FINDING THE LOST, Jeanne Tody Beroza [reading tree txt] 📗

beds and in the bathrooms. I’ll start with this one; let’s do each building in pairs so no one’s alone. Charlie, you and Cristi take cabin #2. We’ll work our way down the hill and then out to the lake.”

They cleared cabin after cabin. There were five old log buildings with four bunks each at the top of the ridge. A grassy lane led from them to the main grouping of buildings. On the way down the lane, they passed and checked the lodge or meeting hall. In this building they went room-to-room and even checked a raised stage with curtains. Cristi hoped these buildings didn’t burn. They were made of huge old tree trunks, hand-planed, fitted wood floors and each contained large wooden tables and wooden-slat folding chairs leaning against the walls. If the fire did enter the Boy Scout camp the place would go up in an instant.

As they continued down the hill they checked a tool shed, eight more cabins, the shower and restroom facility, a group recreation hall and the dining hall. The dining hall was fronted by a raised wood log-railed, wood planking floored deck, enclosed underneath from the ground up to the deck flooring with piled stones from the area. Blaze started whining as Cristi climbed the stone steps to the deck proper.

“What is it girl?” Blaze whined again and started pulling her back down the steps. Cristi followed her knowing she might smell something that the rest of them would never see. Blaze pulled her around to the back edge of the stonewall closing in the space under the deck. There was a hole here - big enough for someone to crawl through. Blaze wanted to crawl into the darkness; Cristi didn’t want her to. She hollered at Charlie who ran over and kneeling at her side, shined a flashlight beam into the area.

“Oh God, we’ve got kids here, a boy and a girl. They’re half naked with bare feet.” Cristi started to crawl through the hole on her hands and knees but Charlie stopped her with a hand on her arm. “I can reach them,” he said. “They’re both small. I can safely pull each one of them out by their ankles; then you can check them.”

Once they were out and lying on their backs, Cristi performed a rapid exam on each. “They’re both alive,” she said. “Both have cool, clammy skin and are dehydrated. They’ve got rapid, irregular heartbeats. The girl’s is harder to hear than the boys. I can’t get a good blood pressure reading on either.”

“They’re in pretty bad shape, Charlie. We need to get both of them to the hospital, ASAP. Will one of you guys call it in? I don’t know if they’re light enough for you to haul them both out in one stretcher or not but maybe you can start them that way while more guys walk in with another stretcher.

Charlie, these kids have been abused. They have new bruises on top of old bruises. They’re both got ligature marks on their wrists and ankles; the little boy looks like he’s been beaten with a belt or something similar. The little girl’s mouth is torn; see how her lips are cracked and bloody like they’ve been forced wide open. I’ll bet you this Smith guy had these two kids awhile and just dumped them here when he dropped off Janie. If he knew you guys were chasing him and shutting down roads, he probably got rid of them so you’d never know he’d taken more than one child.”

Charlie nodded in agreement, “These two probably crawled under here, probably couldn’t make it any farther. We haven’t found Janie so I’m guessing she might have run off somewhere. He’d just taken her so she was probably in better shape, more mobile and probably scared out of her mind.”

“Can you get anything on her from the teddy bear, Cristi?”

“I’ll try.” As she moved off to sit on the steps of the deck, the bagged teddy bear and pajamas in her lap, Mike and Denny wrapped each small child in a blanket. Mike was in continual communication with the IC. Blaze lay at her side. Other search and rescue personnel and one of the Custer Ambulance Para-Medics were already racing to them with another stretcher and enough people to carry the two children out as quickly as possible. She’d done all she could for them. Now she concentrated on the small, blonde girl.

Centering herself, she inhaled Janie’s scent from the items and visualized the little blond haired girl surrounded by her pale pink and blue aura. It had been so easy to form a connection to the man who had taken and abused these children. Why couldn’t she find the mind and spirit of one tiny, lost, little girl? And then she knew why.

If Janie were dead or seriously injured and unconscious, she wouldn’t be able to reach her. She needed an active mind with which to connect. Oh no she moaned as she rocked back and forth, clutching the bag to her chest. Janie, you’ve got to open your eyes sweetie,

she thought, concentrating on seeing Janie’s open, blue eyes. You’ve got to hear me. I’m in your head, baby. I’ve got a nice dog here to find you. She’s soft and pretty. She’s friendly. I’ve got your teddy. Your mommy wants me to find you Janie.

Giving one final push with her own energy, she called to the girl with her spirit. You have to open your eyes and look around you so I can find you.

Cristi knew the girl wouldn’t hear what she said word for word. She was not a telepath. She was just trying to connect with the little girl’s energy, jolt her into waking up or get her to focus for a moment. That might allow her a fleeting glance of something the girl had seen or could currently see. That glimpse might give her a clue as to where the little girl had gone. Janie,

she thought as hard as she could, Janie wake up. Where are you baby?

And then her breath was taken away and she started trembling as her bare feet were running over rocks and pine needles that hurt, through the trees, towards the water. There was fire behind her. Fire in the trees; smoke in the air. It was hard to breathe. Sparks fell around her. She was afraid of the fire. She was tired. She couldn’t run any more so she crawled into a little cave in the big rocks.

Blaze was whining, pushing her body against Cristi’s knees; touching her cheek with her wet nose. “I’m ok, baby, I’m ok,” she whispered, “You’re going to have to find a trail. We need to find this little girl.” Oh, to have JJ right now, she thought. I have no idea where to look. Where would he have dropped her off? Where had she run from? She thought Janie was somewhere in the rocks overlooking the lake. Blaze was not that good at finding a trail without having its start pointed out to her. “Well, we have to try,” she said aloud and squared her shoulders. “We can’t find her if we don’t try.


CHAPTER SIX:

“Charlie, we need to talk,” she told him once he’d moved the radio away from his ear. Even now, when she was so worried, maybe even more so now when he was absorbed in doing his job; his expression serious, his lean muscles taught with coiled energy, his eyes glancing this way and that, taking in the fire and then the children, gauging how far away the other teams were, she was attracted to him. She wanted his arms around her again. She wanted him to take over and say it was going to be ok, make it be ok. He glanced down at her, the look on his face one of distraction.

“I’m sorry the other little girl isn’t here,” he said misreading the expression on her face. “Don’t feel bad, you found two children we didn’t even know the sucker had taken.”

“Charlie,” she interrupted, “I saw her. She was here somewhere with these kids. He dumped her here and she ran into the trees, towards the water or along the water. She was afraid of the fire so she must have been closer to the fire than we are now. I saw sparks falling around her. She’s in the rocks somewhere.”

“You saw her? You connected with her?”She nodded her head.

“She was here? Well, the fire was actually closer to here in the beginning. I think that’s probably why these two crawled under the deck, to protect themselves from the smoke and falling embers
.
You can see how the ground is scorched in places but luckily the grass here is a little moister than the surrounding forest and it didn’t ignite. The fire moved away from here to the east. There was a wind coming off the lake, from the west last night, so that helped push the fire away from the cabins. She may have been in this same area.

Maybe we could do a perimeter sweep of the camp area and see if Blaze can pick up where she left.”

She felt like a weight lifted from her shoulders. With Charlie involved they’d figure out how to find the little girl’s trail. It wasn’t solely up to her and her young, relatively inexperienced dog. “Can we get started? The fire is not that far away and if it turns, we’ll be in trouble. She was unconscious, too, when I first tried to reach her. I got her to come to for a minute, and then I connected with her, but she’s passed out again. I think she’s hurt, Charlie. We need to find her before its too late.”

“Just as soon as the other teams get here and take charge of these kids,” he said. “We’ll all do a perimeter search, Mike, Denny, you and Blaze and me. Hey Mike, what was the little girl wearing when she was picked up?” He was off, talking to Mike and Denny, looking at their fact sheets, planning how they’d run the search. Maybe, just maybe there would be some little thing, somewhere in this area that they’d find to give them a ‘start’ to run a trail with the dog. If they could get Blaze on a trail, she could find the little girl.

Fifteen minutes later the boy and girl were packaged safely onto stretchers, both with an IV running into a vein and a Para-Medic walking with them monitoring each on their own stretcher as four volunteers per stretcher carefully carried them out over the broken ground. “Good luck,” one of the guys called back to the two teams left behind by the deck.

“Ok, I’ve been thinking about this,” Mike said. I have a feeling she was not with these two kids. I think she might have stayed with them if she’d been with them. Maybe he dumped her out first or maybe he dumped them and was going to keep her, then decided to ditch her too. I just think Blaze would have given us some indication if there had been another child here. She is actually the one who found the first two and that was without any scent items telling her who she might be looking for.”

“We can do a perimeter search of the whole Boy Scout camp but that is a huge area for Blaze to search for a scent that might be there. It’s at least a mile around this camp. If we do that large