Off the Map (Winter Rescue #2)

by Tamara Morgan

  Nothing about Carrie caused twinges. She was a constant, undulating, full-body pang.

  “Oh, really?” she said, her voice low. “Funny. That’s not what you said when I had my mouth wrapped around your cock a few weeks ago.”

  He didn’t. He hadn’t. He never would have allowed himself to say what he felt from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her.

  “I said no such thing,” he retorted. “You must have been delirious.”

  “Ha. You wish. Try bored out of my mind.”

  “If you found the task that tedious, maybe it’s because you weren’t doing it right.”

  Now she wasn’t in his face so much as pressed all the way against him, her lips inches from his, her breasts jutting against his chest until he was reduced to nothing but sensations of memory and longing. She tilted her head just enough to send a waft of her perfume—also expensive, also French—over him, her mouth so close to his ear he could hear the vibrations of her breath. “You can stand there and bluster all you want, but you and I both know how much you enjoyed having me suck you off.”

  He wished there was some way he could argue that fact, but there wasn’t. Just as Carrie was annoying and pushy and generous in her everyday affairs, so too was she annoying and pushy and generous in bed. He could picture all too well the sight of her kneeling before him, greedily handling his belt buckle, informing him of the many different ways she planned to use her tongue to pleasure him.

  So, yes. She was right. Boring was the last thing he could ever accuse her of being.

  But dangerous? Catastrophic? A whirlwind of bad luck and disaster? Yeah. Those ones still applied in full.

  “If you came all this way to proposition me, you’re wasting your time. This—” he made a vague twirling gesture her direction, “—does nothing for me anymore.”

  Zip. Zilch. Not even a glimmer of pain, no sign at all that he’d so much as scratched her surface.

  “Oh, that wasn’t a proposition, my friend,” she said with a flash of her perfect, glinting teeth. “You’ll never get another one of those from me. Not even if you do a striptease like the one you gave me for my birthday.”

  Across the table, Max fell into a coughing fit while Ace feigned an intense interest in his discarded hand.

  “I swear, it’s like you’re actively trying to kill me,” Scott muttered. There was a time, not too long ago, when the most those two men knew about his life was that he trained rescue dogs for a living and drove an outdated Blazer. Now, his heart was practically bleeding on the table in front of them. Right alongside what remained of his dignity. “I can’t do this right now. I need to call Newman.”

  Her antagonism snapped off in an instant. “Do you want me to come with you?”

  Yes. Wholeheartedly. Without reservation.

  “I’ll be fine,” Scott lied. He directed his next remarks to Max and Ace, determined to turn the tap and get the antagonism going again. It was the only way he could make it work, this idea of a life without her in it. “Try not to lose everything to her while I’m gone, would you? She plays with the ring on her right hand when she’s bluffing, and her breath comes out in short puffs when she’s excited.”

  Unable to resist one last opportunity to get the better of her, he added, “Well, that and the ear-splitting howl that makes every dog within hearing distance bark. But you’ll recognize that one when you hear it.”

  # # #

  “Are you at a bar right now?”

  “A bar?” Scott looked around Max’s tiny wood-paneled kitchen, which was decorated in a curious mixture of seventies wall-hangings and brightly—if not skillfully—colored drawings of princesses and dragons. “Um, no. Why? Should I be?”

  “I hear background noise.” As if to verify Newman’s statement, an outburst of laughter sounded from the living room—Carrie’s outburst, naturally. She was probably in there telling the guys all about Scott’s sexual proclivities. “Is it a party?”

  “Of sorts. I’m at Max’s house. I’m here with Ace and Carrie for poker night. Did you want to include them on this call?”

  “No—no, it’s nothing like that.” Newman paused, his silence weighty in a way that did little to provide reassurance. “If I remember correctly, Max has a well-stocked liquor cabinet. Get a drink of something, would you? Something strong.”

  Scott cringed. “Do I have to?”

  “I would.”

  That was all he had to say to confirm Scott’s worst fears. Even though he wanted nothing more than to hang up the phone and get back to Carrie’s juvenile card playing and sexual taunts, he prepared himself to carry Newman’s orders out instead. Sixteen years of service under the older man’s expert SAR guidance had trained him well. When the lives of innocent people were on the line, you did what was asked—plunged into freezing rivers or scaled icy mountains or drank to numb the pain—no matter how much you might not like it.

  Most of the time, you didn’t like it.

  Scott set the handset on the countertop and poked his head into the living room. “Hey, Max? What do you have that’s stronger than beer?”

  “Uh…on me right now?” Max looked around the poker table, as if expecting a bottle to appear on the felt top. “Not much, to be honest. I tossed everything out once Tina started spending weekends here.”

  “Really?”

  Max shrugged apologetically. “Parenthood.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “I have prescription-strength cough syrup in my purse,” Carrie offered. “Does that count?”

  “Not really.”

  “Amateurs.” Ace reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts—his standard attire at all times except on a rescue—and extracted a metal flask. “Here.”

  Scott took it and twisted the lid, giving the top a tentative sniff. “What’s in it?” He recoiled without waiting for an answer. Tequila. Vile stuff. “Is this the best you can do? What flavor is the cough syrup?”

  “Grape.”

  He shuddered. That was even worse.

  “I’ll pass.” With a gesture of thanks in Ace’s direction, he palmed the flask. He could tell Carrie wanted to say something more, but her mouth opened and closed in a rare moment of restraint.

  Of course, that didn’t stop her voice from reaching him once his back was turned. “I don’t get it,” she said. “Is this like some kind of long-distance drinking game?”

  “No,” followed Max’s grim voice. “It means Newman is about to say something Scott doesn’t want to hear. He hates giving bad news without something to take the edge off.”

  “It’s why I carry a flask,” Ace said. “Lotta bad news this time of year.”

  Scott wished he could argue, but it would have been a waste of breath. Winter was a busy time for them, and disasters always seemed to pick up as the holidays drew near. It was as if there was only so much joy that could be allotted in the world at one time. The universal law of happiness.

  Picking up the receiver, he willed himself to sound collected. “Alcohol acquired. Am I supposed to drink, or am I saving this for after?”

  “Drink.”

  He complied, the burn of the tequila not nearly strong enough to cover the sharp aftertaste. It also wasn’t strong enough to make him feel better about the upcoming conversation. He took another sip. “Okay. It’s down the hatch. Lay it on me—it’s about my dad, isn’t it?”

  “Your dad?” Newman echoed. “No, no. It’s nothing like that. Your dad is…well, he’s fine. Not in the best of health these days, but fine.”

  Scott felt a fleeting relief move through him, ghost fingers prodding his insides just long enough to leave a mark. His dad hadn’t been in the best of health for the better part of a decade. Three-parts gone to cirrhosis, he was a man who took Newman’s notion of drinking to numb the pain to extremes. Scott had spent most of his adult life waiting for the call that would inform him that the man had finally given up for good.

  But this, it seemed, wasn’t that phone call. He steeled himself f
or more. “Then who are you calling about?”

  “It’s Mara. I’m so sorry, Scott, but she’s gone.”

  “Mara?” Scott had to steady himself with a hand on the countertop. “No. It’s not possible. That’s even worse.”

  Newman’s silence was sharp with recriminations, but Scott felt only the numb wash of loss dousing him from within. Guilt had no place there, could only pass silently through. His dad may have given him life, but Mara was…

  “I don’t understand,” Scott said, his voice tight.

  “There will probably be an official report tomorrow, but I wanted you to hear the news from me first.” Newman paused. “A friendly voice helps in these situations.”

  Yes, Scott understood all too well how this process worked. Reduce the impact, sympathize, support. It was the official bad news credo.

  “And I know how much you’ve been struggling ever since…”

  Yes, he knew that one, too. Ever since he’d lost his shit over Carrie’s accident, falling into the blinding sense of panic that still hung on to the edges of his subconscious, strongest whenever she entered the room.

  The situation had been eerily similar to this one, actually, a page from Newman in the dead of night, information shared over a cheap drink that did nothing to eliminate the pain. He still sometimes found himself reliving those terrifying hours of uncertainty when no one seemed to know if she was going to be okay. Dead. Comatose. Her beautiful, vibrant spirit broken from head to toe. Every possible scenario had played through Scott’s head in horrifying detail.

  She’d only moved to Spokane about a year ago, and she had no next of kin in the area, so no one had been able to get any concrete answers about her condition for hours after the accident occurred. All anyone had known was that she’d gone against her boss’s orders, against all medical and flight regulations, against goddamned common sense to transport a heart attack patient in a blizzard.

  Scott didn’t care that the entire passenger list had walked away without a scratch, or that she’d ended up saving the patient’s life. For a few hours, he’d thought he’d lost her, and his entire world had gone cold and black.

  He cleared his throat, unsure what he was supposed to say now. Did Newman want him to confirm how much Carrie’s accident had affected him? Did he want to hear that Scott’s entire life was still so far off balance he didn’t know which way was up?

  “What happened?” he asked instead, his voice gruff.

  Newman sighed. “I should get the full debriefing shortly, but from what I gather, it sounds like they lost her somewhere in the Colville National Forest. The storm we’re currently enjoying is just the tail end of what they’ve got north of here.”

  “No.” The gruffness hadn’t left his tone; an overwhelming sense of dizziness still buzzed in his ears. “It can’t be. Maybe you heard wrong.”

  “I didn’t hear wrong.”

  “Maybe they meant some other dog.”

  “They didn’t mean any other dog.”

  Scott groaned and rubbed his eyes, wishing he could go back fifteen minutes, when his biggest worry was whether or not he could withstand the power of Carrie’s cleavage.

  Why Mara? Why now? He released a soft curse as the full implication of this conversation hit him, his loss complete. It had been a mistake to let her go up north in the first place. He’d made it a practice long ago only to train the dogs, never to keep them, but he should have made an exception for her. She was the exception.

  Mara had been the runt of the litter, a downy husky who’d been so determined to succeed it almost broke his heart when it took her twice as long to be fully trained. There had been a time, early on in his work with her, when he thought she wouldn’t be able to make it, that the strain of rugged terrain and high-pressure scenarios would prove too much.

  But she’d persevered. She’d made it. She’d learned to channel her weaknesses—that heartbreaking desire to never let a human down—into a strength that made her invaluable on a search. He’d never known any dog so determined to sniff out the lost and fallen.

  Fuck. He’d loved that animal.

  “I don’t understand how this could have happened,” Scott said. “I know she wasn’t as flashy as some of the rescue dogs I’ve placed with the Colville team in the past, but she was well-trained. She was ready. What did her handler do wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Newman said carefully, his tone neutral.

  “Bullshit. Everything happens for a reason. Did he mistreat her? So help me, if I find anything—”

  “These things happen, Scott. It’s a risk the dogs take, a risk we all take, every time we set foot on a mountain. You know that.” Newman was talking down to him, talking him off the ledge, and he felt it prickle at his skin. “It’s unfortunate, but it’s no one’s fault. Least of all yours.”

  “It’s someone’s fault,” Scott grumbled.

  “It’s a stroke of bad luck, that’s all. These things just happen.”

  A stroke of bad luck. Scott’s heart slammed out of his chest and onto the floor, and he didn’t bother to pick it up again. There was no point—he had no use for the damn organ anyway.

  Because Newman was wrong. These things didn’t just happen. They happened—had been happening—ever since the day he’d walked into a SAR meeting to find himself spellbound by a brash, ballsy helicopter pilot with a death wish.

  She should have done them all a favor and worn a sign that day: I’m Carrie Morlock, and I’m bad luck. Bad luck, bad news, a bad idea.

  He hung up the phone, his heart constricted to rock. It was the worst possible moment for Carrie to walk through the kitchen door, concern knitting her brow, her warm and sympathetic smile the exact thing Scott needed to feel better. And she would make him feel better—he knew that without question. No one else was capable of lifting him up the way she could. She’d mock his fears and laugh at the idea of fate. She’d offer him the solace of her perfectly shaped bosom.

  And then she’d re-wash his vest just in case it still retained some of its powers.

  Five years he’d gone without washing it. Five years he’d gone without losing a single rescue dog. Every animal he’d trained was alive and accounted for, either working the field or happily retired with all the bones and open fields they could wish for.

  It was silly to be superstitious—Scott knew that. He was a grown-ass man with grown-ass beliefs about the origin of the universe, and he knew on an intellectual level that the amount of grime on his vest had little to do with whether or not the dogs he trained lived or died. But after spending five perfectly content years with his dirty clothes and his full-length mirror propped up against the bathroom wall and his heart lodged firmly in his chest, he had to believe that something had happened to change his luck so drastically.

  That something was headed his way right now.

  “You.”

  Carrie stopped mid-stride, her foot in the air. “What about me?”

  “You did this. You killed her.”

  “What are you talking about?” As usual, she was neither alarmed nor intimidated by his change of tone. He could command animals to complete subservience using only his words, but she was impervious to everything but the voices inside her own head. “Who did I kill?”

  “Mara.” Even saying her name hurt. She was one of the only dogs he had a picture of, a tiny puppy held up to the camera a few days after he’d received the litter. She’d been licking his face at the time—a habit he normally tried to curb, but it had been impossible to train her out of her natural affection.

  “I have no idea what’s going on right now.”

  “She was probably the best dog I ever trained, and she’s dead.”

  Carrie’s face fell. “Oh, Scott.”

  No. He couldn’t take her sympathy. He didn’t want her love. He wanted his fucking dog back.

  “Don’t you ‘Oh, Scott’ me,” he warned. The edges of his vision spotted with black, and he recognized the color at once, felt the oppressive lu
mp in his throat threatening to choke him and leave him for dead. He’d promised himself he’d never feel this way again, but here he was, falling under, losing his balance. “It’s too late for that. If you cared about me even a little, you’d have thought twice before you washed my—”

  Understanding flashed on her face, all traces of sympathy gone in an instant. “You better not say what I think you’re going to say.”

  “I told you what it meant to me. I told you not to touch my—”

  “I swear on the lives of everyone you hold dear, if you so much as say a word that starts with the letter v, I’ll hit you over the head with that flask of tequila.”

  “Your problem, Carrie, is that you don’t listen. I told you not to wash my vest, but you did it anyway.” The reasonable part of his brain told him to stop, all but begged him to step outside, cool off, give himself a moment to collect his thoughts. Carrie drove him crazy—no woman had ever gotten under his skin and inside his heart quite as effectively as she had—but she wouldn’t kill anything other than the occasional surf and turf.

  Unfortunately, as was always the case when he was in her proximity, he had absolutely zero control. With Carrie, it was all or nothing, fight or fuck, light or dark. There was no rational middle ground. There was no place for his heart to just take a moment to beat.

  “You never listen to anyone about anything,” he said, his heart making the decision for him. “And that’s why Mara’s death is on your head.”

  She made a grab for the tequila, but he’d been anticipating such a jab and yanked it out of her reach. When all she hit was air and his aura of triumph, she stopped as suddenly as she’d begun. Fury heightened her already classic good looks, making her not just beautiful but so breathtaking he could barely breathe.

  That was the end of him.

  “Everything and everyone in your life is cursed,” he said, still holding the flask out of her reach. “I hope you’re happy now.”