his phone. At the truck, he stopped, then walked around to the passenger side.
Sarah squinted. “What’s he doing? Wait, did someone just come up behind him?”
“Yeah.” She continued to watch. Then the truck drove off.
“Whoever’s driving that truck knew the angle of the camera,” Caden said. “He told him to go around to the passenger side. And that’s all I can see before he drove away.”
“But—” Sarah sputtered, “what does he want with Gavin? I thought they were after me.”
“That was the assumption,” Travis said.
“I’m confused, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is finding Gavin and the general.”
“We can do that,” Asher said.
Travis nodded. “If he’s in his truck, we can track him.”
“How?” Sarah asked.
“We have GPS trackers in all of our vehicles.” Asher pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped the screen. “Give me a minute.” In less than that, he looked up at Travis. “You stay with Sarah. I’ll go find Gavin.”
“Alone?” Sarah asked.
“No,” Caden said, “definitely not alone. I’ve got some friends I can call on for help. Give me the GPS data. I can follow him as he’s traveling.”
Asher did and Caden got back on his phone. Sarah’s pulse pounded. What was going on? Fear chugged through her. Oh, please, God, don’t let them die.
Gavin stirred and groaned. His head pounded and nausea swirled. He hoped the cops got the truck that hit him.
Oh wait.
No truck.
Someone had spritzed him with a face full of chloroform.
Awareness returned slowly, but with each passing second, his brain cleared and he knew he was in trouble as pain in every part of his body made its presence known. Taking inventory, he noted his hands tied together behind his back.
And his feet.
And his hands tied to the rope around his ankles. His muscles screamed and his heart thudded.
Think. Think. There was a way out of this. There had to be, because Sarah needed him. And he needed her.
A groan to his left compelled him to roll. The general was still tied to the chair . . . waking from unconsciousness? Had he been drugged as well? Ignoring the pain of his cramped muscles, Gavin scooted on knees and shoulders, pushing his way like an arthritic inchworm over to the general’s side.
“Sir?” he whispered.
Another groan.
Gavin bumped the chair with his shoulder. Hard, but not hard enough to knock it over. “Come on, man, wake up.” The general blinked once, twice. “That’s it. Wake up and tell me who did this.”
Nothing.
Footsteps sounded outside the door and he propelled himself away from the chair, back into his original spot, just as the door opened. A man wearing a ski mask stepped inside, checked on the general, then looked at Gavin. “Well, two out of three of you are here. Now, we wait for Sarah.”
“What do you want with Sarah?” Gavin scowled. “Who are you anyway?”
“Doesn’t matter. The less you know the better.”
Which meant he didn’t intend to kill them? Possibly. Doubtful. The voice was familiar, though. Think!
He walked over to Gavin and Gavin recognized the cell phone in his hand as his own. The man shook it at him. “Sit tight, Sarah will be joining us shortly.”
“You’re not the one who snatched me from the parking lot.”
“I had a little help.”
“What’s this all about?”
“I needed the general to get you here.”
Gavin narrowed his eyes, doing his best to ignore the fact that his hands were going numb. “I’m here. Now what?”
“Now, you get Sarah here.”
“Not a chance.”
“Definitely a chance.” His jaw tightened and his eyes flashed. “I had it all set up in Afghanistan and you ruined it. None of this would have happened if you’d just stayed away.”
Realization was a painful thing. “You set up her kidnapping.”
“And lost a ton of money on that because of you. I’d paid for it with money I didn’t have, but it was supposed to be fine, because once Sarah signed the papers, I would have made that back and more. So, this is all on you.”
“And you plan to get her here how?”
“Easy peasy.” He waved the phone again. “All it took was a text from you.”
Gavin laughed, the sound more pained than he would have liked. “She has 24/7 bodyguards. Good luck.” This man had been behind Sarah’s kidnapping. That had been no small feat to set up. That had taken power—and lots of it.
“She’ll find a way to slip away from them,” his captor was saying, “if she doesn’t want to see you die.”