The Rescue - Nicholas Sparks [17]
The word she kept repeating was “Kyle.”
Another thirty minutes passed, and Taylor McAden had moved into the deeper recesses of the swamp. It was incredibly dark now, like spelunking in a cave. Even with a flashlight, he felt the beginnings of claustrophobia. Trees and vines grew even closer together, and moving in a straight line was impossible. It was easy to wander in circles, and he couldn’t imagine what it was like for Kyle.
Neither the wind nor rain had let up at all. Lightning, however, was slowly lessening in its frequency. The water was now halfway up his shin, and he hadn’t seen anything. He’d checked in on his walkie-talkie a few minutes earlier—everyone else said the same thing.
Nothing. Not a sign of him anywhere.
Kyle had been gone now for two and a half hours.
Think.
Would he have made it this far? Would someone his size be able to wade through water this deep?
No, he decided. Kyle wouldn’t have gone this far, not in a T-shirt and jeans.
And if he did, they probably wouldn’t find him alive.
Taylor McAden pulled the compass from his pocket and pointed the flashlight at it, figuring his bearings. He decided to go back to where they’d first found the blanket, back to square one. Kyle had been there . . . that’s all they knew.
But which way had he gone?
The wind gusted and trees swayed above him. Rain stung his cheek as lightning flashed in the eastern sky. The worst of the storm was finally passing them by.
Kyle was small and afraid of lightning . . . stinging rain . . .
Taylor stared up at the sky, concentrating, and felt the shape of something there . . . something in the recesses of his mind slowly beginning to emerge. An idea? No, not quite that strong . . . but a possibility?
Gusting wind . . . stinging rain . . . afraid of lightning . . .
Those things would have mattered to Kyle—wouldn’t they?
Taylor grabbed his walkie-talkie and spoke, directing everyone back to the highway as quickly as possible. He would meet them there.
“It has to be,” he said to no one in particular.
Like many of the volunteer firemen’s wives who called into the station that evening, concerned about their husbands on this dangerous night, Judy McAden couldn’t resist calling. Though Taylor was called to the station two or three times a month, as Taylor’s mother she nonetheless found herself worrying about him every time he went out. She hadn’t wanted him to be a fireman and told him so, though she finally stopped pleading with him about it once she realized he’d never change his mind. He was, as his father had been, stubborn.
Still, all evening long she’d felt instinctively that something bad had happened. It wasn’t anything dramatic, and at first she’d tried to dismiss it, but the nagging suspicion persisted, growing stronger as the hours passed. Finally, reluctantly, she’d made the call, almost expecting the worst; instead she’d learned about the little boy—“J. B. Anderson’s great-grandkid”—who was lost in the swamp. Taylor, she was told, was involved in the search. The mother, though, was on the way to the hospital in Elizabeth City.
After hanging up the phone, Judy sat back in her chair, relieved that Taylor was okay but suddenly worried about the child. Like everyone else in Edenton, she’d known the Andersons. But more than that, Judy had also known Denise’s mother when they were both young girls, before Denise’s mother had moved away and married Charles Holton. That had been a long time ago—forty years, at least—and she hadn’t thought about her in years. But now the memories of their youth came rushing back in a collage of images: walking to school together; lazy days by the river, where they talked about boys; cutting the latest fashion pictures out of magazines . . . She also remembered how sad she’d been when she’d learned of