One Step Too Far (Frankie Elkin, #2)

by Lisa Gardner

Here are things most folks don’t know: At least sixteen hundred people, if not many more times that number, remain missing on national public lands. Hikers, day-trippers, children on family camping trips. One moment they were with us, the next they’re gone.

There’s no national database to track such cases. No centralized training for search and rescue or, in many cases, even clear jurisdictional lines to identify who’s in charge of such operations. There’s also little in the way of designated funding. A large-scale search effort can cost upwards of three hundred thousand dollars a day. For many county sheriffs, that’s their annual budget. Meaning when the volunteers go away, so do rescue efforts. Leaving behind a family with little hope and no closure.

My name is Frankie Elkin and finding missing people is what I do. When the police have given up, when the public no longer remembers, when the media has never bothered to care, I start looking. For no money, no recognition, and most of the time, with no help.

I originally walked away from material possessions because I felt the weight of them dragging me down. Now I don’t own anything I can’t afford to lose because I don’t want to die one day trying to protect something I never should’ve cared about in the first place.

For me, the question isn’t why have I dedicated my life to this? The question is why hasn’t everyone? So many of our children, who deserve to come home. Loved ones who need to know what happened to their family member. Communities forever haunted by what might have happened, paired with what could’ve been. I know who I am. I know why I do what I do. It’s the rest of the world that’s confusing to me.

Man can progress as much as we want. Mother Nature still owns our ass.”

“Small children take shelter,” I murmur. “The elderly head downhill. The inexperienced follow the path of least resistance.”

Have you ever attended an AA meeting? We are experts at silence. So much of our drinking is about filling those gaps, smoothing over awkward moments, trying to feel like we belong when most of us have gone through our entire lives feeling alone in a crowded room. Meaning, it’s one of the first things we must overcome. It’s not enough to stop drinking. We must change who we are, because who we are, are drunks.

I don’t speak. In this day and age, we all talk too much and hear too little. Listening has become a forgotten art that the world is sorely missing.

“Nemeth is tough, but Martin is just short of crazy, and I never bet against crazy.”

I was never one for haunted houses, and this is starting to feel an awful lot like that.

Now I picture us as a pair of badass commandos in some cool action movie, but maybe that’s the hysteria talking.

Plans give you a list of tasks to keep you from drowning in your own fear. Plans give you a feeling of control, even if it’s just an illusion at the time.

Just yesterday, I promised myself that if I survived this expedition, I’d never eat granola again. Now, I think if I just survive this trip, I’ll never complain about granola again.

Why do I do what I do? Because at the end of the day, the people left behind matter as much as the ones who are missing. We mourn the ones we’ve lost, but we agonize over the pieces of ourselves they took with them. The identities we’ll never have again. The emotions we’re certain we’ll never feel again. The sense of our own selves, becoming undone and disappearing just as completely and suddenly as those who vanished.

I dream of a hot shower, cascading down my body as the dirt sluices from my skin. Followed by a feast of food. Steaming bowls of macaroni and cheese, a fresh grilled burger, piles of spicy Haitian meat patties. Then a bed. A massive, king-sized, incredibly soft, piled-high-in-down-comforters bed with twenty-nine pillows.

I’m tired of pine trees. I want oaks or maples, anything that doesn’t cover me in sticky resin while jabbing a thousand tiny needles into my skin. I’m pretty sure these trees are the mean girls from high school.

I’m convinced—you want a good-looking man, come to Wyoming.

I’m left struggling with basic questions, such as where are my clothes? Or the rest of my worldly possessions, most of which were in my backpack, because I’m that kind of girl?

At a certain point, the spirit rebels against such horrors.