“I’ll just go put the cart in the cart corral. C’mon, Poppy. Let’s let Daddy Number Two have a little tantrum in private while he defeats the big, bad car seat.”
“If I figure this out. And I’m totally Daddy Number One,” Gunner called after him.
Chas let his laughter float back over his shoulder toward Gunner. By the time he and Poppy returned to the car, however, Gunner stood triumphantly beside it and gestured with a flourish for Chas to put Poppy into the seat, which was duly installed and secured.
“Congratulations. I guess you can be Daddy Number One… for now.” Chas passed Poppy a plastic toy that was inset with colorful rubber pieces that popped back and forth with a smacking sound. She went to town on it in the back seat as they pulled out of the parking lot.
Chas noticed Gunner spending a lot of time watching his rearview mirror, and he asked in alarm, “We’re not being followed, are we?”
“Not that I can see. But I’m playing this cautious, not letting my guard down because we’re on American soil and appear to be in the clear. I’d like to put some more miles between us and Misty Falls, to be honest.”
“Why did you freak out back there when I tried to use my credit card?”
“Credit cards are trackable. If our bad guys have connections to even a semi decent hacker, we can be tracked through your credit cards.”
“What about yours? You used one last night to pay for the motel room.”
“I have sanitized cards in fake names.”
“Fake names? Seriously?”
“Sometimes SEALs have to live off the local economy, but we can’t afford to leave trails.”
“Nice.”
Gunner pointed the car south but turned onto a winding two-lane road instead of the major highway only a few miles away.
“Umm, I hate to be a buzzkill, but I have to teach school on Monday. I can’t exactly go on a road trip with you for grins and giggles.”
“What if the shooters are hanging around Misty Falls, waiting for you to show back up with the kid?”
Chas stared at Gunner in dismay. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Go on a road trip with me for grins and giggles until we figure out who the shooters are and what they want. And then we eliminate them.”
“Eliminate, as in kill them?” he squeaked.
Gunner shrugged. “Whatever works.”
“What about my job?”
“Call in sick. Tell them you’re suffering post-traumatic stress after your house got shot up and your neighbor died on your porch. You might want to ask your boss to call the police and let them know you’ll be back in town in a few days and will make an official statement to them then.”
“The police?” Chas blurted, alarmed.
“They surely found your neighbor on your porch, and they know you’re missing. They may have the cavalry out looking for you already.”
“Great. Just what we need.”
“What we need is some time to figure out what the hell happened and who the kid is.”
“That’s no lie,” he muttered. He called the phone number teachers reported sick to and left a message that he would be out for a few days, recovering from the events of Friday night. Then he used bottled water to make formula for Poppy. She drank it hungrily from one of her sippy cups as they rolled down the road. Next, he put dry Cheerios, strawberries he sliced with a pocketknife Gunner passed him in silence, and banana pieces into a plastic bowl and passed those to her.
“She acts like she hasn’t eaten in a week,” Gunner commented.
“I know the feeling,” Chas replied. He dug out granola bars and bananas and passed one of each to Gunner.
“What? I have to eat like a baby too?”
Chas shrugged. “Unless you have a cooked steak in the grocery bags that I didn’t notice, you get no-cook snack food too, until you want to stop at a restaurant or somewhere we can cook real food.”
Gunner said nothing but went back to staring at the rearview mirror.
“Why aren’t we getting on Highway 91? We’d make better time.”
“Because I’m going to turn west at some point, and we’re a whole lot harder to track if we stay off major highways.”
“Track how?”
“There are traffic cameras at intervals along major highways. And where there are cameras, there are hackable feeds.”
“Paranoid much, are we?”
“Not in the least. I’ve used those feeds in my work. And if the SEALs can use them, so can hostiles.”
Chas quieted, more alarmed by the idea of being surveilled on American soil than he wanted to let on.
About midmorning, Gunner’s phone rang, and he put it to his ear. He listened intently for a long time and then said merely, “Got it.”
“Well?” Chas demanded when the call ended.
“Well what?” Gunner asked blandly.
“You’re just teasing me now. Getting even for the car seat, are you?”
“Might be,” Gunner said cryptically.
“C’mon. This isn’t funny. What’s up with Poppy, and what happened in Misty Falls? Who were those guys?”
Chapter Four
SPENCER NEWMAN stepped into the guard shack at Norfolk Naval Air Station. It felt weird as hell to be signing in as a civilian visitor. His companion, Drago Thorpe, murmured as they headed back to the car, “You okay?”
“No, actually. I don’t like being back here one bit.”
“I’m sorry, man. Just remember, I’ve got your back.”
Spencer flashed an intimate smile at his best friend and brand-new husband. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Then up to DC?”
“Yeah. I don’t think we’re going to get anything out of your old contacts unless we speak with them in person.”
A shadow passed over Dray’s handsome face. He, too, had recently lost his job at the CIA. They’d killed possibly the most dangerous terrorist on earth a few months back, but it hadn’t been a sanctioned mission, and Uncle Sam had sacked them both. It was a shitty deal, but those were the rules. At least neither of them had ended up in jail over the incident.
Spencer drove to a nondescript building that housed the largest intelligence unit on base and parked in a visitor’s space. It had been his decision to sacrifice his career. No use being bitter over it. And hey, he’d gained Dray out of the deal.
They went inside, and the clerk at the front desk started in recognition. “Lieutenant Newman. It’s been a while.”
“It’s Mr. Newman now. Is Penelope Walker in the office today?”
“Yes, sir. Uh, yes.”
“Can you ring her up? Let her know I’m here to see her?”
It took only a few minutes for the civilian intelligence analyst, a smoking-hot redhead in her early thirties, to come down to the lobby. She handed Spencer and Dray visitor’s passes, which they clipped to their collars, and then led them to an office barely large enough to fit her desk and two chairs.
When Spencer and Dray sat down, she asked, “What can I do for you, gentlemen?”
“Did you happen to hear about a shooting in New Hampshire last night? And an Asian toddler who may be involved?”