Flash Point - Savannah Kade Page 0,12

the best he could do to let out the tension.

“You okay, boss?” Bethany asked from the seat next to him.

“Yeah.” He let the word roll out on a sigh, though what he really should have said was no.

He wasn't okay. There were two kids still out there. The Ryder boys were thirteen and four. Four! he thought to himself. The littlest one wasn't even in school yet.

Leo was working hard to keep a lid on his rage. He was livid with the kids. What had they been thinking? Where were the parents? In his own mind, he sounded like his father. They weren't thinking. That's what!

Usually, he was more gracious. Kids did stupid things. Some kids had the misfortune of their stupidity turning into real trouble. Most kids just got out of it, no worse for the wear, and never realizing just how much danger they could have been in. But here he was, sitting in his truck, running the engine, with Bethany fidgeting next to him, not able to get going because he was stuck waiting on the rest of the search team.

Another car over, Doug and Bob also waited. And beyond them, Bland and Stanford from the Beatrice FD. The others also ran their engines, as everyone was keeping as warm as possible before they headed out into the cold.

The minutes ticked by like eons. The storm was getting closer, and the kids were getting further away, or more injured, or making more stupid decisions. Probably, they were getting colder. And that was dangerous.

“We can check the provisions again,” Bethany offered almost too cheerfully, as though she were trying to start a task to fill his time.

He chuckled. “I've checked them twice. There's nothing left to do but wait. I just suck at it.”

She didn’t protest his statement.

There were four firefighters coming from the Redemption FD. Depending on what the day brought, they could maybe get out a big community search team. But only if it cleared up. It wouldn't be the first time that Redemption and the surrounding areas needed to come together to look for a kid. He remembered everyone searching for his own brother when he got lost in the woods. That was the first time Leo had met Taggert.

Leo knew now that Taggert had been barely out of his rookie year but had been SAR before he was a firefighter. At the time, to nine-year-old Leo, the man had been a god. He’d saved Garrett and that had saved Leo’s parents’ marriage, too, though he’d only been viscerally aware of that at the time.

Even back then, a lot of the locals already knew about doing the searches. It was big country out here, and they understood the rules—hold hands, walk in a line, kick the plants, check up in the trees, that kind of thing.

But it was a different game in the pitch black, going on three am, near freezing temperatures and a storm rolling in. He glanced at the dash again. The temperature had dropped another four degrees, just since they’d been sitting here. He was going to grind his molars down to smooth, flat surfaces if it took any longer. So he was grateful when he saw the headlights coming up the road behind him.

Leo was out of the car before they were even close. That was dumb. It was cold and he should have conserved his body heat, but he couldn't sit still any longer.

He watched as the ambulance bounced its way up the long, rutted path, and he knew it had taken them longer to get here because they’d brought the cumbersome vehicle.

Slowly, it parked, the headlights cutting through the burned-out field in front of where they all sat now. He'd requested the ambulance, afraid of what they might find. But they were here now, and suddenly it was go time.

He watched as Kane, Phillips, Kelly, and Huston climbed out of the big truck that had followed. Kane and Kelly were solid. Huston was an unknown and Leo didn’t know why his gut reaction was not to like her. Maybe it was because she was a little standoffish and he was used to the general warmth of the locals.

But Phillips? Conrad Phillips was a right asshole, and Leo wished he hadn't come. Unfortunately, the man had trained up for search and rescue. And he wasn't bad at it.

Well, Leo thought, grateful that he was in charge, he won't be my partner. In fact, the firefighters should probably stay together, so