“Do I need to remind you that this is an emergency situation?” He gestured at the Bluebonnet Emergency Services logo on the sleeve of his jacket. “If your sister isn’t willing to comply with the rescue—”
“That’s not it,” Lucy said quickly. “I haven’t seen her.”
“You haven’t seen her?” He arched an eyebrow.
The girl fidgeted. “I thought she was here to take me home, so I had people cover for me. She probably thinks I’m off at the Templar camp.” Lucy shrugged again, wiping her wet hair away from her face with bright green fingernails.
A wave of sheer irritation flashed through him. This girl had deliberately led her sister astray and risked her safety. And in the process, she’d created more work for him.
He turned, hands on his hips, and surveyed the parking lot. This entire evening was a mess. In the distance, he saw volunteers laughing and joking around with men in costumes. He thought he might have even seen one take a swig of an offered drink as they waited for a ride. Disgraceful. The military would have never run an evacuation like this.
He knew the others weren’t military—they were just volunteers from the city that had abandoned their Friday night plans to fish out a bunch of drunk kids—and adults—from a mudslide of a campground. It didn’t mean it didn’t irritate him. No one had their act together, and here he was, taking keys from a bunch of drunk ingrates when he could have been somewhere else. Anywhere else.
And now this. The fact that prissy, prim Beth Ann, unofficial Queen of Bluebonnet, was lost wandering in the woods? It got on his last nerve, because he knew he was going to have to be the one to rescue her ass. And wasn’t that going to be fun. It was bad enough when he ran across her in town and she glared daggers at him. Now he was going to spend his Friday night tracking her down in the woods, where she would no doubt glare daggers at him again, as if the rain and mud were his fault.
She thought everything was his fault anyhow. He was pretty sure she still blamed him for being Dane’s friend, and Dane had hurt her best friend Miranda in the past. It didn’t matter that Dane and Miranda were engaged. She might tolerate Dane now, but that toleration didn’t extend to his friends. Colt knew she still disliked him. The feeling was mutual.
Colt looked back at the sniffling, drenched girl. “Where’s this Templar camp?” he growled.
Lucy hastily stammered directions, and he was able to guess. It sounded like these “Templar” idiots liked to camp right on the edge of the Daughtry land. They were probably the ones Dane had run into before. If so, he knew where that was. “You,” he said in a low voice, and pointed to the waiting ATV. “Go with them.”
“But my sister?”
“I’ll find her and send her on her way.”
“But—”
Colt gave the girl a menacing look.
“Uh, tell Beth Ann I said hi and that I’m sorry,” Lucy said in a rush, and then dashed for the waiting group, her boots squelching in the thick mud with every step.
That was better. He headed toward Rob, the head of the volunteer outfit, and handed him the bucket of keys. “All tagged.”
“You’ve been a huge help, Colt. I can’t thank you enough, man,” Rob said. “We’re just about done here. We have a full headcount, so we just need to clear everyone out and get them set up at the Johnson Motel.”
Full headcount? Then Beth Ann had come through while he’d been talking to her sister? He noticed the clipboard Rob was holding. “Can I see that?”
Rob handed it over, and Colt scanned the scribbles of handwriting. Lord Colossus. Aragorn. Tasha the Wind Dancer. What the hell was this crap? He skimmed the list of strange names, looking for Beth Ann’s. It wasn’t there. Either she truly wasn’t out here, or she hadn’t signed in. Or she was going by a name like Pixy Rainbow-Child, which he doubted. Still, if she wasn’t here, then why was her car stuck in the mud with all the others? He handed it back to Rob and squinted at the woods.
“There a problem?” Rob asked.
“I’m going to do a final sweep of the campgrounds,” Colt told him. “Make sure there’s no one else lingering out there.”
“Mike already did a sweep,” Rob informed him, then clapped him on the back. “You can go home, take a load off. We appreciate you helping out on such short notice.”
He’d be willing to bet that Mike hadn’t found this so-called Templar camp. “Happy to help out. Just the same,” Colt drawled. “I’ll swing through. Ease my mind a little.” He nodded at Rob. “If I find someone, I’ll bring ’em back to the motel in my Jeep.” It was safely parked on the side of the highway a mile and a half away, clear of any mud or flooding.
“If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume you’re just fine, then,” Rob said cheerfully.
“I’ll check in,” Colt said.
“Oh, that’s not necessary—” At Colt’s look, he realized he’d said something wrong, and added, “But, uh, check in anyhow.”
“I’ll check in,” Colt repeated, his words a little flat. The military would never leave a man out in the field and not have him check in. That was just bullshit.
“Good call,” Mike said, slapping Colt on the back.
“Can’t be too careful.” He patted the plastic-covered satellite phone at his belt. “I’ll call you later and let you know when I’ve left.”
“Gotcha,” Rob said, and stuck out a hand. “Thanks again, man.”
“You bet,” Colt said. He made a mental note to discuss additional training for the volunteer group when he got back. They were pretty sad as far as volunteer groups went. And while he didn’t expect them to follow military tenets, common sense was still necessary.
Colt grabbed a flashlight, tipped his sodden baseball cap at Rob, and headed off into the woods and the downpour. He ignored the twinge in his bad knee. It’d just have to wait.
He checked every campsite. They all seemed to go in a half circle through the woods and were pretty easy to find. He was disgusted at the sight of them, too. Fire pits too close to tents—luckily for them, the water had washed away any embers—cans and empty bottles everywhere. Some of it was the rain but some of it, he knew, was carelessness, and he hated that. Damn idiots. He hated to see the land being ruined by a bunch of fools. They could stand a few lessons on wilderness survival themselves, he thought. Of course, Grant would see this as a business opportunity.
But Grant wasn’t out here in the middle of the night, in the rain and the mud. Colt was, and he found their lack of care annoying as shit.
The Templar camp wasn’t anywhere in the neat half circle of campsites, and he knew it wouldn’t be. When Lucy had mentioned it, she’d made it sound like quite a hike away, and had noted a stream with a fallen log that he was familiar with. He finished his sweep of all of the other campsites first, just to be sure. He found each one full of debris, camping gear, and discarded foam weapons. The rain hadn’t let up, and the ground was turning into a muddy sludge. Whoever had purchased this land hadn’t bothered to do anything but clear away the trees for the parking lot. No wonder all the cars were stuck in the morass of mud.
When he’d finished checking all the campsites, he doubled back and headed deeper into the woods, looking for the Templar campsite—or Beth Ann.
The trail was mostly washed out at this point, but Colt didn’t need it. Even in the downpour, he knew which direction he was headed; an advantage, he suspected, that Beth Ann probably did not have. But he took his time, searching the area to make sure that there were no other stragglers, and watching his steps. It was dark, and wet, and cold, and those three things would be an unpleasant combination for anyone not used to the elements.
He went farther into the woods, past the circle of campsites. He found the stream Lucy had mentioned, now swollen and overflowing, and crossed the log that served as a bridge to the other side. He’d been making his way slowly through the woods for some time, noticing that the ground sloped up ever so gently, when he heard a loud crash in the brush ahead.
Colt clicked off his flashlight, listening. Despite the steady patter of raindrops, he could hear something moving in the dense trees ahead, so he stopped to listen. While there were a few wildcats in the area—not many—they wouldn’t be out in the storm. Wild boar might, though, or a coyote.
He paused, waiting.
Another crash. Then, a softly muttered, “Fiddlesticks.”
He didn’t know whether to laugh or roll his eyes in annoyance. Of course she was out here. His suspicions were confirmed when a low call of “Lucy? Lucy, are you out here?” echoed through the woods.
He stepped forward out of the brush, toward her.
It took him a moment or two to find her—he was mostly following the thrashes—when he turned on his flashlight again, and the light caught on something glittering.
“Who’s there?” she called at the same time, a bit of hope in her voice. “Lucy?”
He stepped out toward her and caught his first good look at Beth Ann Williamson.
She was soaked. Her long blonde hair was plastered to her skull, her bangs like daggers over her pale forehead. She wore some sort of blanket over her shoulders, and a peach-colored sparkly dress clung to her wet body like a second skin. Her br**sts were outlined by the damp, clinging fabric, and the shadow of her n**ples could be seen through the pale material. Not that he needed that to see them—her n**ples were hard as rocks and standing at attention. Her dress was so thin he could even see the vee of her h*ps under the fabric, and his c*ck automatically hardened at the sight. Her legs were slick and damp and pale with cold. Below the knee, her calves and feet were covered in mud. She’d clearly been wearing a lot of makeup before coming out—it was smeared over her high cheekbones and dribbled down her face in black streams. She clutched a bag in her hand.
She looked like an utter wreck.
At the sight of him, Beth Ann stopped short. A look of surprise crossed her face, and then her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here?”
He was kind of used to that sort of response from her. They’d formed a momentary truce when Miranda and Dane had gotten engaged, but it had quickly fizzled back into intense dislike on both sides. “I’m here saving your ass.”
She huffed, an action that made her wet br**sts heave and his c*ck jerk in response at the sight. “I don’t need saving, Colt. I need to find my sister.”
She was so outraged at the sight of him. It was damn funny to watch. And, okay, a little arousing. “You look like something out of a horror movie,” he drawled, unable to quit looking at those magnificent, heaving wet br**sts. She was something out of a horror movie all right. The hot, sexy starlet that took her top off and got f**ked by someone for five minutes on screen. Damn. He shifted in the mud. Why the hell was he so turned on by the sight of her all wet and helpless? She had a fine body, but it came attached to that yapping mouth of hers.