“Ro’s gone,” Zach said, answering Jamie’s question and watching as Graham grabbed one of their go bags off the shelf and unzipped it. Each backpack was stocked with all of the essentials needed to bug out. Or track down an escaped woman. He grabbed an M4 off the wall, checked the magazine, and leaned it up against the bag. Graham shoved a .45 in the waistband of his pants. Extra magazines and stripper clips of ammo were shoved into the bag, followed by a long-distance radio.
Zach stepped into the armory and mimicked Graham’s actions. Go bag. Rifle. Ammo. Radio. His pistol was already tucked into the holster on his belt. Jamie followed him inside.
“Gone, gone?” Jamie inquired. “I don’t get it. She should have set off the alarm on the perimeter fence.”
“Not if she knew to avoid it,” Graham said.
“How …?” Jamie’s question trailed off at Graham’s glare.
“Look, it doesn’t matter how she got out,” Zach interrupted. “We just need to get out there and find her. Make sure she’s okay.”
Jamie paled. “We didn’t get that last fucker. He’s still out there somewhere, and he’s got a hard-on for us.”
Graham slung the loaded backpack over his shoulders, and Zach followed suit.
Jamie grabbed a go-bag off the shelf, too, and helped himself to extra magazines and ammo. And the SAW. The M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, which was basically a light machine gun. Then he stuffed a box of linked ammo that fed the SAW into the bag.
Zach paused when he noted Jamie’s actions. “What are you doing? You’ve been up for almost twenty-four hours already.”
“Like we haven’t gone without sleep for longer, all the fucking time. Plus, I’m the best goddamn tracker on the team, and you know it. And, you might need another gun.”
They headed out of the armory to where Graham was standing and speaking with Ryan. “You should take the truck,” Ryan was saying.
“Can’t,” Graham replied. “She’s on foot. We’d never find her.” He cursed. “And I don’t have a fucking clue where she’s headed, except northeast.”
When Graham caught sight of Jamie, loaded for bear, he nodded approvingly. Zach figured Graham would have already asked Jamie to come along, but he was a little rattled over Ro’s abrupt thief in the night disappearing act. “You ready to move?”
“Oorah!”
“Then let’s go.”
Graham froze when they reached the bolt hole. Zach came up beside him. It was unlocked.
“Well, that solves one mystery.”
“She’s not going to be able to sit for a week when I’m done with her.”
Jamie and Zach followed him through the opening, and Ryan pulled the door shut from the inside and barred it. Jamie paused. “Looks like it was propped shut with a stick from the outside. She’s pretty smart, your girl.”
“If she was our girl, she wouldn’t have left,” Graham said.
Once outside the walls, Jamie easily picked up Ro’s small tracks. Graham hadn’t realized how little her feet were until he was desperately searching the ground for her footprints. I’m fucking pathetic, he thought. Woman walks out on me, and I’m trailing after her like a puppy, looking for scraps of attention. No, he reminded himself, I’m just making sure she’s safe. It tore Graham up inside knowing that they could have kept Ro from facing unknown dangers between here and her home if he and Zach had held up their end of the deal.
As Graham had guessed, she’d headed for the hidden gate at the northeast corner of the outer fence. Jamie started to lead them away from the ranch property, still heading northeast. After about fifteen minutes, he stopped.
“I don’t like this, man. Not at all.”
“What?”
“You see these big boot prints here?” Graham looked at the dirt where Jamie was pointing with a stick.
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been seeing them with pretty alarming regularity. It’s like they’re trailing your girl.” He pointed again. “You can tell that one of them stepped on her print here, so we know they came after her.”
Zach looked alarmed. “Wait, you’re saying that it looks like someone is following her? Other than us?”
“More than one someone. Looks like two. And men, based on the size of the prints,” Jamie replied.