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

that made her invaluable on a search. He’d never known any dog so determined to sniff out the lost and fallen.
    Fuck. He’d loved that animal.
    “I don’t understand how this could have happened,” Scott said. “I know she wasn’t as flashy as some of the rescue dogs I’ve placed with the Colville team in the past, but she was well-trained. She was ready. What did her handler do wrong?”
    “Nothing,” Newman said carefully, his tone neutral.
    “Bullshit. Everything happens for a reason. Did he mistreat her? So help me, if I find anything—”
    “These things happen, Scott. It’s a risk the dogs take, a risk we all take, every time we set foot on a mountain. You know that.” Newman was talking down to him, talking him off the ledge, and he felt it prickle at his skin. “It’s unfortunate, but it’s no one’s fault. Least of all yours.”
    “It’s someone’s fault,” Scott grumbled.
    “It’s a stroke of bad luck, that’s all. These things just happen.”
    A stroke of bad luck. Scott’s heart slammed out of his chest and onto the floor, and he didn’t bother to pick it up again. There was no point—he had no use for the damn organ anyway.
    Because Newman was wrong. These things didn’t just happen. They happened—had been happening—ever since the day he’d walked into a SAR meeting to find himself spellbound by a brash, ballsy helicopter pilot with a death wish.
    She should have done them all a favor and worn a sign that day: I’m Carrie Morlock, and I’m bad luck. Bad luck, bad news, a bad idea.
    He hung up the phone, his heart constricted to rock. It was the worst possible moment for Carrie to walk through the kitchen door, concern knitting her brow, her warm and sympathetic smile the exact thing Scott needed to feel better. And she would make him feel better—he knew that without question. No one else was capable of lifting him up the way she could. She’d mock his fears and laugh at the idea of fate. She’d offer him the solace of her perfectly shaped bosom.
    And then she’d re-wash his vest just in case it still retained some of its powers.
    Five years he’d gone without washing it. Five years he’d gone without losing a single rescue dog. Every animal he’d trained was alive and accounted for, either working the field or happily retired with all the bones and open fields they could wish for.
    It was silly to be superstitious—Scott knew that. He was a grown-ass man with grown-ass beliefs about the origin of the universe, and he knew on an intellectual level that the amount of grime on his vest had little to do with whether or not the dogs he trained lived or died. But after spending five perfectly content years with his dirty clothes and his full-length mirror propped up against the bathroom wall and his heart lodged firmly in his chest, he had to believe that something had happened to change his luck so drastically.
    That something was headed his way right now.
    “You.”
    Carrie stopped mid-stride, her foot in the air. “What about me?”
    “You did this. You killed her.”
    “What are you talking about?” As usual, she was neither alarmed nor intimidated by his change of tone. He could command animals to complete subservience using only his words, but she was impervious to everything but the voices inside her own head. “Who did I kill?”
    “Mara.” Even saying her name hurt. She was one of the only dogs he had a picture of, a tiny puppy held up to the camera a few days after he’d received the litter. She’d been licking his face at the time—a habit he normally tried to curb, but it had been impossible to train her out of her natural affection.
    “I have no idea what’s going on right now.”
    “She was probably the best dog I ever trained, and she’s dead.”
    Carrie’s face fell. “Oh, Scott.”
    No. He couldn’t take her sympathy. He didn’t want her love. He wanted his fucking dog back.
    “Don’t you ‘Oh, Scott’ me,” he warned. The edges of