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Remembered falling, and then…nothing. Except there had been something. Tessa’s scream. A gut-punching sound he’d heard way too much in the heat of a rescue. She was in trouble. Big, bad trouble. And he’d caught a glimpse of Bree running after her. Running to save her blood friend.
Bree!
Her name flashed through his head, too, and he forced open his eyes.
“You look like shit,” someone snarled.
Rafe instantly went into fight mode. He looked up, assessing the situation as he sprang to his feet. It was still dark,but the smoke had cleared. And it wasn’t one of the thugs who’d spoken.
It was Jericho.
“Your tracker alerted Ruby,” Jericho said, tipping his head to the vest.
“Tracker,” Rafe muttered, trying to get his mouth to work. He was hurting all over and remembered getting the crap beat out of him by three men. The men who were now gone.
“Once you have on the vest and then go still for more than fifteen minutes, Ruby gets an alert,” Jericho reminded him.
Yeah, Rafe knew that. Hell, he’d been the one who’d designed the vests.
“Anyway, you didn’t move, didn’t respond when Ruby tried to call you, so she sent me,” Jericho finished. “How bad are you hurt?” he asked, helping Rafe the rest of the way to his feet.
“Not bad,” he lied.
“Yeah, right,” Jericho said, clearly not buying that.
Rafe glanced around, trying to get his bearings and clear his head. “Still at my place,” he mumbled. “But Bree and Tessa aren’t.”
“Tessa?” Jericho questioned. “Is she the one wearing the third vest?”
That caused a flood of information to slam through his fuzzy brain. “Yes. Bree has one on, too. I can track them,” he said, already turning to run into the house. That’s when he saw that an entire wall was missing. “Hell.”
Jericho made a sound of agreement. “Buckner cut your power and set your generator on fire. I’m guessing it was Buckner anyway. How many assholes did he bring with him to accomplish this?”
“Four. He was in a helicopter.” Rafe snapped toward the pasture. Big mistake because it caused the pain to shoot throughhim. “China Lake grenade launchers. Tear gas. And smoke bombs.”
“Well, the man is determined. And he got what he wanted,” Jericho added, his voice turning serious. “He’s got Tessa and Bree. Why exactly did he take them?”
“Tessa, because she got away from him. And because he buried Sandy Lynn’s body after Tessa killed her.”
“Ah. Tessa can link him to the crime. But Bree? Why her?”
Rafe could come up with several reasons. None good. “She got too close to arresting him. And he took her because he could.” He cursed. “I need my phone so I can track them.”
Jericho pointed to the debris on the ground. Once, that had been his phone, but it’d obviously been smashed to bits.
“Then, I need a laptop,” Rafe amended. “Or Ruby can—”
“I’ve already tracked them on my phone.” Jericho showed him.
Rafe saw the two red dots. “Where are they?” he demanded.
“About ten miles from here at an old, abandoned compound that was once used for training a gun-running militia. It was shut down about a decade ago, but the buildings are still standing, for the most part.”
Jericho pulled up an aerial view of the compound. Such that it was. It was live feed, likely being supplied by one of Maverick Ops’ drones. And the drone was capturing the site all right. The metal buildings—a collection of shipping containers that had been cobbled together—were now scabbed with rust, and the weeds and underbrush were four or five feet high in places.
Rafe took it all in. The grounds. The placement of the buildings. And then he tried to take in the rest of the situation.
“Buckner left me alive,” Rafe said. “The fourth asshole could have just put a bullet in my head. Why didn’t he?”
