They started the search at the spot where Lucas crashed his plane into the side of the mountain. The last time Lorenzo had been there, it had looked much different. The crash had only happened days before, and the shock had still been fresh. When Lorenzo had seen the wreckage for the first time, he’d sworn he could smell the prince’s pain and horror as he’d realized he was going down. In spite of the fact that Lucas’s body hadn’t been discovered in the wreckage, Lorenzo had felt little hope that he would be found alive.
Time, however, had a way of healing all wounds. The fuselage and debris that were all that was left of the small plane had blended into the mountainside, and the snow nearly covered that. Anyone seeing the site for the first time would have thought the crash happened decades ago instead of just last year.
And this time, Lorenzo really believed Lucas had somehow managed to survive the crash. Oh, he hadn’t changed his opinion about Willy, but he knew his cousin. He loved life and wouldn’t have let go of it easily. If anyone could survive not only a plane crash, but the wildness of the Rocky Mountains in the dead of winter, it was Lucas.
“Where is the forest service road Willy mentioned?” he asked Eliza as she stood solemnly beside him, surveying the scene. “How would you get there from here on foot?”
Considering a moment, she frowned. “I’d head northeast as long as I could, then cross the creek and head north. I don’t think the prince could have made it any other way if he was hurt. It’s too rugged.”
“Then let’s try that,” he said.
Surprised, she said, “You don’t want to drive from here to the forest service road and start the search there? That’s closer to where the scarf was found.”
“But we aren’t positive that the prince is the one who actually dropped the scarf at the campsite where it was found,” he pointed out. “It could have been anyone—which is why I need to see if it would be possible for a man who walked away from a plane crash to make it from here to there on foot.”
She hadn’t thought of that. “Then I guess we’ll leave the truck here and come back for it.”
They started off through the woods, heading northeast, as she had suggested. Within minutes, they’d left the crash site behind and were completely surrounded by the forest. Following Lorenzo as he took the lead, Eliza tried to imagine what it must have been like for the prince after the crash. He had to have been dazed, probably hurt, and in all likelihood, he hadn’t had a clue where he was or how far he was from civilization.
It must have been quite frightening, she thought with a shiver, especially when nightfall had approached. Darkness came early in the winter in the mountains, and he’d been all alone. Eliza liked to think she was pretty gutsy, but just thinking about that gave her the willies. There were wolves in the mountains. And bears…
Sure she felt the touch of eyes on her, she glanced over her shoulder, but there was nothing there. Nothing but trees. Goosebumps racing up her arms under the soft sheepskin of her coat, she moved closer to Lorenzo.
She hadn’t thought he noticed, but suddenly, he, too, was examining the trees around them, his narrowed eyes missing little as he studied their surroundings. “Is something wrong?” he asked quietly.
Caught letting her imagination run away with her, she felt a blush sting her cheek. “I was imagining what it must have been like for the prince to find himself all alone up here,” she admitted with a grin. “Then I got to thinking about wolves and bears…”
“And suddenly you could hear one sneaking up behind you,” he guessed with a chuckle. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to be anyone’s dinner. Whatever bears are in the region are hibernating, and the wolves are probably just as scared of you as you are of them. They won’t bother you.”
Logically, she knew that. But when they started through the trees again, she made sure she was just a few steps behind Lorenzo.
They crossed the creek at its narrowest point, then began the slow climb up to Walnut Ridge. It was a fairly steep hike, but not as difficult as it would have been if they’d taken a path to either the east or west. And even though the prince had probably been hurt after the crash, there was no question that he could have made the climb if his injuries weren’t too severe.
“I don’t know how the hell he walked away from that crash,” Lorenzo said with a frown as they broke through the trees and reached the forest service road, “but he always was a lucky devil. I think he could have easily made it this far. But why didn’t he call home, dammit? Or at least call for help? He had his cell phone with him.”
“He must have been confused,” Eliza said, “and who can blame him? You saw what the crash did to his plane. He couldn’t have been thinking clearly.”
Lorenzo agreed. He could well understand Lucas’s muddled thinking after he’d plowed into the side of a mountain. But that didn’t explain his continued silence. It had been a year since the crash, dammit! Where was he? Was he still walking around in a daze or had he somehow fallen into the hands of someone who meant him harm and wouldn’t let him call his family?
Frustrated, the questions he had far outnumbering the few speculative answers he had, he said, “The answer has got to be here somewhere. C’mon. Let’s find the campsite.”
Given Willy’s oddities, Lorenzo hadn’t put much stock in the directions he’d given them, and with good reason. The man had refused to even look him in the eye! But when they headed due north, just as the old hermit had instructed, it wasn’t any time before they came to the stand of aspen he’d told them about. And there in the middle of the trees was a small circle of stones that could only be the remains of a campfire.
“This must be it!” Eliza said excitedly. “Listen! You can hear the creek.”
Cocking his head, Lorenzo caught the gurgle of a small creek in the distance. Eliza was right. This had to be the place where Willy had found the scarf. “I’ll be damned,” he said softly, impressed. “I didn’t think the old geezer had it in him.”
“I knew he wasn’t lying,” she replied, then sighed in relief. Suddenly realizing that she’d given herself away, she grinned ruefully. “Okay, so maybe I had a few doubts. Sometimes it’s hard to know with Willy.”
Having now met the old man, Lorenzo could well understand that, but at least he appeared to have told the truth this time. And if they were lucky, there would be a clue somewhere in the vicinity that would tell them why Lucas had left and where he might have gone.
Surveying the area, however, he didn’t see signs of much life. It was a stark place for Lucas to take refuge. The aspen, naked of their leaves in the dead of winter, offered little protection from the weather, and the snow seemed to collect in unusually high drifts on the east side of trees. When the north wind blew, it was colder than hell.
“What was he doing here?” he murmured to himself as he began to inspect the campsite. “He apparently traveled five miles from where he crashed and stopped here long enough to at least make a firepit and start a fire. Why? Was he just too tired to go on or what?”
“Maybe it was getting dark and he didn’t have any choice,” Eliza suggested. “If he was going to survive the night, he had to have a fire.”
“Or some other kind of shelter,” he replied, his green eyes speculative as he slowly turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees and tried to imagine why Lucas had stopped here, of all places. Then his eyes landed on a dead tree that had fallen at an awkward angle at the base of a snow covered hill. Located just a matter of feet from the firepit, the tree should have lain flat at the base of the hill but it didn’t. And it was that, Lorenzo decided, that bothered him. What was under that tree?
“What are you doing?” Eliza asked when he suddenly grabbed a stick off the ground and poked through the branches of the fallen tree. When he