Just Enough Light by AJ Quinn Page B

waited. Almost seemed as if it had stopped. But finally help arrived.
    Through the gray mist hanging like smoke over the river, she watched Jeff and Tim wade into the water, fighting against the fast-moving current as they moved toward her. Between them, they managed to get the boy attached to the tag line, then got him safely to the riverbank, where Kellen watched Gabe start CPR on the boy.
    “Come on, Kel. You’re turning blue. Let’s get you out of here. Give me your hand.”
    She heard Tim’s voice as if from a distance. Her headache had gotten worse, and as she slowly turned toward him, she connected with a hard, warm human hand that gripped her wrist. Beyond tired, she relaxed and was instantly buried in water. But Tim’s hand was still there, solidly holding on, and she gratefully let him help her out of the water.

Chapter Five

    As was becoming habitual, Cody was the first person to greet Dana at the office. “Good morning, Annie said to tell you she’s in Incident Command.”
    Thanking her, Dana wandered down the hallway and listened to the muted sound of voices.
    “Good morning,” Annie said, looking up briefly. “Come on in. Help yourself to some coffee and grab a seat. We’ve got a missing thirteen-year-old boy, separated from his parents and younger brother while hiking before dawn this morning. We’ve had two teams out since first light—one in the air, the other on the ground on snowmobiles. One searching north, the other south of where the boy went missing.”
    Dana gratefully poured herself some coffee and thought the steam rising from the cup smelled like heaven. She grabbed the seat Annie had indicated and tried not to distract anyone as she watched over the rim of her mug.
    It was then she realized she’d been so focused on overseeing the construction of the medical facilities that she was only now witnessing her first real search-and-rescue attempt. This was no simulation.
    “We don’t always know where to look,” Annie resumed speaking a minute later, but her hands didn’t stop working the keyboard. “But in this case, we have fairly reliable information about where the family was when they lost contact with the boy.”
    Looking over Annie’s shoulder at a pair of computer screens, Dana could see lights blinking over what appeared to be a topographical map. But she had no idea what exactly Annie was seeing.
    “Every team member has a transmitter as well as GPS on their radios,” Annie explained without Dana needing to ask. “It lets us have both audio and visual on everyone in the field so we can track them.”
    Nodding, Dana continued to watch and listened to the intermittent radio transmissions coming in from the teams involved in the search. The sun was out, but the temperature was still hovering near freezing and she knew the recent storm had dumped a lot of snow on the terrain being searched.
    But as she tried to envision where the search teams were, what they were seeing, she realized she had no frame of reference for what they were doing. She would make a point to ask Annie or Kellen to take her out with a search team. Maybe a couple of times—by land and in the air. That would help her better understand not only the physical demands on the teams, but the emotional and psychological demands as well.
    “IC, team one, we have a sighting.” The disembodied voice cut into Dana’s thoughts, jarring her back to the present.
    “Team one, IC,” Annie said, studying a map on one of the computer screens more closely. “Can you confirm?”
    The room grew strangely silent while they waited.
    “Negative. Cannot confirm it’s our target,” the voice responded. “We’re checking it out.”
    A short time later, Dana shared in the feeling of elation when team one confirmed they had located the missing boy. But the joy was short-lived. The next transmission indicated the boy was in a river. Facedown.
    Dana could feel her heart pounding in her throat as she listened to the two