“We have to move,” he said, apparently thinking that explained everything.
“Someone just took a shot at me,” she said dazedly, more to herself than to him. “With a rifle. In broad daylight.”
“Which is why we need to be moving,” Logan responded. “Obviously he doesn’t mind making a scene.”
Did he sound exasperated? With her? He glanced back in annoyance and tugged her along. Oh, she didn’t think so. Quincy pulled her hand out of his grasp with great dignity. Or tried to, at least. He had a surprisingly tight grip. She set her feet and he finally jerked to a semi-stop.
“Who took a shot at me? Why does it feel like you’re trying to help me? Shouldn’t you have been trying to push me in front of the bullet, not away from it? Your bosses are going to be so mad. Demotion, for sure.”
She was babbling and she knew it. Someone had tried to kill her. She was understandably shaken but, regardless of what had happened between them three minutes ago and the assumptions she’d made, he was trying to help her. And she just couldn’t understand why.
“Who are you?”
He gave her an incredulous look, one that irritated her even more, but he must’ve realized she was serious, because he finally stopped trying to move and rolled his eyes.
“My name is Logan Davies, like I said. What I didn’t say was that I work for a doctor who specializes in neurobiologic pathology. We try to find and help people like you but we aren’t the only ones looking.”
He paused to glance around the alley. Quincy could hear police sirens coming on fast and there were cries and screams coming from the direction of the shooting. Logan put his arm around her shoulders and started steering them towards the other end of the alley. Since he was talking, she let him lead.
“There are organizations that are interested in people like you. Organizations much less friendly than Dr. Garrison. My guess is, whoever just shot at you, and whoever you’ve been running from, work for one of those agencies. And if they just attempted a hit in the middle of a busy, populated area, during the day no less, their interest has shifted from procurement to elimination. Which is why we need to move. Now.”
Apparently, that’s all Logan was prepared to say on the subject at the moment. Quincy was by no means satisfied, but she also realized there were priorities and at the moment, background information wasn’t one of them.
“So what’s the plan?” she asked. “If you don’t happen to have a getaway car stashed handily nearby, we might be in some trouble.” She caught the barest hint of a smile.
“No convenient getaway car, but it won’t be the first time I’ve been in a pinch and had to...borrow.”
Borrow. Great. “Swell. Grand Theft Auto isn’t really my thing, but sure. Whatever.”
It was kind of a catty thing to say but at the moment, she didn’t really care. She had woken up this morning, none the wiser that her life was about to explode. But then it did. Much more literally than she preferred. So really, a little snark was to be expected.
“What are we looking for, exactly?” Quincy asked.
Logan had pulled her along the back alleys and side streets of the commercial district until it merged with downtown, the trendy store fronts giving way to the family-owned businesses she was more familiar with. Now, he was strolling casually through the back parking lot of the north business front like he was at a used car dealership.
“Do you know what the most common car on the road in America is right now?” he asked offhandedly.
“Depends on who you ask and what part of the country. Be more specific,” she shot back.
He shook his head. “Okay. What do you know about, for example, the Ford Focus?”
“The Focus was rated #10 on the compact car index by the U.S. News and World Report. It’s both cost and fuel efficient, which makes it popular with middle class families. It has less interior space than other compacts and is too lightweight to hold out against hardcore collisions, which I assume is why it’s only 10th on the list.”
It poured out before she could stop it. She hadn’t even thought before she replied. Logan just looked at her.
“What?” she asked, running her hand through her hair nervously. Was that not common knowledge?
Logan started to say something but his eyes shifted over her shoulder and he brushed past her. She turned to see what had caught his attention and saw him heading toward a little silver Camry.
“I thought you wanted a Focus,” she said, jogging along behind him.
“I do. And there’s a black one three spots down that’s calling my name. But I want these license plates to go with it.”
He pulled a knife out of a sheath hidden at his back and started turning the screws holding the front plate in place. “Go check to see if it’s unlocked and work on getting it started while I take care of this.”
Quincy was skeptical. “It probably is unlocked. This is small town America, after all. And it’s parked on a private lot, no less. But it’s not likely the keys are helpfully hidden in the glove box or under the floor mat. It may be small town America but it isn’t Mayberry.”
Logan had moved to the back of the Camry but paused to look up at her. He tipped his hat up and grinned at her, which was totally inappropriate, given the circumstances.
“You read the book, right?”
“What book?”
“The one I gave you last week. On small engines.”
“Yeah, so?” Where was he going with this?
“So not having the keys shouldn’t be a big deal for you.”
“You think I know how to hot wire a car?” She laughed. Another totally inappropriate reaction.
“That’s exactly what I think,” he said. “I think you read that book and now you can hot wire a car.” He turned his back to her, dropping down in front of the little Camry. “So get to it already.”
She gritted her teeth. This wasn’t Rain Man. What an idiot. An idiot who might, maybe, have a point.
“Fine, I’ll try. But don’t get your hopes up.” She turned and stomped toward the Focus. “I’m not going to promise I can do it. I’m not Sherlock.”
She heard a laugh but didn’t bother responding. She had never hot wired anything in her life but sure, why not give it a shot? It was a totally realistic request and not at all out of place in real life. Her mind skipped back to the festival and the violin, and she shifted uneasily. Okay, so maybe she’d done some weird things in the past. If she could clamp off an arterial bleed, how much harder could it be to attach car wires? But just the fact that she had played the violin, that she had stopped the bleeding, that she could speak fluent Latin, and French and Farsi and Chinese and Spanish, after listening to a couple of audio lessons, seemed wrong somehow. Normal girls...normal people...weren’t able to do stuff like that. She faltered, momentarily flashing back to the train station, blood gushing from the gash in the girl’s neck, a torn artery clamped between her fingers, before shaking herself free of the memory. Normal people definitely didn’t do things like that. But it didn’t matter right now. It didn’t matter if she was normal or not. What did matter was getting away from the unknown man trying to put a bullet through her head. Priorities.
She pulled the car door open, which was unlocked like she’d thought, and dropped into the driver’s seat. For the sake of thoroughness, she gave a cursory glance through the glove box and all of the other places keys could be hidden, like the sun visors and under the seats, but no dice. She did find the car’s registration, though. It belonged to Patricia Simmons, one of the owners of the ice cream parlor. Quincy closed her eyes. The car sat in the private parking lot behind several of the downtown businesses she knew by heart. Of course she would know whose car she was stealing. The guilt was instantaneous. Patty was a single mom with 2 kids, both in school. How was she supposed to pick her kids up if her car was gone? Quincy slammed the glove box shut and started to climb out of the car, but her hand froze on the door handle. The gunman had only been a street awa
y. If he didn’t run after the first failed attempt, and the odds were 50/50 on whether he would or not, he could be here in just a couple of minutes. They didn’t have time to grab another car.
She hoped one day she’d have the chance to apologize to Patty for what was about to happen. To tell her it was a matter of life and death. From what she knew of the kindly woman, Quincy thought she might understand and even be glad she took her car, if it was to save a life. That Patty would know Quincy would never do something like this if it wasn’t. Then she reached under the wheel and popped the console open, exposing the ignition mechanism. As she stared at the exposed tangle, feeling overwhelmed by the mass of wires and fuses, the buzzing that usually filled her head in moments of stress seemed to move from the back of her skull, where she routinely pushed it, filling her ears until it blocked out everything else around her. Her mind seemed to slow, and then sharpened, like it was locking onto a target. And then her body responded, her hands reaching for different wires and striking them together. It took exactly twice for the engine to catch and she automatically wrapped the two ends together, keeping them in contact. She sat back up and jumped when she noticed Logan standing over her.
“For the record,” he said, “your intimate knowledge of compact car statistics and the ability to hot wire said car on the fly are examples of why you’re on some shadow agency’s hit list. Now move over. I’m driving.”
She slid into the passenger seat without bothering to respond. Not that she could have anyway.
Chapter 27
Auberdeen
The air whistled between his teeth as he blew out his breath in one big rush. Dumb luck, that’s all it was. A gust of wind blew a strand of hair into her face, she leaned forward to brush it away, and his bullet missed her by millimeters. That was all that stood between her and a quick, painless death - a sudden gust of wind. There was irony in there somewhere but he didn’t have time to find it.
He leaned away from the window and had his rifle stripped down in a matter of seconds. In the mass hysteria the gun shot and shattered window had produced, a man had knocked the target down and she had vanished into the crowd. He wasn’t going to get a second shot. Not now, at least. The restaurants and local businesses had emptied in response to the shot, sending seemingly every person in the vicinity running through the street. Chaos reigned. The opportunity was lost. He carefully placed the pieces of his rifle into its case and then shoved it deep into his duffel bag, slung it over his shoulder, and walked out of the room. He’d found the empty apartment several weeks ago in anticipation of the current op. He’d been tailing the target for almost three months, watching where she went, and when, and figuring out her patterns. He had staked out multiple nests based on her movements so he would have options when the orders came in.
He was on the street in front of the apartment in a matter of seconds and turned west. She would certainly run now. That was part of the very vague profile he’d been able to build from the file he’d received from the Colonel. One of the few things that tied Quincy O’Connell to Gracie Elliott and Kara Scott was her penchant for disappearing. He’d honestly been expecting it for awhile now. He had forced her into enough situations to put her on alert and she’d finally flinched after the girl at the train station. But a direct attack? There was no question. She was gone.
When he’d first attempted to cross her name off the list of potential targets, he hadn’t been too impressed. She was just like every other girl he’d seen that fit the profile. But once he started tracking her, started watching her movements, he’d noticed a very distinctive pattern to her actions. A very routine, methodical precision in her movements. Which told him he was on the right track. When the Colonel had given him the assignment of tracking down Gracie Elliott, alias Kara Scott, he had read the file and assumed it would be an easy op. He was fairly new to the organization so he didn’t blame the Colonel for not trusting him with anything difficult just yet. But still, he would have liked something that required a little more skill. But both Gracie Elliott and Kara Scott had been surprisingly difficult to trace. Neither had left any bread crumbs to follow. The profile he’d developed was too general, vague in a way that left the search parameters too wide. But as the names started to pour in, he’d started eliminating them one by one. It had taken dozens of trips to rule out dozens of girls before he’d finally struck gold and even then, he hadn’t been sure. Quincy O’Connell had fit the physical description in only the broadest sense. She was in the right age range, which was still too wide to be much help. She was the right height. She was attending a local college as an auditor and working in close proximity to both the school and her apartment. Those were the only things either of the aliases had in common. That, and the ability to disappear on a moment’s notice.
Gracie Elliott was a thin, bubbly blonde with deep dimples and blue eyes who worked at a diner slinging hash to overworked, underpaid truckers a half-mile from her off-campus housing unit while Kara Scott had been a slightly overweight, bookish-looking girl with thick glasses and mousy brown hair serving drinks to overworked, overpaid corporate slaves in an out-of-the-way dive a quarter-mile from the cheap studio apartment she was renting by the month.
Quincy O’Connell was none of those things. Her hair was so dark it almost looked black, until the light hit it just right. Then it became a deep auburn, tinted red in the sun. Her eyes though, were her defining feature. Like Kara Scott, Quincy O’Connell sometimes wore glasses. Unlike Kara Scott’s, however, they did nothing to pull attention away from her eyes. He was sure that was the point of wearing them, to add to the disguise, but glasses weren’t going to hide those eyes. Large, almond-shaped, and shockingly green, they were probably the most memorable eyes he had ever seen. Which was a pity, since the Colonel had issued the kill order. But still, the job was the job and he had never been one to get overly sentimental about the requirements.
He reached his vehicle and tossed his duffle into the back seat. It was a nondescript Honda, one of a million just like it circulating on the roads. When he’d called the rental company, he’d specifically requested something plain and obscure. The better to blend into his surroundings. They hadn’t even batted an eye and when he’d strolled up to the kiosk at the airport, they’d had the keys ready. He slid into the front seat and turned the car on, tuning the radio to a local news station. He wasn’t worried about the cops but it would be helpful to avoid them if possible. He pulled his phone from his pocket, debating whether to update the Colonel. Probably should, since his botched attempt to eliminate the target had resulted in mass chaos on the streets of Sheridan. The Colonel would be furious, no doubt. The man’s number one rule was to stay off the radar. No muss, no fuss, no undue attention. But he didn’t want to call and report bad news without good news to soften the blow. And he had no doubt he would find her again. He had planned for this circumstance, after all. No, he’d call the Colonel once the job was done.
Chapter 28
“‘My mind,’ he said, ‘rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work...and I am in my own proper atmosphere...for I am the only one in the world.’” Arthur Conan Doyle
While the mind works, it is calm. Quiet. At peace. But peace never lasts for long.
The girl is beginning to see now. Finally. She is beginning to see me the way I see her. She doesn’t understand yet.
But she will.
* * *
Quincy
The car was silent as Logan maneuvered through traffic. It was late Friday afternoon and rush hour was just starting. They had hit the highway with no problems but made considerably less progress than Logan wanted once they settled in with all the commuters and people heading out of the city for the weekend.
“This is actually good,” Logan said about an hour into their drive. “The more vehicles on the road, the harder we’ll be to spot. The car’s probably been reported as stolen by now but I doubt the swapped license plates have been noticed. That buys us time.”
&n
bsp; Logan glanced over when Quincy didn’t bother responding. She had been completely silent since they’d been on the road. Silent, actually, since she’d managed to hot wire a car like it was an ordinary thing. Like it was something she did all the time. The predominant thought running through her mind was, this isn’t normal. Normal people don’t know how to do things they’ve never done before. Normal people don’t have snipers shooting at them with high-powered rifles. Normal people don’t have mysterious men popping up in their lives and pretending to be friends in order to get close to them. No, these things were not normal at all.
She had been staring out the window since they’d hit the highway, trying to convince her mind to slow back down. After the weird zone out when she’d hot wired the car, her brain seemed to be in overdrive, even for her. She hadn’t been able to relax and could feel a headache coming on. She sighed, knowing she couldn’t ignore the situation, and Logan, forever. Leaning her head back on the headrest, she turned away from the window and found Logan watching her. She had absolutely no intention of talking about herself or answering any more of his questions until he answered a couple of hers. She opened her mouth to ask him to explain exactly who he was and why he had been following her, but he beat her to the punch.
“I thought you said you weren’t Sherlock,” he said mildly, with no small hint of amusement evident in his eyes.
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