"On it."I'm already moving, jumping off the tailgate, my body switching into rescue mode with the efficiency of fourteen years of muscle memory."Ranger and Duke.I'll have them ready in twenty."
I hang up and turn to Lydia.She's standing now too.Professional face back on.But her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are still dark, and the ghost of that almost-kiss lives in every inch of space between us.
"I need to go," I say."Missing hiker."
"I heard."She whistles for Scout."I can help.Scout's got tracking certification and she's deployed in wilderness searches before.And I can work your base camp communications while you're in the field."
I look at her.At this woman I've known for thirty-six hours who just offered to deploy into a mountain rescue with me like it was nothing.Like she does this every day.Like she belongs here.
"Can you keep up?"
That small smile again.The one that rewires something in my chest every time I see it.
"Try me."
We load the dogs and gear in under fifteen minutes.Lydia rides shotgun in my truck with Scout in the back seat next to Ranger and Duke, and as I pull onto the mountain road toward the north fork trailhead, I glance over and watch her tighten Scout's working vest with quick, practiced hands.
She catches me looking.
I don't look away.
And the thing I almost did on that tailgate, the thing I stopped myself from doing by the width of a phone call, burns through me with a heat that has nothing to do with the September sun and everything to do with the woman sitting three feet away, braiding her hair for a rescue operation, calm and competent and beautiful in a way that makes my lungs forget how they work.
Three weeks, she said.
I'm not going to make it three days.
CHAPTERFOUR
LYDIA
The hiker's name is Audrey Chen.Twenty-six years old.Solo backpacker from Portland who went off trail near the saddle at eighty-five hundred feet approximately four hours ago.Her emergency beacon activated at two-seventeen p.m.but the GPS coordinates placed her in a ravine system that has three possible branches, and with the storm closing in, Ryan's SAR team doesn't have time to search all three on foot.
That's what the dogs are for.
Stephen briefs me in clipped sentences as we climb the trailhead road, his truck eating the switchbacks with the kind of aggressive confidence that says he's driven this route in worse conditions.Ranger and Duke are in their crates in the truck bed, quiet and focused.Scout sits beside me in the back seat, her working vest snug, her eyes tracking the terrain through the window.
"Ryan's team is coming up from the south approach," Stephen says."We'll take the north and work the dogs down.Wind's out of the west, so the scent should funnel toward the eastern ravine branch, but if she moved after the beacon activated, we could be dealing with a dispersed scent field."
"Scout can work a dispersed field.Her range is wider than a single-track dog."
He glances at me.Quick.Evaluating.Then back to the road."Fine.Run Scout on the east branch.I'll take Ranger on the center.Duke holds at base camp in case we need a backup deployment."
"And the west branch?"
"Ryan's team.They've got Atlas."
We reach the trailhead staging area in twenty minutes.Ryan's truck is already there, along with a county sheriff's SUV and Boone McKenna's fire department command vehicle.Stephen parks, kills the engine, and is out of the truck before I've unbuckled my seatbelt.
I watch him transform.
The man who almost kissed me on a tailgate forty minutes ago disappears entirely.What replaces him is something I recognize from every high-performance handler I've ever worked with.Total focus.Economy of motion.A body and mind running on a protocol so deeply embedded it doesn't require thought anymore.
He pulls Ranger's crate, clips the harness, gives the dog a scent article from Audrey's backpack that Ryan holds out.Ranger hits the odor and locks in.Zero hesitation.Zero stress.Whatever I might say about Stephen's training methods, this dog is exceptional under pressure.
"Brooke."Stephen's voice cuts through the staging noise."You good?"
I've got Scout out, vested, and standing at heel.My field pack is on my back.GPS unit clipped to my belt.
