Holden

Angel grabbed Holden's phone from the car's magnetic dock. "New music. I'm tired of your indie shit. Francis is tired of it, too."

"Fine," Holden yielded. In all fairness to Angel, they had been listening to his indie shit for almost twelve hours after leaving Oregon before dawn. It was a little after 6 p.m. in the Sierra Nevadas, evergreen giants casting gloomy shadows along the serpentine road.

"Ah, crap. Accidentally exited out of it. Spotify, Spotify... jeez, you have a million apps. Do you even use all these?"

"Does anyone use all the apps on their phone?" The pavement ended, and his Camry hit the dirt with a small groan, the road narrowing as it curved around the foothills.

"Maybe not, but you have to housekeep every once in a while. You still have your ex as your wallpaper, for crying out loud."

"Are you going to change the music, or pry into my phone and judge me for the next thirty minutes?"

"She is a babe. What's her name again?"

Holden wondered how long he could go without responding, but it was Angel... with his phone. If he wasn't careful, she'd start digging into his texts. "Becca."

"You know who she kind of looks like?"

"I'm afraid to ask," he said.

"Dr. Dupont."

Holden quickly scoffed. "Yeah, okay, sure."

"You can't look me in the eyes and tell me your ex-girlfriend doesn't look a little bit like Dr. Dupont. Both white girls, long brown hair, blue eyes, that cutie-next-door look..."

"I don't even remember what Dr. Dupont looks like," Holden argued, which was a flat-out lie. He remembered exactly what she looked like, and even worse, had made the Becca-Siena connection himself.

"You just clearly have a type is all."

Holden groaned along with the car as it teetered over the uneven road. "I don't know how many times I need to tell you I'm not doing this because Dupont is an attractive woman. How shallow do you think I am?"

"Chiiilllll. I'm just joking." Angel changed the music to Halsey and set the phone on the dock.

Francis released a louder whine. Holden reached back and scratched his ears. "I know, boy. I feel your pain." His own body hurt from driving, a cruel reminder that being in his thirties meant he was no longer the spry kid who used to be totally cool with impromptu road trips. The forest development roads were particularly terrible, but at least they were almost to the station.

Even with the whining, Francis was taking the drive better than Holden, his head hanging out the back window for most of the trip, happily peeing alongside the road every time they stopped.

Be more like the dog. Holden touched the outside of his pocket and the lump of a thumb drive. He and Angel didn't exactly have a Plan B if the ranger at the station turned them away with or without listening to Dupont's recordings. Drive back into town and get a hotel? Try again the next day? It was that or search for Dupont's team themselves, and the latter was completely out of the question. They had no gear, Holden knew nothing about backpacking, and he didn't really feel like ending his summer dead in the bottom of a canyon.

Angel screamed his name.

From out of nowhere, something dark and large leapt from the brush into the middle of the road. Holden slammed on the brakes, tires scraping against the gravel as the car drifted. He shot his right hand out and caught Francis as the dog lurched forward.

Angel swore when the car stopped. Before Holden could ask if she was okay, Francis released a deafening string of barks, scrambling to the open back window.

"Shit." Holden lunged backward, fighting against the seat belt as he grabbed the dog's hind leg. Francis kicked against him as the barking and snapping continued, and Holden unbuckled, wormed over the divider and into the back seat, and wrestled Francis back into the car.

Angel mashed the button to roll up the window. "Are you okay?"

Holden released Francis, though the dog's attention remained fixed on the window as he growled beneath his breath, his hackles raised.

"Yeah. What the hell was that?"

Angel shook her head. "I—I don't know. It happened so fast and—"

Holden kicked open the back door and got out of the car, making sure Francis didn't wiggle out before shutting it. He circled his car to check for any damage. Luckily, the dirt road had kept him below 25 mph, or they would have slid off the road and down the embankment to their right.

The road...

Holden lifted his gaze to the empty road as Angel climbed out of the car. A plume of dust dispersed around them. The forest was quiet, the shadows cold and deep despite the dry summer day. Holden shivered and replayed the moment before he had braked, the animal leaping from the woods, large and black and amorphous.

"A deer?" Holden asked.

"Had to be." Angel wrapped her arms around her torso and rocked back on her heels. "It was too big to be anything else."

Unsatisfied with the answer, Holden walked out to the middle of the road, right where the animal had landed before diving into the brush again. Though, had he actually seen it disappear? He'd been too distracted with the car and the dog, the three or four seconds nothing more than a blur in his head. His right ear rang, and he jammed his finger into it and walked back toward the car.

"Let's get the hell out of here," he called to Angel as he slid into the driver's seat. "We're almost there, anyway."

And they were. Fifteen minutes later he spotted the sign for the ranger station, quaint and freshly painted, a reprieve from the forest shadows and his jittery fingers. The dog had calmed down, and Angel released an audible breath. "Thank God," she muttered. "I'm still shook. And I need to pee."

The stretch of gravel to the parking lot was wider than the road had been. The actual station was a cabin painted green and yellow, its aging roof coated in dead needles. Several emergency vehicles filled the lot, along with the local sheriff's SUV. Behind the chain-link fence near the station, a small group in orange jackets circled up. A German shepherd and a Lab flanked one of them.

Holden parked in the lot's corner and shook out his hands, tremors still crawling through his body from the animal incident.

Angel threw off her seat belt. "You think they actually listened to you?"

"Either that or someone else went missing." It would be quite the coincidence.

Holden let Francis run around for a few minutes away from the other dogs and then rounded him up into the cool car with a treat and a promise to be back soon. He and Angel made their way to the front of the ranger station, Holden failing to catch bits of the team's conversation. He held the door open for Angel, who stopped right in the middle of the entryway. Holden ran into her.

In the cramped office, Dr. Maidei Chari sat on top of a scuffed-up desk, much like Holden had found her in the basement of the Forestry building. Her braids were tied back, and she'd swapped her flats for hiking boots and her white button-down for a flannel one. She nodded at them politely.

Seated at the desk was the ranger, a Native American man in his early fifties with a round face and a streak of white through his cropped hair.

"So you just show up places and sit on people's desks now?" Angel asked.

"You could say I do it when I've had a change of heart." Maidei's eyes flickered to Holden.

Hope and relief swelled inside him. "You're the reason Search and Rescue's here? Were you able to convince, well..." Holden nodded at the ranger. "Hi."

The ranger nodded back. "Frank. We talked on the phone. And no, Search and Rescue isn't here because of Maidei, though when she showed up, I knew I did the right thing listening to you."

"We go back," Maidei added when Holden frowned. "Frank's been around for a while."

Holden approached the desk. "What happened? Did you find anything else?"

Frank and Maidei shared a look. "I wasn't going to follow up," Frank said. "But I recognized one of the scientists when they got their permit. Cameron Yarrow. Interned for me, well, feels like a million years ago. We put her through the wringer when those girls disappeared back in '16. She took it hard, too, especially when the mission switched from rescue to recovery. She did a lot for me in those weeks, though. Figured I owed her the same amount of attention." Frank sat straighter in his chair and rested his elbows on the desk. "So I called CalTech and got the number for their satellite phone. Couldn't get through, but there's a ranger out at Triplet Lakes a few miles from the base of Agnes. He's required to have his phone on. Tried calling him to see if he could hike up and figure out what was going on. Thing is, I can't get ahold of him, either. I can't even get ahold of the ranger at the base of Charlotte."

"How likely is it that their phones can't reach a satellite?" Angel asked.

Frank shook his head. "Not likely. I don't know what's going on, but I don't like it. I figure we know where these folks are supposed to be, so we might as well send a team in."

"Are you sure you want to send a team in?" Holden asked against his better judgment. This was exactly what he wanted, wasn't it? A rescue team?

So why did he feel so uneasy?

Frank smiled and then looked at Maidei. "You been telling the kid stories?"

Maidei's somber expression didn't evoke the same untroubled attitude. "Not many. Holden has been telling me stories, though."

Holden rifled through his pocket for the flash drive. He set it on Frank's desk. "You need to listen to these. I found them on a drive in storage at Oregon State back in March. I don't know how... I can't explain... umm..."

"Frank." Maidei slid off the desk. "You've been watching over these woods for long enough. You understand. Those files? They won't make sense. Just like... just like everything else. But they are real, I promise you."

Holden hadn't expected this from her. Hell, the fact Maidei was here at all was nothing short of a miracle. He wished he knew what had changed her mind.

"Alright, alright. I'll sift through them," said Frank. "Still sending in that SAR team, though."

Maidei pulled out her phone. "Zaid should be here by now. He's just coming up from the valley."

"Zaid? You dragged him into this mess, too?" Frank chuckled.

"Who's Zaid?" Holden and Angel asked at the same time.

"My old research partner," Maidei murmured.

"He probably went straight up to the Fort," Frank said.

A blank look passed over Maidei's face.

"He didn't tell you?" Frank stood. "Not surprising. Even all those years ago, I could tell he was always extra careful to not hurt your feelings."

"What are you saying?" Maidei asked.

Frank grabbed a set of keys off the wall. "He didn't stop your research, Maidei. Hasn't stopped for fifteen years." He started toward the door. "Hope you're all ready for a bumpy ride."