Rescue Me

by Allie Adams

  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.

  FIVE

  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.”

  “What the fuck is there to celebrate?” Spencer barked over his shoulder. The team fell silent and he felt each and every set of eyes burning into the back of his neck.

  Lyons walked up to him as the rest of the team made themselves scarce. “Son, you can't bite their heads off because you're pissed.”

  “When it's them I'm pissed at, sure I can.” He drew in a breath and held it in an attempt to keep his temper in check.

  “That's not what's got you ready to kill.”

  Spencer ground out a sigh. He had no choice in the matter, which only pissed him off more. “TREX is benching you, aren't they?”

  Lyons smiled and, goddamn it, the gesture reached his eyes. “I get the cushy job of my choice. Intelligence. Surveillance. Logistics. And those are only the ones I'm interested in. Field agents get their pick.”

  “Is this really what you want? You love field work, Gabe.”

  “The mind is still willing, but the body… Not so much.” Lyons slapped him on the back. “Don't worry about me, Spence. I get to work a normal job for the first time in my life.”

  “There's no such thing as a normal job in TREX. If we're in the middle of a find, you'll be working around the clock just like the rest of us.”

  “Not at a desk job,” he told Spencer. “They work in shifts. I work ten hours and then someone else comes in behind me to pick it up. I'm actually going to be home for dinner every night. And I get vacation time. If I don't feel like coming in to work, I can call in sick. No more sitting in the middle of the desert during the hottest part of the day and not being allowed to sweat. No more hiding in the shadows in the freezing cold waiting to get the jump on someone.”

  Spencer knew Gabriel Lyons better than that. The man lived for a find. “And you think you'll be happy sitting at some desk watching instead of being out here living it?”

  “I don't have much of a choice.” Regret filled his voice, giving him away.

  He hated this. He couldn't lose Lyons. No, goddamn it. He wouldn't. He'd just have to talk to Weber about extending Lyons' time in the field. That was the only solution.

  “When are we going to do something more than just stand around?” McKoy asked, his teeth audibly chattering.

  “Go for a run,” Spencer barked, annoyed by the team's constant bitching. So it was colder than shit. So they were all running on pure adrenaline since none of them had had a chance to eat or sleep since this cluster fuck started. Man up, for Christ's sake.

  “It's been daylight for hours. Why are we still here and not back out in the field?”

  Lyons shook his head. “You know the rules, probie. We've been in the field for twelve hours. We stand down for four hours required rest while another team steps in. It's standard protocol.”

  “But we could be out there searching, too. I'm not even tired.” To demonstrate, McKoy jumped up and down.

  Lyons looked at Spencer before turning back to McKoy. “Listen, kid. You can push the body beyond the physical limits, but when exhaustion hits the mind, you miss things. Standing down gives your brain the chance to rest.”

  “I don't need to rest. This is such bull—”

  “Got a problem with orders?” Weber barked as he appeared from the darkness of the forest surrounding them, Gessler in tow. The SAC
nailed that piercing blue gaze on McKoy. The man never cracked a smile and always looked pissed as hell.

  “No, sir.”

  “What do you have on the fourth kidnapper?” Spencer asked him.

  Weber sighed and pinched the skin between his eyes. “That there isn't one, at least not that we could find. Everything pointed to a team of three. The intel. The messages they left. There were no signs of a fourth guy.”

  “Tommy didn't take out his kidnappers by himself.”

  “From what we were able to gather, the kidnappers turned on each other. The male of the couple we found north of the cabin took out the one in the cabin and then ran with the female and the kid.”

  “We didn't find any footprints for the kid with them.”

  “The male had to be carrying him. When they stopped to rest, they fought. Tommy got scared and ran. The male, in a panic, shot at Tommy, wounding him. The female instinctively shot the male trying to protect the kid. When she realized what she'd done, she took her own life.”

  “That's quite a story,” Spencer ground out. He listened to his earpiece as Kathryn's communications officer talked with a dog team, assigning them to another trail. Once the air cleared, Spencer turned his attention to Weber. “How did you come up with it?”

  “The blood,” Gessler jumped in. “It's Tommy's.”

  Shit. Things just went from worse to fucked.

  Spencer pushed off the tree and took a step toward the Com Van. Enough of the covert bullshit. He had to at least tell Kathryn that her subject was wounded. It could change the dynamics of the search.

  “Where are you going?” Weber demanded.

  “Kathryn needs to know.”

  “No, she doesn't.”

  “Sir—”

  “Let me remind you, Allen. K-SAR is not TREX. They are on a need to know basis only, even the hot little biscuit running it.”

  Spencer ran his fingers through his hair, ready to snap Weber's neck for talking about Kathryn like that. “And you don't think this is something she needs to know?”

  “No, I don't.”