Chapter 62
Chapter Sixty-Two
The Agile Security truck is both wrecked and empty. Goddammit.
The driver’s door is open, swaying in the wind. Rainwater pools in the cab. Diluted blood streaks the steering wheel. The metallic stench of blood mingles with the humid rot of the forest.
My gut cinches tighter as cold fear wraps around my mind.
Our clues are fading.
Mother nature destroying any evidence.
I take a step back, scanning for signs of a struggle. Desperate to know more. Terrified of what I might find.
But there’s nothing. No footprints or scuffs, nothing but Aria’s faint scent clinging to air inside the cab.
Truck opens the passenger door, leaning inside. A rough sound rumbles out of him. “Something about this doesn’t sit right. It’s a MVA, but what else is going on here?”
“Fuck.” I clench my teeth. “Who the hell did this? And where did they take her? There’s nothing around for several klicks.”
“Maybe she got away.” He opens the glove box and pushes the contents around.
The satellite phone is there. He pockets it and asks, “Is the thermal tracking equipment in the back?”
Truck’s tone is steady, but tense, when I’m anything but. I’m a downed electrical wire.
“Should be.” I tear my gaze from the blood as I search the rest of the cab. Just the usual equipment—no keys, no pack, nothing personal. No goddamned clues.
But I’m hit by her scent again, faint but undeniable. It’s the soap we both showered with.
I tense, fighting the stinging pain in my throat. “She was here.”
Truck scans the floorboards, running his handheld light over the interior. “No signs she was forced into the back. No signs that she resisted.”
The words hang in the charged air.
I have to swallow twice before I can speak. “Unconscious would be my guess.”
He looks at me and I see the question in his eyes. Or dead.
I slam my fist against the leather driver’s seat, making water fly off of it. “No. She’s alive.”
But the thought grips me, twisting my insides until I’m forced to step back, doubled over. Bile scorches up my esophagus. My stomach heaves as the forest floor spins below me.
I let the nausea wash over me before vomiting into the mud.
Truck rounds the hood and stops next to me, his muddy boots in my field of view. “No keys here?”
I spit on the ground, wiping my hand on the back of my wrist, appreciating that he’s not handling me with kid gloves. “Affirmative.”
He stalks away and seconds later I hear the muted sound of shattering glass. Truck muffled the sound, and the rest was covered almost completely by the drumming rain that’s washing every goddamned thing clean.
Once I’ve thrown up everything in my system, I get on the tablet again, looking at terrain features as he passes me the gear.
“I found the NVGs, thermal system, plus comms gear. I’m calling Beast to tell him to search the road before reporting here.”
“Copy.”
“Come on. If she’s out here, we’ll get her back.”
The forest sounds grow as we leave the wreck behind. Wet leaves, rivulets of water, mud. Dense undergrowth. It’s a goddamned tracking nightmare. The thermal imaging will be almost useless.
Truck’s conversation with Beast comes through my in mouth-bone conduction speaker.
Ignoring them, I tune in, going deep to a place that I haven’t been in over a year. The part of me that tracked and killed in the worst places in the world. Truck has the same skills.
If anyone can find her, it’s us.
I’m coming for you and we’re getting the hell out of this country on the first plane I can find .
“Got her tracks,” Truck mutters in my comms gear as he crouches.
Yes. Sweet relief loosens my clenched fist.
I scrub my hand over my face. “What do you see?”
He swings his hand over a small area. It’s there. One print. Small, exactly Aria’s size. Nothing else.
The sight cuts through me.
Truck tips his chin. “Take her trail. I’ll keep looking for the other.”
Presuming there’s another.
Fuck. Something about this is off.
In my coms gear, Truck’s voice is a rumble. “Maybe someone picked up the abductor on the road. He could have called for help.”
“Or maybe something ate him.”
He chuckles. “Or that.”
I don’t laugh. I keep moving, slowly scanning for the fading footprints.
The forest closes in. Suffocating. The rain is a constant barrage, falling through the thick canopy at an impossible rate.
Fuck rain.
Fuck the mud and goddamned flooded caves.
After I get out of here, I’m taking a year to live in the desert. We’re taking a year. Because Aria’s going to be with me. Griff can bite my goddamned ass. She’s my future.
I push forward, scanning the trees, the ground, looking, listening.
Hoping for another sign of her.
“Anything else? Over.” I check in.
“Negative. Over.”
As much as I don’t want Aria to be with a damned man, the thought of her alone in this jungle makes my heart thud erratically.
“Scout.”
I freeze, worried about Truck’s tone. “What?” I rasp, “Over.”
“Do you think she did this on her own? Over.”
Narrowing my eyes, I see a small divot. I bend and brush my finger over the slight depression but my mind racing with questions I can’t fathom.
Could she have drugged me and bound me?