Off the Map (Winter Rescue #2) (13 page)

He’d had eight months to say the words she longed to hear, eight months to rustle up a fancy meal and woo her in the manner of normal human beings the world over. And all he’d done in that time was make her wonder if she was alone in believing she’d found the person she could spend the rest of her life with.

Goddamned bastard.
You didn’t get to make a declaration when facing death and then just leave it there. Deathbed confessions didn’t count.

“I can take your boot off without incurring further damages. I’m not an idiot.”

“You
are
an idiot, but that’s not the point. If your skull has stopped bleeding, I suggest you finish taking care of Jenga and get the team ready to head out.”

He dropped the snowpack on his eye, the white clump stained bright red in the center. “Are you serious?”

“Yes, I’m serious. This is what we came out here to do.” Save the dog. Give Scott the love of his life back. “We made decent time and the weather is holding well, all things considered. The sooner you guys can start setting up the search parameters, the better.”

“Carrie—you could have died.” He gave up on his annoyingly persistent grab for her boot, his expression earnest. “Please tell me you understand that. You were two seconds away from crashing into that rock and dying in my arms.”

She didn’t point out that they’d all been about two seconds away from crashing into that rock and dying in a collective heap. “You sure have a funny way of showing your affection. Asking me to risk everything for you and then getting mad when I do it.”

His lips grew white with tension. “You’re too careless with your own life.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Careless
was not what he said in the helicopter.
Careless
was not love. “I know what I’m doing, thank you very much.”

He sprang to his feet, heedless of his head injury, his vest a bright beacon against the wintry landscape. “No, you don’t. You don’t have any idea what it means to those of us on the ground and in the passenger seat, crossing our fingers that you once again manage to pull off the miraculous.”

Was this seriously the conversation they were going to have right now? There was a dog to find and a camp to set up and a declaration of love to talk about, and he was going to start up with this again?

“Did you forget the part where you told me I’m the only one brave enough and good enough to do this? Or was that just you trying to get your way?”

“It’s not that I don’t think you’re capable—of course it’s not that. It’s that I can’t sit at home wondering if you’re going to make it back in one piece, or if today’s the day you’re going to die. It
kills
me to see you go.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again, unsure how to respond.

“You make fun of my superstitions—and I get it, I really do.” He shook his head, his anger moving inward, turning bitter. “Scott Richardson believes in magic and fairies. Scott Richardson will cross the street rather than step on his own shadow. What a silly fool. But what you don’t understand is that it’s the only thing I
can
do. It’s the only option I have when I watch you walk out the door to go to work, not knowing if it’s the last time I’ll ever see you alive.”

This time, Carrie’s mouth stayed open, letting in the cold air and incredulity, leaving her breathless. He wasn’t… He hadn’t… He
could
n’t… “I don’t believe this. You did it on purpose, didn’t you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“This mission. This whole thing.” She flailed her hands out, livid with herself for not seeing it sooner. “You asked me to help you, knowing it would mean the end of my career.”

He laughed, the sound frantic, almost desperate. “That’s not even remotely close to what I’m saying right now. Did you miss the part where I told you how much I love you?”

Oh, she hadn’t missed it. It had penetrated her heart and blazed right through her better judgment, leaving a gaping hole behind. The fucking
nerve
of him.

“Do you know what I was doing when you were frolicking with puppies and learning how to shoot empty beer cans in Newman’s backyard?” she asked, her voice dangerous. “Do you have any idea how I spent the majority of my childhood?”

Scott blinked down at her, and she got to her feet—or, foot, rather—pushing him back when he tried to offer her a helping hand. It felt good to get up from the icy rock serving as a makeshift chair, her ass long since grown numb.

“I took the controls for the first time when I was six years old. Could copilot with some of the best air force pilots in the world by fourteen. Was flying solo at seventeen.” She felt a tight clench in her chest, a familiar dam about to burst. “If I wanted to spend any time with my dad, I had to do it with a headset on and my eyes on the horizon. So that’s what I did. Every day, for years, logging so many hours I never really learned how to do anything else.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“Even if it’s not what you meant, it doesn’t change the fact that you have zero faith in me. I know it sometimes seems like bad luck follows wherever I go—and maybe it does, maybe I
am
cursed—but if there’s one thing I can do, it’s fly a helicopter. It’s what I have instead of a family.” She took a deep breath, aware for the first time just how much anger she’d been holding inside—not because Scott had dumped her, but because he’d failed to support her when she needed him most. “Flying is all I have. It’s all I know. And when I got in that accident last month, you were supposed to be there to help me figure out what the hell my life is supposed to be next, not start treating me like a walking, talking disaster you were too afraid to touch.”

The stricken look on his face was enough to convince her that she’d finally gotten through his thick skull. Too bad she’d never been less enthusiastic about winning an argument in her life.

“I needed you, Scott. My entire world was crashing around me, and you just turned yourself off.”

“What are you doing on that foot, boss?” Ace whistled cheerfully as he approached, apparently deciding he’d had enough of discretion. “I told you to stay put until I could take a look at it.”

“Sorry.” She dropped back to the rock’s icy surface. “I’ll be good—and you can perform all the first aid you want in a minute. First, let’s get this ball rolling. Since it looks like this lovely spot has chosen us instead of the other way around, why don’t we go ahead and make it base camp?”

For the first time, she noticed their surroundings—
really
noticed them, not as a helicopter pilot looking for enough clearance to land, but as a human being with eyes and a heart and the sense of wonder that came with both.

These weren’t the tallest mountains she’d ever been on by far, and they were rugged in a forested way rather than a rocky way. There were no jagged edges reaching beyond the clouds or slopes of pure white untouched by footprints, but that didn’t detract from the majesty of their surroundings. If anything, the simplicity only enhanced it. Piles of fluffy snow were broken by thousands of stately evergreens that refused to make way. Whirls of white and grey touched down from the sky, and the air felt fresh rather than thin.

It was beautiful.

It was also dangerous. This forest, which looked so warm and inviting compared to the rocky summits of larger mountains, went on for miles in every direction, the hills rolling out in dips and rises that hid how much acreage this area really was. There were a whole lot of hiding places out there. A whole lot of ground for a team of five people and one rescue dog to cover.

Well, too bad. If she was going to fly out of here without a job, a future, a boyfriend, or a heart, she was leaving with a highly trained rescue dog who deserved the full force of their attention.

“We’ll run this the same way Newman does,” she said, proud to hear a decisive note in her voice. “Base camp here. A search team of three will head out on rotating four-hour shifts. For this first one, we’ll let Nate lead, since he knows the area better than anyone, with Scott and Jenga providing direction.”

She stopped. That was all she had, the most insight she could offer short of all of them piling back in the Falcon and hightailing it out of there—which she wasn’t even sure she could do right now based on the way her foot was throbbing inside its boot.

“There’s some good coverage over in that patch where we’ve been unloading the equipment,” Max suggested. “It’ll be the best place to put up our tents and command station.”

Carrie shot him a grateful look. “Perfect.”

“And I’ll volunteer to stay back with you for this first run,” Ace said. “That way, I can make sure your foot is stable—and I’ve got this kickass new wilderness stew I’ve been wanting to try out.”

They all groaned good-naturedly, as cooking was one of Ace’s many passions better left untouched and untasted. The last time he’d been put in charge of feeding the Search and Rescue crew, their granola bar reserves ran out in record time.

Still, Carrie was relieved to find that this felt normal, almost good. No matter what kind of circumstances surrounded them or how desperate the case might be, these guys would always be here for her to count on. They were rocks. They were
her
rocks.

She’d never had rocks before.

“So, we’re all agreed?” she asked.

Scott raised his hand, belligerence in every line of his bearing.

“What?” she asked warily. She’d said everything she had to say to him—anything more at this point was just hot air and more delay.

“I don’t like it.”

“What?” she asked again, more exasperated this time. “What does that even mean, you don’t like it?”

“For the record, I want it stated that I don’t like this. I think we should head back. You’re injured and it’s too dangerous to keep you out here away from proper medical care any longer than we have to. You need X-rays, not Ace’s poison stew.”

“Well…” She looked around, struggling to find the right words. Unfortunately, there weren’t any. “Too bad. No one gives a flying fuck what you think. We’re here and we’re going to find that poor abandoned dog if we have to strap you to a sled and pull you through the woods to do it.”

Around her, the rest of the team burst into applause. She basked in it, and in the glower that settled on Scott’s injured brow, before nodding her head in a show of her thanks.

Rocks.
She could get used to this.

Chapter Nine

“We see a lot of bears up here in the fall, but they hibernate this time of year, so she probably didn’t get eaten.”

“Thank you,” Scott said to the back of Nate’s head. “That’s very comforting.”

“The temperatures have been below freezing but not below zero, so that’s good too.” Nate made a flying leap over a felled tree. “It’s practically the tropics for us.”

As Scott could no longer feel any part of the surface of his face, he found that particular piece of confidence equally helpful. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“And there are caves and alcoves all over the place. Lots of spots to take cover when night falls.”

That was it. Scott couldn’t take any more of this kid’s misplaced enthusiasm. “Aren’t those the same caves the bears are hibernating in?”

Nate turned back to him with a grin, his eyes shielded by the protective eyegear he wore. “Only a few of them. And Mara could probably smell the dens from miles away. She’s smart. She’ll keep a wide berth. I wouldn’t worry.”

He wasn’t worried. Or, rather, he hadn’t been worried
before
—not about bears, anyway. Of all the dangers out here at the edge of the world, animal attacks hadn’t figured on his priority list. It was the cold that bothered him most. The cold and incredible isolation. Everything was frozen around them—animals, air, time. Even though they were only halfway through their third search shift, it felt as though they could have been out here for days.

Jenga stopped for a moment to sniff at a large rock, and Scott felt his hopes rise and fall in the same pattern that had fueled them from the start. A scent, a sense of excitement, a false alarm. It was a cruel pattern, and he could feel Jenga’s tension ruffle up through her fur as she realized she was once again on the trail of nothing at all.

He took a moment to drop to his knees, whispering words of encouragement in the dog’s ear. To outsiders, it might have looked like another one of his superstitions—talking to the animal as if she shared his thought processes—but this one had science to back it up. Failed searches were often hardest on the dogs. They picked up on every disappointment around them and added it to the burden they were already being asked to bear.

“You’re doing a good job, Jenga,” he whispered. “It’s not your fault.”

He lingered a moment, allowing his arms to remain around Jenga’s neck a few seconds longer than necessary—though he wasn’t sure if it was for the dog’s benefit or his own.

Max gave a slight cough. “We should think about looping back here in the next few minutes. Carrie wants us at base camp before sunset.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it? Okay?”

“Okay,” he repeated, and got to his feet.

“No arguments? No bribes to keep going? No challenging us to a game of who-can-find-the-bear-cave-first?”

Scott tried slapping on a smile to let Max know his efforts weren’t going to waste, but it was difficult. Not only was his face frozen, but his primary emotion right now was a feeling he’d been sucker-punched by fate. There was no trace of Mara anywhere. He’d wasted the SAR team’s resources because of his own inability to let go of the past. And he’d finally told Carrie how he felt about her, but it hadn’t mattered.

He was too late.

“There’s still time.” Max clapped a hand on Scott’s back, and it took him a full thirty seconds to realize his friend was talking about the search. “We’ll start even earlier tomorrow. Nate says he has a good feeling about that path along the frozen creek bed.”

Nate flashed him a thumbs-up. “It’s totally bear-free down there. I promise.”

“I don’t know, guys. Maybe we should just—”