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“The one that hacked our video cameras?” Marc asked.
“No,” Axel said, shaking his head. “No, we’re not seeing him.”
“Why not?” I asked. “You need someone who does that stuff. He does it.”
“That guy sounds like he’s just asking for the FCC and the FBI to visit. And he’s friends with Coaltar.”
“So?”
“So you aren’t going.”
I grunted, and sat back with my arms folded. “Or we could wait for you guys to get lucky. Maybe Corey could rig up enough satellite dishes, computer systems and so forth that this guy already has set up.”
Axel twisted his lips, shaking his head. “It’s a bad idea.”
Marc shrugged. “Have a better one?
He glanced around the parking lot and swiveled his head around. “Let’s grab some breakfast first. I’ve got a few things I want to try before we resort to talking to this Doyle.”
“Gotta love her brain, though, right?” Marc grinned. “If we were really trying to get into this core, or even solve these murders...”
Axel sliced his hand across the space between himself and Marc. “Let’s focus. This guy the German said died because he owned the core, it has to be someone else if it isn’t this Randall guy. This means they’ve killed multiple people. If we can connect the two deaths, and then point the police to any leads, or even get the FBI involved if we have to, we’ll be good to go. Right as soon as we find Brandon, we can send the police after them. Our goal now, though, is to get Brandon out as soon as possible. We can sort out this underground network later.”
Tension mounted in the car. Axel didn’t seem to be in the best of moods. I glanced at Marc, who appeared sympathetic. The longer we went trying to find where these guys were, the chances were greater they’d find out that Brandon wasn’t their guy, and he could get killed.
We were running out of time.
TURTLES
Axel veered into a McDonald’s. Three egg sandwiches later, splitting one with Marc, stealing his hash brown, and downing my own coffee and half of Axel’s, I was finally feeling awake and ready. The only reason why we stopped at all was because Marc insisted we couldn’t continue to work like this on an empty stomach, and Axel could drive and eat at the same time. Marc bitched about the coffee, but downed his own as quickly as possible.
I didn’t want to eat anything. I wanted to stay angry, but after I started, I felt better, still angry, but better.
“She really is a pit,” Axel said as he drove toward downtown Charleston again.
“I think she eats more than I do,” Marc said.
“I’m right here,” I said. I wasn’t really perturbed they were talking about me like that. It was kind of amusing, but I’d been starving so I would have eaten anything. Did I really eat that much?
They both chuckled. Axel in a grumbly, stoic way. Marc’s laugh was light, proud. He kept smiling back at me like he’d won something.
It was the edge of disaster staring me in the face. I pushed that thought away. “Where are we going now, anyway?” I asked.
“We’re going to drive around for a little bit, and try to lead these guys out into the open. If not, we need to find another phone on this network,” Axel said. He weaved his way into downtown traffic, taking roads that were heavily congested. “I don’t want to take plan B, though. It’ll take too long.”
“I still say we could go check out Doyle. Can’t we just tell him to be on the lookout now while we deal with plan A? Save us some time in case we have to do plan B?”
Axel shook his head, and a lock of his dark hair fell against his face, almost in the way of his glasses. “My problem is still timing. The longer we’re waiting, the more likely Brandon is discovered. It would be different if they weren’t killing people over this, but now it looks like they are. How long will it take us to even convince this Doyle guy to do us a favor when we don’t know anything about him? He may not be that easy to convince to help us.”
I sighed. Maybe he did have a point. Doyle was more than likely our best bet at finding a secret underground cell phone network, but who was to say he would help?
Marc pushed his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. “I hate being chased.”
“Do we have anyone following us?” I asked. I looked behind us, trying to pick out cars.
“Uh huh,” Axel said. “Two of them. Team A is three cars behind us, Team B is in the other lane, behind Team A.”
I tried studying our surroundings, but I couldn’t see anything beyond the car right behind us. I was too close. I tried checking the mirrors. “Are you sure it’s them? How did they know where to find us?” I asked.
Marc redirected his pointer finger, aiming it at my face. “We sent someone who looked like you to our apartment. And made sure her team could get her back out and take them for a ride around Charleston. But now they’ve lead them back to us.”
I dropped my mouth open. “Where’s our team?”
“Following the bad guys,” Axel said. “Now that they’ve been able to identify which cars are the ones scouting for you, we’re basically leading them where we want while they are looking for an opening. It’s not easy when there’s two cars with several people inside. We want to take one out and question them without alerting the others.”
I studied the cars, as if I could see through them and figure out who was following us, trying to remember the German’s face and pick him out. “How did you get them to switch and follow us? What girl? How do you know?”
Axel held up his cell phone. He eased the car forward as space became available through traffic. “We’re not just sitting on our asses. I’ve been getting updates. When one of our own is in danger, we call it in. We’ve got a lot of people out there now scouting for Brandon. More than you might think.”
I was impressed. I didn’t know the Academy that well, but it seemed they were working this as best as they could. “Can’t we do something to hurry it along? Th
ey want me, don’t they? They’re looking for an opening? Let’s lead them somewhere.”
“They may not do anything during the day and in public,” Axel said. “And this is the best way for us to stay safe while we’re figuring out an opening. We can’t risk our necks and all get caught by these guys.”
I breathed in, sitting back. Axel was making circles around downtown, and then looped onto the Mark Clark Expressway. There would only be so many times he could make circles before he’d need gas, or the people following us figured out we were leading them on a goose chase because we knew we were being followed. “What happens at night?”
“Hopefully, this will be over before then.”
“What if it isn’t?”
Axel shrugged. “I might drop you off at the hospital with the others.”
“Why the hospital? What’s up with that? How is a hospital keeping Corey safe?”
“Who is going to try to kidnap any of us in the middle of something like a hospital? There’s security and video and people being monitored continuously. It’s second best outside of being inside a police station.”
As crazy as his idea was, it did make sense. Still, I kept looking out the back window. “So we’ll drive around all day.” That didn’t sit well with me. Being chased all day? No. I was too used to being the hunter, not the hunted. I didn’t like it. “Can’t we do something else? Shouldn’t we speed this up somehow?”
He adjusted his rearview mirror. His eyes were intense, a storm brewing behind the otherwise calm exterior. “Would you like to go somewhere?” he asked. “We’ve got one team behind us. I’d rather have two or three, just in case. They’re headed this way.”
“How can we trip these guys up? Let’s just ram this car into theirs and get this over with.”
“We’re doing this as fast as we can. The best thing we can do right now is keep them busy. Eventually, this team is going to need to take a break, and they might head back to where Brandon is. As long as they don’t know we’re looking at them, we’ve got some advantage. It’s what we need right now.”
