Rescue Me (10 page)

“I don't know anything!”

“What's going on?” Martha cried. Martin
Miller pulled his daughter into his arms. Apparently he knew not to
get in Spencer's way when he got like this, too.

Martha fought her father as she tried to get
to Damon. “Let me go.”

“Stay out of it, sweetheart.”

She punched at her father's arms around her.
“He's killing him! Damon? He can't breathe. Let him go, you
monster! Daddy, do something.”

“Two.” Spencer squeezed tighter. Salazar was
turning purple. He clawed at Spencer's hand but it didn't make a
difference. And now he was turning blue.

“I…can't…”

“Three.” He lifted Salazar clear off the
ground, pulled a gun, and brought it up to Salazar's face.
Salazar's eyes flew open wide and he put up his hands. When Spencer
cocked the gun, Salazar snapped.

“He's on a peak.”

“
We're
on a peak. You'd better give me
more than that.” Spencer dug the barrel into Salazar's cheek.

“They took him to a peak. That's all I
know.”

Martha's cries of desperation silenced
immediately as she stood in her father's hold, her eyes wide.
“D-Damon? What are you saying?” When no one answered her, she
started in, her voice an octave higher. “He said they took him. Did
someone take my son? Talk to me, damn you!” She punched at her
father. “Someone tell me what's going on!”

Martin Miller held her tighter as his
expression displayed the same amount of shock as Martha's did.
“Salazar? Did you have something to do with my grandson's
disappearance?”

“Shut up.” Spencer lethal tone sliced into
the air. The tent fell silent except for Martha's sobs against her
father's shoulder.

Kat swallowed tightly and had to turn away
from Martha. The anguish washing over her twisted in Kat's heart.
No mother should ever have to deal with something like this.

Spencer spoke. “How about you start at the
beginning?”

“I've told you everything I know.”

“You wouldn't be lying to me, would you? I'd
hate to spray your gray matter all over the inside of this
tent.”

“I swear.”

Spencer moved the gun up to Salazar's
forehead.

Salazar cried out as his hands went up. He
visibly trembled. “I swear! They took him to the peak.”

“
The
Peak?” Kat broke in as her pulse
suddenly throbbed in her ears. “Or
a
peak?”

“I don't know.”

Spencer pushed the gun harder into Salazar's
skull.

“The Peak! The Peak!”

Oh sweet Jesus. Kat's heart stopped and
painfully started again. “Spence, we've been searching on the wrong
side of this mountain.
The
Peak is Capital Peak and it's two
miles south of here.”

Spencer jerked the gun away and touched the
collar of his turtleneck. “Weber, get ready to move. We're on the
wrong fucking peak. I need a team in here. Now.”

Almost immediately, TREX men in black poured
into the tent, saw Spencer nod at Salazar, and surrounded the
man.

“You son of a bitch!” Martha screamed and
tried to break from her father's grasp. If it were Kat, she'd let
Martha at him. He deserved to feel the wrath of a mother protecting
her child. “What did you do with my son?”

Without a word the TREX men zip tied Salazar
and dragged him out, no doubt to conduct their own interrogation.
Kat shuddered at the thought of what they were about to do to him
to get him to talk.

Dan Weber walked in, took one look at Martin
Miller consoling his daughter, and then rested his gaze on Spencer
and Kat. Spencer gave a nod at the Millers. Weber nodded in
return.

Weber pressed his collar. “Aims. Cummings.”
Within a few seconds, two TREX agents walked into the tent. “Ms.
Miller? This is Bruce and Alan. They are going to sit with you
while I talk with Spencer.”

He didn't wait for an answer from the Millers
and stormed out. Spencer hurried after him. Oh, the hell with that.
Kat refused to let TREX cut her out on this. She just broke this
thing wide open and those were still her teams out there. She ran
outside and spotted Spencer with his SAC off to her left. When she
approached, they stopped talking.

“Tell me what's going on.”

“We don't have time,” Weber growled. “Get
your teams over to that other peak.”

He did
not
just order her like he had
a say in this. “Not until you talk to me.”

Weber glared at her. “If you don't—”

“I'll take care of it,” Spencer cut in and
turned to her, his back to Weber. “Listen, there are some things
about this find we are not going to be able to share with you,
Kathryn. You're going to just have to accept that.”

“Tell me where the cabin is. We start
there.”

“Jesus Christ, Allen.” Weber shook his head
as he glared at Spencer. “Did you tell her anything else you were
ordered not to?”

“She overheard Miller talking to me about the
cabin.”

“I also know about the kidnappers. The
dead
kidnappers. If you want me to move my teams to the
other peak, you'd better give me more to go on than what I've
got.”

Spencer lowered his voice as he spoke to his
SAC. “I think we need to read her in completely.”

“Take a walk, Allen.”

“But sir, she needs to know.”

Weber's expression stilled as his gaze turned
lethal. “Walk. Now.”

Spencer narrowed his eyes. He thinned his
lips. With a curt nod, he spun on his booted heel and stormed off,
leaving Kat stunned. And then pissed at Weber for sending him away
before he could tell her anything.

Now she understood why he couldn't say
anything. Dan Weber wouldn't let him.

Well, fine. She'd just make
Mr. Arrogant
SAC
tell her. She folded her arms in front of her and faced
him. “I'm waiting.”

“I'll give you the coordinates of the
cabin.”

“Not good enough.”

“That's all you're going to get.”

“Then you'll get nothing from me.” She
brought her radio back up. As much as she wanted to help find Tommy
Miller, she would not put her teams in harm's way. She was about to
make the call to have the teams return to base when Weber stopped
her.

“Please, Kat. We can't find this kid without
your help. We don't have the resources.”

Something snapped when he said those words.
As much as she wanted to tell TREX to go to Hell, she couldn't do
that to Martha Miller. It wasn't her fault TREX kept secrets and it
certainly wasn't Tommy's. “Anything else you'd like to tell
me?”

“We found blood where we located two of the
kidnappers and ran it. It's Tommy's. Our subject is hurt.”

“My God,” she whispered and went numb.

“The rest of your answers can wait.”

She nodded and drew in a breath to regroup.
The frigid air caught in her lungs, stopping her dead still. A
sniff thrust a prickled wash across her skin. The heaviness in the
air as she breathed it in—not wet, as it smelled before or after a
rain storm—but heavy with frost and crystals, and sharp chills. She
closed her eyes and for an instant she was a child again, praying
for snow and jumping around in excitement when that smell hit her
senses.

She prayed for the opposite now.

She lifted her gaze to the sky. Ominous gray
clouds had already started to roll in. A quick glance at the haze
hovering around Capital Peak confirmed her worst fear on a
search.

Snow.

As if they didn't have enough of a challenge.
“Uh, Dan?”

He looked at her and then up at the sky.
“What is it?”

“We need to move fast. That Winter Storm
Warning NOAA has been predicting is here.”

Spencer rode in the back of the SUV as Weber
drove the logging road that connected the peak of Larch Mountain to
Capital Peak. Shit. How could they have been so myopic to not see
this? They'd wasted hours searching for Tommy Miller on the wrong
fucking peak.

They had a fifty-fifty chance on the
direction he'd go. They chose wrong.

The droning of the search frequencies
cluttered his thought process. He pulled the receiver out of his
ear, looking up at the ceiling of the SUV while he deliberated.

They may already be too late. The memory of
another search hit him hard. Kathryn had taken the death of Emery
Haynes personally. As the head of K-SAR, she blamed herself when
the rescue turned to recovery. She had no idea her involvement in
that search was for nothing more than show. Emery Haynes' fate had
already been decided.

Nothing Spencer could do or say would have
changed that, so he'd remained silent. He could have told her about
his role in that search. He could have gone against direct orders
and filled her in on the details. But he didn't. He chose his
loyalty to TREX over his love for her.

And she'd left him because of it.

Putting aside the issues with the Haynes
Search, he could have chased her down the road when she peeled out
of the driveway. But he didn't. It disgusted him what a coward he
was for not going after her. He'd let her run away, let her give up
on him. Hell, he'd given up on himself that day and every day
since.

“The snow is falling faster,” Gessler pointed
out the obvious.

“You think?” Weber fired back.

“It's a bitch finding anything when it's
snowing.”

“Thank you.”

“You should let me drive.” Gessler grinned,
as always. It still shocked Spencer that he and Weber were best
friends. Talk about opposites.

“I'm driving.”

Gessler moaned. “But you drive like an old
man.”

“Kiss my ass. I'm trying to keep us
alive.”

“I could keep us alive
and
get us
there ten minutes faster.”

Spencer tuned them out and closed his eyes.
He hadn't slept more than a few hours over the past two days and
Jesus did he feel it now. Snyder had already passed out on
Spencer's left and snored. His head rested against the window.
McKoy's snores joined in on Spencer's right.

“Driving in the snow always reminds me of
Star Trek
.” Gessler brought his hands up as if grabbing a
yoke in front of him. “When they'd hit warp speed all the stars
whizzed by. The snow blowing by looks just like it.”

Spencer glanced out the windshield and hated
to admit he was right. It looked exactly like the stars at warp
speed. The fact that anything Gessler said made sense told Spencer
that he really did need sleep.

He let his mind settle back on a beautiful
redhead with intense pale blue eyes. If only things were different.
He could see himself with her the rest of his life and that scared
the shit out of him. The instant Kathryn had confessed her love,
things changed between them. He had no choice but to pull back and
push her away. He couldn't afford to fall in love. Next would be
marriage. Kids. And then they'd live happily ever after.

He knew better than to believe in fairy
tales.

Who was he kidding? He fell in love with her
the instant he met her. That would never change. His misery was his
own damn fault. He should have never let it get that far. That was
his first mistake. He knew better. Hell, he'd made a personal vow
to never fall in love, to never have another human being rely on
him for anything other than his duty as a TREX agent. Each time an
agent died in the line of duty solidified his belief. He didn't
live a lifestyle that catered to the happily ever after.

After what he went through with his own
father's death, no fucking way would he put Kathryn through
something like that. Did that make him a selfish bastard? Maybe.
But the look on the face of each agent's loved ones at the funerals
clawed at him. Every goddamn time. The desolate grief at losing
their soul mate. The anger directed at the other agents for
surviving when their loved ones hadn't. The hopelessness in their
expressions now that they were alone.

And the pain. So much pain.

He'd never forget the night he lost his dad.
Spencer ground out a sigh as the deep, menacing memory stirred in
his gut. He'd been thirteen and a general pain in the ass sprouting
into his hormonal teenage years.

It was three in the morning and his mother
had answered the door after what seemed an eternity of knocking.
For the longest time she just stood there staring at it with wide,
frightened eyes. When she opened the door, TREX agents four deep
stood there. They didn't even have to say anything.

And then she screamed. Dear God how she'd
screamed at hearing the news, a sound that echoed in his head and
curdled his blood, even now. She'd cried out for Spencer and held
him so tight he couldn't breathe. The memory, so vivid and forever
seared in his mind, still constricted his throat as he relived the
gut-wrenching pain he'd felt that night.

And what did he go and do? Become a TREX
agent himself. Maybe it was some obscure need to somehow right the
wrong that had been brought down on him and his mother. He wanted,
no he needed to make the world a safer place so no other child, no
wife would have to endure what he and his mother had to.

He groaned, a low, tortured growl that
shuddered through him. Kathryn had been his salvation from all
that. She made everything more…well…just
more
. And he'd
fucked it up.

His entire life he'd distanced himself from
others, never getting too close. Then Kathryn went and challenged
all that. He never knew someone could love a person that much,
never knew it was physically possible to hurt when that person
hurt. No one could affect him like her, and that terrified him.
She'd opened up a whole new world to him, both good and beyond
terrible.

The night she'd told him she loved him opened
his eyes and gave him no choice but to deal with his own horrible
memories. The familiar darkness he'd held inside for twenty years
overtook his sanity and won. He wasn't proud of it but couldn't
change the outcome now. The idea of having a wife and kids had
paralyzed him. Spencer couldn't bear to have a son forced to look
at pictures in order to remember his father's face. He didn't want
Kathryn crying herself to sleep while whispering his name. He
couldn't do that to her.