Flash Bang (22 page)

Graham glanced toward the closed bathroom door, hoping against hope she was in there. He rolled off the bed and strode to the bathroom, grabbing up his pants from the floor. He jerked the door open.

Empty.

Graham checked the floor for his shirt, but not seeing it, he pulled open his drawer to grab another. He rounded the bed and reached for the gun on his nightstand. It was gone.

Only his radio sat next to the oil lamp.

He pulled open the nightstand drawer and reached in for his backup sidearm. It was also gone.

Yanking his pants on, he said to Zach, “Get the fuck up, man. Ro’s gone.”

Zach was out of the bed, looking around the room, clearly confused about what the fuck was going on. But Graham wasn’t confused. He was absolutely goddamn certain of what the fuck was going on. She’d run.
She’d fucking run.
She’d left him. Because that’s what women did. They
fucking left
. Suddenly he was a seven-year-old boy again, waiting in a trashy motel for his mom to come back for him. Except this time he wasn’t waiting for shit. He was going after her.

Zach started throwing on clothes as Graham headed into the main room and yanked on his boots. The spot where her backpack had been leaning up against the wall was empty. Further confirmation that she’d run. He strode out of the cabin, slamming the door behind him. First stop, bathhouse.
Empty
. Second stop, mess hall.

Allison looked up from the stove when he banged open the door.

“You seen Ro this morning?” he asked, fighting to keep his tone even.

“No. She hasn’t yet been in,” Allison replied.

“Fuck!” Graham slammed back out of the kitchen, heading back to the cabin, where Zach was standing on the porch, shoving his feet into boots.

“What do you mean she’s gone?” Zach asked.

“She’s gone,” Graham growled. The pain in his chest intensified as he admitted it. “She fucking left.”

“She left,” Zach repeated slowly, as if trying to wrap his head around the concept.

“She took my .45 and my back up. Her backpack is gone. The little fool left. And I have no fucking clue how she got off this property without anyone realizing it. Heads will roll if someone was derelict in his duty last night.”

“Shit, man. If she’s on her own out there …”

“When I find that girl I’m going to beat her ass until she can’t sit for a week,” Graham bit out.

“So you’re going after her?”

Graham shot him an incredulous look. “Of course I am. As soon as I talk to the jackasses on watch last night to see how they could have possibly missed her.” Graham thought back to their time in the command post. He might as well have drawn her a fucking map to get out. But she had no idea what kind of danger could be waiting for her out there.
Fuck
.

He headed to the command post. Ryan was seated at the counter fiddling with the ham radio. He spun when the door cracked against the wall.

“Who was on watch last night?”

“Ty, Jamie, and Travis.”

“They still out there?”

Ryan looked down at his watch. “Should be back and checking in shortly. They should’ve swapped with Cam, Beau, and Jonah ten minutes ago.”

Jamie stuck his head in the doorway. “I’m right here. What’s up? I wanna get some grub and some rack time.”

Graham wanted to lunge at him and throw him up against the wall for letting Ro slip out. Because she had to be long gone by now. She was too damn determined not to be.

“You see anything but deer last night?”

“Nah, man. I would have radioed it in, ASAP. The other guys didn’t see anything either,” Jamie replied. “Why? What’s goin’ on?”

Graham opened the door the led to the armory rather than responding.

“Ro’s gone,” Zach said, answering Jamie’s question and watching as Graham grabbed one of their go bags off the shelf and unzipped it. Each backpack was stocked with all of the essentials needed to bug out. Or track down an escaped woman. He grabbed an M4 off the wall, checked the magazine, and leaned it up against the bag. Graham shoved a .45 in the waistband of his pants. Extra magazines and stripper clips of ammo were shoved into the bag, followed by a long-distance radio.

Zach stepped into the armory and mimicked Graham’s actions. Go bag. Rifle. Ammo. Radio. His pistol was already tucked into the holster on his belt. Jamie followed him inside.

“Gone, gone?” Jamie inquired. “I don’t get it. She should have set off the alarm on the perimeter fence.”

“Not if she knew to avoid it,” Graham said.

“How …?” Jamie’s question trailed off at Graham’s glare.

“Look, it doesn’t matter how she got out,” Zach interrupted. “We just need to get out there and find her. Make sure she’s okay.”

Jamie paled. “We didn’t get that last fucker. He’s still out there somewhere, and he’s got a hard-on for us.”

Graham slung the loaded backpack over his shoulders, and Zach followed suit.

Jamie grabbed a go-bag off the shelf, too, and helped himself to extra magazines and ammo. And the SAW. The M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, which was basically a light machine gun. Then he stuffed a box of linked ammo that fed the SAW into the bag.

Zach paused when he noted Jamie’s actions. “What are you doing? You’ve been up for almost twenty-four hours already.”

“Like we haven’t gone without sleep for longer, all the fucking time. Plus, I’m the best goddamn tracker on the team, and you know it. And, you might need another gun.”

They headed out of the armory to where Graham was standing and speaking with Ryan. “You should take the truck,” Ryan was saying.

“Can’t,” Graham replied. “She’s on foot. We’d never find her.” He cursed. “And I don’t have a fucking clue where she’s headed, except northeast.”

When Graham caught sight of Jamie, loaded for bear, he nodded approvingly. Zach figured Graham would have already asked Jamie to come along, but he was a little rattled over Ro’s abrupt thief in the night disappearing act. “You ready to move?”

“Oorah!”

“Then let’s go.”

Graham froze when they reached the bolt hole. Zach came up beside him. It was unlocked.

“Well, that solves one mystery.”

“She’s not going to be able to sit for a week when I’m done with her.”

Jamie and Zach followed him through the opening, and Ryan pulled the door shut from the inside and barred it. Jamie paused. “Looks like it was propped shut with a stick from the outside. She’s pretty smart, your girl.”

“If she was our girl, she wouldn’t have left,” Graham said.

Once outside the walls, Jamie easily picked up Ro’s small tracks. Graham hadn’t realized how little her feet were until he was desperately searching the ground for her footprints.
I’m fucking pathetic
, he thought.
Woman walks out on me, and I’m trailing after her like a puppy, looking for scraps of attention. No,
he reminded himself,
I’m just making sure she’s safe.
It tore Graham up inside knowing that they could have kept Ro from facing unknown dangers between here and her home if he and Zach had held up their end of the deal.

As Graham had guessed, she’d headed for the hidden gate at the northeast corner of the outer fence. Jamie started to lead them away from the ranch property, still heading northeast. After about fifteen minutes, he stopped.

“I don’t like this, man. Not at all.”

“What?”

“You see these big boot prints here?” Graham looked at the dirt where Jamie was pointing with a stick.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been seeing them with pretty alarming regularity. It’s like they’re trailing your girl.” He pointed again. “You can tell that one of them stepped on her print here, so we know they came after her.”

Zach looked alarmed. “Wait, you’re saying that it looks like someone is following her? Other than us?”

“More than one someone. Looks like two. And men, based on the size of the prints,” Jamie replied.

The icy feeling was back. This time it was a fist, clenching his stomach and turning it inside out. It took Graham a few seconds to realize it was absolute gut-wrenching fear. He’d been a team leader. Creeping into the unknown, ready to throw himself in front of a bullet for any one of his men. But he’d rarely ever had time for fear. Even that day he’d watched Isaac, who’d just saved Graham’s ass, take a sniper bullet to the back of the head—exploding his skull like a watermelon on the losing end of a sledgehammer; even then, Graham hadn’t had time to fear Isaac’s fate. He was gone in a flash of a moment. But this, what he was feeling now was real, soul-gripping fear for Rowan. They needed to find her. Now.

“I hate to say this, but … I think I recognize one of the tracks,” Jamie tossed over his shoulder, as he charged forward, following the boot prints.

“What the fuck do you mean?” Graham demanded.

“It’s the same print as the guy I was tracking yesterday,” Jamie answered, not stopping.

“Wait,” Zach interrupted. “If it’s the same guy from yesterday, why is there more than one set of prints? The other two are dead.”

“There had to be more of them than we thought. They’re like fucking cockroaches. You kill one, and you turn around to see a dozen more scuttling away,” Graham said. “Fuck! Did anyone ever get any answers out of the woman? Did she know how many of them there were?”

“Lia wouldn’t talk to anyone but Cam. And as far as I heard from him, she has almost no memory of what happened after they grabbed her. Beau thinks she’s blocking it out because her mind can’t handle it right now,” Jamie answered.

“So there’s at least two of them after Ro.” That icy fist sprouted claws and pierced Graham’s gut when he thought of the shape the other woman had been in when they’d brought her in. He voiced his earlier thoughts. “We need to find her. Now.”

Ro woke to a steady throbbing in her head, a slightly nauseous feeling in her gut, and burning in her wrists. It hadn’t been Graham and Zach catching up to her … unless they’d been really pissed and had taken to hitting women. Given the likelihood of that was the same as her waking up wearing ruby slippers, she was terrified to open her eyes to see who had knocked her out. Opening them slightly, she tried to pretend she was still unconscious, but the squinty vision kicked the nausea up another notch. Ro’s eyes snapped open. Chills crawled over her skin.

Dirty blue flannel. Stringy brown hair and scraggly beard. Dark, dead eyes. A shining buck knife flew through the air, end over end, until the fixed blade sank into the trunk of a pine. He tore off a chunk of a Power Bar as he crossed to the tree to yank the knife out. The one who’d wanted to cut Lia for nearly biting his dick off. Son of Red.
Of all the fucking bad luck
. Ro cringed, imaging a similar knife at Lia’s throat. She was so unbelievably fucked. A second man was sitting with his back propped against a pine tree. He was equally dirty, but wearing a black long-sleeve t-shirt and a tan Carhartt vest over ripped camo pants and leather boots. He was tracing the wood grain on the butt of a 12-gauge shotgun while he dumped the contents of an MRE into his mouth. Her backpack was lying unzipped at his feet next to another small, dirty canvas rucksack.

Ro was double fucked. And this time the ménage was going to be worse than facing down the strap-on sporting Mistress of Evil.
Think. Think. Think
.