Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Just before dawn, Sebastian lay on his bedroll knowing he should get everyone moving but unable to resist watching Nora sleep in the firelight for a few more seconds. Dark lashes hid her unusual eyes. There was a slight scar close to where her left eyebrow met her perfectly proportioned nose.
He wanted to know how she’d gotten that scar. He wanted to know everything about her journey from victimhood to kick-ass survivor. But something told him she’d be furious if she discovered he knew about her past.
He didn’t like keeping that from her, but he couldn’t throw her off her game just to assuage himself of guilt because he couldn’t keep his nose out of other people’s business.
It wasn’t fair to Summer. It wasn’t fair to Nora, and it wasn’t fair to his team. He was committed to this deception until Nora felt safe enough to confide in him.
He wanted her trust even though he wasn’t sure why.
Except, maybe he did…
He’d known from the start that there was something different about her. Something special. He didn’t research random people. She stirred something inside him that he hadn’t felt for a long time.
He’d been obsessed with his job for years. Committed to his teammates. Determined to be the best damned Hostage Rescue Team operator Gold Team had ever seen—not because he considered himself better than anyone else, but because he wanted to be worthy.
And he was. He knew he was.
But…there was still an emptiness inside him. An aching bruise in his chest cavity. A weakness and vulnerability he would never share with his colleagues no matter how close they all were—or maybe because of how close they were.
He’d die for any one of them, but the idea of them learning he wasn’t as confident or self-assured as he pretended. That would break him. Childhood trauma had left him damaged in an invisible way that could never be truly fixed or forgotten.
But Nora… She’d been through something a thousand times more horrifying and seemed almost normal—if normal was resilient and funny and kind.
It drew him in, the mystery of her. The strength.
He wanted to get to know her on a deeper level. A much deeper level. A level not aligned with a mission to save a little girl who was in grave danger.
Nora frowned in her sleep, brows pinching.
She wasn’t conventionally pretty, but he found her looks compelling.
Her hair was a mess of short blonde waves, her chin a little too stubborn to win any pageants, but he’d never really been drawn to conventional measures of beauty.
Those unusual eyes combined with a bottom lip that looked temptingly lush drew him in.
He knew he shouldn’t be thinking in those terms, not about a co-worker, but he couldn’t stop himself from enjoying these few stolen moments before their day was due to start.
He had no plans to act on his interest and attraction, not with a work colleague, not with someone who’d been traumatized far more than he ever had—not when he had no intention of making himself vulnerable.
And it wasn’t like him to be distracted by a woman.
He’d never jeopardize the mission, but maybe afterwards he could buy her a coffee or something.
She wasn’t FBI—not that FBI agents were strictly forbidden from dating one another—but working on the same team definitely created problems. But right now, Summer needed to be everyone’s top priority.
Time for daydreaming was over. He sat up. Chance raised his head and licked his cheek. Sebastian huffed a laugh and got to his feet, wiped at the patch of dog saliva. He took a large pot full of melted snow and put it on the camp stove to boil.
They needed to fuel up before they headed off, and a thermos of warm tea or coffee went a long way to keeping spirits high for whatever was to come.
Cas was outside on guard duty.
Ryan stretched and rolled over, flung out his arm which ended up draped over Donnelly’s waist.
She woke with a hard blink and spotted Sebastian in the kitchen area. To Sebastian’s surprise she eased carefully away from Ryan without smacking him and pulled on her clothes.
She headed out to the outhouse as people started to stir.
Nora sat up groggily, and Chance went over and gave her a lick.
She laughed and hugged him. The dog went and said “Good morning” to everyone one at a time, and Sebastian wondered what it was like to wake up to that kind of unconditional love every day.
Nice.
Probably.
Nora fed the dog in the corner of the room and filled his water bowl.
Everyone quickly got up and dressed. Securing what they needed for the day before they ate the scrambled egg packets he’d prepared and drank the disgusting instant coffee he’d made.
“Breakfast of champions,” Nora mumbled between bites, catching a bit of egg that escaped.
He checked in with Novak as he ate but there was no fresh news. Ryan, Grady and Meghan were ready to head out before they’d cleared up breakfast, so they went ahead. They had farther to travel anyway. They were to report in every two hours, sooner if there was a sighting.
Sebastian bagged the garbage and cleaned up. The two sleds were stacked in the corner along with anything deemed unnecessary for twenty-four hours. Nora’s pack still looked heavy.
She saw him assessing it. “It’s Chance’s food and the medical kit.”
“I’ll carry the medical kit.” He nodded to his pack. Ryan had taken the squad’s first aid supplies because Sebastian knew Nora also had one. He also knew she was unlikely to let someone else be responsible for her dog’s gear, but at least he could lighten her load a little.
Cas made sure the fire was fully out, and they looked around. They hadn’t left any weapons or ammunition, and hopefully it was too cold for the bears to be awake yet and break in for the MREs.
“Let’s go.” He locked up while Nora secured Chance’s service vest and booties, and then she and Cas attached their skis, leaving their snowshoes strapped to their backpacks.
Sebastian had considered leaving the shoes behind.
Skis were faster, but shit happened, and he didn’t want them stuck, unable to traverse an area of deep snow with only cross-country ski boots.
He hung the key on a nail in the outhouse and hurried back to the others.
“Let’s stay in the trees below the ridge line for now. Cas, take point.”
Nora opened her mouth to argue.
“You said Chance would alert if he scents Summer, yes?”
She nodded.
“Then you don’t need to be out front the entire time. I trust your dog not to get confused by our scent. You should too.”
“I do.” Her brow crinkled, and her lips pursed. “You’re right. We’re used to being in front but this should work.”
He pulled the bag containing the white sneaker from his pack and handed it to Nora.
She opened the seal and let Chance sniff the shoe intently. Cas was breaking trail as he cut into the trees.
She handed the bag back to Sebastian and told her dog to “find” even as she followed Cas. The dog scouted in a circle on the end of his long leash but went with Nora, obviously not finding Summer’s scent in any of the other directions.
Sebastian sealed Summer’s shoe tightly into the plastic bag and placed it securely inside his pack, then headed off after the others.
They skied aggressively for about an hour, then Cas raised his arm and pointed to the ridge line. He’d obviously heard something.
Sebastian’s pulse gave a skip despite his training. Was that little girl over the hill, within reach? He used his breathing to get his heart rate back under control.
He heard it too now. A man shouting. He unsnapped his skis about twenty feet from the top.
Gave Nora a look and pressed his finger to his lips to emphasize the need for silence.
If this was Eastman and Summer, the last thing they needed was for the dog to give them away.
She squatted and told the dog softly, “Quiet.”
Then she broke out a pepperoni stick, and the dog sat rapt at her feet.
He hadn’t alerted, but as the noise was coming from the other side of this ridge, perhaps the scent hadn’t reached his nose yet.
Sebastian used his fingers in a “come here” motion, and he made Nora crouch with Chance behind a large pine.
“I’m a LEO, not a civilian,” she reminded him in a whisper, opening her jacket to show him her SIG.
“This is recon, and the fewer things that might give us away, the better.”
She pressed her lips together. “Fine.”
He suppressed a smile at the word. Headed off to crawl to the top of the ridge and lay beside Cas.
Cas handed him the spotting scope. Down below, in a gap in the trees, it looked like a massacre had occurred.
The pristine white snow was soaked with crimson.
A man in a blue-and-black checked lumberjack shirt stood over the carcass of what had probably been a black bear, holding a knife the length of Sebastian’s forearm.
The man’s face was grizzled, hair gray and wiry, but too long to be Eastman’s. He turned to yell at another man who was vomiting behind a tree. A pile of intestines had been dumped off to one side of the dead animal. Two snowmobiles were parked nearby. One had a sled attached.
The vomiting man turned out to be a woman with long, straggly, blonde hair. Her eyes looked huge and bloodshot from booze or tears. Sebastian couldn’t tell. What he could tell was that these two were not Glenn and Summer Eastman.
He turned and waved Nora up to them, pressing his finger to his lips again.
She arrived with a subdued Chance at her side. His nose worked the air as he stared over the ridge. Nora held his collar.
She looked down the slope, and her eyes narrowed with fury.
“Those two are poaching. Bear season doesn’t open for another month, and the fact they’re outside the National Park is probably more accident than design.” She slid her phone out of her pocket and started taking photos.