Ivy is seven. She was wearing a thin yellow rain jacket, navy leggings and Converse sneakers. She'd been collecting stones all morning. They went inside for a minute and then she was just… gone.
From her phone, the mother shows me a photo of Ivy on her father's shoulders at some park back home, both of them grinning. Front teeth missing. Same yellow jacket on.
"Please find her." It's the only thing the mother has said since I arrived. "Please."
I nod, wishing I could tell her that we will bring her daughter home safely, but all I can promise is that we’ll do our very best.
Eager to get out there and help, I find Taylor at the map and get ready to join the search.
"What do you need?"
He glances up, eyes crinkling at the corners, cap pulled low over his salt and pepper hair. Taylor's been doing this work for thirty years, and there are very few people who know this area like he does. "Grid four with Hendricks. Already cleared one and two."
The first sweep turns up nothing. Hendricks is methodical and quiet while we work the grid in clean parallel lines before meeting back at the rendezvous point empty-handed within ninety minutes.
The K9 unit has been working a possible scent trail from the rental cabin, but they've lost it at the creek crossing near the entrance to the property. Frustrated, the dogs circle, and after numerous attempts to pick up the scent again, further along the bank on the far side, they haven’t had any luck.
As the hours pass, we continue to widen the search, with every officer, ranger and volunteer within reach working tirelessly, combing the woods around Miller's Creek in a grid pattern that's grown wider and more desperate with every passing hour. We check every abandoned structure, every hollow log, every shallow cave within a three-mile radius, but come up with nothing.
We’re now operating in near darkness, and while it isn’t something we’d normally do, every person here has a daughteror niece they keep picturing out there that keeps them going long past the point we should safely continue the search.
I don't take a break other than to drink some water and stuff a protein bar into my mouth. My thighs are burning, the soles of my feet ache through my well-worn boots, and my skin is tight with dried sweat.
Dirty and exhausted, I'm standing at the trailhead now, strapping on a fresh headlamp and getting ready to lead one final sweep before total darkness when Taylor, the search and rescue coordinator, calls me over. He's bent over the huge map on the hood of his truck, marking off the grids we've already covered unsuccessfully in red.
There's a lot of red.
Fear lets doubt creep in. She's so small and could be injured. How can we even be certain we didn't miss her in one of those crossed out boxes? Maybe we need to go over them again.
“You need to take a break. Why don’t you go home for a couple of hours?”
Taken aback, I shake my head. “No way.”
He sighs. “You look like shit, Lisa. I mean, we all do, but are you feeling okay?”
Clamping my teeth together, I know better than to admit that my head is pounding, and I’ve had an ache in my chest that’s had me googling symptoms of heart attacks in women more than a few times over the last two weeks.
“I’m fine. Tired, but so is everyone. I’ll catch up on my beauty sleep when we find her.”
Taylor knows I won’t go home. “Then at least humour me and go sit in one of the trucks, have some food and take fifteen minutes off your feet.”
My initial instinct is to fight him, but that would be a waste of precious time we don’t have. He’s in charge for a reason, and he has enough to worry about right now. Making his life harder bychallenging him isn’t helpful, so I’ll just take a short break then get back to it.
“Just fifteen minutes,” I agree. “Then what?”
Relieved, he turns back to his map.
"Take Sheridan and head east." He points to a spot on the map that looks a long way from where we are now. "There's another search team setting up base and coming in from that side. Hopefully, we’ll find her somewhere in the middle. After that… we’ll have to call it a night. Go back at it first thing in the morning."
I slip a full bottle of water and some fruit that volunteers have brought into the pack I’m gripping between my knees.
“Nobody wants to, Lisa,” Taylor sighs. "But what good are any of you to me if you get lost out there, too? Or break a leg in the pitch dark?"
Ignoring him, I focus on the map, and the direction he’s sending us in.
He lifts his cap from his head and scratches the back of his neck. “It's a long shot, kids usually don't climb that high when they're lost, but there is an old hunting trail running along the top, that if she stumbled across, she could be following."
Sheridan appears at my side and gives me a polite nod, thick arms folded over his plaid-covered chest. "That's a long way for little legs to walk. You really think she kept going that far?” he lowers his voice. “Without any help, I mean…"