Off the Map (Winter Rescue #2) (4 page)

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 for 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 lump 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.”

She was smart enough not to try for it again, but the icy way she looked at him felt like a wash of alcohol and stainless steel over his head all the same.

“Very,” she said with a curl of her perfect bow lips. “I would’ve murdered your dog with my own two hands months ago, but sacrificial bloodstains are such a pain to get out.” 

Chapter Three

“It doesn’t look enough like him. Here—let me.” Carrie grabbed the Ken doll from out of her friend Lexie’s hand. The brown marker they were using to color over the signature golden plastic locks hadn’t dried all the way yet, so some of it smudged on her fingers. “Shoot. Shouldn’t we be using permanent marker for this instead? And why are there sparkles all over his feet?”

“I only had glitter glue,” Lexie apologized. “You should have warned me we’d need more than just basic art supplies. I only took that one scrapbooking class.”

“Hmm.” Carrie finished touching up the hair and used a red marker to try and pull Ken’s glistening smile into a more suitable scowl. “I guess this is as close as we’re going to get. I just need to sketch in the tattoo on his arm. Are you almost done with his vest?”

The conversation they were having on the living room floor of the house Lexie shared with her boyfriend wasn’t as strange as it seemed on the outside. Yes, they were adult women sitting cross-legged on shag carpeting with glitter in their hair. And yes, they were creating what amounted to a plastic voodoo doll. But desperate times called for desperate measures. It was either this or take a baseball bat to Scott’s headlights. Craft time had seemed the more ladylike choice.

“Ta-da!” Lexie held up a miniature red vest with a flourish. They’d had to cut into a pair of Lexie’s tights to make it, but her friend assured her the hosiery loss was worth it. “It’s kind of adorable, if I do say so myself. Are you sure you want to ruin it by poking holes in it?”