Rescued (Navy SEALS Romance Book 1) Read Online Free Page A
Author: Rachel Hanna
Saturday most people had already arrived at their destinations. The sky was fairly clear.
He headed toward Palomar. Midway there he got a call from Knox who for obvious reasons felt heading to a search for a missing girl would be preferable to spending another minute in his soon to be ex-girlfriend's company.
"Too late," Tanner said. "I'm already airborne and en route."
Knox didn't make the obvious "You're not airborne, you're SEALs" joke which meant negations with the ex must be going particularly poorly. "Man, help a brother out," Knox said and Tanner just laughed and hung up. Knox could figure out his own exit strategy, no way Tanner was turning the bird around.
No word from Angel and Jake. He hadn't expected there would be. They were in Vegas. They weren't going to make it for this particular party. No sense filling up the airwaves with chatter.
Still no word from Mike and no idea why. Mike could go dark with the best of them, prone to depression and worse since they'd been put out to pasture at the tender age of 20-something for each and every one of them.
He was on his own.
Just the way he liked it.
Friends said Tanner Davis was happier by himself than he ever was with anyone else. He didn't think that was necessarily true.
He just wasn't unhappier without people around him.
The chopper made good time. The September day wasn't windy. In 31 minutes he found himself approaching Mount Palomar. From a couple miles out he could see the black smoke of the fire rising into the air, and another minute and he could see the flames. The fire was still burning on the valley floor and if her friends were right, then Miss Taylor Adams was probably still all right. The fire was just starting to edge toward the mountainside.
He triggered the phone, told it to dial the last incoming call.
"Tanner?" Duncan's voice and Tanner identified why the man hadn't been cut out for Marines. There was fear in that voice. Fear came later. It couldn't be present while you were doing the job. First sign and you threw out whatever was causing it.
He couldn't land but he could circle. "Any contact?" He'd told Duncan to get his people off the mountain and to call if the girl showed up. Didn't seem like either of those things had happened.
"Nothing from Taylor. Her phone's not going through. I'm not even getting voice mail." He started to give coordinates of where they were and where they'd last seen Taylor. Tanner let the info wash over him. He'd sort it out later provided the usual didn't happen: instant appearance of sheepish lost/stolen/strayed/silly hiker and resolution of everything in less time than it took to fly to the scene.
Only that didn't happen. A full six minutes of making a circuit across the area she'd last been seen, then widening the search to see if she'd gone up or down, and there was nothing. No sign of her.
"Why are your people still on the mountain?" he demanded of Duncan when he stopped processing.
Must have sounded random. He hadn't spoken for a minute or two but they should both still be on task.
"Because it took us several hours to get up here. Going to take a while to get back down. That's why we didn't want to go to the ranger station. Too far away and we didn't want to split up."
From a civilian point of view, he understood that. From his own, they should have sent someone. Taylor Adams had now been missing, without contact, for more than an hour.
Chapter Four
T aylor hadn't noticed the time when she took off after Monster. She hadn't even paid attention to it when she was trying to make her phone work. It wasn't until she'd started to panic that Taylor had set the stopwatch on her phone, hoping it would keep her centered. Subjectively it felt like hours and lifetimes had gone by since she'd become lost. Objectively, looking at her phone, she'd only been missing for 45 minutes.
Quite long enough. One thing she'd noticed over the years was that being lost made her queasy. She knew, in the grand scheme of
He headed toward Palomar. Midway there he got a call from Knox who for obvious reasons felt heading to a search for a missing girl would be preferable to spending another minute in his soon to be ex-girlfriend's company.
"Too late," Tanner said. "I'm already airborne and en route."
Knox didn't make the obvious "You're not airborne, you're SEALs" joke which meant negations with the ex must be going particularly poorly. "Man, help a brother out," Knox said and Tanner just laughed and hung up. Knox could figure out his own exit strategy, no way Tanner was turning the bird around.
No word from Angel and Jake. He hadn't expected there would be. They were in Vegas. They weren't going to make it for this particular party. No sense filling up the airwaves with chatter.
Still no word from Mike and no idea why. Mike could go dark with the best of them, prone to depression and worse since they'd been put out to pasture at the tender age of 20-something for each and every one of them.
He was on his own.
Just the way he liked it.
Friends said Tanner Davis was happier by himself than he ever was with anyone else. He didn't think that was necessarily true.
He just wasn't unhappier without people around him.
The chopper made good time. The September day wasn't windy. In 31 minutes he found himself approaching Mount Palomar. From a couple miles out he could see the black smoke of the fire rising into the air, and another minute and he could see the flames. The fire was still burning on the valley floor and if her friends were right, then Miss Taylor Adams was probably still all right. The fire was just starting to edge toward the mountainside.
He triggered the phone, told it to dial the last incoming call.
"Tanner?" Duncan's voice and Tanner identified why the man hadn't been cut out for Marines. There was fear in that voice. Fear came later. It couldn't be present while you were doing the job. First sign and you threw out whatever was causing it.
He couldn't land but he could circle. "Any contact?" He'd told Duncan to get his people off the mountain and to call if the girl showed up. Didn't seem like either of those things had happened.
"Nothing from Taylor. Her phone's not going through. I'm not even getting voice mail." He started to give coordinates of where they were and where they'd last seen Taylor. Tanner let the info wash over him. He'd sort it out later provided the usual didn't happen: instant appearance of sheepish lost/stolen/strayed/silly hiker and resolution of everything in less time than it took to fly to the scene.
Only that didn't happen. A full six minutes of making a circuit across the area she'd last been seen, then widening the search to see if she'd gone up or down, and there was nothing. No sign of her.
"Why are your people still on the mountain?" he demanded of Duncan when he stopped processing.
Must have sounded random. He hadn't spoken for a minute or two but they should both still be on task.
"Because it took us several hours to get up here. Going to take a while to get back down. That's why we didn't want to go to the ranger station. Too far away and we didn't want to split up."
From a civilian point of view, he understood that. From his own, they should have sent someone. Taylor Adams had now been missing, without contact, for more than an hour.
Chapter Four
T aylor hadn't noticed the time when she took off after Monster. She hadn't even paid attention to it when she was trying to make her phone work. It wasn't until she'd started to panic that Taylor had set the stopwatch on her phone, hoping it would keep her centered. Subjectively it felt like hours and lifetimes had gone by since she'd become lost. Objectively, looking at her phone, she'd only been missing for 45 minutes.
Quite long enough. One thing she'd noticed over the years was that being lost made her queasy. She knew, in the grand scheme of
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