What Lies Below The Watchtower

One storm, two people missing, and one helicopter: enough hours for one of them.

Search specialist Soren Ostby takes the report on Josie Garrick, whose husband says she went hiking at Larch Lakes and never came home. But a search dog follows her scent from her car to the road’s edge, and sits down. Thirty miles away, the state senator’s son has gone over an edge at dusk, says the only witness, his brother. Soren means to spend the flight where someone is still alive.

Then Soren sends the helicopter by one number he writes on the wall, the odds a flight finds each of them. Every hour in the cold, the number beside Josie’s name falls. But the senator, ten days from her election, was promised the flight. Josie’s sister puts a cardboard sign in her windshield: SHE HAS A NAME TOO. In a search full of liars, only the dog cannot lie to Soren.

Now Soren can follow the odds to the senator’s son, or bet the flight on a woman whose trail ends at a road. Whoever the math doesn’t pick spends another night in the storm.