Useless Bay(11)

“Hypocrites, all of them,” she said. “So you be good to people while you’re alive, and when you’re dead, you’ll be compost. Now let’s go help that family find their baby.”

This was before we had a system and had our kits with everything we might need in an emergency; so the five of us just had flashlights, and Frank had his roadside-assistance kit.

It was raining hard when we got to the ranger station at Deception Pass. Sheriff Lundquist briefed us on what had happened. The parents, Mr. and Mrs. Goodman, and their son, Martin, had been day-tripping, and they had let Martin down from his backpack for a minute—just one minute, honestly—and when they turned around, he was gone.

Now the parents were inside the ranger station, hugging each other close. Mrs. Goodman was red and poofy from crying. They were drinking hot chocolate, which Mom thought should’ve been spiked with Jack Daniel’s.

Outside, Sheriff Lundquist handed me a flare gun and a freezer bag with a cloth diaper that had been pooped in. Full of good smells.

“Now comes the test,” Sheriff Lundquist said. “Let’s see if this dog really is useless. When and if you find the kid, send up the flare. We’ll find you.”

I alternated between not optimistic (I had the world’s stupidest beast) and freaked (the kid had been missing more than eight hours—what would I find?). But I knew either way I would never be the same after that night. Either the people in uniforms gathered around me watching my dog sniff poop would remember what a failure I had been and not call me again, or I would find my first body and I’d be on the hook for the next missing hiker.

I opened the freezer bag. I thrust it under Patience’s nose. “Go,” I said.

And she was off.

I wasn’t stupid enough to let her off the leash. Who knew what kind of sniff she’d find if I did? There were just too many distractions. So I held onto her as she plowed through the undergrowth and ran up and down muddy trails, my brothers hurrying after me. Even though I didn’t know it at the time, Dean had the presence of mind to mark the trail by breaking off branches.

Finally, Patience stopped at the top of a slope that had been eroded and went straight down into the churning water. Halfway down, a toddler, too weary to flail, was caught on a branch.

“Aroo, aroo, aroo!” Patience bayed, and pawed at the muddy ground. I pulled her back.

“Harosho,” I said. Which is Russian for good, a term Yuri had taught me. But I had no treats for her. A major oversight. Those would have to come later.

“Martin! Martin Goodman!” Dean called down. He didn’t get a coherent response, but there was a thin mewling coming from the kid. “Pix, send up the flare. He’s too precarious. We’re going to have to move him. Form a chain, and let’s pull him up.”

“Damn it,” Sammy said. I’m sure he wanted to slide all the way down on his butt. “Can I at least be on the end?”

I could see Dean’s thoughts churning like the water below. “Yes,” he said. We definitely didn’t want Sammy on anchor. Too jumpy.

So after stepping into a clearing and sending up a flare, I wrapped myself around a Douglas fir. Frank grabbed my waist, then Lawford, then Dean, then finally Sammy, who was able to unhook little Martin from the salal and hand him up to Dean, then Lawford, then Frank, then me. As soon as we were all up top, Frank laid him flat on the ground and checked him over for broken bones and hypothermia, both of which he had.

But he was alive.

Alive enough to spread the word in the papers the next day that he’d been saved by a race of giants and one very wet princess.

Princess?

Princess?

Should we have talked poop? Should we have talked about smelly dogs? I wasn’t exactly sitting at home spinning straw into gold while my brothers got out and rescued him. How long was it going to take me to live that “princess” comment down?

If I could’ve prayed without Mom’s noticing, I would’ve prayed for a different superpower. It was bad enough being the Girl. Now I was the princess, too. I didn’t see how it could get any worse.

No, that’s not right. Martin Goodman could’ve been dead. That’s how it could’ve been worse.

? ? ?

After that first rescue, my brothers and I got more calls, and we got better at finding what was lost.

Sometimes it was okay. I found hikers or paddle-boarders who were cold and wet and didn’t know where they were, or some adrenaline junkie who’d broken a bone, required a splint, and couldn’t get cell reception to ask for it. Stupid I could handle. Injured I could handle. Scared I could handle.

It was carrying the weight of things broken beyond repair that I hated. Adult or child, it didn’t matter. They were always so heavy. And even though my brothers were quick to help, I somehow felt I carried that weight alone.

No matter what configuration my brothers and I took, I was the one with the scent hound—now the best in the state, according to some—so I was the one who took the lead. I was the one who handed these broken things to inconsolable families who, if they noticed me at all, would forever associate me with the senseless death of someone they loved.

If I was a princess, I was a princess of muddy, overex-posed death.

All this went through my mind as Henry and I followed Patience on the path through the lagoon to Yuri’s guard shack.