*For the record...I drink energy drinks...and I like them.. just wanted to throw that out there...
At the first hint of light they were up. Olivia made some quick early morning calls before the day got started. She checked in with Noah and Fin. Jace's mom finally found someone to take her other son so she could pick up Jace and meet with sergeant Anderson and the head of search and rescue.
She checked in with her team and nailed down a plan for the day, and helped them figure out which interviews to prioritize. Finally, she called the hospital. She had dreaded that call. She saved it for last, procrastinating it as long as possible.
Immediately after the hospital admitted Clem she was taken into surgery. Brain damage was their primary concern because of her deep head wound. They relieved the pressure build up, but no one knew when or if she would wake up. TBIs were unpredictable, and the surgeon said they needed to wait a couple days before committing to a prognosis, but for now it could go either way.
Olivia's heart hurt for Clem's mom. She arrived at the hospital while Clem was still in surgery. Clem's dad would be there as soon as he could, which should be later this morning. All anyone could do was wait.
Beyond the severe head injury, she sustained a broken femur, clavicle and arm. Her shoulder dislocated, but by some miracle her spinal column remained intact. If the brain injury healed, the rest of her body would too. It all came down to her brain damage, and whether or not they got her medical attention in time. For now, it was a waiting game, and she hated waiting.
She found Elliot sitting on one of the picnic tables with his feet on the bench. She filled him in on Clem's status, and handed him a drink she snagged from a guy on the search and rescue team.
"What the actual hell is this?" His face puckered as inspected what she handed him.
"Energy drink. It was all I could scrounge up that had any amount of caffeine in it. One of the guys with search and rescue had a few." She flicked her head in the direction of the guy she was talking about.
Elliot craned his head to see him, "He looks like he's 25." He took another swig of the drink and cringed.
"Probably is." She watched him grimace after he gulped back more of the drink. "Oh come on. It can't be that bad…"
She took a drink. It was gross. She tried not to make a face. "It's horrible isn't it," he chuckled.
"God yes, but just drink it. I'm sure we can find some coffee later, but I'm not wasting time looking for a coffee on this mountain.
"Oh my god this is so gross." He smacked his lips.
"I know." She agreed, "Just drink it and then we can head out." He swallowed back a few more gulps.
"Did you find some medical tape?" He asked while eyeing his drink, deciding how badly he wanted caffeine this morning.
"Yeah." She gulped some more of the drink in an attempt to get it over with.
He finished the can before crushing it and throwing it into the garbage. He reached his hand out for the tape. "Let me tape your ankle, and then I won't stress out about the boot being supportive enough through the day."
She handed over the tape. Okay. I'll try to finish this…whatever this is."
He knelt down in the dirt, and lifted her bad ankle. He stretched out the tape and began taping a snug pattern around the bones in her ankle. She drank her drink quietly and watched him work. Her mind drifted to their middle of the night activities. That was a dream right? But his warm hands bracing her ankle and calf felt familiar, and she knew it wasn't just in her head. As it was with everything between them, their timing was awful. She barely had time to think about it, let alone talk about it. But it happened. And strangely enough, that snippet of time, losing herself with him, fortified her for what was sure to be a physically and emotionally taxing day.
He finished taping her ankle, and checked his work. "Hand me the boot." She passed it to him and unlaced the other one. He slid the boot on, and in a familiar pattern established yesterday he laced it up. As with everything regarding her, he was careful, making sure he was the safest he could make her.
When he finished, his hand lingered behind her knee, and his blue eyes found hers. She knew he was replaying the same scene from last night, but he knew as well as she did that it wasn't the time to discuss it.
He stood, and reached a hand out for her to help her off the bench. He dropped her hand, and his eyes focused on the daunting tree line.
-000-
While Elliot tied her boot he couldn't help thinking about the early morning, and what the hell it all meant. He would love to live in that memory, but darker thoughts loomed as he mentally prepared himself for another day of searching.
He lifted Liv from the bench and their eyes simultaneously focused on the intimidating tree line. They stepped forward, but he abruptly stopped. He felt Olivia's eyes on him, questioning, but he needed this moment, a second really, to ask God to keep that boy safe until they could find him. At this point, they needed a miracle.
After that brief pause, he started moving, and Liv fell into step next to him. "I spoke with Anderson briefly while you made your calls."
"Where does he want us today?" They had already made it to the creek.
She watched him step into the snowmelt near the bloodied rock. He seemed fixated on the rock, but continued talking. "He has a group spreading out from the location they," his breath caught and he swallowed the lump in his throat. "Where they found Clem." He finished.
He pointed downstream. "A smaller group is sweeping downstream, he thinks the uphill terrain would be too difficult for a kid to traverse in the dark."
He lifted his eyes to hers, and she immediately knew what he was thinking. "You want to search uphill."
"Yeah," he stepped out of the creek and back to the bank next to her. "They are still working off the idea that the kids snuck out and got lost, but…"
"You're thinking that if someone purposefully hurt Clem, and Colton was being pursued he would instinctively run uphill."
"Right," he confirmed. "Grabbing someone during a rear pursuit is challenging if the person is running uphill. It's harder to tackle them." She looked up the hill, "especially if he could get behind some rocks for cover.
"Exactly. Anderson only sent one pair of officers up this direction yesterday. If nothing else, it deserves a second look."
"Let's go, then." She said and began their ascent.
-000-
The rocky uphill terrain made Olivia's ankle throb. It sustain hours of stress the day before, and today's hike was turning out to be twice as difficult. Her ankle was screaming, but there was no way she was stopping now. Or telling Elliot.
She silently thanked God when they reached the first outcropping of rocks. Elliot handed her a bottle of water.
"Thanks." She drank half of it and handed it back to him. He finished off and tossed it into his pack.
"How's the ankle?"
"It's okay." She faked a smile. There was no way he believed her.
"Well," he drew the word out, and she knew he was trying to decide if he should call her out on it. "Let it rest for another couple minutes, but then we need to start moving again before it stiffens up."
She nodded and let her gaze drift down the hill. "Think he could have made it all this way?"
"With the help of adrenaline? Yeah. I'm just nervous that once he lost them he wandered somewhere else completely."
They took in their surroundings. The task that laid ahead was daunting. He could be anywhere. She felt stress tightening in her chest, and tried to remind herself to breathe. "Where do we go from here?" She asked, her voice tight.
She watched him look over the east side of the creek and back over to the west side. "It depends on if he started running when she was hurt or when they tossed her body."
Olivia mentally detached, trying to approach the situation as a work situation, and not one so close to her personal life. "If we're going with the theory he tried to protect her, I think he would have intervened long before the body dump."
"Right." Elliot focused on the west side of the creek. "If that's the case, I don't think he crossed through the creek. Clem was hurt down by the creek, and if he followed from camp, then he would have been on the west side."
She tried to visualize what he was saying. "That makes sense, but he would have had to have gotten far enough west to lose track of the campsite. He has to be far enough away that he couldn't have found his way back."
"Exactly." Elliot lifted his pack to his shoulders. "I say we head west, spread out a bit, and see what we find."
She reached out her hand and he pulled her to her feet. "Alright then. Let's do it."
-000-
They began the now familiar pattern of sweeping the area back and forth. Elliot felt frustrated with the progress, but they had to be meticulous so as not to miss anything. The area was densely wooded, it would be extremely easy to miss vital evidence.
The first hour passed with nothing, and Elliot began to doubt his instincts. Maybe the kids just got lost, and search and rescue were in the right place. But for some reason that didn't sit right, and he knew the boy had to be somewhere in this direction. He just knew.
"Elliot!" Olivia's call broke his focus from the ground. His head lifted and he saw her standing down the hill a little with something in her hand. He tore through the foliage, and quickly arrived at her side. "Is this Colton's?" Her voice filled with nervous hope as she held out a baseball cap.
Elliot sent a silent prayer heavenwards. It was Colton's. "Yes." He took in their surroundings, and handed Liv the radio. "Do the honors?"
She gave him a quick smile before she was all business again. "This is Captain Benson," she gave them the coordinates Elliot provided. "We found Colton's hat. We need backup for a thorough sweep of the area."
"Copy that." Came the voice on the other end. "Headed your way now."
-000-
It only took a couple minutes for back up to arrive, making the sweep of the area substantially more effective. Olivia continued her original course while Elliot was assigned down the hill a ways. Finding the hat breathed new life into the entire group. With Clem's dire condition, and Colton nowhere to be found, the mood dampened, and things began to feel hopeless. This rapidly improved morale.
But that hat. He had to be somewhere in this direction. She continued looking for any sign of the boy behind every bush or thick tree root. She paused when she thought of something.
When she had interviewed children pulled from traumatic or dangerous situations many were found hiding in tight spaces, like in a closet or under a bed. She took in her surroundings in a more broad fashion, instead of looking for a minute detail she looked for a place a scared kid could hide. Colton was twelve, and still small, but obviously not as small as a six year old. The space needed to be big enough for him to hide comfortably. For over 24 hours.
She continued forward with that idea in mind. She hoped she could find a cave, or outcropping of rocks. She had moved steadily away from that hat's location, but not too far. After a few more minutes, she spotted what she was looking for. It wasn't a cave or rock configuration. It was a sheltered space created by fallen trees. It was innocuous, really it was just more trees in an entire forest of trees, but it felt like something.
She stepped towards the tree fall. Nerves gripped her stomach as she hoped she would find a live child, not a body. She pushed away some fallen branches, and poked her head into the dark opening. "Colton?" She called gently.
To her surprise she was met with a soft, "I'm here."
Im not crying..you're crying...