Savannah rolled away from me, taking the covers with her. I was too hot anyway and she was always too cold — opening and closing the bedroom window was often a point of friction during our first marriage. That was before I discovered Buddhism and the duality of life. There can be no up without down, no joy without sorrow, no heat without cold. The sooner we embrace uncomfortable opposites, the more content we’ll be.

“I can shut the window if you’re chilly,” I said.

“I’m OK.”

“You sure? I don’t want the baby catching cold.”

“Babies don’t catch cold, Logan, not in the womb.”

“Good to know.”

Savannah rolled over to face me.

“What if it’s a girl?” she said.

“Makes no difference to me.”

“You wouldn’t be disappointed if we had a daughter?”

“I probably would be when she’s a teenager. Larry has a daughter in high school. He says it’s like trying to defend a box of raw chicken in a swamp filled with gators.”

“It’s the male who decides the gender, Logan. Your little swimmers. Sixteen years from now, you’ll only have yourself to blame. Just so you know.”

“We should be so lucky.”

She cuddled in closer. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Tell me we’re gonna be OK, Logan.”

“More than OK.”

There was no response. A minute or so passed. I could tell by her slow, sonorous breathing that she’d gone to sleep. I always admired that, Savannah’s ability to simply turn off the day, its nagging disappointments, and drift off. My mind, meanwhile, raced in the darkness among myriad ruminations. What would it be like being married again, and responsible 24-7 for a life other than my own? How would I earn a viable income to support my child? What was up there, on that mountain? What if what I saw was nothing? Was I leading authorities on a goose chase?

I closed my eyes. Savannah was in my arms, her soft, warm breath on my chest. It’s possible I may have slept.

Deputy Woo picked me up before dawn. I’d rolled out of bed quietly, careful not to wake Savannah, and dressed in the dark. Through the front window of our getaway bungalow, I watched a jogger slowly plod the Lake Tahoe shoreline in Spandex leggings, stocking cap and a ski parka. The condensation of his breath clouded in his wake like steam from a locomotive. Definitely cold out there. Part of me toyed with the tantalizing prospect of crawling back under warm covers and snuggling with Savannah, but only fleetingly. Except for my spare boxers, I threw on every article of clothing I’d taken with me.

Sunshine streamed through the pines. The first light of morning.

Woo navigated his four-wheel drive Wrangler along the rain-rutted logging road he’d pointed out to me a day earlier. Other than exchanging a “Good morning,” and, a “Thanks, You’re welcome” for the cup of McDonald’s coffee he’d brought me, we’d said nothing to each other for more than twenty miles. He wasn’t unfriendly. He was merely a man of few words. I respected that. Many of the great writers whose works I had devoured at the academy believed that language is a perishable commodity, that we’re allotted only so many words in a lifetime. Once we’ve used them up, that’s it. Game over. Could be Woo read the same books I had. Hard to know. It was hard to know anything about the guy. His face gave away nothing.

We passed an old cabin on our left, its two front windows covered over with tinfoil, a rust-bucket Chevy pickup parked out front. The shingles of its steeply pitched roof were dappled at the joints by green moss. White smoke curled languidly from the chimney. Somebody was home and up early.

The higher we climbed up the mountain, the less road-like the road became. The steering wheel twisted and spun in Woo’s hands with each jarring furrow and rut. He maneuvered the Jeep expertly, like he’d negotiated many such roads before. A mule deer, a juvenile, given his immature rack, darted out from the trees to our right, no more than ten meters ahead of us, and flitted across the road back into the trees. Woo said nothing.

“Cold this morning,” Woo said after awhile.

“Yep.”

The “road” came to an abrupt end after another 400 meters or so, widening into a frost-dusted trailhead, about the size of a residential cul-de-sac, and rimmed on three sides by dense, dark forest. A Ford Explorer bearing El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department insignia and the words “Search and Rescue” was parked in the small clearing. Two graybeards in their late fifties and a squat, beefy younger woman, all wearing mountain climbing helmets and florescent orange, one-piece ski suits, were busy hauling backpacks and brightly colored coils of nylon rope out of their vehicle.

Woo pulled in beside the Explorer, got out, and exchanged curt greetings with the search team members. I stepped out — and set foot directly in a patch of cold, sticky mud.

“Careful of the goop,” the larger of the graybeards said. “It’ll get you every time.”

“Now you tell me.”

He grinned, which made his bulbous nose, scarred white from bouts of skin cancer, seem even larger.

“Tom Wood,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m team leader.”

Wood was six foot one, my height, but stockier than my 190 pounds. The other male member of the team was five foot eight and 150 pounds at most. He wore a faded Batman sticker on his helmet and wire-frame eyeglasses. Wood introduced him as Richard Wojewodski.

“And this lovely lady,” Wood said, “is Bree Kelly. Better mind your manners. Bree teaches tae kwon do.”

“ ’Preciate you helping guide us in,” Bree said. She had the grip of a professional wrestler.

I observed how none of them looked like cops. That’s because they weren’t, Wood said. They were unpaid civilian volunteers, he said, who coupled their love of the outdoors with passion for public service. Wood taught junior high math. Wojewodski designed software. Kelly was an electrician and part-time ski-lift operator at the nearby Heavenly Mountain Resort.

“I understand you’re a pilot,” she said.

“Flight instructor.”

“Where?”

“Rancho Bonita.”

If any of them were impressed by my occupation or city of residence, they hid it well.

“Good luck,” Woo said, climbing back in his Jeep.

“You’re not coming along?” Wood said.

“Too cold.”

The search and rescue folks, Woo said, would give me a lift into town after they’d completed their mission. I watched him turn around and head back down the road, brake lights glowing, the SUV bouncing among the furrows and over rocks, before the forest swallowed him from view and he was gone.

Wood spread out a topographical map on the hood of his SUV, along with various satellite photographs. He asked me to confirm the location where I’d observed aircraft debris. After I did, he punched some buttons on a miniaturized GPS strapped to his wrist. We were looking at a two-hour climb at the minimum, he said, excluding rest breaks.

“You didn’t bring any climbing gear of your own, obviously,” Wood said.

“I hadn’t planned on doing much climbing. I prefer flying over mountains.”

He looked down at my low-cut, mud-caked Merrell hiking shoes, the kind favored by many covert operators in the field, including those of us who’d served with Alpha.

“You’ll probably be OK in those,” Wood said of my choice in footwear. “We’ll take along an extra pair of crampons just in case. Might wanna lose some of that mud before we shove off. Your legs’ll start to get heavy pretty quick otherwise.”

He snapped open a folding knife and handed it to me. I walked across the small clearing toward a large rock, where I intended to sit and clean the soles of my boots while Wood and the others squared away first-aid equipment and shrugged on their backpacks. That’s when I noticed fresh tire tracks on the frosty ground.