Troop 18 by Jessica L. Webb

Author:Jessica L. Webb [Webb, Jessica L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626399358
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2017-02-18T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Andy hiked into the foggy morning, five silent cadets shadowing her movements on the slippery trail. It had taken only minutes to verify that Shipman wasn’t anywhere in camp. Trokof had grilled the cadets, but they knew nothing. They looked miserable and stressed, Petit and Frances now not the only ones who could pass as sick. Foster said he’d heard the door of the cabin sometime after midnight but hadn’t really thought anything of it. He figured Shipman was sneaking out for a smoke after a long day. Foster had gone back to sleep and said he hadn’t known Shipman was gone until roll call.

Foster was at Andy’s heels now, and his tension was palpable. He and the four other cadets in Andy’s search party—Hellman, McCrae, Awad and Mancini—took turns calling Shipman’s name, hearing it swallowed by the fog in the low areas or disappearing up into the sky as they crested the next series of hills. Initially, they had heard Meyers’s team as they also called out for Shipman, but that had been over an hour ago.

Andy pulled the radio out of her belt and called Meyers. Nothing. She checked with Les who had taken a group in the other direction, down past the main house. No sign. Zeb had taken Andy’s Yukon and was slowly making his way down the highway into Kamloops. He didn’t have a radio, so Andy had to call Trokof who was waiting by the phone at the main house. Kate was alone at camp, hoping he’d show up there. Nothing from any of them. No one had heard a thing.

Andy shoved the radio back into her belt and tried to quell the mounting concern that had moved from her stomach and up into her chest. She thought about the quick team debrief they’d had right before breaking up into teams. Shipman had seemed no more or less sombre than the rest of the troop when he’d last been seen. He’d given no indication that he was suffering or depressed or that he was considering quitting. Shipman was just gone.

“Does Shipman have a significant other?” Andy said to the cadets over her shoulder.

“A girlfriend back in Alberta. She’s a teacher, I think,” Cadet Chris Mancini offered, stumbling a little on the loose rocks, as if talking and walking at the same time was troublesome.

“Have they been fighting recently, do you know?”

Mancini shrugged his shoulders, kicked at a rock and dug the toe of his boots into the hard-packed mud in an attempt to gain purchase. Andy looked briefly at the other cadets, but no one seemed to have anything else to add. She tried to temper her annoyance. Pushing would get her nowhere. Troop 18 had made that perfectly clear.

“You tell me then, why do you think Shipman would take off? Best guess,” Andy said to the cadets trudging behind her, wondering how they would take this question. It could be seen as concern, or prying or an offer of betrayal.

No one spoke for a long time, the silence only broken as Awad called out Shipman’s name into the fog.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.