Rescue Me (3 page)

“Was she awake?” Snyder asked.

Spencer shot him a glare. Snyder found a
sudden interest in one of the overkill of weapons he had hanging on
him.

“Well? Was she?” McKoy, the probie dumb shit,
would learn fast when to ask questions.

And when not to.

Spencer turned to face him and stared him
down until he, too, darted his attention to something other than
his team leader. “Don't you have somewhere to be?”

Snyder spoke up way too casually, taking the
heat off McKoy. “Larch Mountain is only two miles up. We'll make it
in fifteen minutes, tops. We have a few minutes to spare. Give us
something.”

“No.”

“Come on, Allen. You just talked to the woman
that fucked you over.”

That was definitely backward.
“No.”

“But you were talking to K-SAR,” McKoy said
as he joined in on the inquisition. He then widened his eyes and
dropped his jaw and the comprehension sank in. “You and the head of
K-SAR? I thought we weren't allowed to fraternize with our
contractors. They drilled that into us back at
Gahanna
.”

“We're not,” Snyder confirmed and gave
Spencer a look. “Our boy got in some deep shit for it, too.”

“Was it serious?”

“He asked her to move in with him.”

Spencer's eyes burned as he bounced his glare
between the two men. He balled his hands into fists. “Quit living
in the past, Snyder. Kathryn and I are through.”

Even as Spencer said it, he didn't believe
it. They were far from over. The hunger scraping across his nerves,
leaving them raw and him in engorged pain, confirmed it. Definitely
far from over.

McKoy redirected the conversation, thank God.
“So tell me about K-SAR. Search and rescue for hire? I thought SAR
was a volunteer thing.”

“Sanctioned SAR is,” Spencer corrected,
thankful to be talking about something other than his love life.
“Kathryn tends to dabble in the gray.”

McKoy lifted his brow as he thrust out his
chin. “Anything illegal?”

Spencer didn't much appreciate the tone in
the probie's voice. “No, nothing like that. She was a coordinator
with the state's search and rescue command team for years before
branching out into the private sector after being told one too many
times that they didn't have the resources for something. She runs
her company the same way she runs her searches, with 100%
conviction. She gets what she wants when she wants it.” Spencer
clenched his fists tighter in an effort to control his voice, to
hold back the lust thickening his tone, driving his need to see her
again. To touch her and hold her. They were on a mission, for
Christ's sake. His lust had to take a back seat.

Snyder glanced at his watch. “Time to run,
literally. Probie, try and keep up.”

McKoy hurried after Snyder.

Spencer watched them disappear into the
darkness before touching his mic. He muttered a curse when he
realized it was still on VOX. Reluctantly he said, “This is Allen.
Awaiting assignment.”

“Go home,” Weber ordered.

No way did he hear him correctly. “Sir?”

“You've been emotionally compromised,
Allen.”

The fuck he had. “I'm fine. Our mission is
not complete. We don't walk away.”

“I don't want a repeat of the last time you
and Ms. Davis were together.”

Jesus Christ. Did everyone know about that?
“Understood.” When Weber didn't say anything else, Spencer
prompted. “Sir? My assignment?”

“Head to base camp.”

Spencer had already started after Snyder and
McKoy.

“And Allen? If you screw up another one of
our finds because of her, I won't stop the board from booting your
ass out this time. Hell, I may just do it myself.”

Kat Davis hated insomnia. Despised it. But,
she reasoned as she drove to base camp, in her profession it
actually worked to her advantage. Getting callouts in the middle of
the night rarely woke her. It was a part of life. At least
her
life.

The nightmares didn't recur nearly as much as
they used to, but they were still there, just waiting for her to
let her guard down. To this day, eighteen years after she'd been
lost for two days, she had yet to go back into those woods behind
her parents' house for fear whatever monsters that hadn't taken her
before would still be there, waiting.

Kat pulled in a deep breath and let it out to
clear her head of that dark time. Maybe she should call Rand. Her
logistics officer had a sixth sense when it came to her requests.
Talking with him would at least keep her mind off the nerves
spiking her heart rate at seeing a certain tall, dark, and
ridiculously handsome man with smoky gray eyes.

Her cell phone rang. She recognized the
number and hit her Bluetooth to answer. “I was just thinking about
you, Rand.”

“Did it include calling me any good
four-letter words?”

“Sorry. Not this time.”

“I'm not pissing you off enough then,
clearly.” His British accent had faded over the years, but she
still heard it there. “Fine day for a search, don't you think?”

“What have you got for me?”

“Becker is at basecamp with the Com Van now.
We've got ground, horse, mobile, and dog units all awaiting your
arrival.”

“No deployment?”

Rand's chuckle rumbled into the line. “I've
been with you long enough to know your rules, Kat. No search
deployment after dark or before sun up. That ground pounder's
busted ankle because he couldn't see where he was going still eats
at me.”

Good. He shouldn't have gone around her and
deployed her teams into the field before sunrise. The risk
outweighed the potential reward and she would not put her teams in
any danger.

“Anything else?”

Rand cleared his throat and Kat gripped her
steering wheel. She knew his signals. He was about to ask her
something personal. “Have you had a chance to talk to anyone from
TREX?”

“You mean Spencer?”

“Yes, precisely.”

“He's the one who called me.” And, speaking
of the dirty devil, he beeped in on her second line. “That's him on
the other line.”

“Try not to kill each other.” He hung up.

Kat debated not answering, knowing who waited
for her. TREX Special Agent Spencer Allen. Dominantly male. Highly
sexual. He commanded authority with nothing more than a smoldering
look from those destructive gray eyes.

She didn't want to talk to him without having
at least half a dozen witty comebacks to cover her nerves, but
considering the circumstances, she'd make do. Besides, when it came
to the sexy, irritating man, she usually thought of the perfect
comeback two seconds after she said something that made her sound
like a complete moron.

Showtime. She answered with the perkiest
voice she could muster at two-thirty in the morning. “What's up,
Spence?”

“How close are you?”

“ETA in ten.”

“Can you make it in five? We have teams
waiting on you.”

What little teeny tiny excitement that had
sparked to life at the thought of seeing him again fizzled. She
knew better than to think she'd ever see him outside of one of
TREX's precious missions. Or finds, as he constantly reminded her
they preferred to call them.

“It won't be light for several hours. Until
then, the teams aren't going anywhere. Besides, Travis can hand out
the assignments and prep the teams.”

“I wouldn't trust Becker finding a pair of
matching socks, let alone a six-year-old lost in the woods. We need
you on this, not him.”

Travis Becker had been her SAR co-coordinator
with the state before partnering with her to create K-SAR. He was
every bit as capable of finding their subject as Kat was. Spencer
didn't like him simply because Travis spent more time with her than
he did.

She decided not to open up that can of worms.
Guaranteed they'd be fighting before she reached basecamp if she
did. But then her attitude engaged her tongue before her brain
could stop it. “Travis is just as much K-SAR as I am. If you have a
problem with that, call in another SAR agency.”

“We need K-SAR.” The grinding of Spencer's
teeth echoed through the line. When he spoke, he kept his voice
low, even. Kat knew that tone. He was close to exploding. Too damn
bad. She refused to let him have his way on this. Let him pout.

“Then cut this bullshit about Travis and talk
to me about the search.”

More grinding of teeth followed by a very
distinctive growl. Oh, yeah. Definitely close to exploding.
“Point-Last-Seen is Larch Mountain, as you already know. It's no
place for a kid. There are way too many roads up here to get lost
on.”

“And not every downhill road leads to
safety,” she added, focusing on the search and not the way his
voice—even at a growl—stroked over her senses. She hated that he
still had that kind of affect over her. They were coworkers now.
Nothing more.

Tell that to the steady throb centering
between her legs.

“We have to move fast. There's a storm moving
in.”

“I know.” She always listened to the NOAA
report before and during a search.

“At least if they're predicting it, it's a
guarantee it won't hit, right?”

Ah, small talk. Classic avoidance. She
decided to humor him and keep it light. The real fireworks would
start the minute they saw each other again. She was not looking
forward to that. “Not this time. The entire state is under a Winter
Storm Warning on a front coming out of Canada. We're going to get
hit with it.”

“Won't that be fun.”

She almost broke character and laughed at the
sarcasm in his tone. “Tell me about our subject.”

“His name is Tommy Miller. He's six years
old. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Last seen at the Larch Mountain
campground.”

“Did he wander off?”

Spencer hesitated. He only hesitated when he
needed to come up with a lie to cover whatever TREX really had on
their agenda. “Yes.”

“In the middle of January?”

“That's right.”

“With a Winter Storm Warning in affect?” She
caught herself and drew in a breath before she called him out on
his bullshit.

“Some families like to live on the edge.”

God how she hated it when he lied, and so
convincingly. If she didn't know every tone of his buttery voice,
she would have never caught it. His lies, forced by TREX or
otherwise, was the reason behind all their fights and, ultimately,
why they'd never work as a couple. She wanted answers and he
refused to give them.

And now, their first find together after a
year apart, started on yet another lie. Awesome. Kat laughed and
didn't even bother to filter the disgust and bitterness in her
tone. “Some things never change.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You're lying to me.”

“Who said I was lying?”

“I did.”

“Kathryn, please. You know if I could tell
you more I would.”

Damn him. God
damn
him for calling her
that name. She hated when he called her that. No, she actually
loved it. She just hated that she loved it. No one outside of her
immediate family called her Kathryn, except for Spencer. To
everyone else she was Kat Davis, owner of K-SAR. To Spencer, she
was Kathryn Louise. Or, when he really wanted to get to her, he'd
call her his Katy-Lou.

She blew out a breath. This didn't have to be
this hard. She needed to get over the fact that they'd never be
more than what they were right now. He could call her whatever he
wanted. That wouldn't change anything.

“Fine,” she conceded, not willing to expend
the energy needed to sort through his lies. She'd find a way to
learn the truth. She always did. “Let me ask this: how did TREX get
involved if it's a simple case of a kid wandering off? Don't you
guys only take cases to stop world domination? Or terrorist acts
before they happen? How does a missing six-year-old boy fall into
any of those categories?”

“Tommy's grandfather has connections.”

“Clearly.”

“And?” he asked after she didn't say anything
more.

“And what? Take the win, Spence. I'm not
going to dig.” Without missing a beat, she switched gears and
snapped into head of K-SAR mode. “The B-Line logging roads
surrounding Larch Mountain scatter across the north side of the
entire Black Hills. Has TREX searched every road?”

“In progress.”

“There are little spurs that finger out for
miles. That campground is the most popular site for camping because
there are so many places to tuck away for privacy.”

“So we could have civilians up here with us?”
He didn't sound happy about that.

“No one is going to be up there at twenty-six
hundred feet in the middle of January with a Winter Storm Warning
in effect. Being on the mountainside closest to the water makes the
weather too unpredictable.”

“NOAA says the snow won't hit until
noon.”

“NOAA's wrong.” She flicked her gaze to the
dark sky. It had cleared out, dropping the temperature down. No
wind. No clouds. The storm would hit, but not until later and then
it would sock them in.

“You think it's going to stall,” he said,
reading her mind. She both loved and hated that he could still do
that.

“Yep. So when it hits, it's going to hit us
hard. If we don't find Tommy before that storm does, we aren't
going to find him at all.”

Spencer ground out his favorite cuss word.
“So we find him before the storm hits. It's our only option.”

Finally, something they both agreed on.

“I'm almost there. See you soon.” She ended
the call as she turned off the highway and started her ascent up to
the Larch Mountain campground. Her knuckles were white as she
gripped the steering wheel. She hated the dark and hated driving in
it even more, especially on a narrow, windy gravel road.