Page 27 of Crash’s Secret

I’m close enough to catch the sound coming through, not the words. Doesn’t matter. Saber’s face does the translating. Something is wrong.

“Say that again,” he says.

Acorn says it again.

“Which car?” His eyes land on me, and my body goes numb.

“Cassidy,” I say.

He doesn’t answer. He’s listening, jaw locked, phone crushed against his ear.

“Truck came off the shoulder,” he repeats for the rest of us. “T-boned Cassidy’s car. Second truck blocked her. Two men pulled her out before the brothers could get turned around, and they lost them on the dirt roads.” He listens another second, then says. “Acorn says they weren’t targeting her. They hit the middle of the column and took whoever was in reach.” He’s pacing. “Whoever was in reach was Cassidy. Everyone else made it to the safehouse. All the women and children.”

I put a hand on my tank, for balance, and the metal is the only thing grounding me.

They took her. The Crimson Warriors took her.

“Jinx.” Saber snaps his fingers. “The trackers. Everyone got one before they rolled out, right?”

Jinx already has his phone out, thumb flying, pulling up Cassidy’s tracker. We crowd in. The screen is a map, mostly empty desert, and one green dot.

The dot is moving north. Back roads, but every turn it takes bends it toward the same destination, and all of us standing around that screen know the address.

“They’re taking her to the Warriors’ compound,” Joker says.

“They’re taking her to the place we’re about to burn down,” Razor says around his cigarette.

“We cut them off,” I say.

“On which road?” Razor doesn’t even look up. “They’re threading dirt tracks we don’t have eyes on. We pick wrong, we’re an hour out of position, and they’re behind a fence. We pick right, and it’s a gunfight with her in the middle of it.”

He’s right. I hate him for being right.

“Glad she listened,” Jinx says quietly. “I told everyone to put the trackers in their pockets, not their bags.”

Good girl.

Saber stares at the dot. The compound is forty minutes up the road. The staging point Razor scouted for tonight sits five minutes south of its fence.

Once that dot stops moving, his sister will be five minutes from where we’ll be standing.

Five minutes. And we have to let them take her through that gate first, because the only thing worse than her inside that compound is a gunfight on an open road with her in the truck.

“They don’t know we’re coming tonight,” Duke says. “She’s leverage. They’ll want her breathing.”

Saber gives his orders. “Nothing changes. We’re attacking the Warriors’ compound exactly as planned.” He tells everyone what their specific job is.

“What about Cassidy?” Duke asks.

“Crash and I will get Cassidy.” Saber pulls his Glock, checks it, holsters it. “We go in four minutes before the rest of you. We get her. Then you all follow your orders.”

He turns to me last. This morning, he ripped me off her bed and told me I don’t have love in me. Now, he looks at me a long second.

“You really love her?” he asks.

“I do.”

He nods once. It’s not forgiveness, but acceptance. “Let’s go get her.”