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Adam was a stark contrast to his fellows. He burned again but with a new fever. Not rage, A
“What are you so happy about?” she asked as she took her place at the end of the table, the de facto “Mom” spot. “Are we going to find Robin?”
Ridley turned from the stove. “Does he know where Robin is?” he demanded sharply. “Adam, do you know where she is?”
“I just have a good feeling, is all,” Adam said. “We could do with a little optimism around here for a change. I, for one, would rather believe she’s alive somewhere than dead in a snowdrift.”
A
“Chipper,” she said. “Adam, you sound downright chipper.”
Ridley stepped across the small space between the four-burner stove and the Formica-topped table where the rest of them sat over empty bowls like Goldilocks’s ursine victims. The thin, bony hands grabbed the front of Adam’s shirt and Ridley hauled him half out of his chair and held him suspended with wiry strength. “Do you know where Robin is?” he whispered, a hissing of steam from overheated pipes.
A
“Rid, I’d never hurt Robin. You know that. If I could bring her back right now, I’d do it. Let me go, Rid.” The last was said almost sadly, and A
Ridley lowered Adam carefully back into the kitchen chair. “Sorry,” he said and went back to stirring the oatmeal. If he didn’t pay attention, it was going to be the consistency of library paste, but A
They ate quickly. Though no one but Adam seemed anxious to start the search for Robin, it was tacitly agreed that it would be wrong not to seem anxious. A
Bob was scared.
Adam took the bowls from the table and dumped them in the sink.
“What do you want us to do?” Ridley asked A
“We have to search,” she said and tried to keep the pointlessness out of her voice. Adam was right; they could do with more optimism.
“Since she was taken in her sleeping bag – a winter bag, probably good to five or ten below – there’s a good chance she survived.” She drummed her fingers on the table and thought. “One of us took her, you guys know that, don’t you? Or there’s someone else on the island who has been screwing with our minds.”
That sat in the air for a while. Ridley stared at Adam and Bob in turn. Adam played with a spoon. Bob’s eyes were skittering around the room, as if he followed the path of a butterfly on Benzedrine.
“Which one of you found Katherine’s cell phone?” he blurted out finally.
He’d seen the missed call from A
“Are you still on that cell phone kick?” she snapped. “Just pay the two dollars.”
“What…” Confusion passed over his face, then cleared. “It’s more than two dollars. Somebody found it.”
“Leave it alone,” Ridley said wearily.
“Maybe Katherine took it with her,” Adam said. Had he used sepulchral tones, it would have been mocking at best and bad taste at worst, but he said it the way a grocer would say “four dollars a pound.” Bob’s face quivered like a pudding when the door slams.
A
“What do we do first?” Ridley cut across the others.
There was a story problem A
Who would try to find Robin, if she did happen to still be living, and who would sabotage the search? Who was the fox, who the goose?
The matter was taken out of her hands. “Bob and I will head up the Greenstone,” Adam said. “Get your stuff, Bob. These guys are going to dither half the morning.”
Since A
Adam and Bob left to get their gear together and suddenly the kitchen felt bigger. There was more air to breathe and the walls moved back.
“Can you ski, Jonah?”
“I got the silver medal in skiing in the 1908 Olympics,” he said.
“I knew that,” A
“Why would anybody take Robin to Feldtma
“What are you going to do?” Jonah asked.
A
“Why? Are you worried about me?”
“It seems the animals separated from the herd aren’t living to a ripe old age this winter. Riper old age,” he amended with a ghost of his old raillery.
“I’ll recheck the housing areas and the lean-tos,” A
“Anywhere else and we’re just looking for a body.”
“Keep your radio on, and keep it on you,” Ridley said.
“Make sure your batteries are charged,” Jonah added. “Adam’s been having a heck of a time with his. A heck of a time.”
Then A
What she meant to do was take the bunkhouse apart till she found out what the hell was going on. In the process, she dearly hoped to find out who took Robin. “Who” might tell her where the young woman had been stashed.