Not Really the Outdoor Type(18)
Kendall would rather the sheriff send men up there now, but she supposed it was the best she was going to get from the man. At least right now.
“Okay. Thank you.”
She waited at the store for another hour. When Jason still didn’t show, she decided to go home, only to spend a restless night tossing and turning in bed worrying about him.
Kendall woke up before the clock went off the next morning. Taking a quick shower, she put coffee in a travel mug and grabbed a granola bar, then practically ran out the door. The store wasn’t due to open for another hour, but she raced over there hoping Jason would already be in. When she got there, thought, the store was empty. Praying he’d gotten in late the night before and was still at home, Kendall tried his cell phone, but there wasn’t any answer.
Trying to quell her rising panic, Kendall forced herself to wait until mid-morning before she called the sheriff again.
“Jason still isn’t back,” she said as soon as the man came on the line.
“Okay,” Atwater said. “I’ll send some men up to check it out.”
His tone of voice made Kendall think he was only doing it to humor her, but she didn’t care. She had to know if Jason was okay.
“It will take a few hours for them to get up there,” Atwater continued, “so I won’t know anything for a while.”
She could interpret that clearly enough. What he meant was, “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”
Kendall tried hard to keep her mind on work the rest of the day, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Jason. What if something really had happened to him? What if he’d gotten injured and was unconscious, and the fishermen couldn’t find their way out of the mountains without his help? What if he’d been attacked by a bear or a mountain lion? Even worse, what if one of the fishermen was a psycho killer who’d only joined the group so he could murder everyone?
Stop it. This wasn’t some horror movie, for heaven’s sake. There was probably a perfectly logical reason that Jason wasn’t back. She just couldn’t think of one right now.
On top of everything else, clouds had been steadily moving into the area since yesterday. By afternoon it started raining and she couldn’t see most of the mountains through the heavy overcast. Telling herself that fishermen didn’t fish in the rain, Kendall was convinced Jason would be back soon, but her heart plummeted when the door opened and a grim-looking Sheriff Atwater walked into the store half an hour later.
Kendall hurried around the counter and walked over to the tall, gray-haired man. “Did you find Jason?”
The man took off his hat, and regarded her with compassionate gray eyes. “You’re Kendall Merriweather, I take it?”
She wrapped her arms around her middle and nodded. “What about Jason?”
Atwater sighed. “We weren’t able to locate him yet. And with the bad weather moving in, my men had to turn back. I had to call off the search for tonight. As soon as it clears up, I’ll have my men back out there looking for him.”
Icy cold fingers wrapped around her. Search. The word echoed in her mind. They had upgraded it to a search already. But that meant…
“It’s only rain,” she protested. “Surely your men can go out in that.”
He gave her a rueful smile. “It may be raining here, but it’s snowing in the mountains, Ms. Merriweather.”
She hadn’t thought of that. Which was stupid, since she had grown up here. Weather on the mountain was completely different than what the town experienced.
“But Jason didn’t bring anything with him other than some fishing equipment. He and the others could freeze to death in a snowstorm.”
Atwater’s brow furrowed. “Jason grew up in those mountains. He knows how to take care of himself. When this storm clears, I promise I’ll get my men up there to look for him.”
Kendall wanted to plead with the man, beg him to send a search party back up into the mountains right then, but something told her it would do no good. Atwater wasn’t about to send his men out into a snowstorm, no matter how much she begged.
Wanting to be there in case Jason came back, Kendall hung around the store after she’d closed up. Now that the weather had turned, she was even more worried about him than she’d been before. Regardless of what Sheriff Atwater said, Jason wouldn’t have stayed in the mountains with those tourists simply because the fish hadn’t been biting. Something must have happened. And the thought of what that something might have been worried the hell out of her.
She tried to keep herself occupied by straightening up and checking inventory, but after two hours, she gave up. Restless, and unable to think about anything but Jason, she wandered into his office.