“I’m mad at me,” Gunner replied.
That made Chas press up onto an elbow to stare down at him in the dark. “Why?”
“I could’ve been doing that for the past decade.”
Chas laughed under his breath, a gust of humor that slid across Gunner’s chest like a blessing. “Thank God. When I woke up and realized I was giving you a hand job, I thought you might kill me.”
Gunner rolled over on his side and gathered Chas against his chest. “You did kill me.”
They lay together, their legs entwined and Chas cuddled with his ear to Gunner’s chest, for a long time. The late hour was deep and still and matched the peace settling into Gunner’s soul. Finally. He’d made up for getting it so terribly wrong the last time. Twelve years’ worth of guilt was lifting away from his heart as he lay there with his lover.
He heard a noise outside and turned his head toward the window. It sounded like a car door latching gently. Too gently, as if someone had closed it with the intent to muffle the sound.
The skin across the back of his neck prickled.
He rolled out of bed and gained his feet all in one smooth, athletic move. Naked, he moved swiftly over to the window. Standing to one side of it, he peered around the curtains without moving them.
Three men dressed in dark clothing stood behind a black SUV. As he looked on, they pulled ski masks down over their faces.
“Get up, Chas. Right now. Get dressed and grab what you can. We need to be out of here in thirty seconds.”
“What?” Chas mumbled.
“Move.”
Gunner threw on clothes, stomped into his boots, and was ready to go before Chas, so he scooped up all the baby gear and crammed it into the baby bag. He opened the hallway door and peered out cautiously while Chas scooped up Poppy behind him and wrapped her in a blanket.
Signaling with his hand for Chas to follow, he raced out into the hall and took off running on his toes, as silently as possible. Chas was relatively quiet for an amateur but breathing heavily in what sounded like near panic.
They reached the stairwell door, and he threw his shoulder against it as the elevator dinged in the middle of the long hallway. Gunner held the door for Chas to slip through ahead of him, and then Gunner leaned against the back side of the door to force it closed more quickly.
There was no way of telling if the hostiles spotted it closing or not.
“Run,” he breathed.
Fortunately, they were only on the second floor, and it was a fast sprint down the stairs. They emerged into a hallway that matched the one overhead, and Gunner took the lead, running full-out to the middle of the building and turning left to the exit closest to their car.
He slowed at the exit and eased the door open. Then they slipped outside, hugging the wall of the building. They were leaving footprints in the mulch under the bushes, but there was no help for it. Hopefully their pursuers weren’t trained trackers.
They reached the car, and he eased the passenger door open for Chas, who slid in with Poppy. The toddler was starting to wake up.
“Keep her quiet,” Gunner muttered as he closed the door. Chas stuffed a pacifier in her mouth as he let down the door handle slowly enough to make minimal noise. Then, with a sprint around to the driver’s side and a repeat of closing the door silently, he threw the car into Neutral and released the parking brake.
He’d chosen this parking spot for its proximity to the exit and its slight downhill slope. Slowly, the car rolled forward. He turned the wheel and let it roll for perhaps thirty more seconds. It had nearly reached the end of the building before it started to lose momentum. At that point he started the engine and pulled away from the building.
He accelerated away into the night, praying that the hostiles did not pursue them in their faster, more powerful SUV. To that end, he didn’t take the same road they’d come into town on and changed directions to head south and then back to the east. Most civilians fled in a single direction, straight away from pursuit, and he hoped the circuitous route would throw off the bad guys for a while at least. Long enough to figure out how in the hell they’d found him, Chas, and Poppy.
“Chas, did you use a credit card in the past day without me seeing you do it?”
“No.”
“Make any phone calls?”
“None. Why are you asking?”
“They’ve got to be tracking us somehow. There’s no way they randomly showed up in a dinky town, hours away from Misty Falls, and went directly to our hotel. They even knew the floor we were on.”
Chas’s eyes went wide. “How could they do that?”
“Poppy,” he answered grimly. “They’ve got some sort of tracker on her. Or in her.”
“In her?”
“Sure. I’ve got one implanted under my shoulder blade. If I ever go missing, Uncle Sam can find me anywhere on earth.”
“Are you kidding me?” Chas blurted.
“Nope. Hurt like a bitch when they put it in too.”
Chas frowned. “I don’t remember seeing any scars on Poppy when I gave her a bath.”
“Tracker’s probably in her clothes. Do we still have the shirt and pants she was wearing the night you found her?”
“Yes.”
“Check them over. It’ll be a small metallic device about the size and shape of a grain of rice. It may be glued to the fabric, or it may be tucked inside a seam.”
Before he checked the clothes, Chas turned around in the front seat, got on his knees, and carefully lifted Poppy into her car seat. “I’m worried about her. She’s gone silent again.”
“She definitely picks up on fear in the adults around her,” Gunner agreed. “It’s come in handy a couple of times now.”
“But it can’t be good for her emotional health,” Chas commented. “Here, sweetie. Suck on your pacifier while I make you a bottle.”
Gunner snorted. Just like his mother, Chas was. When in doubt, feed people’s hurts and pains away.
Once Poppy was sucking sleepily on a bottle, Chas dug in the baby bag and came up with a plastic grocery sack. He flopped back down in the front seat.
“I wrapped her clothes up in case they were needed for evidence or something. I never dreamed they’d be used to follow us.” He paused, then added apologetically, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“You’re a civilian. It’s not your job to live in my world. I’m the one who should’ve thought to check for a tracking burr earlier.” Damn, he’d been off his game ever since he woke up in that hospital room.
Chas opened the bag and began checking over the baby’s clothes. He found the burr in the hem of Poppy’s pants. “Oh my God. There it is. Should I throw it out the window?”
“No!” Gunner exclaimed. He headed for the nearest highway, which took about a half hour to reach, and then he headed north until he found a truck stop at an exit. Chas started to pump gas for the car while Gunner jogged to the diesel fuel pumps where a few trucks were filling up. He found one with Canadian plates and surreptitiously opened the passenger door of the cab, dropped the burr on the front seat, and backed out of the truck.
He checked on Poppy, who was fast asleep in her car seat, carefully locked the car doors, and headed inside quickly to find Chas.