How could he have been so fucking careless? So stupid? He was a trained operative, and he’d let his goddamn guard down for five minutes, and now, the woman he was supposed to protect with his own life, was gone.
He saw a clearing and ran toward it. Just as he came out of the woods, he saw the same black SUV that he’d seen earlier, speeding away.
The Armenians had Ava and were taking her God knows where, while Razor stood by the side of the road, with no way to follow them.
—:—
The man shoved Ava into the back seat of the SUV face down. She could hear him talking to another man, but couldn’t understand what they were saying.
“Go!” she heard one of them yell, and the SUV lurched into gear as the driver pulled onto the road.
“Tabon,” she whispered as she felt a needle penetrate her thigh, right before everything went black.
—:—
“Doc, the Armenians have Ava. They fucking took her, right from the cabin. Monk is down,” he yelled through the phone as he ran through the woods back to the cabin. “They’re at least five minutes ahead of me.”
“Raze, slow down. You’re breaking up. I’m only getting bits and pieces of what you’re saying.”
Fucking cell coverage. “She’s gone. They have Ava,” he yelled into the phone.
“Got it. Sending backup now.”
When Razor ran back through the woods, Monk was already pulling up in the SUV.
“They went east,” he yelled, jumping into the vehicle and slamming the door closed as Monk peeled away.
There were no turnoffs from this mountain road, until it hit the highway ten miles from here. Their only hope to catch them was speed.
His phone pinged and he grabbed it, thinking that it was Doc with an update. Instead, he saw it was from the tracker app.
“We’ve got her,” he told Monk. “At least until they find her phone.”
“We’ve got her,” said Doc, calling back.
“We do too, but I doubt it’ll be for long.”
“Gunner just made contact.”
“And?”
“When he and the rest of the team arrived, the girls were gone.”
“But they’d been there?”
“Affirmative. His best guess is they’d missed them by hours. Razor, we need to—”
“No. I can’t do this yet.” He disconnected the call. He knew what Doc was going to say, and he wasn’t ready to hear it, or agree to it.
“It’s the most viable option,” said Monk, without turning to look at him.
“Just fucking drive,” he shouted.
Maybe it was for now, but he would damn well come up with a better plan than the one he knew everyone on the K19 team was going to try to convince him to carry out.
18
Razor watched his phone and knew the minute Ava’s captors found her phone. Less than a mile from where the road hit the highway, the tracking device lost contact. They no longer had a way to know which direction the SUV would take once it got to the main road.