Rescue Me (2 page)

“This way,” he whispered into his mic and
nodded for Lyons to follow. He pointed out the branch and Lyons
nodded in understanding. Moving without making any noise, they
crept through the inky darkness, following the trail of broken
twigs on the ground, snagged branches, and fresh needle fall from
the evergreen trees.

“This is too high for a kid to make,” Lyons
pointed out when he caught sight of another broken branch five feet
off the ground.

“But perfect for an adult shoulder.” Spencer
grinned.

Lyons wiped at the sweat that had collected
on his brow.

“Look at this.” Spencer ignored how tired
Lyons looked and pointed at a fresh carving in a tree. The sap
hadn't even completely hardened. “They're marking the trees like
breadcrumbs.”

Lyons narrowed his eyes. “Why? It's not like
they'll be back this way.”

Spencer shook his head and touched his mic.
“Teams, be on the lookout for chunks cut into the trees. These guys
are a special kind of stupid, marking their trail like this.”

“It'll lead us right to them,” Gessler
commented.

Spencer's anxiety inched higher and tightened
his nerves even more. The markings were on the wrong side, making
them visible leading away from the cabin, not toward it. They
weren't marking the trees to find their way back. They marked them
as a trail away from the cabin.

Again, why?

The kidnappers left that body to send a
message. If they had no qualm with killing one of their own, they
wouldn't hesitate to kill the kid the instant he outlived his
usefulness. And now they literally cut a trail into the trees,
purposely leading TREX away from the cabin.

Nothing about this find made any sense.

“Check this out,” Lyons said, drawing
Spencer's attention.

More broken twigs on the ground and with
them, footprints in the rot of a dead log. Spencer knelt down and
studied them, using his hand as a gauge on the size of the prints.
Only two sets, neither small enough for a six-year-old. They
definitely went this way and from the displacement of the tree rot,
they were moving fast. Why would they be running with the boy if
they had a four hour head start?

“We've got prints,” he said into his mic.
“Two sets. Adults. One a male, size twelve. The other more than
likely a female, size eight. Unless the man is a good fifty pounds
overweight, I'd say he's carrying the kid.”

“Teams, time to reposition,” Weber ordered.
“I want everyone's attention to the north. Team One, get your asses
two miles up and see if you can head them off. Team Two, tighten
your path. Move to the middle.”

Spencer spotted Snyder and McKoy to his left.
Soon Aims and Cummings came up on his right. They moved forward,
following the trace the kidnappers left for them.

“We're two miles up,” Gessler reported twenty
minutes later, panting from the run.

“What took you so long?” Weber asked, his
tone light.

“Had to stop to take a piss.”

Even in the middle of an op Gessler couldn't
stop himself from trying to get a rise out of Weber.

“Move south. See if we can box them in.”

Tense minutes passed as the teams moved in.
No one talked. No one made any noise, which wasn't easy in the
thick forest in the middle of a cloudy night. The vapor from his
breath lifted and swirled above him, mixing with the darkness. It
had to have dropped ten degrees since they got out here. At least
with the snow he smelled in the air, they'd be able to see any that
brushed off branches as well as fresh prints on the ground.

Spencer smiled. These guys were so
screwed.

He quickly lost his smile as he spotted what
at first looked like a split stump ahead. As he drew closer, he
made out the shapes. Holy shit. That was no stump. He broke into a
run and skidded to a stop as his blood froze in his veins.

“Holy shit,” Lyons muttered when he stopped
behind Spencer.

“Weber, we've got a problem.”

Spencer stood over the two bodies, still
trying to process what it meant. First the dead kidnapper in the
cabin. Now both remaining kidnappers dead. The boy missing. Who
killed them? Did the killer take the boy? Or was there a fourth
kidnapper TREX never knew about?

He glanced down at the guns in each of their
hands. Maybe a lover's spat gone wrong? The male had a lethal shot
to the forehead just as the first male had. The female's shot could
have been a suicide. A bullet to the temple would do the trick.

But that didn't explain how they ended up
leaned against each other like this. She could have killed him and
then held him up with her own body as she took her life. But
why?

“This is fucked up,” Snyder said as he kicked
the gun out of the male's hand. With a stick through the trigger
guard, he lifted the barrel to his nose and took a quick sniff.
“Metallic sulfur. That smell always reminds me of a dirty penny.
This gun was recently fired.”

Spencer swept his gaze around, studying each
tree for anything that could pass as a bullet hole. He didn't see
anything. “He missed.”

“Did he?” Gessler knelt on the ground not
more than ten feet away from the bodies. He pointed at something in
front of him. “I've got blood here.”

Spencer stood between the bodies and Gessler,
looking back and forth to get the trajectory right. He then lifted
his gaze, staring off into the darkness, searching for any trace
that whoever did this escaped in that direction. That blood didn't
belong to either kidnapper. No, they died instantly. Which meant
little Tommy Miller was either an expert marksman at six years old,
or the more obvious choice.

Tommy wasn't out here alone.

“Lyons, get the blood to forensics and
compare it to the DNA sample Miller gave us on his grandson. Aims,
you and Cummings search the area for any prints.” Spencer pulled
out his phone. He didn't want to make the call but things had just
gone from bad to worse. TREX agents were experts in tracking and
tactical retrieval, but they didn't know this terrain and had to
move fast. If that blood belonged to the shooter, they could be
dealing with someone armed and desperate. If it belonged to Tommy,
it could be even worse. They had to get to them before someone bled
out.

“Are you calling her?” Gessler asked as he
nodded at the phone in Spencer's hand. “Weber gave us two hours.
It's been like thirty minutes. Tops.”

He had no choice. “I know.”

“I have a crazy idea,” Snyder broke in, a
shit-eating grin on his goddamn face. The charming ladies' man of
the team, David Snyder could win over the hardest heart with
nothing more than a flash of one of his smoldering looks. Or so he
thought. “I think you should pay her a personal visit. If I recall,
the last time you two were together was, shall we say, less than
pleasant.”

Less than pleasant was right. She threw
Spencer's house key at his head when he wouldn't tell her what he
did for a living. He scratched at the scar on his chin, hating that
his team even knew that much about his history with Kathryn.

“If he goes,” Gessler said with a wiggle of
his eyebrows and an even bigger grin than Snyder's on his face.
“I'm going, too. Kat is smoking hot. I have a thing for fiery
redheads.”

The way Gessler spoke about Kathryn had
Spencer clenching his fists, fighting back an explosion he knew
would end up with him in front of the board for putting an agent in
the hospital. But damn if the asshole didn't deserve it.

“Maybe we should all go.” Logan McKoy, the
newest member of their team spoke up. “I haven't met her, but from
what Gessler just said, sounds like I need to.”

They did this to get a rise out of him and he
knew it. That didn't mean it pissed him off any less. Spencer
dragged in a breath and let it out slowly. He knew what he had to
do. Didn't mean he had to like it. “Can we at least get teams out
there for containment while she gets her teams in place?”

“I'll get Rand on it,” Weber said over the
radio.

Good. Walt Randall had a long reach and
pulled information even Weber couldn't get his hands on. Rand had
access to resources that told everyone else to take a hike, which
made him the best logistics officer Kathryn had on her team. She
had no idea he was also a TREX agent and never would. Hell, she
barely knew anything about TREX, only that Spencer worked for the
tactical retrieval agency and every once in a while needed her
agency's help.

Like now.

“Team One,” Weber spoke up. “Give me a two
mile perimeter sweep. Aims and Cummings, leave the print search to
Team One and backtrack to the cabin. I want to make sure these
assholes didn't sneak back in behind us.”

Spencer stiffened. What the fuck was he doing
overriding his command to his team? He switched his mic to VOX.
“Why are you breaking up my team?”

“Because we don't need six guys waiting
around for K-SAR.”

“No one needs to wait around for her.” He
caught himself and added, “K-SAR is a professional agency, sir.
They know what to do on a search.”

Weber ignored Spencer's reasoning and barked
out his own orders. “Snyder, you and McKoy head up to Larch
Mountain and rendezvous with K-SAR when they arrive. I've
instructed Rand to place base camp there.”

That made no goddamn sense whatsoever. Why
put base camp outside the search perimeter? Spencer thinned his
lips as Weber made another bad call. “Why Larch Mountain? That's
not even close to the cabin.”

Again, his SAC ignored him and it pissed him
off. “Once Allen makes the call, you two move out.”

“Yes sir,” they both replied in unison and
turned to Spencer.

He wanted to tell Weber where to stick his
fucking orders, but knew he'd never get away with it. Not only
could Dan Weber drop a man without breaking a sweat, he was
Spencer's boss. Although Spencer could definitely hold his own
against the likes of men like Weber, he knew better than to cross a
senior agent, especially one with such a short fuse. He'd end up on
shit finds for the rest of his career.

He turned from the rest of the team to hide
his nerves. His jaw clenched, his head throbbing with the
uncertainty he'd face the second he heard her voice again. He hated
the effect she had on him. No one got to him like Kathryn Davis and
it terrified him because of it. She needed a man willing to confess
his deepest, darkest sins to her. No secrets. That was what she
deserved.

And it was something Spencer would never be
able to give her.

First ring.

He could do this. She was just one woman. No
harm ever came from a phone call, right? Spencer set his jaw and
drove that idea out of his head. He didn't want to think about the
last phone call he had where he thought something so fucking
naive.

Second ring.

She wasn't with someone. She couldn't be. He
hadn't been with anyone since their breakup. Breakup? Hell. It was
close to the start of WWIII. Regardless how they split, she
wouldn't be with another man now. He refused to believe she'd been
able to move on when they still had so much unresolved between
them.

Third ring.

Maybe she had her ringer off. That would
explain why she hadn't answered, yet. It couldn't be anything to do
with Caller ID. She'd recognize his number. He wouldn't put it past
her to ignore his call. He glanced over his shoulder and spotted
McKoy's phone clipped to his hip. One more ring and he'd call using
another phone. As much as he hated to admit it, TREX really did
need K-SAR right now. He was just about to hang up when her melodic
voice sounded over the line.

“Kat Davis speaking. What's your
emergency?”

Need immediately wracked his body and pushed
into his cock, waking it. Son of a bitch. He couldn't even keep his
libido in check long enough to make it through a single phone call
with her. “Hello, Kathryn.”

“Grandpa?”

He almost smiled. Only two people on God's
green Earth called her by her proper name. He loved how her voice
jumped an octave whenever he caught her off-guard. “It's Spencer
Allen.”

The silence on the other end had him tight,
unable to breathe as he waited for her reaction. They hadn't heard
each other's voices in close to a year.

“Spence?”

He closed his eyes at the way his name rolled
from her lips. Oh, how he wished he could witness her reaction to
him in person. Her stunning pale gray-blue eyes would be wide in
shock. Her thick red hair would be so wild the waves would spill
into her lovely face. Spencer would happily push it back and cup
her cheeks as he lifted her chin to give him better access to her
lips.

Holy Christ. He had to get a hold of his
imagination. This wasn't a booty call. “We need your help.”

“Let me guess,” she snapped, now fully alert.
And pissed. “The
we
in your request is TREX? Am I
right?”

“Yes.”

“You have the balls to call me at two in the
morning to talk about that men-in-black agency you hide behind? Are
you shitting me?”

Let her be pissed at him, his agency, and
everything else. None of that mattered. They had a little boy to
retrieve. “Kathryn—”

“I should have known you'd never call me to
actually, you know, apologize for being such an asshole.”

Yep. Definitely pissed. “Listen—”

“No, Spence. You listen to me.”

“That's enough!” He roared and then pinched
the skin between his eyes to ward off the sudden pounding in his
head that pulsed through his entire body. With a deep breath to
pull in his control, he went on. “We've got a kid lost in the Black
Hills. TREX is calling in K-SAR.”

“Fine.” Kathryn immediately dropped the
prickly attitude. Sort of. “I'll call you when I'm on the
road.”

Spencer ended the call and slipped his phone
into one of the plethora of pockets on his pants. He ignored the
two men staring at him, waiting for him to give them the dirty
details of his brief conversation. Well, too fucking bad. They'd be
waiting a while.