Page 9 of A Future To Remember

“Sir,” Oscar whispered.

I startled and Eggy moaned. He was wrapped in my arms, and I must’ve dozed off for an hour or two. I carefully set him to the side and then edged away from him, tucking the covers around him and getting out of bed.

“What time is it?”

“Five.”

I nodded and yawned. “If I remember, the coffee’s pretty good here.”

Oscar offered me the mug in his hand. “I made you a cup.”

“Thanks, bud.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

We started to get dressed and pack up when I thought of something. “Oscar?”

“Yeah?”

“Stop calling me ‘sir.’”

He was near the door and my back was to him. I was busy gathering up Eggy in my arms with his blanket.

Oscar didn’t reply right away; he waited until I turned around to face him. “With respect, Special Agent Rivers—”

“I quit, remember?” I snapped. I hadn’t meant to. It seemed like everything out of my mouth these days had a hard edge. With a grimace, I added, “Sorry. I didn’t mean it to come out like that.”

“No harm, no foul. But I’m going to keep calling you ‘sir’ because you’ve earned it. Whether you’re an active agent has nothing to do with it…sir.”

I sighed. They all wanted me to go back to being good ol’ Special Agent Dutch Rivers—but that was the guy who had the love of his life at his side. I couldn’t work for the Bureau without her. I couldn’t even walk into the fucking building without her.

Still, I was too exhausted to argue with Oscar, so I gave in. For now. “Fine. Whatever. We gotta go.”

The plane ride to Missoula was cold. Eggy woke up for a bit, and he seemed a little bit perky. I fed him the Canadian bacon from my Egg McMuffin, and he loved it. One positive sign, at least.

From the small Missoula airport, we loaded into the F-150 that Oscar had rented and began to haul ass.

I was glad I didn’t have to tell him to step on it. The waiting for word was killing me.

We finally got to the Lewis & Clark County Sheriff’s Office around ten a.m., and Oscar laid a hand on my arm as I was reaching for the door. “Sir.”

I looked at his hand before I looked him in the eye. “You’re not keeping me from her, pal.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. But I think I should at least be the one to break it to you, if that’s the case, cuz that guy,” Oscar thumbed over his shoulder toward the door of the station, “is an asshole, and he’s probably just gonna blurt it out the second you walk through the door.”

He had a solid point. I hated this county’s sheriff. He was disgusting; he smelled; his uniform was always wrinkled and riddled with stains; and beyond that, he was lazy, stupid, unsympathetic, and without tact or good manners; and he knew as much about investigating as I know French.

“Bon-bon, wee-wee” is the level of Sheriff Wheaton’s investigative and interpersonal skills.

Still, I wasn’t gonna wait to hear the news—whatever it was—about my wife’s fate one second longer than I needed to. “I’m braced. It’s okay,” I told Oscar.

I left Eggy in the truck, wrapped in his sweater and covered in blankets. I wouldn’t leave him long on such a cold morning, but the cab was well insulated and warm, and he’d been fed and given his pain pill, so he’d be fine for at least an hour.

I led the way to the station, which was larger than you might think, with a central A-frame main section and two boxy wings off each side.

Over the course of my investigation into Abby’s disappearance, I’d done a little digging into county records and learned that the county sheriff’s office covered a huge swath of territory—roughly two hundred square miles. Wheaton and his two deputies mostly patrolled the highway, handing out speeding tickets (“Payday,” as they put it) and responding to the occasional distress call—mostly medical emergencies, auto accidents, drunk drivers—regular stuff.

In the past fifty years, the county had seen thirty-eight people go missing: most before Wheaton’s time. Of those thirty-eight, twelve had been found, wandering and cold, lost in the woods. The rest were divided into four camps: Nine had been fly-fishing and had wandered too deep into the river only to get caught up in the current, their bodies later discovered downstream; ten were hunting accidents, which meant someone else had poor aim with a gun or bow; and the rest died either from natural causes like a heart attack or by suicide.