Total Exposure. Tori Carrington

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СКАЧАТЬ squads. The north team had already anchored a lead rope and was harnessing up the family of four to come down one by one. The south team was having a harder time finding a solid foothold from which to operate.

      The civil engineer he’d ordered dispatch to contact held out the plastic-covered schematic of the houses on the hill. Of the more than a dozen homes, two were almost completely swallowed by the cascading mud, either buried outright or in pieces, and four more were about to give way. The bridge spanning the pass had been washed out, making those houses inaccessible. The rescue team had to move quickly.

      He pulled his two-way to his mouth. “South team, status report.”

      “Surface unstable. No foothold, sir. Repeat, we can’t get a foothold. Over.”

      Dan eyed the terrain around the team. “Go fifteen paces southeast, Captain, and see if you can get a lock on the rock there by the trees.”

      “Roger that.”

      He watched the leader of the south team secure his radio, then point out the route to his men. On the other side, the stranded mother was cautiously sliding down the taut rope, a firefighter from the north team at her back to ease the way.

      Dan caught himself rubbing the back of his damp neck, awareness crawling over his skin. While the doc hadn’t stayed in the car as he’d asked, she had stayed out of the way, staring at the mudslide, her eyes wide, looking particularly vulnerable.

      Now that was a word he wouldn’t have used to describe Natalie Giroux only an hour ago. As he recalled, pushy was the adjective he’d chosen. She stood at the foot of the hill, appearing to want to do something, but aware that she wasn’t qualified.

      He grudgingly gave her credit. He knew what it was like to be stuck on the sidelines. At forty-five, he’d had to trade an active role for that of coordinator. But the urge to rush into the fray was something he wasn’t good at quelling. Not yet. And, he was coming to fear, not ever. As it was, he now fisted and unfisted his hands, his pulse pounding with the impulse to climb up the shifting mountainside and help those in need.

      “Doesn’t look good.”

      Dan turned to address the man at his side. K-9 Patrol Officer Cole Winslow’s rain gear wasn’t much protection against the storm blasting them, but he seemed oblivious to it. He held the lead to Braveheart, his black-and-tan German shepherd.

      “What brings you out to this neck of the woods?” Dan asked after he directed team members on the ground to help the rescued mother from her harness and to safety.

      “Actually, I was already here. You’ve heard about the series of break-ins in the area recently? Well, the prowler was spotted in one of the houses. Braveheart and I were called in to track his scent.”

      “Which house?”

      Cole nodded toward the northeast and a house that a river of mud was claiming even as they watched. “Dylan Deeb’s place. You know, that producer who was brought up on sexual assault charges six months ago?”

      Dan was familiar with the case. Deeb was a slimebag with a capital S. He was accused of coercing underage actresses into having sex with him in exchange for parts in his movies. The charges were dropped when the actresses refused to testify against him. Likely Deeb had convinced them their careers would do better with him on this side of prison bars.

      “You get the prowler?” Dan asked.

      The officer shook his head. “Lost his scent at the marina. A small boat was reported stolen an hour ago, so my guess is he borrowed it and headed out onto the bay.”

      Glancing at the churning waters in the distance, Dan wondered if the prowler would have been better off facing Cole and prison than the storm-tossed sea.

      A car raced up behind him and ground to a screeching stop on the wet asphalt. It had obviously passed the barriers his men had placed a quarter of a mile up the road. Like a river of brown lava, the debris path had sheared the highway in two, blocking traffic on both sides. He glanced at the older model vehicle and the young blond woman who stumbled out of it. She stared at the mountain in horror. A resident? Possibly. He motioned toward a junior firefighter to stop her from advancing, then concentrated on controlling his own overactive adrenaline.

      BRITTNEY MACKENZIE COULDN’T believe her eyes. She stumbled forward, staring at the disintegrating mountain in front of her. She’d been there only an hour before and everything had been fine. Now the road she had taken to drive up to film producer Dylan Deeb’s house was indistinguishable from the rest of the oozing mud eating the highway.

      Fine? Had she really just used the word fine to describe what had happened in Dylan Deeb’s house only sixty minutes ago?

      “Miss, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to step back.”

      She blinked unseeingly into the face of a young firefighter in yellow waterproof overalls and black boots. “What…How…” The words came out of her mouth but she couldn’t seem to form a coherent sentence as she desperately sought out the producer’s house. Her heart beat an uneven rhythm in her chest.

      It’s gone.

      Along with any chance of her ever becoming a working actress.

      Remorse, shame and fear rose up in her throat, choking her.

      “Whoa, easy there,” she heard the firefighter say right before her legs went out from under her.

      When she became aware of the world around her again, what could have been minutes or hours later, she was blinking into the face of a pretty woman who reminded her of her mother.

      “Can you hear me?” the woman asked, waving a penlight in front of her eyes.

      Brittney squeezed them shut against the intrusive light. “I can hear you.”

      “How many fingers am I holding up?”

      Brittney squinted. “Three.”

      She realized then that she was lying across the front seat of her own car.

      “Do you live here? Is there someone I can call? When’s the last time you had anything to eat?”

      Eat?

      Brittney struggled to a sitting position. “I’m fine. Really, I am.” She pulled her shaking legs inside the car and reached to close the door. “Thank you. I’ve…I’ve really got to go.”

      The woman stepped back and Brittney finally managed to get the door closed. She hit the automatic lock, discovered her car was still running, then put the engine into reverse, her only intention to get as far as she could, as fast as she could, away from Deeb’s nonexistent house….

      CHAPTER THREE

      NATALIE HAD IMMEDIATELY responded to the firefighter’s call for help, but was forced to step back as the young woman—who had been all but unconscious a moment before—sped off in reverse. Twenty or so feet down the highway, she spun the rusted vehicle around, then raced off into the rain.

      “What do you make of that?” the firefighter asked.

      Natalie frowned. “I СКАЧАТЬ