Five missing teenagers. One silent boy. A trail that doesn't add up.
It shouldn't be burning. Rain is pounding the mountain, but smoke rises from Devil's Bowl, and Cal Walker's instincts tell him something is wrong. He finds the evidence scattered through the canyon: melted backpack buckles, bullet holes punched through trail signs, a faded graduation cap half-buried in mud.
Five Echo Creek High School seniors went camping two nights ago. They haven't come back. But the teenagers aren't the only ones lost on Black Mountain. In a drainage pipe beneath a collapsed section of trail, Cal finds a young boy. He's on the autism spectrum, in full sensory overload — rocking, nonverbal, terrified. The fire and chaos around him have overwhelmed every coping mechanism he has. His father is frantic and aggressive. His mother is begging Cal to do something.
Cal Walker has pulled people from burning buildings, collapsing ice fields, and flooded canyons. He has never faced anything like this. His ropes and harnesses are useless. His commanding voice makes it worse. He has to become someone he's never been — quiet, patient, still — to reach a child who cannot tell him what's wrong.
LOST BOY is the seventh book in the Black Mountain Series — and the one that proves the hardest rescues don't happen on a cliff face.
Genre: Mystery
It shouldn't be burning. Rain is pounding the mountain, but smoke rises from Devil's Bowl, and Cal Walker's instincts tell him something is wrong. He finds the evidence scattered through the canyon: melted backpack buckles, bullet holes punched through trail signs, a faded graduation cap half-buried in mud.
Five Echo Creek High School seniors went camping two nights ago. They haven't come back. But the teenagers aren't the only ones lost on Black Mountain. In a drainage pipe beneath a collapsed section of trail, Cal finds a young boy. He's on the autism spectrum, in full sensory overload — rocking, nonverbal, terrified. The fire and chaos around him have overwhelmed every coping mechanism he has. His father is frantic and aggressive. His mother is begging Cal to do something.
Cal Walker has pulled people from burning buildings, collapsing ice fields, and flooded canyons. He has never faced anything like this. His ropes and harnesses are useless. His commanding voice makes it worse. He has to become someone he's never been — quiet, patient, still — to reach a child who cannot tell him what's wrong.
LOST BOY is the seventh book in the Black Mountain Series — and the one that proves the hardest rescues don't happen on a cliff face.
Genre: Mystery