Chapter Thirteen
Rescue:
*save someone from a dangerous or difficult situation. *keep from being lost or abandoned; retrieve. *to free or deliver from confinement, violence, danger or evil.
~Savage~
“The perimeter line starts here and stretches to the north about two miles. Let’s spread out and go silent unless you come across the structure. Satellite shows it’s very small and built to blend. Watch for vehicle trails and pathways and keep your ears open.”
Jax has taken over our team of seven and he leads as Derek, Snake, Boomer, Case and me slink up the mountain. Jim stays with the SUV at the bottom as a lookout. It’s 3:00 a.m. and eerily quiet until we hear shouts from up ahead.
“You stupid bitch! You’re gonna freeze out here. If you kill my baby, I’m gonna kill the rest of your family.” The voice at the top echoes.
“What the hell!” Case whispers. “Do we have the right property, over?”
“Affirmative,” Jax whispers back.
Jax looks at me, points to the left and we begin to belly crawl closer to the sound of the shouting. My head is clogged with images of her pregnant with this better-than-dead bastard’s baby. What will I do if she’s pregnant with his baby? I have searched for her for so long that I didn’t think of anything except getting her back. If she will have me, will it bother me to raise another man’s baby alongside my own? No! Any baby she carries will be a part of her. She is mine; I will love her and any baby she has or will have until the day I die.
I don’t know why she left the morning after we made love, and right now I don’t care. She has been the only person in my life that I have given my first name too, and I had planned on telling her anything she wanted to know that morning, but she was gone before I got back. I can’t explain the pull to her I felt the moment I laid eyes on her any more than Derek or Jax could explain the connection they had to their wives at first sight.
“I’m gonna kill you when I find you or make you wish you were dead.”
Jerry’s shouting snaps me out of my head and I realize that I have quit climbing the hill. Jax is about fifty yards ahead of me and I’m sure the other guys have the cabin surrounded. I hear a slight rustling sound to my right causing me to remain motionless. There are a lot of predators in these mountains and the last thing any of us need is to be mauled by a cougar or hungry wolf. After a few minutes with no more sound, I begin my ascent up the mountain. As I clear a small rise, my night vision locks on the man standing at the cabin door holding a shotgun pointed at Case. We are all dressed in black with infrared headgear covering anything identifiable except for the colored band around one ankle. Case wears a yellow band and is standing motionless with his hands in the air. I’m sure he is playing up a distraction so the other guys can get into place and search the cabin.
“Who the hell are you? Why are you on my property? If you’re here to take me in, I’m not going in for questioning. I will die and take her with me before you can take me.”
Slight movement appears at the back of the cabin out of Jerry’s line of sight and I see Snake signal that there is no woman in the cabin. Where in the hell is she? I have the perfect kill shot, but if I take it we may never know what happened to Livvy. I need this man alive long enough to torture the information out of him. Jax whispers, “Take the shot Boomer.” A shot is fired from the left causing Jerry to pull his trigger and Case drops hard. Jerry falls to the ground screaming and loses his gun as Snake, Jax and Boomer rush in to secure him. I jump up and race toward Case, but when I’m within five feet of him, he stands up to brush debris off his clothes. “Damn, Case; I thought you were hit.”
“Hell no! I know how to dodge a bullet.”
He pulls off his goggles, winks and slaps my back as we walk toward the others. I’m never going to live that down. Jax has Jerry pinned down with a boot to his knee that was blown to hell by Boomer’s bullet. He is screaming that he doesn’t know where she is. Just then Derek walks out from clearing the cabin.
“She’s not in there.”
“I swear. She ran this afternoon when I left. I came back around five, and she was gone. I have been searching all over this mountain and haven’t found her. It is 3:00 a.m. and freezing. If the animals haven’t got to her, the cold surely will. I don’t know why I bothered; she was a cold fu....”
My bullet between his eyes shuts him up. I walk away shouting, “we’ve got to find my woman.”
“Damn, Sav; that
