Cascade by Janice Boekhoff

Author:Janice Boekhoff [Boekhoff, Janice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-948003-03-2
Publisher: Lost Canyon Press LLC

Lenaia paced in circles around Wally's shack. The place was dead silent. No Randy. No Wally.

She'd already stopped by the hospital. Marge had been expecting Randy to return to have lunch with her, but he hadn't come back. And Marge had confirmed, Randy still wasn't answering his phone. But she had found his green truck parked along the Westside Road, so he had to be somewhere on this vast mountain.

If Randy had come up here and couldn't find Wally, where else would he go? Perhaps to the tiltmeter to search for clues. It was worth a try. She turned northeast, hiking back to the Wonderland Trail. A few hours later, she came out of the tree line onto the Puyallup cleaver. She couldn't see St. Andrews Rock from here. The only way to know if anyone was up there was to climb.

The hike strained her legs, but at least her lungs handled the altitude better now. After another hour, she crested a small rise, giving her a view of the STAR observation station. No one up here either.

She looked down at the gray rock under her feet. A myriad of footprints swirled through the dust. She couldn't get a fix on which prints belonged to whom. They could be hers and Griffin's from their first trip. Or maybe the saboteur's.

She paced in a circle, from the face of St. Andrew's Rock as it rose above her and around to the edge of the path where it sloped down toward the Tahoma Glacier. On her second pass along the edge, a crumbled rock a few feet down the slope caught her attention. It had a large footprint in what remained of the crushed rock. Someone had gone off the path on the way to the glacier. Maybe Randy had come through here.

With careful sidesteps, she followed the prints downslope until she found another set of footprints, barely visible in the dust. They were smaller ones, although still bigger than hers. Two people had come this way.

She continued sidestepping down until she reached the margin of the glacier. There, the clear footprints morphed into a jumble of disturbed dirt. She searched the dusty ground for a few minutes, then found the same two sets of footprints moving parallel to the glacier. The feet were spaced farther apart. Perhaps they were running.

She followed as the larger set stayed close to the glacier's margin. The other set swung wider. Then suddenly, both sets disappeared.

Although, the footprints didn't have the telltale tread of ice spikes, the only place they could have gone was onto the glacier.

She stopped and stared at the white expanse. Not far out, she saw a large area of torn up ice. Something gray and dull lay on the pale surface. She took a deep breath and stepped out onto the slippery ice. Sliding her feet one by one, she inched closer to the object.

When she was a few feet away, she recognized it as a park ranger's badge. Picking it up, she read the name.

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