Rescued (Navy SEALS Romance Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

from which she'd come. It probably paralleled the damned path she'd been on, which she was starting to hate for its very reticence in showing itself.
    And it was on fire.
    Taylor stepped back and instinctively clutched Monster's leash tighter before the dog could think to bound down the side of the mountain in a Here's how you do it, follow me! motion. Suddenly there was far less air and that was imagination but it left her no less dizzy and not a bit less scared.
    She tried her phone again. No signal. Now she was probably dealing with the smoke as well. Taylor had no idea how cell phones worked. She might work for a tech company, but that didn't mean that the weren't some sides of tech that didn't just seem like magic.
    And magic didn't always work. Magic, according to most novels, demanded sacrifice. That thought made her shudder. Peering down again she saw the fire was climbing swiftly. She could still hear the planes in the air but they didn't know she was here. Now clouds of smoke were rising. She didn't have time to see if they could fly through if or if they could see her. She had to get her and Monster out of there.
    "Time to go, Monst," she said and started for the edge of the trees. The instant she crashed through the other side of them, still amazed she couldn't remember doing it in the first place, she found herself on the path.
    "Good," she said. She'd count blessings. Concentrate on whatever went right. Better than the way her thoughts were tending. "Now." She looked at Monster and memory, canceled by the events of the last 50 minutes, stirred. They'd been coming up the trail, still happy, enjoying the day, thinking how slow everyone else was and that no, she wasn't going to stop, if they couldn't keep up they could meet her on top, and Monster had disappeared very briefly into the woods on her left side.
    Instantly she'd called him, shouting him back to her side. She had no idea what was up here – badgers, lions, squirrels – but she didn't want Monster crashing about by himself. She'd just pulled the leash out and was ready to clip it on him when he'd come back soaking wet and muddy, and done the Labrador equivalent of tradition: he done a thorough ear/jowl/ruff/coat shake, his fur moving in counter sway to his violent shaking and the water and mud splattering her. Mud still clung to her shorts and t-shirt. She should have remembered this.
    Because this meant there was a body of water over there and if she was lucky, it was a creek. Giving Monster's collar a sharp tug, she led him with her, tromping through the underbrush, as jumpy as Jessie now about snakes and wishing the ground were a little more clear and a lot more wet so she could see if there were crushed plants or Labrador tracks.
    Minutes after they left the path, she came to the stream and here she could see some disturbance down stream, where something large had dug wildly at the side in the mud, happy for the simple fact of water and mud and sunshine.
    Good. That was the Lab she was going to get down the mountainside.
    "Come on, you," she said, and tugged his leash again, leading him directly into the water. Monster took one look at what she was doing and where she was heading and then barked and grinned, staring at her like she was a goddess. If only she'd known all she had to do to make him adore her was wallow in mud.
    "We're going down the river without a paddle," she told him and broke into only slightly hysterical sounding laughter. Better than tears. She was on her feet and moving, they were in water, and far enough to the side away from the valleys and the fire that the air was a tiny bit cleaner.
    Still no running. She wasn't going to break her neck or injure her dog. But moving slow was hard to do. They could hear the sounds of the fire now, eating up the side of the mountain, and the Lab kept tugging on the leash, trying to force Taylor to go faster. She couldn't blame him.
    Partway down she tried calling again. If her friends could