Shattered Highways

by Tara N Hathcock

  “First of all, the fact that you feel like you should have vetted all the people in my tiny little world is creepy. I’m pretty sure that qualifies you as more of a stalker than Brandon. Secondly, who did you ‘vet’? I’m pretty sure Mr. and Mrs. Boatright don’t exactly stand out as the deadly type.”

  She took a breath. “And thirdly,” and at this, she shoved her finger hard into his arm, just to make sure he knew she was serious. “I don’t need you to protect me. You might be a super soldier but I have been keeping myself alive, and off the radar of whoever this is, my whole life. I’ll manage, because I always have.”

  He was silent, to her supreme satisfaction. Feeling proud of her ability to firmly put presumptive men in their place, Quincy turned her attention back to the road. She was strong. She was capable.

  And he kept completely undermining her by saying things like, “I know you can take care of yourself. I know you can keep yourself alive. All I’m saying is, you don’t have to anymore.”

  And then leaning his head back and dropping off to sleep. Always with the last word, this one.

  Chapter 38

  Logan

  Logan’s eyes opened slowly, blinking in the morning light, confused.

  “Puede usted por favor repita que lentamente?” There was a pause, then, “Can you repeat that slowly?”

  “No, gracias. La soda está bien.” Another pause. “No thank you. Soda is fine.”

  He cracked his eyes open and turned to look at Quincy.

  “Are you teaching yourself Spanish?” he asked.

  She shrugged. ” Por qué no? Tuve tiempo.”

  He mulled that over. “I guess so,” he shrugged his shoulders. “But most girls who had the time would have flipped on the radio. Or plugged in a playlist. Maybe something upbeat to help keep them awake. They wouldn’t be listening to Spanish on Cassette.”

  “First of all,” she replied,”who listens to cassettes? Cars don’t exactly come with tape decks anymore Grandpa.”

  The grandpa clearly thrown in to twist the knife.

  “There are apps for this stuff now. And second, I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.” She looked over at him. “Something you picked up in the army?”

  He laughed. “Oregon, actually. It might have been a small town but we had people from all over the world. My best friend in high school was from a small town on the Tex/Mex border, so it kind of stuck.”

  They both fell silent, letting the soothing strains of a heavily-accented Latino man flow around them. Logan leaned into the back seat and grabbed a soda out of the plastic bag.

  “We need to grab a cooler the next time we stop. It’s going to be a long drive and I wouldn’t mind some ice.”

  “Speaking of, I don’t suppose you’d fill me in on a destination?” She turned those big eyes his way. “This aimless driving is getting a little old.”

  Point taken. “Sorry about that. I don’t want to lead these guys to Dr. Garrison. He’s firmly off the radar and I’m not about to put him back on it.” He thought back over the previous night. “And I’m a little concerned about how Brandon managed to track us to the motel. He obviously didn’t know what car we were driving since he was looking through the windows of all the cars in the lot. So how did he find us?”

  It was a good question, one that had been bothering him since their near miss. He had agreed to let Quincy drive because he knew she was right - he needed some sleep if he wanted to be on top of his game. But he also agreed because he thought, if he got some rest, he might be able to figure out where he’d slipped up. But he still didn’t know, and that was dangerous.

  “I’ve been thinking. The shot came from across the street and above, meaning probably one of the lofts above the ice cream parlor. With all of the panic, the people running and blocking his view, he probably wouldn’t have been able to see where you went. Plus, the police were en route pretty fast. He would have packed up the second he started to hear sirens.”

  “How long does it take to ‘pack up’ from trying to kill someone?” she asked.

  Logan did some quick mental math. “The shot sounded like it came from a large caliber rifle. If he’s a professional, and I think we can assume he is, then he could have been out the door in less than two minutes.” He reconsidered. “Much less, if he was in a hurry.”

  “So, it’s possible he could have gotten down to street-level and saw us take the car?” Quincy asked.

  Logan shook his head. “Possible? Technically, yes, I guess it’s possible. But he would have had to get out of the loft, down to the ground, and across the street. Then, he would have had to know which alley we took and watched us drive the car off the lot. With the amount of people crowding the street, I doubt he would have been able to get there in time.”

  “Okay,” she said. “So what other options are there?”

  “I don’t…,” he started, trailing off as an idea started to take shape.

  “What was it you said earlier?” he asked. “About cassette tapes?”

  She looked over at him, confused. “Cassettes tapes? What, that cars don’t have decks anymore?”

  He shook his head. “No, the other thing. About - ”

  She cut him off. “About how there are apps for that now,” she said in excitement. “There are apps for almost everything anymore. You don’t think…”

  Logan interrupted her. “That Brandon downloaded a lo jack app to your phone? Yeah, I kind of do.” He reached up and grabbed it from the dashboard. “But if he’s tracking it, how would we even know?”

  He was flipping through her system settings and apps but nothing was standing out.

  “Does it matter?” she asked. “If he is tracking the phone, he’s probably behind us right now. He can hang back an hour, two hours, and it wouldn’t matter. The second we stop, he’ll have us.”

  She hit the turn signal and took a hard, sudden right onto an off ramp that was already too far behind them to safely take. Several honking horns and two turns later, Logan pried his hand off the door handle and turned to her, a silent question on his face.

  “Give me the phone,” she said. “I have an idea.”

  She held out her hand and he slapped the phone into it. She pushed the door open, hopped out, and shook her arms and legs. Then she started to walk, seemingly wandering around the parking lot with no clear purpose or destination. Logan decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and pushed himself out of his own seat. He begrudgingly admired how easily she’d been able to shake off hours in the car on little sleep because his body wasn’t quite as spry as hers seemed to be. He rolled his shoulders and slanted his face up towards the sun. It was warmer here than in Sheraton but he could feel fall in the air. It wouldn’t be much longer and the chill would be here, too.

  “Okay,” she said, slapping the hood of the car to get his attention. “Let’s go.”

  “What did you do with the phone?” he asked, leaning his forearms on the hood and looking across the car at her. She had the driver door half open but stopped, looking up at him with a grin.

  “Tossed it into the open window of that truck over there.” she said, nodding towards a big rig with Illinois plates. “Silenced it, just in case he got any bright ideas about calling. But I heard the driver say he was heading to Maryland, which should be enough of a wild goose chase that we can slip away pretty easily.”

  Logan whistled appreciatively. “That’s smart.” He raised an eyebrow speculatively. “How did you come up with it?”

  She had the grace to blush. “I may have read it somewhere. Maybe.”

  The blush got deeper. “Whatever. It works, doesn’t it?” She threw herself back into the car and slammed the door. Logan laughed, taking his time before climbing back into the car himself. She really was a handful.

  Chapter 39

  The Colonel

  He sat at the bar of his four-star hotel, nursing his drink and watching the news footage reporting live from the downtown area with the other patrons. Some were
locals and he could hear them talking animatedly about the excitement. Apparently, shootings were few and far between in the charming little college town. He overheard one man speculating about the heretofore unknown mob presence possibly making itself known while another dismissed it entirely as an accident. He suppressed a laugh. It was a high caliber bullet shot with extreme precision from the roof of the building across the street. It never failed to amuse him how the common man could cover up blatant violence with a shrug and an explanation.

  Not that he minded. He’d relied on blind eyes and willing trust too many times to count. He sighed and signaled the bartender for another. The situation was inexcusable. He had given explicit orders for his man to keep the situation contained and now he had a very public spectacle on his hands. He should have never trusted Auberdeen to handle something sensitive. He’d had a feeling about the man but he’d come so highly recommended that he’d hired him anyway. The man hadn’t even called him to report. It was unprofessional and unforgivable.

  Well, bygones and all that. He didn’t have time to sit and ponder what he should have done. He would have to deal with what was. And what was, was something that would require his personal intervention. He finished his drink in one swallow and pulled out his wallet. He tossed a couple of twenties on the bar and heaved himself off the stool. He had another long drive ahead of him and he thought blandly that he might just be getting too old for this. Unfortunately, the only way out was one he wasn’t ready to take himself just yet. No, for now, he would finish the job. And then he would ensure that Mr. Auberdeen found his way to that one-way exit.

  Chapter 40

  Quincy

  Quincy lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling. The day had been uneventful after their unplanned stop to ditch her phone and the drive had been monotonous. She was exhausted though, if not from sitting in a car for six hours then from the conversation. It had been a heavy day. But sleep wasn’t going to come tonight, no matter how much her body needed it. For starters, she had gotten almost four hours of sleep the night before, courtesy of the migraines that always forced her mind into an uncomfortable sleep. But mostly, she was just unsettled. Her mind was spinning, but not in the usual way. She was used to her thoughts jumping randomly from one subject to another, without rhyme or reason. Trapped in the car with Logan, sometimes talking about their situation, sometimes talking about nothing, and sometimes not talking at all - but never talking about why exactly they were on the road, had created a razor-sharp focus and she could think of nothing else. Most of the story he was telling made sense. She had known from the start that he was military. His build and posture gave him away, if nothing else. He had been open about his service from day one. He had told her that day in the park that he had lost people he cared about, so Logan’s experiences overseas wasn’t a big surprise. Yes, the IED explosion, the trauma, both physical and mental, she got that. But there were parts of the story that just didn’t make sense. Super hearing? This wasn’t a movie. Things like that didn’t happen in real life. But she found herself believing it anyway, because she had felt his sincerity. Logan was telling her the truth. As the great Sherlock Holmes liked to say, when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

  She smiled to herself. Logan was right. She really did read too much. The smile faded quickly, though. What Logan was telling her about Jones’s injuries, his recovery and his hearing, was improbable. But it wasn’t impossible. Not technically. She was pretty up-to-date on current trends in neurology thanks to a book she had found tucked haphazardly under a bookcase at Sit-a-Spell. The human brain had built-in safeguards to filter the amount of input they consciously register. The thalamus was responsible for sifting through incoming information and eliminating what was unnecessary because too much stimulus would cause mass chaos in the nervous system. It was a system of checks and balances that the body seamlessly employed to protect itself. It was possible - improbable but certainly possible - that Jones’s thalamus could have been injured in the attack and healed, but incompletely, leaving him without his filter.

  But she always circled back around to her initial concern - this story had something to do with her. Or Logan thought it did, anyway. The mere fact that Logan had sought her out, going so far as to enroll in college classes to put himself in closer proximity to her, indicated he believed, strongly, that she was connected somehow. People like you, he had said, first in the alley and then again in the car Friday afternoon. Those words kept playing over and over again in her head. People like you. Who were people like her, she wondered. He was grouping her together with Jones certainly, whose defining characteristic was his brain injury and the resulting side effects. But she didn’t have a brain injury. And unless he was counting a great memory and super insomnia as her super powers, she didn’t have any improbable side effects, either.

  The pounding she had shoved to the back of her head earlier returned full force, pushing painfully against her thoughts, making her feel anxious and jittery. She threw back the covers in frustration, kicking her legs free and making the old bed creak and groan as she moved. She was being petulant and she knew it. But if she couldn’t sleep, why should Logan get to? Apparently the man, when he slept, slept like the dead. She rolled onto her side facing Logan, tucking her hands under her cheek. She watched him a little wistfully as he snored softly. What would it be like to sleep so soundly? Or to sleep all night? It was probably really nice. It would explain why she had never seen him with dark circles under his eyes. Lucky duck.

  She needed to run. The second it crossed her mind, it became a painful, burning urge. She was a runner by necessity more than sheer love of the sport. The physical exertion helped clear her mind more than anything else and it served the added bonus of wearing her body out too. If her body was exhausted, she could usually get at least a couple hours of sleep throughout the night, which was probably adding to the problem. She hadn’t run in almost 48 hours, which meant her body was rested; her brain, however, was not. If she could just get a few miles in….she glanced over again at Logan. He was breathing deeply, still sound asleep. It had been hard to convince him to sleep He wasn’t satisfied that Brandon had taken the bait with the phone and was on his way to Maryland instead of hot on their trail. He had compromised by swapping cars again. They had driven through a town on the Texas/Kansas border and parked their ‘borrowed’ Focus in a two-hour paid public lot. When the car was flagged as being delinquent, it would be towed and the owner contacted. They had wiped it down as well as they could and Quincy had insisted on topping off the tank. Leaving it empty would’ve been adding injury to insult and Patricia deserved better than that. Then they had walked to a nearby rental agency and put a Honda Civic on Logan’s super special credit card, which apparently came with its own handy fake i.d. Before jumping back on the interstate, they had swapped out the rental plates with a minivan parked in the lot of a run-down motel. Quincy could see shoes and a tiny pink Barbie jacket through the Baby on Board sun visor stuck to the window. First they rip off a small business owner, now a family-friendly soccer mom. She was living the dream.

  Finally convinced they were as safe as he could make them, Logan had collapsed his ten-foot tall frame onto the hard mattress and hadn’t moved since. So it was completely plausible that she could sneak in a run and he would never even notice she was gone. Because if he did, she had no doubt all hell would break loose. She knew why he was being so protective, for lack of a better word. And she appreciated his tight reign on security. Her life did seem to be in danger, after all. But they had taken Brandon out of play hours ago and it was still the dead of night. She didn’t know the terrain but if she stuck close to the building, maybe jogged through the residential area right behind the motel, she would be fine. But if Logan woke up, there was no way he would let her go.

  He was probably right, but the burning in her legs and her mind wouldn’t let her give up the idea. She rolled slowly, taking care to avoid the
more creaky parts of the mattress, and landed on her feet on the opposite side of the bed. Luckily, she was very accustomed to getting dressed in the dark. Her shoes were lined up beside the bed waiting for her. Out of habit, she had laid out her clothes for the next day in the chair beside her bed. She shot another quick glance Logan’s way before slipping out of her current clothes and into the leggings and t-shirt she had bought at the department store several towns back. She had noticed a chill in the air that evening so the leggings would be perfect. She turned to grab her phone out of habit but checked the impulse quickly. If all had gone according to plan, her phone was still in a big rig heading for the East coast. She wasn’t used to running without it, but no matter. The jog alone should be enough to clear her mind and help her unwind. She took a moment to contemplate her backpack. She didn’t usually run with it because there was no waist strap to keep it in place. But these weren’t usual times. She debated a second more before turning away. She’d only be gone for a little while. One hour, tops.

  Now for the tricky part. She moved slowly, so very slowly, passed Logan’s bed, stopping every few steps to make sure his breathing was still deep and easy. When she reached the door, she stopped again, turning to check him one more time. She felt a twinge of guilt at leaving him. What if he woke up and she was gone? There was every chance he would think she had decided to skip out on him. She debated for just a moment before turning slowly back towards the desk in the corner of the room. There was the standard motel pen and a pad of paper and she jotted a quick note with the time - 1:30. Went for a run. Back by 2:30. It would have to be enough. She grabbed a room key off the desk and slipped quickly out the door, fading silently into the night.