Off the Map (Winter Rescue #2) Read Online Free PDF

I’m so sorry, Scott, but she’s gone.”
    “Mara?” Scott had to steady himself with a hand on the countertop. “No. It’s not possible. That’s even worse.”
    Newman’s silence was sharp with recriminations, but Scott felt only the numb wash of loss dousing him from within. Guilt had no place there, could only pass silently through. His dad may have given him life, but Mara was…
    “I don’t understand,” Scott said, his voice tight.
    “There will probably be an official report tomorrow, but I wanted you to hear the news from me first.” Newman paused. “A friendly voice helps in these situations.”
    Yes, Scott understood all too well how this process worked. Reduce the impact, sympathize, support. It was the official bad news credo.
    “And I know how much you’ve been struggling ever since…”
    Yes, he knew that one, too. Ever since he’d lost his shit over Carrie’s accident, falling into the blinding sense of panic that still hung on to the edges of his subconscious, strongest whenever she entered the room.
    The situation had been eerily similar to this one, actually, a page from Newman in the dead of night, information shared over a cheap drink that did nothing to eliminate the pain. He still sometimes found himself reliving those terrifying hours of uncertainty when no one seemed to know if she was going to be okay. Dead. Comatose. Her beautiful, vibrant spirit broken from head to toe. Every possible scenario had played through Scott’s head in horrifying detail.
    She’d only moved to Spokane about a year ago, and she had no next of kin in the area, so no one had been able to get any concrete answers about her condition for hours after the accident occurred. All anyone had known was that she’d gone against her boss’s orders, against all medical and flight regulations, against goddamned common sense to transport a heart attack patient in a blizzard.
    Scott didn’t care that the entire passenger list had walked away without a scratch, or that she’d ended up saving the patient’s life. For a few hours, he’d thought he’d lost her, and his entire world had gone cold and black.
    He cleared his throat, unsure what he was supposed to say now. Did Newman want him to confirm how much Carrie’s accident had affected him? Did he want to hear that Scott’s entire life was still so far off balance he didn’t know which way was up?
    “What happened?” he asked instead, his voice gruff.
    Newman sighed. “I should get the full debriefing shortly, but from what I gather, it sounds like they lost her somewhere in the Colville National Forest. The storm we’re currently enjoying is just the tail end of what they’ve got north of here.”
    “No.” The gruffness hadn’t left his tone; an overwhelming sense of dizziness still buzzed in his ears. “It can’t be. Maybe you heard wrong.”
    “I didn’t hear wrong.”
    “Maybe they meant some other dog.”
    “They didn’t mean any other dog.”
    Scott groaned and rubbed his eyes, wishing he could go back fifteen minutes, when his biggest worry was whether or not he could withstand the power of Carrie’s cleavage.
    Why Mara? Why now? He released a soft curse as the full implication of this conversation hit him, his loss complete. It had been a mistake to let her go up north in the first place. He’d made it a practice long ago only to train the dogs, never to keep them, but he should have made an exception for her. She was the exception.
    Mara had been the runt of the litter, a downy husky who’d been so determined to succeed it almost broke his heart when it took her twice as long to be fully trained. There had been a time, early on in his work with her, when he thought she wouldn’t be able to make it, that the strain of rugged terrain and high-pressure scenarios would prove too much.
    But she’d persevered. She’d made it. She’d learned to channel her weaknesses—that heartbreaking desire to never let a human down—into a strength