Page 13 of Bait and Switch (Subtle Deceptions #2)

TEN

Casey

Tuesday

In spite of the high-quality winter gear he was bundled up in, the cold was starting to get to Casey. His nose, fingers, and toes were feeling the windchill, and his voice was getting hoarse from calling Carlos’s name again and again.

They’d been searching for much longer than two hours and so far, nothing. There was no sign of the missing man. The top-of-the-hour check-ins with Tor were depressing and short as the other search teams were also coming up empty.

The radio crackled right on time.

“Lundin here.”

“Anything?” Tor asked.

“Nope,” Casey replied. “We found a couple of footprints in a clear area underneath a tree, but they disappeared.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah.”

The likelihood of Carlos’s survival—if he was still alive—was plummeting with every passing minute.

“Keep on, touch base in forty-five minutes. There’s not much daylight left and it’s getting too cold to stay out much longer.”

Yes, thank you, Tor . Casey was well aware of how much time they didn’t have.

There’d been that glimmer of hope half an hour ago when Greta had spotted a set of footprints off the narrow path they’d been following. But if there had been more, they’d been washed away or perhaps covered up by the slushy half-rain half-snow that was falling.

“What do you think, keep heading this way?” Casey asked, pausing next to Greta under the protective branches of a Sitka spruce that had planted itself against the banks of a steep, rocky hillside and managed to not only survive but flourish.

Thankfully, the wind had died down to almost nothing, which was good, but the mercury still lingered around freezing and would drop below that overnight. He did not envy anyone who spent the night without proper gear.

Greta nodded, staring intently out at the landscape, as if Carlos might abruptly appear. “That’s my instinct. We haven’t seen any other signs of a human being coming through here. If it is him, he’s heading downhill. We’ll find him.”

Greta always talked about rescues in the present tense. She said that it helped her stay positive, that negative energy didn’t help search efforts. Was it a bit woo-woo for Casey? Yes. But there was no arguing with Greta’s success record.

“All right, let’s break for a few more minutes, then keep heading in the same direction until the next check-in.” He glanced through the branches to the darkening sky overhead. “I think Tor wants us to hike out to the road.”

Greta nodded but wasn’t looking at him. Her attention was aimed outward, on the faint path most likely created by creatures of the forest, not humans.

While being equally watchful for signs of the missing man, Casey tugged off his pack and pulled his Yeti travel thermos out to take a long sip of the still molten coffee, then groaned with pleasure. The hot liquid began to work its magic, thawing him from his insides out.

“Ahhhh,” he groaned.

After shooting him a raised-eyebrow glance, Greta took a sip but did not groan.

“I think you need to get laid.”

“Who says that kind of stuff anymore, ‘get laid’?”

“Obviously, I do,” she scoffed. “It sounds like you’re having a carnal relationship with that java you’re holding there.”

“I do not need to get laid.”

“Methinks the ranger doth protest too much.”

“Do not even misquote Hamlet to me.”

A small smile playing across her lips, Greta shrugged as if to say I’m right and you know it .

There was no way in hell Casey was telling her he’d had a dream about Gabriel Karne.

More than once. The same drawn-out, sensual, suggestive dream, several times over the past week.

And each morning he’d woken up sweaty, hard, and wanting.

But he refused to give in, so he’d also been unbearably grouchy.

Casey had never felt the need to get laid before in his life, and Gabriel Karne was not relationship material.

Casey pressed his lips together to keep himself from continuing the conversation.

Not that it was one. Greta would only take any denial as a challenge.

Damn her and her Spidey senses. Because yes, Karne was attractive.

And sexy. Something undefinable about him had Casey’s attention in a way very few ever had.

But on the other hand, he was a dissolute grifter with the moral compass of an alley cat.

It was beyond Casey’s comprehension that Elton seemed to not only like Karne but also trust him.

Charming Fucker he was and would remain.

For another couple of minutes, the two of them stood in place and listened to the sounds of the forest. What could it be telling them? The soft sounds that reached their ears were unremarkable. It was quiet, almost too quiet, but what they did hear was typical of a cold, snowy day.

A small creature scuffled in the salal and bearberry that grew on the hillside above them. Regardless of weather forecasts, the forest creatures needed to eat. Wet snow slid off a tree branch and plopped to the ground with an audible smack.

The critter squeaked again, higher pitched this time and a bit louder.

Greta cocked her head in the direction the sound came from.

“That doesn’t sound like any bird call I know of,” Casey said. He wasn’t a bird-call expert, but he’d spent a lot of time in these woods.

In tandem, he and Greta turned to face the incline. It was a dirt-covered boulder that didn’t quite qualify as a hill. There was just enough soil to allow the shallow-root shrubs to grow there, but no trees had found purchase.

“Carlos?” Greta called out.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence; the forest seemed to have inhaled a deep breath and held it. Then Casey heard a sound. Not a bird or a squirrel—a low moan. A human moan. He and Greta stared at each other.

“Carlos?” Casey said, making his voice gentle as possible. “We’re here to help. Can you make another sound? We’ve been looking all over the forest for you, buddy.”

The silence was amplified. As hard as Casey listened, the only things he could hear were the soft sound of Greta’s breathing, the wind through the treetops, and the irregular drip of raindrops falling from branches overhead.

If Greta hadn’t heard the sound too, Casey might have convinced himself he was imagining things.

Leaning in a bit closer, Greta whispered, “Let me try.”

Casey nodded. If Carlos was afraid for some reason, he might respond better to a woman’s voice.

“Carlos?” she called out. “My name is Greta Harris, and I’m one of the park rangers. Casey’s one too. Are you injured? We want to help you.”

Whoever—if anyone—was out there, they were silent for so long that Casey was back to thinking they’d both imagined the moan of pain.

Maybe it had been the wind or tree branches rubbing together, and they were wasting precious time.

He peered up the steep hillside and glanced over at Greta.

Her nose was pink from the chill. Casey knew that his was too.

“We’re losing valuable time—” Casey began.

“Shh!” Greta clapped a mittened hand over his mouth and mouthed be quiet . Blinking, Casey nodded, and Greta dropped her hand.

Almost immediately, they were rewarded with a half groan and a ragged voice calling out, “Here, over here.” And this time they were both looking in the right direction.

Greta pointed up and to their left. “Up there!”

Squinting into the quickly increasing shadows, Casey peered upward to where Greta had indicated.

About halfway up the hill was an odd hollow space in the shrubbery.

Greta flicked on her flashlight and shone the beam in that direction.

A single, slender branch of salal appeared to move of its own accord.

“Yes,” hissed Casey. “Let’s go.”

Side by side, they began to scramble up the rocky hillside, grabbing onto branches and vines and whatever they could reach to help pull themselves up. Leave no trace was thrown away in the hopes they’d found Carlos.

Halfway to where they thought he was, Casey stepped into a hole hidden by fallen leaves. If it weren’t for his boots, he would have wrenched his ankle or worse.

“Shit.” He let himself fall forward onto his knees instead of fighting gravity.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. I’ll feel it tomorrow, but the only thing wounded is my pride.” Casey surged to his feet and started climbing upward again, ignoring the vague pain in his right knee.

It took them about fifteen minutes to reach the spot. They’d had to detour around another hidden crevasse, this one much larger than the one Casey had tripped into. When they reached the general location, they took turns calling Carlos’s name, but they didn’t hear or see a response.

“I sure hope we’re not climbing for nothing.”

“We’re not,” huffed Greta. “He’s here, I can feel it. Let’s go a bit higher.”

Casey knew better than to question Greta’s hunches. More than once she’d proven to be right, and more than one person had survived due to her instincts.

Because of the crevasse, they had to cut across and up the slope. It was hard going due to the frigid cold and rough terrain, and Casey had to work to ignore whatever he’d done to his knee. When he got home that night, he figured he’d ice it and take it easy for a couple of days. No big deal.

If Carlos was up here, why? What could have made the brush worker climb part of a mountain that not even nimble deer or other larger animals crossed? At least, not this time of the year. Maybe, for once, Greta was wrong, and they’d climbed up the treacherous crag for no reason.

He started to suggest that they head back down, that Tor and the rest of the team didn’t need another couple of people trapped overnight on the mountain. But at that moment, Casey glanced a few feet ahead and realized that they were at the top end of the cut in the mountainside.

“Stay here,” he told Greta. “No reason for both of us to fall in this thing.”

Unsurprisingly, Greta did not listen, but hey, he’d tried.