The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [114]
“Are you really planning to search yourself?” Valerie asked her.
“You better believe it,” Janine said.
“Well, then, take this with you.” Valerie handed her a small device, and Janine recognized it as a GPS, one of the tools the searchers had used to keep from getting lost. “We don’t want to have to come back here looking for you, too,” Valerie added.
“I don’t know how it works.” Janine looked at the gadget in her hand.
“It’s easy to use,” Valerie said. “I’ll give you a little tutorial, and you can borrow one of the maps. Then you’ll always know where you are. Okay?”
Janine nodded. “Thanks.”
“Come inside when Lucas gets out of the john,” Valerie said. “I’ll show you how it works.”
It was another minute before Lucas joined her on the road, and she held the small black device up to show him. “Valerie gave me a GPS,” she said. “Will you look for Sophie with me?”
He did not show the sort of enthusiasm she’d been expecting. “You mean, now?” he asked.
She nodded. “Please, Lucas. Every minute counts.”
He looked into the woods, then touched her arm. “How will you know which way to go, Jan? The dogs couldn’t find her. I’m not sure—”
“We’ll go in the general direction of the cabin we saw,” she said.
He still looked dubious.
“I have to try, Lucas,” she added. “I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.”
It took him a moment to look at her again, and he nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll help you today, but I have to go back to Vienna tonight.”
“You don’t believe she’s alive, either, do you?” she asked.
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, and she noticed how tired he looked. How beaten. “What I do believe is that you need to look for her,” he said. “That you won’t rest until you’ve searched every possible inch of this forest for her, and that’s okay. And I’ll help you. But I’ll have to be on the road by four. All right?”
“All right,” she said, although she knew that he, like Valerie, was only humoring her. He thought this was a fruitless mission. Maybe it was, but she wouldn’t know that until she’d searched the woods herself.
Inside the trailer, Valerie showed them how to use the GPS, then Janine leaned over the map on the counter.
“The cabin we saw was somewhere up in here,” Janine said, pointing to an area on the map. “Did they search up that far?”
“Like I told you yesterday, Janine, that’s over five miles from here,” Valerie replied. “We cut off the search at three miles in every direction. It’s extremely doubtful she could have gotten any farther than that.”
“You don’t know her,” Janine said. “And I told you I saw her penknife lying on one of the rocks near the cabin.”
“You think you did,” Valerie said. “It would be very hard to see anything that small from the helicopter. Our minds can play some mean tricks on us.”
“Jan,” Lucas said, “I think Valerie’s right. I think even if Sophie hadn’t lost a shoe and even if she’d been in the best shape, she couldn’t have made it that far. I know that cabin’s been on your mind, but I think it’s just because it was one of the few things we could see from the air, so that’s where you can imagine her being. But I—”
“I need a target, Lucas,” Janine interrupted him. “I need a goal. Something we can walk toward. I think we should start at the creek where the dogs picked up her scent, and then head from there toward that cabin. It’s as good as any other direction. And if Sophie had seen that cabin, she would have gone to it.”
“It’s very far,” Lucas said again.
Janine looked at Valerie. “Is the Herbalina still in the fridge?” she asked.
“Yes.” Valerie walked toward the small refrigerator at the rear of the trailer. She took the soft-sided cooler out of the lower compartment, then reached into the freezer for some Blue Ice. She handed the ice and the cooler to Janine.
“Thanks.” Janine opened the cooler and placed the Blue Ice inside it, then slipped the strap of the cooler over her shoulder. She looked at Lucas.
“Ready?” she asked.
“As I’ll ever be.”
They said goodbye to Valerie, then began walking down the road, heading