by Dale Mayer
“That’s why I want to take a look at this country property,” Gavin said. “I figure we’ll take about an hour to run up, take a quick look around, and then an hour’s run back. And, of course, we’ll still have communication with the Mavericks chat box, if anything pops up.”
“And what’s likely at this point?”
“Well, we can always hope that something breaks.”
“Are we leaving her?” Shane asked.
“No, you are not,” she said from under the covers, her voice sleepy.
Gavin walked over and sat down beside her. “We’ll go do some reconnaissance where a particular vehicle has parked.”
She sat up slowly. “Give me a moment,” she said. “I’ll get dressed and join you.” And, with a little more vim and vigor than he expected when she was still half asleep, she hopped from bed, snagged her clothing, and walked into the bathroom.
He raised his eyebrows at Shane, who just shrugged. “It’s probably better if we stick together anyway.”
“Unless we’re walking into danger ourselves,” Gavin replied.
“I know, but let’s not look at it like that.”
“Got it,” he said with a grin.
Back out of the bathroom a few moments later, Rosalina was completely dressed, with her face washed and her hair pulled back. Grabbing her sweater, putting on her shoes, and snagging her purse, she said, “I’m ready.”
Gavin led the way without a sound, locking up the door behind her. Instead of taking them through the main part of the hotel, he dropped down into the car park, and he slipped into a vehicle right in front of them.
“Different vehicle,” she murmured quietly from behind him.
“Well, one of them had a broken window,” Gavin said with a smile, “and the other one was borrowed from Henry.”
“I wonder what the legal term for borrowed is in this instance,” she said.
He chuckled. “Not sure. We can look that up.”
“Right,” she said. “Where are we going?” He gave her the name of the town. She brought it up on her phone and asked, “Why would they go there?”
“Close to town but far enough out of the big city. Personally, if I had to work in Oahu, I’d be finding a place out of the city to live myself.”
“A lot of commuting then,” she muttered.
“Depends on how often I’d have to come in,” he said. “I would much prefer to have a couple acres and live a few miles away.”
“Not everybody can afford a couple acres,” she said, with a laugh.
“Maybe not,” he said, “but I’ve spent so much of my life in the city jungles that I’d just as soon retire from all that.”
She sat back and stared at him through the rearview mirror. He smiled at her and said, “Don’t worry about it. Just keep on looking at whatever you’re looking at.”
“No, but it’s an interesting insight,” she said. “What about you, Shane? Are you leaving the city when you’re done too?”
“Possibly,” he said. “Depends on what done will actually mean though.”
“Meaning, whether you do or do not survive long enough to retire?”
Gavin could hear the joke in her voice, but it was definitely an attempt to hide some of the negative aspects of their work.
“It’s always possible,” Shane said.
“What about you?” Gavin asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve spent so much time in the lab that I tend to forget there’s anything but that.”
“Right,” he said. “Work can be all-consuming, and then we have nothing left at retirement.”
“Exactly,” she said, as they drove steadily out of town. “Any chance we can stop to pick up a cup of coffee?” she asked. “I know it’s not a sightseeing trip, but I could use it to wake up.”
“Yes, of course,” Gavin said. “Do you need food too?”
She shrugged. “I should have brought some of those muffins and croissants that were still left.”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “I think we’ve got them.” He looked over at Shane, lifting a bag from the seat beside him. “Yes, they’re here,” he said.
She crowed lightly in the back seat. “Now that is awesome,” she said. “I’m really glad to see that.”
“At least it’s something.”
“It’s a lot of something.”
Gavin pulled into the nearest coffee shop drive-through and ordered three coffees. He looked at her. “Do you need anything in it?”
“No,” she said. “I like my coffee black.”
“Good enough.” When they were given the take-out cups, he paid for it and proceeded to pull from the drive-through.
“You don’t worry about your face being caught on any of the cameras?” she asked.
“Not at this point,” he said. “We’re just having a drive.”
“Yeah, but it’s the direction we’re going,” she said. “Surely that makes a difference.”
“It does,” he said, “but not that much.”
“Awesome.” She accepted the cup of coffee from Shane, then gave him a smile and reached for the bag. As he watched, she snagged a muffin and proceeded to settle into her seat.
“Do you always eat this much?” Shane asked.
She nodded. “I used to put it down to the fact that I have a really fast metabolism,” she said, “but now I’ve pretty well figured out that it’s due to my brain constantly moving. Do you know that professional chess players need thousands and thousands of calories over and beyond the normal person?”
“I hadn’t heard that,” Gavin said. “But that would assume then that brainpower is a high-calorie energy requirement.”
“It is,” she said with a nod. “And I never really put the two together, but, when I’m researching, I tend to be hungry,” she said. “After all, I’m constantly calculating and working on data, running scenarios in my head, looking for anything to make it all work.”
“Which is kind of nice,” he said.
“It is,” she admitted, as she held up the last bite of her muffin. “Besides, it lets me eat. And I really like my groceries.”
He chuckled at that. His gaze caught sight of a vehicle behind them. He glanced at Shane to see him studying his side mirror. “Can you catch the numbers?”
Shane shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Okay, let me slow down a bit and see if we can get him to come up behind us.” He maneuvered into the slow lane, even though it was nighttime, and the highway through town was pretty well empty. As the vehicle came closer, it slowed down and pulled behind him again. “Not very smooth there,” he said.
“Not smooth at all,” Shane said.
“Okay, you guys are scaring me. What’s going on?” she called from the back seat.
“We’re being followed,” he said, “but it’s not a pro.”
“And I suppose that, once again, I’m not allowed to turn around and look, right?”
“Right,” he said. “And I think you should slink down a little bit, just in case I decide to shoot out the back window.”
She gasped and immediately sagged down so she was flat on the seat. She had her coffee in her hand. Shane looked around and said, “That does not look comfortable.”
“No shit,” she glared at him. “Do I need to be like this?”
“Well, you definitely should have your head below the seat back,” he said, “but there’s got to be a more comfortable way to arrange yourself.”
She shrugged, then shifted, so she lay on her side, using her purse and sweater as a pillow, still holding her coffee cup. “It’s just awkward drinking coffee this way.”
“Well, don’t spill it,” he said. “It’s damn hot.”
“I know,” she said. “But still, it is what it is.”
“True,” he said.
Gavin listened to it all with only half an ear. As he watched the vehicle stay just enough behind that he couldn’t really see into the vehicle. “We should have a zoom l
ens so we could get a closer view.”
“Better than that,” Shane said, “I’m trying to get the chat window to check it on satellite, to see if they can get any more details than we have.”
“Good idea,” he said, as they exited the city limits and headed up the stretch of highway. “It’ll be interesting to see if they make a move,” he said.
Immediately Shane brought up the map of where they were going. “If they do,” he said, “I’m thinking it’ll be eleven miles ahead. Looks like a turnoff’s on the right.”
“I can make that work,” Gavin said, his mind already thinking about a play to get out of the way.
“The question is whether it’s just the one vehicle,” Shane said.
“Well, let’s keep our eyes open for a second,” he said. “I can hit the gas pedal to the floor, but I don’t know this road.”
“We’re doing just fine right now,” Shane said, “as long as they stay behind us.”
Gavin drove on for the next ten miles, realizing they were coming up on the city within a few miles. “No move yet, and we need to pull off here in a couple miles, but I don’t want them to know where.”
“The turnoff’s up ahead,” Shane said. “Instead of slowing down, why don’t you hit the gas and go as fast as you can, then tuck into it as they speed up.”
Gavin laughed. “I love it.” And that’s what he did. He pressed the pedal to the metal and sped ahead, going faster and faster and faster. He looked for advance notice of the turnoff, happy to see a little dip in the road that should keep them out of sight for a bit.
Meanwhile, as the vehicle sped up behind him, trying to keep up. At the last minute Gavin hit the brakes hard and tucked into the turnoff on the same side of the road. The vehicle flew past at high speed and hit its brakes, but it was already too late, and the people following them were well and truly past. With no other options than turn around or keep going, they kept on going.
Gavin killed the lights and waited, watching as the follow car’s red taillights disappeared over the horizon.
Chapter 9
She watched the men work in awe. She leaned forward and whispered, “Is it safe now?”
“It’s safe in that you can sit up, yes,” Gavin said. He took the lid off his coffee as he studied the horizon. “The question now will be if they come back.”
“But, if they do turn around and come back,” she said, “won’t they see us?”
He nodded. “If we stay here, they will.” He pointed to a grove of trees up to the side where it was flat and level. “So, I’ll probably pull in there, and we’ll give it a few minutes.”
“Interesting that they came that close, actually letting us see them,” Shane said. “So was that on purpose? Or just not pros?”
Gavin looked at his partner. “Cops?”
“That’s what I was thinking. Or one of Steve’s navy buddies? FBI? Or hired locals?”
“As in Steve hired them?” she asked in shock. “Or the same department?”
“Could be either,” Gavin said. “Could be local hires, like at the warehouse.”
She watched as he put the lid back on his coffee, put it down, and, without turning the lights back on, moved the vehicle across the road and pulled it up into the shadows of the tree growth there. She wasn’t even sure what type of tropical foliage it was, but he managed to tuck under a bunch of long leaves. “Is it even safe to park here?”
“Well, there’s no hill, and it’s flat,” he said, “so it looks safe enough to me.” And just then headlights came down the road, facing them.
“But how can you tell if it’s them or not?”
“We can’t,” he said. “At least not yet.”
The vehicle slowed as it got to the turnoff and kept on driving past.
“Well, that’s them for sure,” Shane said, “and I got the first three digits.”
“I got to the last three,” Gavin said. Shane quickly wrote it down, and she watched as Gavin texted it to somebody.
“Are you still thinking government?”
“It’s hard to say,” Gavin said. “Things like that can get misconstrued very easily.”
“Not to mention that sometimes government vehicles get used on private jobs,” Shane said. “So you can’t always blame the government, even if it’s a government vehicle.”
She was a little nonplussed at that. “Do you think they’ll turn around again?”
“They’ll either think they lost us or that we turned around and chose a different route,” he said. “With any luck they’ll head that way for another few miles before they come back in this direction again, in which case we need to be long gone.” They sat here and waited in the silence while Gavin watched in the rearview mirror.
She kept looking, but the highway stretched for a long distance behind them. When the car completely disappeared from sight, Gavin started the engine, turned on his lights, and pulled out. “How far is this place we’re going?”
“Not far at all,” he said. “Maybe ten minutes to the turnoff, which is why we wanted to make sure they didn’t know where we were going.”
He kept driving for the next few minutes, while she watched and studied the area. The sun was just crossing the horizon, giving a much lighter air to the world around her. It was almost a magical moment, with the tropical ocean in the distance and the colorful wildlife and such lush greenery all around. It was really special. Yet the reason she was here was the opposite, but she still noted the stunning scenery. “Has anybody checked in with my sister yet?”
“No. Why would I?” Gavin asked. “I talked to her yesterday, and that was plenty.”
“She doesn’t know about our parents being at that warehouse then, does she?”
“I didn’t give her an update, but that doesn’t mean that somebody else didn’t tell her.”
She sagged back and wondered if she should.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Gavin said.
She glared at him. “You’re not allowed to read my thoughts now too,” she snapped.
“Then stop thinking so loud,” he said with a chuckle.
In spite of herself she smiled. She was really comfortable around very few people, but he was definitely one of them and getting more so every moment. She didn’t have a ton of friends. And she certainly hadn’t dated at all in the last few years. Her marriage had been cold, and she thought that trying once was enough to know it wasn’t her thing. But apparently it wasn’t, as now she truly hated never having somebody there for her.
And what she hadn’t realized early enough was that the coldness of her marriage meant her husband had been looking for heat elsewhere. It had really bothered her to find out he’d cheated on her all that time. He had said he assumed she’d wanted an open marriage since she was gone all the time anyway. There hadn’t even been any recriminations when they divorced, more just wondering why they had bothered in the first place.
Rosalina watched as Gavin slowed the car and didn’t even signal before he took a road off the main highway.
“So do you just not know how to use signals,” she asked, “or did you do that deliberately?”
“Deliberately,” he said. “Just because we can’t see anybody watching us doesn’t mean they aren’t.”
“Don’t you think they’ll see the vehicle as it turns up here?”
“Probably,” he said, “but you don’t want to give people enough warning to let them know ahead of time that this is what we’re planning on doing.” Instead of continuing up the drive, he pulled into another heavily green area and parked, shutting off the engine. He looked back at her and frowned.
She gave him a frown right back. “What’s that about?” she asked.
“Just trying to decide what to do with you.”
She groaned. “Why don’t I just lie here with the doors locked, while you guys go do your thing?”
“I like that idea,” he said. “A blanket or something should be back there to cover yourself with. Make sure it’s
thrown over you so nobody can see your face.”
“Am I trying to hide then?”
He nodded. “Absolutely.”
She sighed, then searched around, and there, on the floor in the other footwell, was a blanket. She didn’t have a clue how clean it was, and it didn’t seem to matter to anybody else. She fluffed it out and threw it over the top of her, pulling it up to her neck.
“Remember what I said about your face,” he said. “Your skin will shine in this light.”
Surprised, she sank under it.
“Much better, thank you.” He reached over and patted her gently. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
Just then the doors closed and locked, and the two men disappeared. Even though she listened very hard, she couldn’t hear their footsteps recede. How did that work? How did they possibly slide through the night so quietly like they did? She knew he’d just say training, but it was more. It was a sense of oneness, a sense of rightness. It was a sense of coming together with this atmosphere and this earth at this very moment in time and becoming one with it all. They didn’t disturb anything, they just moved with it.
She didn’t shift her body, for fear of somebody noticing her movement. And yet that was stupid. Still, there was only so much she could do. She lay still and quiet as she waited for them to come back. And waited.
And waited.
And waited. And then she started to fret. She hadn’t heard anything. No sounds of gunfire, no voices. Nothing. So where the hell were they?
They’d already circled the house once, before breaking in and doing a quick search of all three floors—basement, ground level, and second floor, even the tiny attic—finding no signs of life on the inside. No sign that anybody was at home in any way, shape, or form. Gavin was looking for the black truck with the canopy he’d seen arriving here earlier on the satellite feeds, but, from the ground, everything looked much different than from above.
He couldn’t find a vehicle parked anywhere, but another property was close by that was easy to miss with the tree canopy, but, even after searching the outside of that second house, Gavin found no sign of the black truck. However, he did find a three-car garage attached to that house. And he desperately wanted into that. Even with his best efforts, every time he tried to shift the door, the squeaks let him know it would groan loudly if he pulled it open more. And that meant he couldn’t take the chance.
