by Kendel Lynn
I remained out of his sightline by sitting several yards behind him beneath a shady oak tree. I slipped a paperback from my bag and tilted my head toward the page while keeping my sunglass-covered eyes on Alex.
He dug into his bag and pulled out an apple. By the weight of the pack, I figured that apple may have been the only thing in there. It was flat and slumpy. He finished the apple, tossed it into the metal trash bin, returned to his bench. Arms splayed wide across the top, enjoying a leisurely afternoon at the park.
I was thinking Sid and I really needed a pair of walkie talkie earbuds for our next stakeout. Perhaps something was happening back at the Camaro, because nothing was happening here. I was contemplating texting her when a guy approached Alex with his hand extended.
“Hey, man,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Dude,” Alex said, doing the whole hand grip, half hug, back pat greeting. “Just hangin’.”
It was hard to tell the newcomer’s age. Perhaps a little older than Alex? Maybe younger? College buddies? Colleagues? He matched Alex’s outdoor adventure vibe with his faded tee and cargo shorts—and backpack. Same color, same size. But his was full. They’d each set it on their insides, so both packs rested between them on the bench.
The ole switcheroo was in play.
They talked lazily. No rush. Just two buds kickin’ it in the park. Their voices drifted in the languid early afternoon breeze, but I couldn’t fully follow the conversation. Only random words floated my way. Bits about surfing and cycling, waves and winds, girlfriends and families. These two had nothing but time.
I noticed a man on a bench to the left of Alex, but near the other side of the sandpit. If Alex was at six, this guy was at ten. He must have been there before we arrived. He was large, bald, and bulky. Almost thuggish. He wore an ill-fitted suit and carried a brown bag lunch, very office worker on a break. But something seemed off. Like the fact he looked thuggish.
I thought he might be watching Alex’s exchange. He lifted his phone a smidge too high at times. Secretly snapping pictures? Certainly not frequent enough or obvious enough for Alex to notice. But I did. And he didn’t actually eat anything from the brown bag on his lap.
A girl with blue spiked hair and a face chain of some sort stopped and asked the suit a question. He looked at his watch, looked at her, said something, and she moved on. All very deliberate. Anyone watching could easily follow their exaggerated pantomime. A casual parkgoer asking for the time. But a millennial without a cell phone or a smart watch?
I didn’t think the suit noticed me, and Alex and his friend didn’t so much as tense a shoulder during their chat. Easy breezy, those two.
I continued to randomly turn pages, my expression engrossed. Blue hair punk girl was at the very edge of my peripheral. To get a better look, I’d have to swing my head with a fake stretch or something. I didn’t risk it. There seemed to be a lot of people watching a couple of laid-back guys hanging on a park bench, and I didn’t want anyone to notice me.
“My mom’s—ill, so I gotta cut—short,” the friend said, his words hit me in batches. “I’d say visit sooner, but—let’s see how—out.”
Alex bumped him a fist. “No worries—I totally—it.”
They each picked a backpack, slung it single shoulder-wise, and walked down different paths.
Except they had chosen their own packs from the bench. Had I missed the switcheroo?
I followed Alex, though I was tempted to follow his friend. Alex’s pack was still empty. His friend’s still full.
I walked in the grass until I found a brick path that mirrored Alex’s. I grabbed my phone. The sun glare made it difficult to see the screen, so I just started talking. “I’m almost there,” I said with a laugh into the mouthpiece. “I’m hurrying. I got lost in my book. They’ll hold our reservation.”
As I babbled on my call to no one, Alex’s pace picked up. His casual stroll quickly escalated to mall-walker speed.
We were nearing the parking lot.
The suit thug was also nearing the parking lot. He must have taken the long way ’round the sandpit, then hustled along a different route to arrive when Alex did. He had a whole watch ruse playing out, frantically checking the time. It seems he, too, was late for a very important date.
Alex didn’t seem to notice either of us. Without a backward glance, he simply unlocked his Camaro, started the engine, and darted out of his space.
Sid sat behind the wheel of the Ferrari. She started the engine as soon as I hit the passenger side. “Buckle up.”
I’d barely snapped it into place when she whipped into the aisle.
We passed the suit hurrying into a slick black coupe. “We may have company,” I said.
“Who?”
“No one I want to meet in a dark alley.”
Alex zipped onto Kings Drive, but didn’t stay there long. He had his muscle car pushed to maximum, hightailing it toward the highway.
It was no match for Sid and the Ferrari. Though we still kept a reasonable distance behind as Alex sped as fast as his rumbler let him.
“What happened at the park?” Sid asked. “Kidnapping? Stabbing? Jewel heist?”
“Nothing. A twenty-minute chat with a dude who looked like Alex. Same surfer outdoorsy vibe and an identical backpack. Same color, size, everything. I swear they talked about the weather. I thought they’d at least swap packs. Maybe it was a silent handoff during the handshake? Maybe one of them got spooked and called it off?”
“Good call on spooked because someone is chasing him. That coupe is right behind us, one lane over, and gaining. But who is that guy? Drug dealer?”
“That expensive car he’s driving suggests he’d be higher in a drug dealing food chain than a street dealer. Maybe manufacturer? Though even that doesn’t seem quite right. Like he should be chasing Alex in an SUV with machine guns out the window.”
“Watch tv much?”
“What about corporate intelligence?” I said. “He could be a hired fixer. Maybe we’re dealing with a smuggled flash drive loaded with stolen trade secrets? That’d be a quick handoff.”
The thug suit’s coupe blasted past us, tailing Alex two cars behind. I couldn’t tell if Alex saw him or us. His speed continued to climb, but he didn’t make any overt evasive maneuvers. Simply flying fast down the highway in a souped-up muscle car, changing lanes as speed limit abiding citizens got in his way.
“We have company,” Sid said with a pointed look in the rearview.
“More?”
I pulled my sun visor down and clicked open the mirror cover. Blue hair punk girl was behind us in a black Hummer.
She changed lanes. She rode to our right, staying a car’s length behind. Another SUV, long and black with dark windows, stayed close to her bumper.
Alex’s Camaro continued to race, but had begun to weave and bob.
“Must be some kind of corporate secret to bring this heat,” I said. “We’re all over ninety miles an hour now. But he works at a beach rental hut.”
“A hundred, but who’s watching? Then it has to be espionage? From a bike shop? Oooh, maybe money laundering?”
“Whistleblower!” We shouted at the same time.
“Which makes him a good guy, right?” Sid said.
“And makes these guys chasing him very bad,” I said. “His flight is in six hours. Let’s say he’ll need forty-five minutes to get to the airport, depending on where he’s headed. That gives him about five hours.”
“You think he has another stop?”
“There’s plenty of time for one,” I said. “I mean, how long could’ve that park conversation actually lasted, had it all gone well? Assuming, of course, that it hadn’t gone well? Another ten minutes? Alex had to have planned another stop today.”
The thug floored it. He raced up to the Camaro, and I thought he was going to slam into
his bumper.
Alex may have, too.
The Camaro made a hard right. He crossed two lanes and missed the water barrels at the exit by a paint chip.
The coupe’s brake lights flashed red, but it was too late for him to make the exit. He swerved before he hit the water barrels and missed his chance.
We did not.
Sid switched the engine to manual mode with a flick. She downshifted and punched it.
My head thumped into the headrest. My hands gripped the door.
We flew across multiple white lines.
She shifted again and we flew down the exit.
The Camaro turned left onto the cross street, running the red at the bottom of the ramp.
Sid kept her foot to the floor. “Hang on.”
“I’ve been hanging on,” I said. “I don’t want to fly out when you take this turn.”
“I’m less concerned with the turn, more concerned the Hummer is going to ram us.”
Our tires screeched—in protest or in conquest.
I checked the side mirror. “Shit. The girl is still on us.”
“Us or Alex?”
“Us and Alex?”
The Camaro hit a curb on the right. It bounced over, then skidded into a turn Starsky and Hutch style.
“How bad do you want to know where Alex is headed right now?”
Another black SUV, like a twelve-passenger Yukon, swerved into our lane. It nearly overtook us.
“Not this bad,” I said.
Sid flicked the gearshift and we launched. The Ferrari shot down the center lane like a racehorse out of the gate. An Italian one with a turbocharged V8.
Sid turned left on a yellow, then a quick right down an alley. The park’s idyllic movie scene had morphed into an action film.
We burst onto a side street.
Sid slammed her foot to the floorboard and we flew.
I dared a glance in the side mirror. The SUV turned the corner three blocks back.
At the next light, Sid hollered to hang on.
I’d been hanging on so tight, my knuckles cramped.
We whipped right, then an instant left.
Four turns and five minutes later, we skidded into a hospital’s multi-level garage. Sid slipped the Ferrari behind a delivery truck on the first floor.
We were both shaking. One from adrenaline and the other from terror. Silence enveloped us. The engine ticked. A car honked in the distance.
I rested my hands in my lap. My meditation app guided me through slow inhales and exhales.
“You okay?” Sid asked.
“I’m great.”
“Tell your face.”
I gave her a side eye.
“I’d kill for a dash cam right now,” Sid said. “Milo will never believe this.”
“Oh, he’ll believe it.”
“Yeah, he will.” Sid stretched her arms, rotated her neck.
“I can’t believe we lost them,” I said.
“Who were they?”
“Hired security? Organized crime? Alex is mixed up in something, that’s for sure.” I slipped my hat from my head and put it in my messenger. “We can do a better job next time. Rent something non-descript. And we need a set of earpieces.”
“Next time?”
“Alex flies to Charlotte monthly, if not weekly,” I said. “I think he’s got a reservation for next Thursday.”
Sid ignored me.
We waited another fifteen minutes before she drove conservatively to the airport, using a dozen different side streets, turns, parking lot crisscrosses, and slowdowns. We monitored the mirrors constantly.
With Alex on the run or hiding out, we decided to fly stand-by on an earlier nonstop flight to the island, rather than spend the afternoon re-routing ourselves through Atlanta as originally planned. Under no circumstances could I miss this flight to Sea Pine. The BBQ was in two days, and while I wasn’t central to the planning, I was central to the not wanting to drive four hours back to the island chased by the mob.
Micah was still on duty at the rental counter. “You’re returning early. Did the Portofino meet your needs?” His smile was bland, but I detected a note of smugness, like I should’ve waited for the standard.
“It exceeded all of my expectations, and I can’t imagine how I could’ve survived the day without it,” I said. “While I’m here, did you have a chance to ask your co-workers about Daphne Fischer?”
Bland turned to blank.
“The flyer I left earlier,” I said. “She’s a missing girl who used your rental services frequently.” A teensy embellish.
“I’ve never seen her,” he said.
“Is it possible to look her up in your system? See when she rented?”
“Our records are confidential. If you’d like to return with a warrant, I’d be happy to forward it to our corporate office.”
No amount of me imploring, canoodling, or explaining changed his position. And he was truly the only one at the counter. He had dramatically opened the office door for verification.
“Last question,” I said. “Is there any significance to a rental receipt timestamped at 11:27 p.m.?”
“We close at eleven,” he said with a shrug. “Any return after that is auto-processed. You take a ticket, put the keys in the lockbox, and you’re mailed a receipt.”
I thanked him and left the rental car building. As I waited at the crosswalk signal, I checked each parked and passing car, their drivers and passengers. No one looked familiar. No thug in a suit or a girl with blue hair. But that didn’t mean those chasing Alex earlier were the only teams assigned to him.
Sid and I raided the terminal newsstand for airport snacks, then tucked into a corner at the departure gate.
“Feel like we’re being watched?” I asked.
“The thug in the coupe or the girl in the Hummer or the unknowns in the SUVs?”
“I don’t know, but at least it’s a small plane, and we’ll see who boards before us.”
I didn’t notice any strangers lurking behind unfolded newspapers or peering around load-bearing posts. But I maintained a stealthy and consistent watch until the gate agent announced pre-boarding.
We remained seated until general boarding was nearly complete. Passenger after passenger scanned their pass beneath the mounted laser reader. The gate agent never really looked up. Just scan, “have a nice flight,” scan, “have a nice flight.”
“Oh shit,” I said.
Alex Sanders approached the gate agent, his boarding pass in hand. He wore a baseball cap low over dark sunglasses, but was recognizable enough in the same tee and cargoes he’d been wearing earlier.
“We still boarding?” Sid asked.
“Definitely,” I said. “Keep your head down and don’t make eye contact with any passengers. When was the last time you noticed anyone on a flight?”
Sid slumped down the walkway, her shoulders slightly humped over, and I kept my ticket close to my face. We hurried onto the tarmac, wind blowing steadily. We hunched our way up the steps into the plane.
I snuck a glance once inside. Alex sat on the single seat side of the aircraft, the row in front of us. He never looked up. Kept his own face snug behind the inflight magazine, as if engrossed in the airport diagram provided in the seatback pocket.
With the engine roaring and humming at peak altitude, Sid and I leaned close to talk. When it proved too difficult, especially with Alex so close in the cabin, we switched to writing notes on our cocktail napkin squares.
Me: He didn’t make another stop. Thugs stayed on him?
Sid: Drove like it. Maybe better to leave town?
Me: Word.
I drew a line, then wrote beneath it.
Me: I think Daphne flew from Atlanta to Charlotte.
Sid: Agent said no, tho
?
The plane bumped as it vibrated toward Sea Pine Island. I elbowed her and nodded toward the bathroom.
Sid raised a brow, so I nudged her and half-stood, urging her toward the cramped quarters by the galley near the tail section. The bathroom door lock had a green unoccupied placard in place. I opened the door and squeezed inside, waving frantically until Sid joined me.
“I can’t write all this out on a napkin,” I said straight into her throat.
“Clearly this is the only solution,” she said into my forehead.
“What if Daphne did what we did and followed Alex? He said she was acting funny. Maybe she thought he was acting funny.”
“He’s definitely up to something.”
“Right!” My hands flew up in excitement and I jammed my wrist into her hipbone. “Oof, sorry.”
“How does she get to Charlotte if she doesn’t fly? We barely picked up his trail, and our flight was early. No way she could take a train or a bus.”
“Daphne flew, just like us. But she tricked the system. She took the same connecting flight we did, but she flew under a different name.”
“Say again?”
“We didn’t have to show ID to board this flight, right?”
“Riiiiight,” she said slowly. “Only a boarding pass.”
“So she books the first leg to Atlanta under her own name,” I said. “She goes through security on Sea Pine, shows her ID. It’s all legal and logged. However, once she’s in Atlanta, she doesn’t need to show any of that. She only needs a boarding pass to catch the connection to Charlotte. No ID required.”
“Ah, tricky. She must have another credit card in a different name or one of those you get at the Piggly Wiggly.”
“Yep. She books two separate flights. First a flight from Sea Pine to Atlanta in her name, then a round-trip from Atlanta to Charlotte under whatever name. She prints the second pass and keeps it in her bag. I figure it took her once or twice to nail down the timing with a rental car to follow Alex, like we did. Probably why she was renting a Hummer. It’s all they had ready, and she needed to get down to the exit.”
