Shit. Franco. Stuck below with his victim.
And just that fast, the earth steadied.
The demolished wasteland around him went eerily quiet. Sweat and filth plastered his uniform to his body, his heart hammering in his ears. Relief workers stood stock-still as if the world has stopped. But spirals of smoke affirmed the world hadn’t ended, just paused to catch a breath.
He exhaled hard. Adrenaline stung his veins. The tremor hadn’t been an earthquake, just another aftershock. Four so far today. Nerves were ragged, especially with the locals.
His headset blazed to life again with a frenzy of orders, questions, and curses from command center, along with check-ins from others on his team—Rocha, Cuervo, Data, Bubbles—spread out at other potential rescues in the sector. But the most important voice was conspicuously missing.
Hugh Franco.
Dread knotted his gut. Liam had lived through hell on earth before, but it was always worse when his men’s lives were on the line. They were his family, no question. As his three ex-wives would attest, he was married to the job.
“Franco? Franco?” Liam shouted into the mic. “Report in, damn it.”
His headset continued to sputter, some voices coming through piecemeal. None of them Hugh Franco.
Crappy headset… Liam’s hands fisted.
“Shit.” He punched the tractor. Knuckles throbbing, he resisted the urge to pitch the mic to the ground.
Rocha edged around the tractor. “I’m going in after him, boss. I’ll follow the cable, dig through, and—”
Reason filtered through the rage. He needed to level out, stay in command.
“Hold steady. Not yet. I don’t need two of the team missing.” He refused to believe Franco was gone. Only his voice, only the radio connection, had faded. “Let’s check in with the cleanup crew, maybe nab one of the search dogs again to confirm the exact location since things have shifted.”
Scrubbing along his jaw, he scanned the crews returning to business as if nothing had happened. Training kicked into overdrive at times like these. The cold-sweat stage would set in later, once there wasn’t anything to do but sit and think about how very wrong the day could have gone.
How badly it could still go, as they all hung out together in an active seismic zone…
All the same, Liam intended to bring as much help to the table as he could wrangle out of the already-overtasked people scurrying around the buckled piles of concrete and rebar. He scanned the construction crews—a mix from around the world—for a spare soul to help out.
And came up empty.
He scrubbed a gloved hand over his face. God, they were all maxed already, working alongside a rescue task force from Virginia for the past eighteen hours without sleep. He was running on the fumes left over from his catnap on the cargo plane ride over.
More C-17s dotted the sky, a trio landing one after the other in the distance with more supplies and personnel. Much-needed help. Except it would be hours before they were in place here.
But the helicopter hovering closer? The supplies and personnel that chopper contained would be available in minutes. His headset buzzed with news of a relief dog handler being sent from the Virginia USAR—Urban Search and Rescue.
He zeroed in on the cable lowering from the craft. A wiry figure dangled from the end, appeared to be a female in rescue gear with a dog strapped to her chest.
The helicopter was sending in a fresh search pair. A gold mine, when everyone else was running on fumes after over eighteen hours without sleep. They were also closer than whatever troops or supplies might be loaded in the C-17 still circling in the sky.
He clapped Rocha on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back. Keep talking to Franco.”
Sure-footed, he jogged across the jagged debris toward the chopper, eyes homed in on the duo spinning on the end of the descending cable.
He was a scavenger from way back, and intended to be first in line to claim her…
Liam turned from the rain-slicked window and back to the bed. Rachel had been his from the start. In the field or out. That hadn’t changed.
So what was it that had him reaching for the mutt puppy as if he needed a dose of therapy just because he’d hinted at the M word? Marriage. Even thinking it now made him break out in a cold sweat at the prospect of failure.
But the thought of losing her? Hell, that gave him the shakes too. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. The image of Rachel sleeping in his bed merged with the vision of her descending from that helicopter with her dog. Even in his memories, she damn near took his breath away.
Realization filtered through him without the aid of any therapy session—or hell, maybe the dog had a magic all its own. Because he knew without a doubt, just as he was reaching the point where he had to leave his work in the field, the time had come for Rachel to return to her calling.