Cascade by Pamela Beason

Author:Pamela Beason
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WildWing Press
Published: 2022-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 31

The next day, Sam read over the draft of article she’d thrown together for Out There, determined to finish so she could get back to the hospital. It was embarrassingly evident how absent her brain had been the day before. The story contained so many errors; their for there, its for it’s, missing pronouns, misspellings. The editor would probably change all the instances of he and she to they; her and his to their. Although she had to admit that they and their was efficiently non-gender-specific, to her those terms sounded like an individual had multiple personality disorder. Maybe English needed to create some new words for possessives and pronouns, the way the kids on her Wilderness Challenge expedition had made up new swear words when they weren’t allowed to utter the typical ones.

She fixed the typos but decided to leave all the politically correct challenges to the editor. She’d just clicked Send when her phone chimed. She expected Michael Fredd to be asking yet again when she’d be finished with the piece.

But the caller ID on Sam’s new cell displayed the name Adam Steele. Did she want to answer? Before Chase, the ambitious reporter had been her lover. Years later, on several occasions, he’d been her collaborator in reporting stories that needed to be told. But Adam was often her nemesis when it came to publicizing details she’d rather keep quiet. Sam hadn’t heard from Adam since the nightmare of the search for Maya’s half sister, Jade Silva, at the Arizona-Mexico border wall.

“Hello?” she finally answered.

“Hello! Hello!” echoed Zeke from the kitchen, followed by “Alexa, set re-eyender.”

Reminder? Maybe lips were required for M sounds. Thank God she had no smart device in the house. Lucky man, Blake had left for work before she uncovered the parrot’s cage.

“I can’t believe you still don’t call me!”

“Hi, Adam. And how are you?” She failed to keep the note of sarcasm from her voice.

“After all the stories we’ve done together. Utah, Galápagos, Arizona. And now you’ve been involved in the biggest avalanche disaster to hit the Western US in a decade, and you still don’t call me.”

This greeting was so typical of Adam Steele. Everything was about the next exciting news story. “Frankly, it didn’t cross my mind.”

“Didn’t cross your mind? You’ve got to be kidding! I bet you’re writing that story right now!”

Sam stared at the words on the screen, a thread of needless guilt weaving its way into her brain. How dare he make this sound like some sort of game! “People died, Adam.”

“Nine, I heard. So far.”

Nine? So far? Would there be more? Sam rubbed a thumb across her lips. The purple-shoe babysitter, the upside-down man . . . How many others had she not discovered in the collapsed building? Were they alive when she crawled out? If they had been, she didn’t want to know; she already felt guilty enough for surviving. “You shouldn’t sound so eager, Adam.”

“Sorry.” He didn’t sound remorseful at all.

“Gonna trade you for a dog,” Zeke yelped.

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