Flash Point - Savannah Kade Page 0,20

of. Then again, it hit just a little too close to home.

He'd been nine when he and Garrett had gotten lost. But he had left signs as soon as he realized he was in trouble. He'd grabbed a rock and scratched arrows onto the trail. He'd stolen his father's bright yellow field marking tape some time before, simply because it was cool. So he’d doled it out, leaving tiny scraps of it hanging from low branches as he went. The search team had found him quickly.

Now he was hoping that at least the older of the two boys, Jason, might have done something similar. But they'd found nothing and Leo was losing patience and hope.

His comm crackled to life, even as he watched the ambulance drive away and hoped to God no one else got hurt before Luke Hernandez turned it around and brought it back.

Bethany had slipped and fallen on a patch of ice they hadn't seen. Not even while they’d been running. Later, after they’d stopped. Of course, he now had everybody put on the traction cleats. His own gripped well enough that he didn’t walk with his regular ease, but at least he wouldn’t slip.

But for Bethany, it was too little too late. He didn't think she'd broken anything. But she'd be on muscle relaxers in bed, probably in screaming pain every time she tried to move her back for the next handful of days.

He felt like crap for not having them get the elastic and metal slip on covers on sooner. His only excuse was that it was a pain to stop and affix them properly. They liked to tangle … and in rain gear and thick gloves, it hadn’t been easy. But his excuse was shit in the face of Bethany’s pain.

Bethany, of course was her sunny self, apologizing even as she grimaced with the pain. “Don’t worry, Boss. This was on me. It wasn’t the first time I slipped, and I should have been smart enough to put on my own cleats.”

He still felt like it was his fault though. At least the ambulance was warm. Bob and Doug were standing at the edge of a makeshift parking lot. Just a patch of grass where Leo had made everyone meet up.

Being the closest, they’d come immediately when Bethany had her accident. They'd help stabilize her, but then there’d been nothing to do but sit in the rain and wait until Luke arrived with the backboard. The four of them had rotated shifts carrying her out. Though Bethany herself wasn’t heavy, the board was awkward and the ground uneven and now icy.

He looked at Bob and Doug now. They looked barely the worse for wear, but they were his old guard. Both were pushing sixty and, though they were in excellent physical health, if anything did happen to them, Leo was afraid the recovery would take twice as long.

He couldn’t afford to lose them in their regular capacities. Not for a search that was dangerous and yielding nothing. He was considering sending them home.

No, he admitted to himself, he wasn’t considering it, he was doing it. The decision was made.

So he was down to fifty percent of his original search force.

He was opening his mouth to tell them his decision when his comm crackled.

“Where can a guy get some hot coffee around here?” Phillips asked.

This time Leo did scrub his face with his wet glove before he thought better of it.

Jesus, Conrad, he thought, you don't get coffee on these searches unless you bring it with you.

Maybe the guy thought he was being funny. Leo had coffee, but it was for when everyone came back. It was for the victory of finding the boys. The better part of valor right now was silence.

He started to push the button on his own comm, trying to think of a neutral reply, but Phillips voice came over the air again, sharp and this time serious.

“What's the word? Are we calling this off?”

The angry sigh escaped him, and he was glad no one was close enough to hear or see it. This was the third time Phillips had asked. Leo was tempted to tell him to just turn around and haul his own ass home. There was every possibility his attitude was hurting the search more than it was helping.

But they were all on the same channel and everyone would hear. Doing that would leave Kalan Smith without a partner … though, the more Leo thought about it, it