Flash Point - Savannah Kade Page 0,18

for your help and stay safe. Check in when you get there.”

Bob and Doug headed back to their search area, not wanting to leave a grid section unfinished. But Leo would have to divide the most likely areas up again. He sighed just as Bethany once again turned to him.

“We'll find them, Boss.”

He wished her optimism was more contagious. It wasn't. And even as he had that thought, he felt the icy rain start to fall, freezing on contact. They were standing in the open field as the clouds opened and the sky began to pour down on them.

Leo looked to Bethany, and saw her eyes widen.

“Run!”

Chapter Eleven

Jo and Sebastian were pulling out their rain gear and doing the awkward climb into it even as Leo's voice came over the comms.

“Rain gear on. Seek shelter.”

It didn't bother Jo to be getting instructions that she should have clearly already known. It was simply par for the course. If they got wet, they could get hypothermia. From the tone of the transmission, it sounded like Leo Evans was already frustrated with the entire situation. Maybe because in addition to finding nothing, he’d already lost two of his searchers. She felt it, too.

Luckily, she and Sebastian had already been under the cover of trees. So they’d heard the icy rain hitting the leaves before they felt it. But it still took them a few minutes to get the gear out and pull it on.

It was another layer over already layered clothing. It was cumbersome, clear, and crinkly. Because it covered their heads more thoroughly, the gear made it harder to hear a child calling out. But not becoming another victim to be rescued was important.

So Jo wiggled into her gear, pulled her phone out, and checked her bars again as icy crystals hit and melted on her screen. “My signal’s fading. But it was better just a few hundred feet that way.”

She pointed back the direction they had just come from as Sebastian nodded. He didn’t seem to fully catch on. It wasn’t just about wanting to have a phone signal.

Jo had a point to make. “We're down two searchers. I'm going to make a call.”

Sebastian followed along then leaned over her shoulder, opting to look at the screen of her phone rather than fumbling with his own through the heavy gloves at four thirty in the morning.

“Do you know Ivy Dean?” she asked him.

Sebastian laughed as she realized what a dumb question that was. Redemption was a small town, of course he knew the librarian. He replied, “I'm actually more surprised that you do.” Then he tipped his head. “Though I guess you did come help when Seline was missing.”

Jo nodded, wondering how Sebastian knew that … small town, she reminded herself.

Jo had a few days between moving into her new apartment and starting her first shift. So she’d simply gone into the library to get a book. The librarian had been warm and charming and by the time Jo had several romance novels pulled from the shelves, she also had a new friend. Ivy had plucked it out of her that she was a new firefighter, that she was on A shift, that she was search and rescue trained, originally from Boston, and had done a stint in Dallas before landing here.

Jo had learned that Ivy grew up in the Ozarks. That’s she'd gone off to college after a few years working as a waitress and finding it wasn’t enough for her. She had been on her own since she was sixteen. The thing Ivy hadn't told her, but Jo had quickly learned, was that the librarian was brilliant, resourceful, and stubborn.

“Ivy will know things we don't—at least things that I don’t. And I doubt she'll mind if we wake her up in the middle of the night for a missing child,” Jo told him as she searched for Ivy’s home number.

“I think you're right.”

Within moments they had a sleepy Ivy Dean on the line. But the voice quickly snapped to attention. “What can I help with?”

“We're down to eight searchers, and daylight is coming up soon,” Jo told her. “We’ve been out all night searching grid patterns but we haven’t found anything. No sign of the boys. And now, with the injury, a fifth of our territory isn't getting covered. I’m wondering if we can be a little more strategic.”

Jo was almost yelling above the sound of the rain. The harsh pattering on the leaves above her and the crinkling