“Rough fucking road, man. Be advised.”
Wolf leaned forward with his phone. “I’ve pulled the area up on satellite. “Looks like the road—if you can call it that—ends at a cabin.”
“Most of these roads do,” Lion said. They heard a banging sound, followed by a stream of curses from Lion. “This one seriously sucks. I think that just fucked up my alignment.”
When we rescue Sylvie, she’ll be thrilled to look at it. The thought drifted through Alex’s head. Theyhadto rescue her.
“Spooky,” Kyle said. “Can we expect any backup from your friends?”
Gina’s voice came over the SUV’s speakers. “My friends are still securing the initial site. They are reluctant to show their faces beyond that.” She sounded angry. “The cartel is not on their candidate target list so they say this is a matter for us, since they’ve achieved their mission objective.”
Fuck. Alex ground his teeth. In other words, they were only interested in smashing Capitoline and not rescuing Sylvie, even though she was responsible for helping to unearth their Colorado base.
Lion’s voice came back over the speakers. “Whoever they are, they don’t sound like friends. Look, I’m going to ditch my truck and proceed on foot until you guys catch up. I can do some recon—”
“Negative,” Kyle said. “Pull over and wait. We know where they’ve gone and I’m not risking your life if you get caught.”
“With all due respect, you don’t know me,” Lion answered.
Kyle gave Shane the side eye.
Shane just shrugged. “Well, you don’t. Trust me, he’s invisible and he’s the best tracker I’ve ever met.”
Chewie whined in his kennel as if he understood Shane’s words and was personally insulted. More likely, he was missing Sylvie and could sense the tension in the SUV.
Kyle looked toward the back of the SUV. “Don’t worry, buddy, you’ll see your mama soon.” They’d brought the dog along in case he needed to track Sylvie, or if Del Rio took off on foot. And besides, it just didn’t seem right not to let him help find his mama.
“Fine,” Kyle said.
“Pulling over now. You’ll see my truck. I’ll report when I have a visual.” Then Lion was gone.
“We’re gonna need to talk, Shane,” Kyle said, and not for the first time.
“They’re all former military, like us,” Shane said. “They’ve saved me, and I’ve saved them. We all go way back. I’ll vouch for them on my life.”
Kyle grinned. “What I want to know is if any of them need a job.”
They drove a few more minutes up 34.
“There’s the scenic point,” Shane said. “Sullivan’s Gulch is just up ahead.”
A minute later, they were crossing the road and pulling onto a narrow dirt track that Alex probably would have driven right past. It switchbacked through trees on its way up the side of the mountain. Most of the dust had settled but as they went farther, Alex could see a cloud of it hanging in the air ahead. The SUVs bounced over rocks and roots, through ditches that probably channeled water down the mountain after a storm.
Shane’s phone buzzed and he handed it to Kyle. “That’ll be Lion.”
Kyle looked at the text on the screen. “Remind me to equip your guys with comms.”
He read over the text. “He’s lucky he ditched the truck. There was an El Camino parked and waiting for the Mustang to pass, then it pulled out and followed.”
“Told you he’s got good instincts,” Shane said.
After a minute, another text came through.
“Fuck. Shane, Spooky, step on it.”
Alex leaned forward. “What is it?”
“Chief, just be ready, all right?”
