Powerhouse

by Rebecca York

  Still weaving through the residential area, he headed toward the tourist district. “Make sure nobody is behind us.”

  “Okay.” She twisted around in her seat, looking out the back window. “Where did those men go when they left?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe the cops will find them.”

  “We can hope.”

  She turned back toward him, her face rigid with worry. “How did the bad guys find us?”

  He made an angry sound. “I’m working on that. They didn’t show up at our cabin by accident. So they must have had some inside information.”

  “Jack and Claudia didn’t tell them,” she said in a firm voice. “Even if they wanted to rat us out, they didn’t know where we were.”

  “I guess that’s right.”

  “What about your credit card?’

  “I had to use it to get a rental car. But, like I said, I didn’t use one at the motel. And they didn’t have a transponder on our car, because it’s a rental.”

  “What’s a transponder?”

  “A signal device that would let somebody find a particular moving object.” He made an angry sound. “So if there is one, the only possibility is that it’s on me.”

  She gasped. “What do you mean?”

  “Somewhere under my skin there’s a tracking device, and we have to get it out before those guys can zero in on the signal again.”

  “You’re making a big assumption.”

  “What else could it be?”

  “I don’t know.” She clenched her fists on her lap. “They could have been checking every motel in the area—looking for the car you rented.”

  “That’s a possibility—but a pretty long shot, since it would take a lot of manpower. I think we have to go with the transponder theory.” He thought about the best plan of action. “We’ll head for Ellsworth Air Force Base. They might have some electronics equipment up there that would jam the signal. And there will be plenty of motels.”

  “We’re going to stay there?”

  “Briefly.”

  AS HE DROVE, Bobby Savage turned to his partner. “Are you picking him up again?”

  “Partially,” Don Campbell answered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The screen’s not stable. It’s flashing in and out. Something must be getting in the way of the transmission.”

  “Like what?”

  “How the hell do I know? I’ve never used one of these things before. I think we’re getting closer. We just have to hope that the signal gets stronger and homes in on them.”

  Neither one of them mentioned the incident in the parking lot, where they’d started shooting into the air like a couple of drunken cowboys.

  Neither one of them wanted to admit that something strange had happened. At least now they were heading in the right direction. That was the important point.

  AFTER MAKING SURE there was no car sticking to their tail, Matt turned onto Highway 90 and headed east toward the base. As he’d predicted, there were lots of motels.

  Before getting a room, he pulled into the parking lot of a drugstore.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting some things we’re going to need. You stay in the car, so we won’t be seen together in there. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

  She slumped down in the seat, and he went inside, heading for the back of the store, where he bought alcohol, gauze, tape and tweezers. He also got a baseball hat with the logo of a local team and a pair of sunglasses.

  After paying for his purchases, he climbed back into the car.

  “I don’t like this,” Shelley murmured.

  “Of course not.” He turned onto a road near the base that was lined with bars, motels and pawnshops.

  “Look for a motel where the lights in the parking lot are dim and there aren’t a lot of cars.”

  “Okay.” She leaned forward, watching the passing scenery, then called out. “There’s one.”

  “Good.”

  He turned in and cut the engine, then pulled the baseball cap and sunglasses out of the drugstore bag.

  “How do I look?”

  “Kind of strange. Who wears sunglasses at night?”

  “Guys who don’t want to be recognized. Wait here.”

  Once again, she slumped down in her seat as he walked into the dingy office.

  “Can I get a room for a few hours?” he asked a short young man who was watching a wrestling match on a small television screen behind the counter.

  The guy looked up, studying him. “You can, but it will cost you the same as all night.”

  He glanced back toward the car. “I’m with a lady who doesn’t want her husband to find out where she is.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He wanted this to work. Could he give them some extra insurance? You like me. You want to help me out. You won’t tell anyone that you’ve seen me. He silently sent that message to the clerk, then repeated the instructions aloud.

  “If a guy comes looking for us, tell him you haven’t registered anyone in the last couple of hours.”

  The clerk hesitated.

  “There’s something in it for you.” As he got out his wallet, he added a fifty-dollar tip as insurance. “I’d like a room as close to the end of the row as possible.”

  “Okay,” the clerk agreed, although Matt wasn’t absolutely sure the guy was going to keep his mouth shut.

  But they did get the end unit, and Matt was able to pull around the corner and leave the car in the shadows.

  As soon as they stepped into the room, he closed the drapes, then turned to Shelley.

  “We’re going to try and find that transponder. You’re going to have to help me.”

  She looked uncertain.

  “I can do part of it. But there are places on my body that I can’t see.”

  “You’re serious about this.”

  “Yeah. And we’d better hurry. Because if the thing is active and there’s no interference from the air base, we have to get it out of me and get out of here before those guys come after us again.”

  She shuddered.

  He turned on all the lights, wishing the room were brighter, then started taking off his clothing. When he had stripped to his shorts, he sat down on the side of the bed. “We’ll start at the top with my scalp and work our way down.”

  Slowly, he began to run his hands through his hair, trying to feel every inch of his scalp.

  “I should help you,” she said, sitting down beside him.

  “Yeah.”

  She began to work her fingers through his hair, and he closed his eyes, enjoying her touch, even though he knew that their purpose was serious.

  “Nothing here, I think, although I don’t exactly know what I’m looking for.”

  “Neither do I, but I assume we’ll recognize it when we find it. See if there’s a place where my skin seems a little raised. Or a little firm. If it’s not in my hair, we’ll look for raised places and discoloration.”

  She went on to his neck and his ears, carefully running her fingers over every inch of his skin. Then she started on his shoulders.

  “I guess I should lie down,” he said in a husky voice.

  “Yes.”

  He would have liked to give in to the sensuality of her touch, but he kept thinking that the bad guys could come bursting through the door at any second. And they’d find him almost naked.

  To speed up the process, he searched his chest, stomach and sides, while she did his arms. Then he turned over, and she ran her hands over his back.

  His feet and legs were next. He did the right side. She did the left.

  “Nothing,” she said when she’d examined everything from his toes to his thighs. “I guess you’re wrong.”

  “We haven’t finished.”

  “Matt, you don’t think they could put something there?”

  “You want to take a chance on it?” he asked, reaching for the waistband of his shorts.

&n
bsp; “Okay. No.”

  After he was entirely naked, he turned over on his stomach.

  “I guess you’ve got to search my butt.”

  “Is this some new sex game?”

  “I wish.”

  He heard her swallow, then felt her hands on him.

  After a few moments, she said, “Just the usual hairy male cheeks.”

  “There are only a couple of places left.”

  Heaving himself onto his back, he stacked his hands behind his head and tried to act like he felt comfortable as she stared down at his genitals.

  “You’ve probably seen a naked man before,” he quipped.

  “Right. You.”

  “Nobody else?”

  She didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m not very…experienced,” she whispered.

  He felt his heart turn over. Was she saying he was the only man she’d made love with? He wanted to ask, but he knew this wasn’t the time or the place.

  With a jerky motion, she reached out, connecting with his most intimate area, running her hands over it.

  He lay with his eyes closed and his hands flat on the bedspread, willing himself not to let her touch turn him on.

  The old trick of saying the multiplication tables helped. But Shelley’s attentions were erotic, even when she was doing something perfectly innocent, and he was relieved when she went on to his inner thigh.

  When she reached a spot high up in his groin, she made a small sound.

  “What?”

  “I think I feel something.”

  He sat up, looked down, and stared at the spot she was pointing to.

  There was a slightly raised place that he’d always thought was a mole, but as he eyed it now and prodded it with his finger, he was pretty sure the darkened color was coming from something under the skin, not from the surface.

  “I think that’s it,” he muttered. “What are we going to do?” “Take it out.”

  Chapter Seven

  Shelley’s eyes widened as she stared at Matt. “You’re kidding, right?”

  He shook his head. “No. I’m deadly serious. If that’s a transponder, those men used it to find me, and they can do it again. It has to come out, because they’re probably on their way here right now.”

  “What if it’s not a…transponder.”

  “Then I’ll be putting myself through a little unnecessary pain.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “I don’t think we have a choice.”

  Without giving her the opportunity to argue further, he climbed off the bed, disappeared into the bathroom, and came back with a couple of towels. Then he pulled a penknife out of his pocket.

  As she watched in a kind of dumb shock, he took out a bottle of alcohol he’d bought at the drugstore and poured it over the blade of his knife, then did the same thing with a pair of tweezers he’d also bought.

  After laying them on a piece of sterile gauze, he used another piece of gauze to wipe the skin over the bump he’d found. When he’d finished, he put one towel under himself and used the other to drape his genitals.

  “Look out the window and make sure no cars are pulling up in front of our room,” he said. “I don’t want to get caught in the middle of this.”

  Glad of the excuse to turn away from him—and to postpone what she knew was coming—she went to the window and pulled the drapes aside. When she looked out, she saw no one.

  “Nobody out there,” she said.

  “Then wash your hands so we can get this over with.”

  Numbly, she did as he asked, but when she came back to him, she could hardly breathe around the lump in her throat.

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  His face took on a look of resignation. “You want me to sit up and try and dig it out? That’s going to be a little convoluted, but I’ll take a whack at it.”

  The word whack made her suck in a sharp breath. “No!”

  “Then pretend you’re taking a splinter out of Trevor.”

  “An unlikely place for a splinter,” she muttered.

  “Unfortunately.” He lay back and closed his eyes.

  Hating her choices, she eased onto the bed beside him and took the knife.

  Please God, let me do this fast and keep my hands steady, she silently prayed as she bent toward the place she’d found. Knowing she was going to hurt him, she pressed the knife against his flesh, but not hard enough to penetrate.

  “Do it! The sooner you get it over with, the better for both of us,” he said.

  When she looked up at him, his teeth were clenched.

  Praying that she had the strength to see this through, she pushed the point of the knife through his skin, feeling his body go rigid as she began to probe for the foreign body.

  When the point of the knife hit something hard, he made a low sound. “I guess there’s more there than a freckle.”

  “Yes.” She changed the angle, digging under it, working as fast as she could without damaging too much of his flesh.

  After pushing the thing toward the surface, she used the tweezers to grasp the edge and pull.

  A small metal rectangle came free. Sitting up, Matt looked at it the way he might look at a tick he’d taken off a dog.

  “SOMETHING STRANGE,” Bobby Savage growled.

  “Now what?”

  “The screen just blipped.”

  “That interference again?”

  “I don’t know. We’d better hurry up before the system goes down or something.”

  “Okay. There’s a motel up ahead. I think that’s it.” He checked the screen. “Yeah. We got them cornered.” He looked at his partner. “And this time no shooting.”

  “Yeah.”

  He turned in at the motel sign and stopped at the edge of the parking lot, looking at the screen and trying to figure out exactly which unit they wanted. It seemed to be down by the end, but there were lights on in a couple of the windows down there, and he couldn’t be sure until they got out of the car.

  “I…I GUESS you were right,” Shelley whispered.

  “Yeah,” Matt answered between clenched teeth. Taking the flat metal disk from her, he used the tweezers to crumple it.

  “I’d like to take it to the FBI, but I think we’d better flush it down the toilet,” he said in a gritty voice. “In case it can still function.”

  “Yes.” Looking at it with disgust, she carried it into the bathroom and dropped it in the toilet bowl. After flushing, she watched to make sure that it had actually gone down the drain.

  When she returned to the bedroom, Matt was swabbing more alcohol on the spot she’d cut. Next, he taped on a couple of gauze pads.

  “I hurt you,” she whispered, struggling to control her emotions. Now that she was finished with the operation, she had to press her hands against her hips to keep them from shaking.

  “We had to get rid of that thing.” Reaching for his pants, he started getting dressed.

  She watched in disbelief. “You just had an operation. You should lie down.”

  “Not yet. It’s not safe. We have to get out of here while we still can.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that thing was giving off a signal until a few minutes ago. Anyone following the trail could end up at this motel and start looking through the rooms.”

  When he continued getting dressed, she pulled on her coat, then watched as he eased the curtains aside again.

  “Damn!”

  “What?”

  “I think we’re already too late. I believe those bastards are in the parking lot. They traced me this far before the signal went dead. It looks like they were right behind us!”

  Her heart leaped into her throat. “How do you know it’s them? It could be someone who wants to spend the night.”

  “I don’t think so. It looks like the same car as before.”

  “What are we going to do?” she asked in a voice she couldn’t quite hold steady.

  “Let’s see what happens.”
<
br />   The driver of the vehicle hesitated for several moments, then drove into the lot and pulled up at the office, where a man got out and walked toward the vacancy sign.

  When he went inside, Matt waited a few moments. “I told the clerk I was getting a room with another man’s wife.”

  She winced.

  “I paid him extra to say nobody had checked in during the past few hours. You slip out the door and walk around the corner to the car. Stay in the shadows, close to the wall.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll wait thirty seconds and follow you.”

  Her heart was thumping as she opened the door a crack, inched out and walked rapidly along the wall toward the corner of the building.

  Ignoring the impulse to look back around the corner, she opened the car door, climbed inside and sat waiting tensely for Matt to follow her.

  As promised, he showed up thirty seconds later and slipped behind the wheel.

  BOBBY SAVAGE resisted the urge to grab the clerk by the collar and slam his face against the counter a couple of times.

  “Nobody’s checked in in the past hour?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Nobody paid you to say that?”

  The man hesitated.

  “There’s a hundred dollars in it if you tell me where he is.”

  There was a long pause. “You the husband?”

  “What?”

  “He said he was having a quickie with another guy’s wife.”

  “That so? Yeah. I’m the husband.” He took out a hundred-dollar bill and slapped it on the counter.

  “Last room on the right.”

  “Thanks, buddy.” Bobby turned back toward the door, just as a car that had been hidden around the side of the building pulled out of the lot.

  He hesitated. That could be them. Or they could still be in the room.

  “SO FAR, so good,” Matt murmured.

  They drove along the far edge of the lot, past the car that was parked at the office. Nobody followed them as they turned onto the highway.

  She looked behind them, but the car they’d seen was still at the office.

  “I think we got away.”

  “Yeah. Finally a lucky break, but we’d better put some distance between this place and us, since the motel was the last known location of the transponder.”