Guardian Ranger (Shadow Agents 2)

“Jasper!” Logan called out.

Jasper didn’t stop. He jumped in the vehicle. Sydney had another car. He wasn’t abandoning the other agents. He just wasn’t waiting. Veronica needs me. Jasper jerked the keys in the ignition, and the engine snarled to life.

Logan’s hand slammed against the driver’s-side door. “You don’t even know where to look,” Logan snapped. “Let us get some intel together and—”

“You get your intel. Get Sydney to run all those phone searches and GPS hunts like she does.” His fingers clenched around the wheel. “I’ll go back to town and tear every building down if I have to. I won’t let her—”

His phone rang. He grabbed it instantly. “Veronica!”

A faint laugh rolled into his ear. “No, but she’s close,” Jasper was told.

Then he heard Veronica scream.

He almost crushed the phone in his hands.

“Want to see her, Ranger? Then you ditch those other EOD jerks,” Wyatt told him, voice grating. “You lose every single one of them, and you get yourself out to the old ranch at the end of Derby Road.”

Derby Road? He had no idea where that road was, but he’d load the name into the GPS and find that ranch.

“You’ve got twenty minutes to get there, or I’ll put a bullet into Veronica.”

Jaw clenching, Jasper looked back up at Logan. Logan was his friend, his team leader. He knew the way situations like this were supposed to go down.

Except this wasn’t just a case. Not a normal mission. It was Veronica.

“I love her,” he said, the only thing that he could say. Logan would know who’d just made that call.

Logan’s gaze told him that he understood, but Logan shook his head. “Give us the location. You need some backup. We can help!”

Jasper shook his head. “Get away from the car.”

Logan’s jaw clenched. But he jumped back.

Jasper raced away from that burning ranch house. He couldn’t think of anything, anyone else just now...only Veronica.

* * *

“HE’S GOING AFTER her?” Sydney asked softly as she watched the car rush down the narrow highway. The flames burned behind them, the heat seeming to scorch her flesh.

“Wyatt called him. I’m betting the SOB told him that if he brought backup, the girl would die.”

Wasn’t that always the way it was.

Sydney pulled out her phone. Scrolled through the carefully designed apps she had in her system—applications that she’d designed herself. “How long of a head start do you think Jasper wants?”

Because Jasper would know that the EOD would be able to follow him. As long as his phone was still on, they could track him.

Maybe Jasper was worried that Wyatt had a partner—that missing deputy—who might be watching them right now. So he wanted to make it look as if he were going in alone. Or maybe he just was thinking with his heart and not his head. Either way, the EOD never left a teammate on his own.

Never.

“Ten minutes,” Logan said with a nod. His gaze was still on Jasper’s fleeing vehicle. “That’ll give him time to get to his destination, go in and take out the sheriff.”

Ten minutes. Plenty of time for an EOD agent to complete a mission. Only...

It was also plenty of time for a man to die.

“The sheriff got the drop on three other agents,” she reminded Logan, trying to keep her voice calm. “He’s not your average killer.” That fact should have turned up in her search. Where had the guy gotten all of his training?