“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—”
Max squeezed Scott’s shoulder hard enough to send a jolt of nerve pain down his arm. “We’ll start even earlier tomorrow.”
There didn’t seem to be any more argument to make after that. With Jenga at the helm, her unwearying nose searching the snow for signs of a dog she’d never met and probably never would, they made a U-turn and started back toward the camp.
# # #
“Do you understand how a rotation works?” Carrie stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at Scott over the top of her tent. “You rotate. It’s literally part of the word.”
“It’s fine,” Scott replied tightly, grateful for the polypropylene dome between them. Otherwise, there was a good chance he’d reach over and shake her until they both fell apart. “I can keep going.”
“No one is asking you what you can do. I’m sure you could do cartwheels and sing show tunes at the same time, but that’s not going to help us find Mara. You need to take a break, and so does Jenga. You two are sitting this one out.”
He steeled his jaw. “No.”
“Yes.”
“I’d rather not.”
She threw up her hands, gloves raised to the sky like a winter goddess making her offering. “Stop the presses. Scott Richardson would rather be contrary and go against protocol than make this easy on me. It’s a story for the ages. Now would you please secure your dog and go sit down? If it helps, I’m not asking you—I’m telling you. It’s your turn to help man the command station, whether you like it or not.”
He didn’t like it.
For one thing, he faced four long hours of not-searching, of trusting Ace, Max, and Nate to do the hard work for him out there in the snow and cold. He’d been on enough of these things to know that he sucked at sitting and waiting while other people did the groundwork.
Even more to the point, he wasn’t sure he could handle four straight hours of Carrie’s company. If she’d been able to walk—if her foot wasn’t causing her to limp through the snow in a way that snagged his throat each time he saw it—they might have been able to manage it so they never had to be alone together. But he’d messed that up, too. She was injured and incapacitated, forced to oversee things with her ankle elevated in keeping with Ace’s orders.
And now they’d be alone together. To talk. And feel. Scott wasn’t sure he could take any more feelings right now.
Since there didn’t seem to be anything he could do to help the team prepare, he set about feeding and watering Jenga, a pang of guilt added to his crushed-windpipe sensation as the dog fell into a grateful and exhausted heap inside her crate. They’d been going almost nonstop since they’d landed yesterday, pausing only for a few hours in the middle of the night when it grew too dark to continue searching.
“I’m sorry, girl,” he murmured, brushing his gloved hand over her fur. “I’d hoped we’d have more luck finding her by now.”
Jenga lifted her head as if to agree before dropping it to her paws once again. Scott was tempted to do the same, but he knew that the moment he stopped moving, he was going to have a hell of a time getting back up again.
“I should never have asked you to come here like this,” he said, again to the dog. This was where the science of dog training ended and his questionable beliefs took over. “It was a mistake to ask it of you, but I didn’t know where else to turn or what else to do. I’ve never been very good in an emotional crisis.”
Jenga whimpered, probably begging him to go away so she could sleep.
“I know what you’re thinking. My dad’s like that, too. He’d rather smash every mirror he can get his hands on and blame his life on bad luck than confront his feelings head-on. I guess you could call it a family failing.”
He probably could have kept going, but movement at the edge of camp indicated the three men were ready to head out. With one last check to make sure Jenga was warm enough, he approached the team, pretending not to notice the forced smiles on their faces. As the hours passed and they couldn’t find any sign of Mara, they were all smiling more and more. By the end of all this, their faces would probably crack open.
“Which trail are you guys taking this time?” he asked.
Nate tilted his head toward a fairly open path that wound down the far side of the eastern slope. “Probably just along that abandoned access road we passed over yesterday.”
Scott nodded his approval. Jenga hadn’t seemed to think there was much to be found t
here, which made it ideal for a trip out in her absence. At this point, they weren’t following leads so much as eliminating the remaining possibilities—and there weren’t that many possibilities left.
“Be careful out there,” he called.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Carrie added, coming up behind him.
“That’d make a pretty short list, boss lady,” Ace said with a mock salute. “See you in four hours.”
With that, the men disappeared down the clear-cut road, their footsteps sure as they once again attempted the miraculous.
The silence that fell in their absence was oppressive—all the more so because of the eerie quiet that could only exist in absolute isolation like this. Well, that and the eerie quiet of Carrie not making an attempt to fill it. She remained at his back, her presence a palpable thing, but he couldn’t seem to make himself turn into it.
“Are you hungry?” she asked after a few minutes passed.
“Not really.”
“Tired?”
“A little.”
“Do you want me to leave you alone?”
Yes. No. He had no idea anymore. He gave in and faced her, reeling once he caught a glimpse of the stark pain in her face. “How’s the ankle holding up?”
Her pained look fled, and he realized it had nothing to do with her current level of physical discomfort. That look had been directed at him and him alone.
She shrugged. “It hurts. But I bet it’ll feel better if you sit down and eat something.”
He felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “That’s cheating.”
“I never claimed to play fair. Come on. I picked all the raisins out of the trail mix just for you.”
With such a noble gesture on the line, Scott had no choice but to follow her back to the camp, wishing he knew what to say. Even if he was the kind of man who could put his emotions into words, he’d have had a difficult time nailing down the slippery bastards right now. He was angry and sad and overwhelmed. He wanted to alternately pack up this entire failed mission and build a permanent shelter so Mara would have somewhere to come home to. He wanted Carrie to stop treating him like he was one strong gust of wind away from falling apart.
Mostly because he was one strong gust of wind away from falling apart.
The pretense of eating and sleeping made it easy to get by on banalities for about an hour, though Scott didn’t nap so much as stare at the ceiling of his tent, watching in angry silence as the wind played with the flaps. He killed another half hour by walking the perimeter of the base camp under the pretense of collecting firewood, but he eventually had to return to where Carrie sat poking at the snow with a stick.
If he was agitated from all this imposed sitting, she had to be slowly turning to stone by now. Waiting was the worst. It was the time when all the what-if scenarios came slinking silently by.
“I think maybe Jenga needs to heed the call of nature.” Carrie nodded over at the golden retriever, who’d given up on her own nap and was walking in tail-twitching circles by the helicopter. “You want me to take her?”
“She should be fine on her own.”
“She doesn’t look fine.”
He sighed. Of course she wasn’t fine. He’d forced her out here into the cold, desperate to right a wrong he’d made months ago—and all for nothing. Some things couldn’t be fixed. “She’s probably just anxious. She picks up my mood pretty easily.”
“You’re anxious?”
He stared at her, wondering if she was joking or just mocking him. “Carrie—we’ve been out here over twenty-four hours, and there’s no sign of her. The weather is only getting worse as time goes on. And you’re in so much pain you can barely walk. Of course I’m anxious.”
She didn’t reply, just kept staring at Jenga, her head tilted. “Are you sure it’s anxiety? She’s kind of freaking out.”
Now that she mentioned it, the dog was kind of freaking out, her head bending to the snow before picking back up again, ears cocked and on alert.
Oh, shit.
“Oh, shit.” He jumped to his feet. “I think she’s picked up a scent.”
“What? How is that possible? We haven’t gone anywhere.”
He looked up and gauged the weather, realizing with a start that the storm had shifted dramatically sometime in the past ten minutes. “It must be the change in the pressure or the direction of the wind. She’s got something.”
“And by something, you mean Mara, right? Not…like a bear?”
He laughed, feeling giddy, his heart working double-time. “You better hope it’s not a bear. Otherwise, we’re about to become a mid-winter snack.”
He made a quick survey of his clothes to ensure that he had everything securely fastened. It would have been better to take a minute to gather his pack and ensure he had the proper gear stowed, but this was the first sign of anything positive. He wasn’t wasting a second.
Offering a low, crooning command to the dog, he allowed her to run ahead. She moved sure-footed and swiftly toward a wooded area they hadn’t yet had a chance to explore, and he felt his heart pick up even more. Mara could be in those woods. Mara could be heading their way even now.
He loped after the dog, determined to make good time, when he was stopped by Carrie’s sharp call from behind. “What are you doing, Scott?”
He stopped, grunting his irritation. “What do you think I’m doing? I’m following Jenga.”
“You can’t just run off like that. Let me call the team back, and we’ll shift the search this way.”
Jenga pressed her nose to the snow and whimpered, and Scott was tempted to do the same. Did Carrie miss the part where they actually had a lead? Didn’t she realize the storm could shift again just as easily, leaving them with nothing? “There isn’t time for that. They’re already a good two hours out by now.”
“You can’t escape into the wilderness by yourself.” She’d come about halfway to his position, her steps slow as she hobbled along on her sprained foot. “They’re probably already headed back, but I’ll radio them just in case.”
“There isn’t time.” He spoke through clenched teeth. Already, he could see Jenga lifting and dropping her head in confusion, her instincts aligned with his in a need to follow that trail or die trying. “This is the closest thing to a chance we have, and I’m not losing it. I’ll be careful—I promise.”
“The hell you will. You’re not going anywhere.” Carrie winced as she stumbled over a rock, and Scott had to jump to catch her before she fell. His hand on her elbow was firm, and she glared at him. “You know that’s not how this works. There’s protocol in place for a reason.”
Protocol. Right. Carrie Morlock was lecturing him about following rules. “This is a joke, right?”
“Yeah. A super hilarious one. Wouldn’t it be funny if you wandered off into the woods all alone and disappeared into the night?”
“I won’t disappear.”
“I know you won’t.” She shook her arm out of his grasp. “Because you aren’t going anywhere until Nate and Ace and Max can go with you.”
“Carrie—” He stared at her, at this woman he knew so well, at the rosy cheeks and glittering eyes, at the ski cap that couldn’t do anything to cover the long, flowing tresses of her hair, and realized she wasn’t kidding. “This is what we came here to do. This is why Newman put you in charge. He knew you’d be willing to bend the rules if it came down to it.”
Her eyes flashed with a dark warning. “That is not why Newman put me in charge.”
“Of course it is. No one is as good at disregarding consequences as you.” He laughed without humor, his desperation taking over. “You did your part and warned me of the dangers. Now you can let me go with a clear conscience.”
She crossed her arms. “You’re not going.”
“I am.”
“You’re not.”
“I’d like to see you stop me,” he said, and began walking away.
He didn’t make it very far befor
e the crash of a branch behind him caused him to turn in surprise. Carrie had yanked part of a tree down and was stripping the leaves off with her teeth—an action that he was ashamed to admit turned him on in ways wholly inappropriate to the current situation.
“Are you making a spear to hurl at my head?” he asked.
“No. I’m making a walking stick, you asshole.”
“What for?”
“The usual reasons. For walking.”
Not if he had anything to say about it. He called for Jenga and picked his way back through the brush to Carrie’s side, taking the stick from her hand and tossing it deep into the forest. “There. Now you have no choice but to head back to camp.”
“I’m in a forest. I think I can find another one.”
He let loose a string of curses. He knew he’d done a lot of things wrong in his life—especially with regard to this woman—but he needed her to not fight him for once. They were losing the scent already.
“Now is not the time for this, Carrie. Please.” He took her hands and squeezed them, hoping she would feel the current of his desperation. “Don’t make me choose between you and Mara.”
Her entire body stilled, and that pained expression fell over her features once more. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”
His jaw ticked as he attempted a shrug. Choosing between them was damn sure what it felt like right now—and she had to know by now that he’d always pick her. He loved that dog, yes, but he loved Carrie even more. He loved her most of all.
“Screw you. If you’re going to be stupid enough to follow that trail without a support team, then I’m coming with you, even if it means my foot falls off and we can never fly out of here.” She squared her stance in a way that meant business. “I hope you’re happy.”
Now he didn’t release a string of curses so much as an entire ball of them. He didn’t have time for this. Without waiting for her to protest, he scooped her into his arms and stalked back to camp.
Scott was a strong man, and he’d done his fair share of hoisting this woman over his shoulder and tossing her to the bed, but he’d never before tried carrying her when she was fighting back with every muscle she possessed. She kicked and flailed, hollered at him to stop acting like a barbarian, and did her level best to ensure he never walked again. But he managed to make it all the way to his tent before depositing her on the ground, his breathing heavy and his anger so high he wasn’t sure it registered on a physical scale anymore.
Off the Map (Winter Rescue #2) Page 11
