Rescue Me (4 page)

After a tense eternity, Kat pulled into
basecamp and parked her Xterra next to the Com Van before she let
out a sigh of relief. But then she sucked in another breath at the
sight of the man who had just walked into the beams of her
headlights.

How did he make ordinary look so damn
extraordinary? That black material strained to cover his tall,
broad body. His wide shoulders displayed perfectly in that snug
turtleneck. His wavy brown hair, worn longer than she remembered,
still drove her to the brink of sanity. He thrust his fingers
through it, a nervous habit of his that she absolutely adored.
Something about this chance meeting clearly had him upset.

She couldn't agree more.

Still, her angst over seeing him again took
second to the concern swirling in his dark eyes. She fought to calm
her racing heart and keep her expression slack, unreadable. In an
instant, he snapped back to the hard, dark brooding man that was
all business and never any pleasure.

No, that was a lie. He definitely knew how to
deliver pleasure. Spencer defined the very word, but only on his
schedule, never hers. And always planned. He never did anything at
the spur of the moment. The man didn't have a spontaneous bone in
his body.

Something unsettling moved in his eyes,
something she rarely saw in the hard-bodied male. Was that emotion
shadowing his gaze? Not fair. She'd worked up her defenses the
entire drive out here, but if he used something as raw as emotion
against her, she'd never survive.

Kat stepped out of her vehicle, leaving her
headlights on so she wouldn't miss a single change in his
expression. The smell of snow hung in the air like a dense fog. It
was cold, too cold for a six-year-old boy to be out in the
elements. Heavy cloud cover kept the temperature hovering right
below freezing. Ice crystals formed on the vehicles lining the
parking lot. The fog floating around base camp made for an eerie
scene and would, no doubt, hinder them using any of their air
support come daylight.

Inhaling deeply, she let it out, nice and
slow. She'd always loved the smell of the forest, even at three in
the morning. The crisp air awakened her senses like a cold drink on
a hot summer's day. The ice glittered as it floated in the air,
catching the light off the halogens illuminating her Com Van.

“Thank you for coming,” he said as she
stopped a few feet from him. When apparently that didn't satisfy
him, he closed the gap to a mere six inches and she swallowed
tightly as she fought to squelch the fury now twisting inside her.
“We really need K-SAR's help.”

Of course he'd make this about TREX and
K-SAR, and not about them as man and woman. He was so good at that,
building her up and then crushing her like a grape at a wine
festival. And she fell for it. Every time. A wave of hearty regret
brushed over her senses and burned into her, forcing a sense of
calm only surface deep.

“Well, I'm here now.”

Her heart fluttered in nervous anticipation
of another search with the mysterious TREX agency. The last search
they'd called her in on didn't turn out so well, both for her and
for her subject. She'd been so hell bent on trying to read Spencer
that she'd failed to find the subject in time. He died of exposure
and she'd blamed herself. She still blamed herself.

With a deep breath to clear her thoughts of
that search and focus on this one, she turned toward the Com Van.
When Spencer didn't follow her, she turned to see him in the same
spot, his arms crossed, his fingers drumming on his bicep.

“Are you coming or do you have to return to
your secret men-in-black convention hiding somewhere in the
shadows?”

“Let's not do this.”

“Do what?” She feigned innocence even though
she knew her eyes had to be icy blue. They always were when she got
pissed, and she was there now.

“You knew coming out here that TREX was
involved. It's never bothered you before.”

“It's always bothered me. I don't like
secrets, Spence.”

He kept his gaze on her, that look on his
face pure, controlled fury. “Kathryn—”

“Just tell me one thing,” she said and
crisply folded her arms under her breasts. “Are you telling me the
truth about this search? Was Tommy's PLS really Larch Mountain? Did
he really wander off?”

He didn't answer and she didn't expect him
to. Kat hated when he got like this. When it was his way or no way.
He decided the plan, the where and when, and nothing she said could
change his mind.

“I'll check in with you later,” Spencer
ground out, his voice cold, exact. “For now, get your teams
prepped. We move at first light.”

Frustration boiled in her blood. She did not
take orders well and he knew it. “If you think you can just—”

The look he shot her killed the rest of her
threat. Anger kept his features sharp, his eyes burning, his
expression still. One of these days she'd learn to defy that
look.

Today wasn't one of those days.

Kat made a beeline for her mobile command
center before she said something else to earn another one of those
looks from Spencer.

The forty-foot motor home had everything she
needed to run a search. State-of-the-art radio equipment lined the
walls of the gutted out bedroom. GPS trackers. SAR packs with
everything needed to survive in sub-zero temperatures for days. She
spared no expense when she created K-SAR. The private funding she
received each year allowed her to do what she wanted when she
wanted, all without having to jump through the hoops she used to
when she worked for the state.

She loved everything about her job—except
having to solicit people richer than God for money to fund K-SAR.
Still, it was far better than the alternative of hearing those
dreaded three words. No one should ever have to hear
not enough
resources
as an excuse when desperate to find a loved one.

Travis stepped out of the Com Van. “Howdy,
boss. Who's that with you?”

She glanced over her shoulder to see Spencer
walk toward the woods. No doubt he'd be meeting with the rest of
his TREX men. They rarely made themselves known, but she knew
they'd be close. They always were when TREX had anything to do with
her searches. It bothered her to have a group of grown men-in-black
babysitting her, but she knew to pick her battles. Fighting the
covert agency would be futile. Besides, they called her in on this
find. They had every right to be here.

“Is that Spencer?”

“Yep,” she answered, not wanting to give
Travis anything more until she had better answers surrounding this
search. And she'd get them, but not at the expense of Tommy
Miller's life. She'd put her teams into the field first and get
them started. And then she'd get her answers.

Travis's attention hadn't left Spencer since
he spotted him. “What is he doing here?”

“TREX called it in.”

“Shit. Why the hell didn't Rand tell me
that?”

She looked at him. “Why would that
matter?”

Travis put his hands up and took a step back.
“Still touchy about TREX. Got it and don't blame you one bit. If I
had an ex with a covert agency and who built our entire
relationship on lies, I'd have serious issues with working with
him.”

Kat didn't want to get into this with him.
Travis hated when K-SAR worked with TREX. She kept her voice steady
as she focused on the search. “Get the Operation Leaders from each
of the teams front and center. I want to brief them and get them
ready to deploy.”

“You're the boss.” Travis walked off toward
the crowd to get the OLs moving.

She brought her attention to the front of the
Com Van where they always pitched the large wall tent for the
family. She should check in with them and introduce herself. God
only knew what story Spencer concocted when he'd talked to
them.

When she rounded the corner, she stopped,
baffled. The tent wasn't there. Where'd they place the family camp?
A quick glance around for anything that would be big enough to
house the family of a lost little boy came up empty. Where was this
connected grandfather? His dad and mom? Siblings? Add in aunts,
uncles, cousins and the plethora of friends who always insisted on
helping at the searches, and she should be able to spot them in the
biggest tent in site. But she didn't see one. No large tents. No
camp trailers. Nothing.

Which made no sense. Weren't they up here
camping when Tommy wandered off? In what? And where? This only
reinforced her belief that Spencer had lied to her.

She chewed on her thumbnail as she waited for
Travis to return from gathering the OLs. When he did, she nodded
for him to follow her to the other side of the Com Van, away from
the OLs starting to gather.

“What's up, boss?”

“Where's the family?”

“It's three in the morning. They're probably
at home, sleeping.” He turned and started back to the front of the
Com Van.

“With their little boy lost in the woods?
That's quite an assumption. As first on the scene, you should have
questioned that right away.”

Travis slowed and tossed her a hard look from
over his shoulder. “That's a new record for you. You haven't even
been here five minutes and you're already finding fault with what
I'm doing.”

She should have known it would come to this.
Whenever Spencer Allen got between them, they ended up at each
other's throats. When she left Spencer, Travis and she had never
gotten along better. Even though Spencer wasn't back in her life,
it seemed Travis already had an issue with it.

She really didn't have time to put up with
bruised egos. Travis would just have to accept the fact that they
were working with TREX on this search. Spencer would just have to
accept that Travis would be working this search with her. If either
had a problem with it, they could take it out on each other and
leave her out of it.

Kat went on. “So you made the call not to
involve the family?”

“Rand didn't send them up here. I didn't
question it.”

But he should have. She grabbed her cell and
dialed Rand's number. As it rang, she called out to Travis, “Don't
wander off. We need to brief the OLs.”

“I have to pee and if you don't mind, I'd
rather do that without you following me, telling me how I'm doing
it wrong.”

She took a breath to say something but Rand
answered, pulling her attention to him. “Hey, boss. What's up?”

“Why isn't the family up here?”

“Because they don't work for K-SAR.”

“Cut the crap, Rand. Where are they? Our
subject is a six-year-old boy. His family was supposedly camping up
here when he wandered off. Why aren't they still up here looking
for him?”

“You know the family only gets in the way.
They don't think rationally. Count your blessings.”

“What about this well-connected
grandfather?”

“How did you know about him?” Rand's voice
changed. His usual playful, casual tone shifted to something hard
and even. He sounded, dare she say, exactly like Spencer did when
she got too close to an answer he didn't want to give. Spencer
lying to her pissed her off enough. She didn't need it from her own
team, too.

“Spencer told me all about him and his
connections,” she said, hoping by pretending to know about it than
she really did would get Rand to loosen his lips. He clearly knew
more about it than he let on.

“Oh he did, did he?” His voice grew even
flatter, smoother, his accent more pronounced.

“So cut the cover, Rand. I already know.”

“And what, exactly, is it you know?”

Her frustration mounted. “Why are you being
so evasive? You're my logistics officer. You should have
information
for
me, not keep it
from
me.”

Rand laughed and, just like that, his hard
sound disappeared, replaced by his easygoing demeanor. His accent
even seemed a bit more relaxed. “Evasive? Hell, I'm just trying to
get answers. I'm supposed to be your logistics officer, yet I'm the
last to know what's going on half the time. Do you need me out
there?”

She rounded the corner of the Com Van and
spotted several OLs gathering around. “Just a sec.” She moved her
cell away from her mouth. “Briefing in five, everyone. Make sure
you sign out a GPS from Travis in the Com Van. If you have your
own, get the local topography downloaded ASAP.” She brought her
cell back to her ear. “No. I like you better in the office.”

“Thanks so much.”

“You know what I mean.” She glanced up to see
Spencer walk out from the woods. His gaze locked on her. He didn't
slow as he chopped up the distance between them with his
well-muscled legs. Oh, great. He had a hard scowl that tightened
the edges of his face and the closer he got, the more she debated
running. Her heart rate spiked as she braced herself for fight or
flight. “Rand? I have to call you back.”

“But—”

Spencer took the phone out of her hand and
brought it up to his ear. Too stunned, she stood there, her mouth
open.

“Rand? Who else would she be talking to at
three in the morning?” Spencer narrowed that storming gaze on her.
“No, I didn't.”

Oh, shit. Rand must have called her bluff on
what she knew about the grandfather. She spiked an eyebrow to cover
her guilt and crossed her arms in front of her. She knew better
than to try and take her cell back. Not only would it not work,
she'd draw unwanted attention to them.

“I'll take care of it. In the meantime, get
me some air support. If they are in a clearing, I want to
know.”

His order broke Kat from her paralysis.
“
They?
”

He growled and turned his back to her. The
action had her clenching her fists to stop herself from tearing
into him, both arms swinging. She wasn't a violent person but
somehow Spencer always seemed to know exactly which buttons to push
to drive her into doing things she wouldn't normally do.