Rescue Me (5 page)

“Tell me what's going on.” When Spencer
didn't acknowledge her, she pushed at his back. Hard. It was like
pushing a building. He didn't so much as sway and continued to
ignore her. She brought her left hand back, ready to punch him,
when he ended the call and spun around. He spotted her fist up,
damning evidence of her next action, and then riveted his gaze to
her face. A slow, steady grin pulled across his lips, curling the
corners. The smile reached his eyes, causing them to gleam.

Oh, how she hated him right now.

He handed her cell to her and walked
away.

She called after him. “You don't get to
leave.”

Spencer slowed and faced her. “Get your teams
into the field.”

She marched up to him so she didn't have to
yell in front of the OLs. “Tell me what you meant when you said
they
. Does Tommy have someone out there with him?”

He kept his tone guarded. “What difference
does that make?”

“It makes a hell of a lot of difference. Kids
alone are predictable. They walk in circles. They are scared of
strangers and are less likely to answer our voice checks. The
protocol is completely different when I'm searching for a lone kid.
If he's out there with someone else, I need to know that.”

Spencer tensed and relaxed his jaw several
times. He brought his hands to his hips as he clearly debated
telling her more. When he didn't speak and only shook his head, she
blurted her ultimatum before she could stop herself.

“Let me make it easy for you.” Kat waited
until she had his undivided attention. He watched her carefully,
cautiously. “If you don't share with me the details of what I'm
about to send my people into, we pack up and go home. I will not
put any of my teams in danger.”

A frown creased his brow. “You'd use a kid's
life as leverage to get your precious answers?”

“You'd risk a kid's life just to keep your
precious secrets?” she countered.

Spencer thinned his lips to a fine line. “You
want answers? Fine. Tommy Miller was supposed to be up here.”

“With family.” It wasn't a question. More of
a reminder to keep him in character with his lie.

“That's right. When he wandered off, TREX was
sent in to find him.”

“And with your endless amounts of resources,
you couldn't do that.”

“No,” Spencer ground out, followed by several
of his favorite curses. “When we got here, no Tommy.”

“Then how do you know he's even out
here?”

“Because we were sent in to retrieve him.”
Spencer was tense, despite the forced calm in his voice.

Now they were getting somewhere. “Retrieve
him from where? Here?”

“I—” He stopped and pressed his finger to his
ear as he shifted his gaze away from her. After several seconds, he
dropped his hand to his neck and touched his collar. “Understood.
On my way.”

He brought his attention to her as his
expression hardened and settled as steel in his eyes. She hated it
when he looked at her like that. She also knew she couldn't push
him any further or he'd explode. “He's out here, Kathryn. Whether
he's alone or not, he's out here and it's up to us to bring him in.
Now, as you ask more questions, time is ticking away. We have to
get out there and get him back.”

Get him back?
Oh, shit. It
clicked.

“He was taken, wasn't he? This is a
kidnapping.” Why else would TREX be involved? Goddamn him for
keeping something like this from her. This changed everything. They
weren't just looking for a scared little boy. They were tracking
people trying to keep him from being found.

He gave her a curt nod. If she hadn't been
staring at him, waiting for some sort of answer, she would have
missed it.

“How many kidnappers?”

He held up three fingers.

“Are they still with Tommy?”

He shook his head and brought his finger up
to his lips to silence her from asking any other questions. When he
pointed at his ear, she nodded in understanding. They were being
monitored.

“Can we bypass your rule of no deployment in
the dark and just get your teams out there?”

Giving him a single nod, she spun to brief
her OLs. Once she had the teams deployed, she'd corner Spencer and
demand he give her the entire story behind this search. If she
couldn't get him to talk, she'd turn on the rest of the TREX agents
she knew were out there.

One way or another, she'd finally get some
answers. She deserved the truth and refused to settle for anything
but.

Tommy Miller's life depended on it.

The six-man TREX team found a nice opening
hidden from view of base camp while at the same time giving Spencer
a view of the Com Van. The trees provided enough shadow in the
daylight for them to stay out of sight as he monitored the search.
The last of the teams had been deployed, leaving base camp empty
except for the giant white K-SAR motor home.

Spencer already had all the team's
frequencies dialed in and listened to the drumming of the search's
radio traffic. It was quiet. Too quiet. He didn't like it. It had
been hours since first discovering those bodies. Tommy could be
anywhere by now.

A shiver from the air snuck in and Spencer
shifted in his Kevspa. A one-piece bodysuit that made them all look
like Spiderman in black, it had kept several agents breathing when
they shouldn't have been. Kevlar and spandex woven together in a
nice, bullet-resistant package TREX dubbed Kevspa, it didn't hide
shit on a person, but it did its job at deflecting knives and
bullets. And, in this case, also protected them from the thorns and
sharp fucking branches trying to gouge out a piece of their flesh.
As an added bonus, Kevspa fit perfectly under anything and
everything.

“Do you think she has any coats in that
thing?” Snyder nodded at the Com Van. “I'm freezing my nuts off out
here.”

“TREX up and quit bitching,” Spencer barked
at him. Snyder narrowed that dark glare at him in return.

“I'm with Snyder on this one.” McKoy crossed
his arms in front of him and shoved his hands into his pits. “It's
fucking freezing out here.”

Aims and Cummings were ten yards away
punching each other in the arm over and over, laughing as they
tried to outdo the other. Spencer rolled his eyes and glanced over
at Lyons, who'd found a rock to lean against and get some sleep
while they were on required stand down. He turned his attention
back to the Com Van.

Kathryn was in there with that ass, Becker.
She could hold her own and he knew that, but that didn't make it
any easier waiting out here hidden in the safety of the shadows
while she ran the search with Mr. Shit-For-Brains. Rand could make
it out to the base camp in less than an hour. Spencer would sure as
hell feel a lot better if Rand joined them in that Com Van. As an
ex-SEAL, Walter Randall knew how to kill a man seven different ways
with just a look. He had a body conditioned for battle and
instincts twice as deadly. He'd make sure Kathryn stayed safe while
the rest of them went back into the field.

He pulled out his cell and dialed the number.
“I need you mobile.”

“Kat told me to stay here in the office.”

“Who do you work for?”

Rand laughed and it pissed him off. “Cut the
bullshit, Allen. I know my role in this game. I'm not about to blow
my cover so you can have someone there Kat trusts enough to allow
in the Com Van. Besides, if she sees me out there, she's going to
have my ass. And then she's going to go after yours. It's safer for
us all if I stay here and you quit thinking with your dick.”

“Fuck you. I'm thinking about the find.” That
and Spencer didn't want Kathryn alone in the goddamn Com Van with
Becker.

“Then let me do my job. Call me if you need
something other than to bitch.” Rand hung up.

Spencer squeezed the phone as he fought to
control the unease wracking his body. Why the hell was Rand
fighting him on this? Why didn't anyone else feel the sense of
urgency about this find that he did? Something didn't feel right
about this whole situation. The kidnappers had to have known Martin
Miller had a long reach. Men with that much wealth and power always
did. They had to have known he'd bring in his own team to track
down his grandson. Hell, it's what the agents of TREX did every
goddamn day. They found stuff. Anything that could be considered a
threat. Person. Place. Thing. They were the best of the best. They
never failed.

He refused to have this find go down as the
first failure in TREX history.

Why choose the grandson of someone with the
power to destroy them? Lots of billionaires had family to choose
from. It was like a grocery store for mercenaries wanting to make a
quick buck, yet these mercs picked Tommy Miller. A mistake on their
part?

Mercs like
this
didn't make mistakes
like
that
.

These guys were way too methodical from the
beginning to screw up this close to the payoff. This part of the
plan made no sense. Spencer wanted to talk it out with Lyons, but
he'd started to snore. Being perceptive all the time drained the
brain. Snyder had just finished checking his weapons for the third
time. He definitely needed something to take his mind off the
arsenal he had hanging on him.

“Hey, Allen?” Snyder checked his .45 before
replacing it in the holster. “What do you think we're looking at
here?”

Spencer glanced at McKoy as he moved in to
listen to their conversation. Good. The more scenarios they came up
with the better chance they had at landing on the right one. “I
think we're dealing with pros. Tommy Miller wasn't a random
choice.”

“Mercs?” McKoy asked. The kid had potential.
Not only did he want in the middle of the action, he was one hell
of a shot.

“That's my guess.” Spencer ran his hand
through his hair.

McKoy inched closer. “Do you think they know
his connection with TREX?”

“I have no idea, and that bugs the shit out
of me.”

“So let's say these mercs hand-picked Tommy
Miller,” Snyder started. “They had to have known Martin Miller
would bring TREX in to find him. If they even knew his connection
to TREX.”

“They knew.” No way could they not. Mercs did
their homework before any job. Tommy Miller was hand-picked for
something bigger. But what? To draw out TREX and take them down? It
would take something bigger than kidnapping a kid to do that.

“Maybe they wanted to start a war,” McKoy
offered.

Snyder snorted. “Why would kidnapping one
little kid start a war? Martin Miller is powerful, but he's not
that powerful.”

Spencer thought about that. Snyder was right.
One boy wouldn't be enough to start a war, despite what the mercs
thought. But, on the other hand, McKoy's comment had merit. Spencer
leaned up against a tree as he continued to run through the
scenarios in his head. No matter how many different theories he
came up with, his mind went back to the mercs and a war.

He glanced back to the Com Van. If the theory
of mercs wanting to start a war panned out, he had to tell Kathryn.
Her teams were in danger if more mercs were out there, just waiting
to pick them off. Until they had proof, he couldn't involve her in
he and his team's wild conspiracy theories and jeopardize the
search. Kathryn would pull her teams faster than it takes to soft
boil an egg if she knew the truth.

Yet another secret he'd have to keep from
her. Fan-fucking-tastic.

“I got something to spring on you boys,”
Lyons, awake from his nap, spoke up. He stood and joined the group.
Aims and Cummings joined as well and the five TREX agents gave
their veteran brother their full attention. “Before you hear it
anywhere else, I wanted to be the one to tell you. This is my last
find.”

Spencer's blood slowed as Lyons rested that
troubled green gaze on him. “Are they forcing you out?”

Lyons shook his head. “Hell no, nothing like
that. I just realized that I'm in my fifties and the only traveling
I've done is with you guys. For twenty-four years now Mary has sat
in that house waiting on me to stop playing
G.I. Joe
. Our
twenty-fifth anniversary is coming up this summer and I want to
take her somewhere that's more than a day's trip away from the rest
of you.”

Spencer clenched his hands into fists. “Are
you sure you want to do this?”

“It's better than seeing your ugly faces
every goddamn day.” Although Lyons said one thing, his expression
said something completely different. Sadness and regret swirled in
his eyes. The man loved being a field agent. No, he didn't want
this. TREX was forcing him out.

When Spencer stared him down, knowing he had
more to say, Lyons finally gave in. “Besides, I'm starting to feel
every one of the years I've been a TREX agent. Don't look so
shocked, Spence. You'll get a new agent assigned to the team, one
half my age and twice as fast.”

“Fuck that,” Spencer snapped as his
irritation quickly transformed to anger. He didn't want another
agent. “I like the team the way it is.”

“What's that saying? Accept the things you
cannot change.”

“Or change the things you can't accept,” he
countered.

“You can't turn back the hands of time.”

Didn't he know it
.

Spencer shifted his focus back to the Com Van
and ignored the sudden churning in his gut. He couldn't imagine a
find without Lyons. Sure, he'd been out in the field without his
mentor, but he knew Lyons was never too far off.

Lyons retiring? Son of a bitch. As if he
didn't have enough shit cluttering his brain. While the rest of the
team congratulated Lyons—for what, Spencer had no idea—he kept his
back to them until he could say something that wouldn't make him
sound like a first class prick.

“So let's send Lyons out in style,” Snyder
said. “After this find, we celebrate.”