Levi groaned. “Shit. It didn’t occur to me. Give me twenty minutes. I’ll find out and get back to you.”
“While we wait for Levi, I’m gonna go check out the house. Listen for their voices. Just to be sure.” Ripper pointed at me. “You stay put.”
I crouched down behind a bush and watched Ripper circle around toward the back of the house. He crept across the side yard. Blinds covered all of the windows, but dim light from lanterns glowed through cracks. Ripper paused under three windows, looked toward me and shook his head. He retraced his path back to our hiding place.
“No sign of any of our people,” he whispered.
“But Sahdev has to be there, right?”
“Yeah, most likely.”
“If Kenzie and Hannah were in the back of the truck, if we somehow missed seeing them, then they’re in that house right now. They’re in the hands of those vicious dimwits right now.” The thought filled me with murderous rage.
“My gut tells me that Mac and Hannah got away.” Ripper blew out a breath. “The doc is smart. He backed the jeep into the trees for a reason. I bet Mac and Hannah grabbed the go bags and took off into the hills. They got food and water, blankets, knives, flashlights. No question we gotta find them, but they’re in no immediate danger.”
“But what about Sahdev? Is he in immediate danger? What will those racist assholes do to him?” Sahdev was one of the good guys, always helpful, always thinking of others. Crap.
“Remember, he’s a doctor, and they got a pregnant woman,” Ripper said. “That should buy him time.”
“Will they even let Sahdev near Libby? What comes first with these people? Bigotry or the need for a doctor?”
The walkie-talkie sounded. “The bags are missing from the back of the jeep, and I found the keys jammed between the seat cushions.”
Kenzie and Hannah got away. Thank God.
“So what do we do?” I swung my eyes toward Ripper. “Go back and hunt for Kenz and Hannah, or keep watch here?”
Ripper pondered, brow furrowed, staring at the ground. Finally, he lifted his gaze to meet mine. “We wait here. Mac’s smart. Most likely they’ll hunker down and spend the night in a safe place.”
“I don’t like it,” I interrupted.
“Me neither. But I trust that Mac can handle the situation.”
“All right.” I grudgingly accepted his reasoning.
“And if things go south for Sahdev—if they frogmarch him outta the house—we need to be here,” Ripper continued. “If they don’t...well...this is a big place. Even if they won’t let Sahdev doctor Libby, they could use him to work the ranch. We need to see what happens in the morning, see if both Bear and Sahdev are brought to the barn to work. If that’s the case, we’ll know that we have a window of opportunity every morning when our people are together, with only two men standing guard.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
Ripper shrugged. “You got a better plan, I’m all ears.”
“No. It’s just hard to sit and twiddle my thumbs when people I care about are in trouble.”
Ripper clapped a hand on my shoulder. “I know, but if we want our people back unharmed, we gotta do this right.”
Ripper radioed Levi to fill him in on the plan. He didn’t like it any better than I did. Ripper had to order him not to grab a flashlight and hike out into the boonies looking for his girl. Ripper and I had the night vision goggles. The last thing we needed was for Levi to injure himself or get lost while wandering the countryside in the middle of the night.
“Barricade the door and get some sleep,” Ripper ordered. “You can’t help Hannah if you’re dead on your feet.”
“Are you going to take your own advice and try to catch a couple of hours of shut-eye?” I asked after he signed off. “You haven’t had much sleep for the past two days. I’m too buzzed to relax. I’ll take watch.”
While I stood watch, Ripper settled back in that relaxed, half-dozing state that allowed him to recharge his batteries.
When the sun came up, we heard people talking inside the house and smelled coffee. Dwight and Darryl led a shackled Bear out the door and toward the barn.
I kept the binoculars trained on my friend. My stomach clenched. Bear looked bad. Bruises covered the side of his face, and he’d lost weight.
There was no sign of Sahdev. So much for the plan to strike when our friends were separated from most of the brigade. I guess we should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy. We watched for another half hour, but didn’t catch sight of the doctor.
We marched back to our bolt-hole and found Levi at the pump refilling the water bottles.
When he saw us, he turned to face Ripper. He stood erect with his feet apart and his shoulders back, as if bracing for a fight. “There’s no way I’m staying behind when you look for Hannah and Kenzie.” He lifted his chin, daring Ripper to contradict him.
I had to admire the kid’s balls. Not many people got in Ripper’s face like that.
“No problem,” Ripper said mildly.
Wait. What? I swung my gaze toward Ripper. “What do you mean?”
“Want you to stay at the house, in case Mac and Hannah make it back. And we can’t keep taking off, leaving the weapons untended. Levi and I will track down the women.”
I opened my mouth to protest, then snapped it shut. I recognized the look on Ripper’s face, his don’t mess with me look. I glanced at Levi, whose jaw was set in a stubborn line. Yeah. I got it. Of course, he’d want to search for his missing girlfriend. It made sense, even though it didn’t sit right with me. I’d grown used to thinking of myself as Ripper’s indispensable right-hand man.
He wasn’t thinking of replacing me with a teenage boy, was he?
THIRTY
Ripper
Levi climbed on behind me, and we rode the Harley to the spot where Sahdev had been forced to abandon the jeep. I parked the bike out of sight behind some trees. We’d decided to leave the jeep where it was. If we moved it, the brigade might suspect that Sahdev had friends in the area. If they hot-wired the jeep and took it to Valhalla, we’d get it back once we took the ranch.
Two of the four go bags were still stashed in the back of the jeep. Levi and I added our extra water bottles to the packs and slung them over our shoulders. A couple of broken branches and the fragments of a cobweb revealed the spot where Mac and Hannah had pushed through the trees.
Once past the trees, I paused to methodically scan the area, searching for any anomalies. My eyes searched for footprints, trampled grass, a strand of hair, anything the women might have dropped in their haste or—worse-case scenario—bloodstains.
“You said your Grandpa Kurt taught you how to hunt. Did he teach you how to track?”
“No. Grandpa taught me that if you use the correct caliber rifle and place your shot right, the animal will drop where it stands, and there’s no need to chase it down.” He glanced sideways at me. “And I don’t think it occurred to my grandpa that I’d ever need to track down my missing girlfriend. Who was fleeing from Nazis.”
“Yeah, I didn’t see this coming, either.” This helpless uncertainty that coiled around my guts must be what Mac felt every time I left her behind when I went on a mission. No denying the world was a dangerous place. If something went wrong—if she ran into trouble that she couldn’t handle—she might disappear, and I’d never know what happened to her.