Rescued (Navy SEALS Romance Book 1) (3 page)

T
anner crested
the edge of the mountain, coming in from the east. He'd headed east the entire trip and circled round once he was there, trying to see the lay of the land. He'd been in contact with the rangers, who now knew they had a missing hiker in the midst of a fire that was spreading fast, feeding on dry autumn underbrush. The ranger he'd talked to had said "Oh, holy fuck," before even thinking about radio protocol, if they worried about such things, and Tanner didn't blame him. What was down there was a cluster fuck waiting to happen. Duncan and his friends were probably still down there, probably still separated, but Tanner hadn't been able to get through to them. If Duncan had listened, and he probably had, he'd gotten his people down and was evacuating to the ranger stations, cutting between the flames. Bad news would be if they were trapped in their vehicles. Better news would be if they were moving and had just gotten turned around from not knowing the area and driving in the smoke or trying to avoid flames.

He didn't have time to think about them. He crabbed the helicopter into the wind, following the rise of the land, fighting fire wind and the currents that flow against mountainsides. He brought the chopper up sharply over the top of the mountain, then stared a sweep down the side where lay the path the hikers had followed. First sweep he didn't see anything except the flames at the base of the mountain, right where someone trying to get down and get out would run into them. He banked, turned, started back up, watching as the turbulence from the rotors flattened the trees and bushes, opening up the view in some instances and closing it down in others.

About halfway up, he spotted her. She was tiny, blond, ponytail, the right hiker, and that was good news, it wouldn't have been that unusual to find another stranded hiker or two and everything would slow him down. She was crouched in the creek bed – good girl! – her arms around a big black Labrador. That cinched it. This was Taylor Adams. Now he just needed her to look up at him.

Because right now, she had no idea he was there and the way she crouched, hanging on to her dog, her face buried in his wet, muddy fur, looked like she'd just given up.

W
hen the wind
around her picked up and the sound crescendo'd, Taylor raised her head. Whatever was going on, if it was fire winds, they were different than what she'd expected. If it was a firestorm moving up at her, she wanted to know about it. She had no intention of going out with her head buried in her dog's ruff; she thought better of herself than that. In the split second between the sound reaching the screaming point and Taylor looking up, she thought of everything left undone in her life – a battle with her sister that had never been resolved, friends forgotten along the way to getting through college, her father divorced from her mother and Taylor taking sides, which she shouldn't have, the guys who had dumped her, and not being the one to come back strong from it after Zach left her, her longing to be loved, the five pounds she'd never lost, the –

Overdue library books, damn, girl, this is the best you can come up with when your life flashes in front of your eyes?

At the very least, sorrow she'd brought Monster to this horrible end.

Taylor looked up.

The helicopter looked balanced on thin air. The rotors chopped frantically fast, sending the willows flat and the dust high. It looked like it was right there, within touching distance, but she understood instantly it was above the tree line, higher than she could, say, climb.

She understood it was real, it was there, it was for her. She'd done her best to get her and Monster out of the forest and now –

"Help!" she shouted, as if the bright red and white helicopter with SEArch & Rescue painted on the side wasn't there for her. She waved her arms over her head and felt her hair whipped into a frenzy. Monster barked.

The pilot, helmet, glasses, alien-looking behind the clear bubble of glass or plastic or whatever it was, gave her a thumbs up. Then a voice, amplified over a PA system, said, "I'm sending down a basket. I can't land. Strap yourself in first and the dog second."

Yeah, no, because that made no sense. Minute she tried to do anything like that Monster either bolted or turned into something as containable as live Jell-O. She gave the pilot a thumbs up in response, grinning and lying. No way she was risking losing her dog. Not now.

The helicopter which had been at an angle, now hung straight and improbable in front of her, and the sound of a winch filled the air. The afternoon that had been so eerie and silent had opened up to a cacophony of sound that was deafening.

"I'm never going hiking again," she said aloud as the basket began to lower toward her. Heart pounding, uncertain she could really get in anything that looked so damn flimsy, she gathered it to her, discovered she could pull Monster with her so at least they got in at the same time, then buckled him in before she buckled her in. Anyone who had a dog would understand.

"Ready?" the pilot boomed.

She gave him a thumbs up and the winch started again. Taylor's stomach instantly lurched unhappily. She did not particularly like heights and she liked them far less when she wasn't in control of what was happening with them. She expected him to winch her up, but there didn't seem to be anybody else on the craft, which was weird, she thought, and he boomed at her, "Here we go, hang on, do not let go," and suddenly the helicopter was turning, powering away from the damn path, the basket following along obediently, Taylor's stomach seeming to remain back in the creek. She held tight to Monster, afraid he'd panic and try to bolt despite the carabiners attached to his collar, but he just stopped panting, shut his mouth and stared around curiously, ears up. She felt more like whining than he did, apparently.

The flight was fast, not that she was letting go of the basket or the dog to check her stopwatch, but even in her terror it didn't take long, then they were hovering over a ranger station and instructions were coming from the crew on the ground and the guy in the air when all she really needed to know was he was putting down the basket and she should probably get out of it.

She did. Happily. The minute strong hands grabbed the sides of the basket she unclipped Monster and herself and was out of it before the rangers around her could even assist.

One of them motioned at the pilot he could take off, but instead the red and white waited for them to move back, then landed without powering down. Taylor shaded her eyes, watching as the cockpit door opened and the pilot emerged. He'd taken off the helmet, and was wearing aviator glasses, a skin tight gray t-shirt with a logo on it that matched the one of the side of the chopper showing what looked like waves and he wore the kind of heavy pants firemen wore. He jogged over to them, high fived one of the rangers, the others already heading back to inside jobs, and looked at Taylor.

Who caught her breath.

He had pale ice blue eyes, darkly lashed and set in a suntanned face made up of chiseled angles. He was older than her, she thought maybe twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with hair that looked black in the sunlight. Thick chest with defined pecs she thought she could see the striations in even through his t-shirt, and arms that compared favorably to Dwayne Johnson's. He stood easily a head taller than her.

All that work getting off the mountain and she was going to die right here. Heart attack. Or forgetting to ever take a breath again. Or she might breathe in an insect and choke, because she seemed unable to close her mouth.

"Taylor Adams, I presume?" he asked with a goofy guy-next-door grin (he was anything but the guy next door to anywhere she'd ever lived) and held out his hand. "I'm Tanner Davis. SEArch & Rescue."

His hand was warm and dry and huge and enveloped hers and she had no desire to try and take her hand back. Ever.

"Taylor," she said, as if she were acknowledging what he'd said and not just too stupefied to realize he'd just identified her. "This is Monster."

At which point Tanner endeared himself to her even more than the rescue had already done – he dropped into an easy crouch, held his hand out to shake Monster's paw and when Monster – untrained and untrainable – just stared, then looked back at Taylor with a WTF expression, laughed, and gave the Lab a hug.

Lucky dog,
Taylor thought, right before her attention snapped back to the fire – and her friends.

"My friends are out there," she said. Then remembered – "Danny contacted you?"

"Bad connection, but he got through. He and the others in your party were headed down the mountain."

Taylor panicked. "But that's – "

"Right. So I'm going back up." He turned to the ranger. "Any contact with the group of hikers? It's three males and three females."

"First we've heard of it," the ranger said, and Taylor paid attention for the first time. He was a redhead, tall and slender and serious, wearing an official Forest Service uniform. He had already turned to a computer terminal in the lee of the huge garage where only one sage green truck was still lodged. Even as he entered information he threw out questions to Taylor and to her rescuer.

She gave him the names and ages of everyone in the party, fast enough it didn't matter they were all pretty much the same age. Then descriptions of the three vehicles they'd used to get there, a rented RAV-4, a borrowed Jeep Wrangler, and Jessie's Toyota 4x4.

"Right," Tanner Davis said, already striding back to the helicopter. "Why don't I put another pair of eyes in the sky?'

The ranger nodded, still entering info and starting to send it out to the planes flying overhead dropping either water or retardant – Taylor hadn't noticed on the way in. She'd been too busy convincing herself she wasn't going to die like eggs dropped from an incredible height rather than in the fire that would have been leaping up the creek in another five minutes. What she had noticed about the flight was she hated it more than she hated commercial airliners – Taylor liked to have her feet on the ground unless she was the one in charge of whatever was going on that had gotten her off of it, and she didn't fly – but now he was headed away from her, she called, "I know the vehicles and I think I know where we were." Now she was back down on the ground, the map of the area seen from the ground and from the mountain top and from the air was starting to come together in her mind.

"Come on," he called without looking back. He was already swinging up into the cockpit.

She turned fast to the ranger. "Can you keep Monster here?"

The guy grinned. Monster had that effect. So did his name. "Are you a Monster, buddy? Sure. I'll put him in the truck. If we have to head out fast, he'll be with me."

"Thanks!" She bent, kissed her dog, kept her head down and ran for the helicopter, climbed onboard and took the proffered helmet from Tanner.

Shame to put away a guy like that into a helmet, she thought irrationally. Then she was spouting info as they ascended. "We came in from the south, as Jason kept telling me over and over. The entrance is south and it was about two miles from the trailhead. We headed west up the trail – " Because that's the only direction it goes from there, but what the hell, she kept talking because she was scared to death for her friends, scared of the helicopter, and in awe of the beautiful man beside her –

He took the chopper south, flying high over the fire until they had positioned themselves between the mountain and the ranger station, and she started scanning the ground. He couldn't get too low, not with the weird currents fires put out but it only took her a minute to spot the vehicles.

They were moving, a tiny convoy, and from the looks of it, hemmed in by flames. She could see one escape route, but all the fire had to do was fill in behind that gap and they'd be trapped again.

"Hang on, " Tanner said. "I’m going to bring them up. It's gonna be a rough couple minutes in the fire winds." Then he handed her the controls.

Taylor panicked, suddenly wishing she were on the ground in the middle of the fire and not here –

"I don't know how -- !" she said, trying to back away, but the harness held her in place and there was nowhere to go.

"It's fine. Just hold it steady . Keep it right where it is. I'm going to be directly behind your seat. But this time I have to bring people into the craft, I can't leave how many – "

"Six," she said.

"People in the basket. Won't hold them."

She rubbed her wet palms on her cargo shorts. "What if I – "

"You won't," he said, and unexpectedly darted in close to her as he stood, the controls in her hands, bent to accommodate his bulk inside the helicopter, and gave her a very quick kiss.

Taylor stilled completely, shocked. She wanted to demand to know what he was doing or – or to grab him at the expense of everything and return the kiss or to – what
was
he doing?

"Just distracting you," he said, gave her that goofy grin again that made him look like anything but a search and rescue dude, and went behind her seat.

Instantly she felt like her sweating hands were slipping on the controls and as if, when trying for a better grip, she was moving them. The fact that the chopper held steady changed nothing. Clearly she was going to get them all killed.

But when Tanner's amplified voice came outside the craft, booming around them with the fire winds, she didn't even flinch and the chopper stayed steady. Which, she thought, either meant she wasn't actually doing anything, or she was doing better than she thought.

"My name's Tanner Davis," he said. "Duncan, wave, I can't see you."

Taylor looked down and saw Danny's arm sticking out of the Wrangler.

"Very good. Are all of you accounted for? Give me a thumb's up."

The thumb went down and Taylor gagged on fear.

Tanner swore. "Sorry! Very sorry. I've got Taylor Adams with me. Is everyone else accounted for?"

This time Danny's thumb turned upwards. Taylor felt a sob tear loose. Relief could be a bitch.

"Good! I'm going to lower the basket. Anybody there hysterical enough they have to come up with someone else? Because I'd really rather not."

Jessie,
Taylor thought, and sure enough, Jess climbed from her truck holding so tightly to Barb there was a good chance she'd throttle her.

"Right. Two girls we can handle. Basket coming down." He gave them instructions, told Danny to cheek the carabiners and lowered it away.

Taylor sat holding the joysticks, feeling like an imposter – and kind of having fun. Her own danger was sliding past, already becoming memory and she was forgetting the exact details, only reveling in not being in the creek, not being responsible for Monster's death, and maybe, just maybe, being partially responsible for the rescue of her friends.

Scariest day ever. And then Tanner appeared beside her and took back the controls and she thought just maybe what she'd thought was her last day might turn out to be one of the best.