Spencer shook his head. “We’ve all come out of stuff folks thought should have killed us. But maybe it’s someone in Becks’s family out to make up for his death?”
“Why pull Anna into that? And what’s the connection to her boss and his company?” Gage frowned. “I don’t like any of this.” He glanced at his phone—and frowned when he saw two new texts. “Guys—Anna messaged me.” A couple of thumps from the trunk meant that the fake cop wanted their attention, but Gage ignored him. He showed his phone to Spencer and then to Scotty.
Spencer shook his head. “What the hell does she mean, ‘follow’? Like on Facebook? Track her phone’s GPS? What are we, spies?”
Scotty was already pulling out his smartphone. He nudged Spencer’s arm. “Dope. Yeah, like Facebook. There’s an app that tracks your location. We just have to follow her—meaning friend her—and see where it shows her as being.”
Spencer stared at Scotty. “When did you get to be so smart?”
“My momma didn’t raise any fools,” Scotty said. “And some of us pay attention to tech. Dammit, my battery’s low. Anyone got a charger?”
Gage gestured to Anna’s purse, sitting neglected in the back seat. “Try Anna’s tablet instead. You should be able to get a Wi-Fi connection somewhere—we’re not that far out of town yet. You can also use it to log into her Facebook.”
Turning the tablet on, Scotty swiped across the screen as the home page came up. “It’s asking for a password.”
“Try Romeo,” Gage told him. “It’s the name of her cat.”
“That worked. And, man, this girl reads. Books, books, books.” Scotty shook his head. He got a connection and pulled up Facebook. “She also needs some better security—she left everything logged in.”
“Not all of us are paranoid,” Kyle muttered.
“Yeah, well, not keeping her guard up meant that she got kidnapped. So far, not seeing…Here it is. Bingo. Got it. And we’re on track. I’ve got an address—last known spot for her. Hell if this doesn’t make someone easy to grab.”
“Rescue mission, remember,” Gage said. “Save the ideas for one of our ops for later.”
“Make a left here,” Scotty told him. “Hmm, wonder what I’d find if I looked up info on this address. Ah, here we go. Seems the place has been in the Monroe family for a few generations. And if we look into that—yeah, that’s what I thought. Monroe happens to be the maiden name of a woman who married a guy named Becks, who had a son who went into the SEALs. God, I love the internet. So we’ve got our connection to the team that went down in Borneo. I’m thinking now that Becks didn’t die with the rest of his guys.”
Spencer looked up from craning over Scotty’s shoulder. “How does any of this tie in with Nick’s death?”
Gage pulled out his weapon to check the clip. “We find Anna and whoever is holding her, we might find some answers.”
An hour later, Scotty leaned forward. “Slow down. The place is a quarter mile away now. We can’t go in hot—not when we don’t know what we’re up against. Pull over somewhere.”
Kyle stopped the car under a group of trees. They had steadily left civilization behind. The road had gone from highway to two-lane and then to gravel. City became suburbs, which turned into rural properties and then into emptiness. Gage hadn’t known there was this much open land left in Virginia.
The thumping in the trunk had died down, indicating that the fake cop had worn himself out. Gage tapped on the metal and got a kick in response, so the guy was still alive.
They all gathered around Scotty, and Gage asked, “What’s the terrain?”
Scotty pointed to the tablet. “We’re here. Anna’s location is here.”
“What if she’s not there now? We’re tracking her phone, nother.Her captors could have ditched it somewhere,” Kyle said. Gage shot him a look, and he spread his hands. “You know we need a plan.”
“If she’s not here, we find whoever is and beat the crap out of him until we learn where she is now,” Gage said.
Kyle nodded. “Works for me.”
Gage turned to Scotty. “What else do we have?”
Scotty shrugged. “It’ll be an old house—means a lot of ways in and out. The Google Maps satellite view shows it’s pretty open at the front, but we have woods close to the back. Good cover. The rest, we’ll have to find out.”
Gage nodded and turned to Kyle. It was habit: Kyle was ranking officer, and they were still a team. Kyle stared back, eyes bloodshot, face still ragged with grief. But he did what he needed to do. Gage saw him button it up, rub a hand over his face. He nodded. “Check your weapons. Single file in.”
They headed through the woods and around the back. Gage followed Kyle, itching to pick up the pace, but they had to do this slow and easy.Hang on, Anna, hang on.He kept thinking that, willing her to still be alive, to still be coping. After this, she’d probably want nothing to do with a guy like him, but he could live with that so long as she was alive and well.
A steep incline led them to a rock outcropping. Kyle waved Scotty forward, and Scotty gave the all clear. He also pointed down.
A rusted metal door had been set into the rock. The lock on the latch was new. They all stared at it. “What the hell?” Kyle muttered, leaning down.