Part 1
“Leave her up there. At this time it is no longer rescue, it is procedure.
The phrase came out of Graham Whitaker’s mouth with such ice-calm calm that several volunteers stopped bending the thermal blankets and looked at it as if they had just heard something indecent. Outside, snow was still falling over the fine, cruel Colorado Rocky Mountains, covering the pines, rescue vans and plasticized photographs of Celeste Whitaker, the state’s richest woman, who had been missing for 3 days.
Graham was not a stranger. It was his younger brother, the man who had given interviews crying in front of the cameras, that had hugged their mother while promising that he would not rest until he found her. But there, inside the makeshift command center in the gym of a rural school, away from the microphones, his patience had run out too quickly.
“Mr. Whitaker, we haven’t closed all sectors yet,” said the rescue chief.
“My sister fell with a private plane in a snowstorm,” Graham replied, adjusting his leather gloves. Don't turn this into an emotional circus.
A few steps away, Olivia Whitaker, Celeste's mother, squeezed a rosary in her hands. I didn't cry. It looked like stone. Next to him was Derek Sloan, a fiancé of Celeste and chief financial officer of the family business. His face was pale, but his eyes went and went to the maps too quickly, as if he did not look for a lost woman, but a pending signature.
Celeste Whitaker was 39 years old, 2 houses in California, a foundation with his last name and control of Whitaker Dominion, an empire of energy, hotels and land that his father had built before he died. She was admired, feared and hated with the same intensity. His disappearance had paralyzed newscasts, markets and even a Senate hearing where a multi-billion-proven pipeline purchase was being discussed.
