Page 18 of Her Fearless Warrior

Everything Jase was saying resonated with Linc.

Every.

Damn.

Word.

Well, if he’d been doing the talking, he might not have mentioned the hand part.

“Fuck it’s hot,” Matteo murmured.

“I think I remember you bitching about the cold in Finland. So, which is it? Do you like the cold or the heat?” Ryker asked.

“Oh, he just likes to bitch,” Jase laughed. “He’s the common denominator on why the women don’t last. He doesn’t scrape them off, they dump him.”

Linc laughed along with everyone else as Matteo frowned.

“Come on, man, he has a point. You do see things from a glass is half empty point of view,” Linc pointed out.

“I—”

“Five kilometers out. Start your engines.” Gideon’s voice came through their comm system.

“Roger that,” Linc answered. He was the driver, so he started the engine.

Jonas was driving the other vehicle. He was behind him. He always preferred to be in front, but you couldn’t have everything. He should just be happy that his leg was doing so damned well after the bullet he’d taken in Russia. A half smile tipped his lips. He’d made a damn good shot, though. Saved their asses. That’s what really mattered.

“Leila’s shitty phone should be pinging by now. We still only have Elijah’s tracker,” Gideon said grimly.

Linc could feel the mood in the car amp up. Everybody was on alert.

“Maybe they found it and got rid of it,” Landon Kelly said from the other car. He was the youngest teammate. Where Matteo was a glass half empty kind of guy, Landon’s glass was half full and the glass was made with rose-tinted glass. Linc knew the day would come when Landon’s glass would shatter. He hated to think about it.

“It could be anything,” Kostya said. “We’ve only seen three vehicles in the time we’ve been here, which is almost an hour. Linc, cross the highway and on my mark, you’ll come out and block that side, we’ll block this side. Use the rear of your vehicles so we can be prepared to follow them if they go off-road.”

“Got it.” He veered past Jonas’s Humvee and crossed over the highway. He found two scraggly bushes that might hide a child, but they were the best camouflage he had available, so he parked his vehicle behind it, the rear end facing the road. He looked in his rearview mirror and saw that Jonas had done the same thing, only he was still behind the electrical power station.

“Two klicks out,” Gideon reported. Linc looked out of his window. He couldn’t see their vehicle yet. He started counting in his head. When he reached eleven, he saw a vehicle. He saw two vehicles. Shit! Was one a civilian?

He thought about who the living players were. Elijah Hopkins, Leila Cloud, Katherine Cole and her secretary Annie Trent, and Sam Phelps the former Marine. Okay, that many would account for two vehicles.

He pulled up his binoculars. The first was a car, looked to be a little Russian OKA, and behind them was a tarp-covered truck. The OKA could comfortably seat one as far as Linc was concerned, but he’d seen places across the Middle East where they’d crowded families of eight or nine into the vehicle. When he zoomed in with his binoculars, he could tell that the front seat only had the driver, a passenger, and two rifles. He couldn’t tell who or what was in the backseat.

They were moving slowly, probably in deference to the big truck behind them. When he tipped his binoculars upward, he saw that there was only one man in the cab of the truck. He didn’t see any rifle standing up beside him. Maybe he had all of his guns stashed on his empty passenger seat.

“Gideon, are you getting a good view? I only see the passenger and driver in the car, and just a driver in the truck. What about you?”

“Same.”

“How are we playing it?”

Linc’s question was met by silence. He knew why. Rankin had loaded them up when it came to what they were driving. They hadn’t skimped in the slightest. Linc and Jonas were both driving advanced up-armored Humvees with armored gun turrets, just in case the kids started fighting in the backseat and you needed to send them upstairs to play.

“Landon and Ryker, I want you both up top,” Kostya said through the comm. “I want Mateo and me at the back bumpers in the center of the highway.”

“Are you thinking they’re a package deal?” Linc asked his lieutenant.

“Pretty sure,” Kostya replied. “Even if they’re not, no harm, no foul. We stop them both. Let me know when you’re in position.” Ryker was in the turret in less than sixty seconds.