. Something."
Still shaking his head, Damien began to pace a fretful, uneven circle while the rain decided it was time to escalate hostilities. The downpour came in needle-hard drops, and Blaze couldn't be sure some of it wasn't hail. He snagged Damien's arm on the next pass and marched him back to the truck.
"Come on, Twitch. We're not getting any answers standing out here, and I think we're wet enough."
Back in the truck, Blaze turned on the heat and the defogger because if he was cold? Damien, chronically underfed and with a hyped-up metabolism when he was tracking, was probably close to hypothermia.
"It doesn't—" Damien's teeth chattered so hard he broke off, his jaw clenched in obvious frustration.
There had been a time when Blaze would've reached over to wrap him up tight without thinking. Even if Damien used him as a bulwark at night to keep the nightmares at bay, that didn't mean they were back to that point. No pushing. Just no. Instead, Blaze reached behind the seat for a blanket to drape over Damien. He could still show he cared without invading Damien's personal space when he was upset.
"I'm gonna drive a starburst pattern away from the end of the trails and back, okay?" Blaze kicked the maglev back on, half an eye still on Damien. "See if you pick up anything."
Curled up under his blanket, eyes shadowed and distracted, Damien made a noise that could have been agreement orfuck you. Hard to say. Either way, Damien kept his attention forward as Blaze drove back and forth in his search pattern. No flinch, no twitch betrayed he'd picked up anything.
