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“Hugo calls you paranoid, and that’s your question?” Lancelot asked with an amused grin.
Oscar shrugged as Hugo said, “Eric is merely a colleague.”
They fell silent once more. Hugo wished for more conversation. The moments of quiet gave him too much time to think, to focus on the churning well of panic and rage that made him nauseous. Sylvia wouldn’t be with Alicia if they hadn’t involved her in this manhunt. It was why he’d resisted speaking with her to begin with.
He recalled Eric pulling him aside following that last librarians’ meeting, when the fleet admiral announced Hugo would be the one to deal with the “goddamn Americans.” The fleet admiral had waited until the others had left, then dropped the real reason he was sending Hugo to find Alicia.
Ordinarily, Hugo would never have spoken out against his leader, but the second he’d heard Sylvia’s name, he’d dug in his heels, refusing to put the sweet young student he’d recalled in danger. Hugo remembered Cecilia, another librarian, describing the way Alicia had killed Derrick Frederick, the details etched into his brain. He’d refused to put Sylvia in harm’s way.
Eric had been displeased, telling him if Hugo could find Alicia without Sylvia, to do so. But if he failed…
He’d failed. Failed the mission, the Masters’ Admiralty, but most of all, Sylvia.
And now all he could do was sit in this car, imagining Alicia placing an electrical collar around Sylvia’s neck, pushing the button on the rem—
“We got it,” Oscar exclaimed from the back seat.
They’d been driving nearly an hour, Hugo feeling more and more hopeless with each mile. Sylvia’s brother had set up a mobile office on the back seat of the truck, his laptop open, several cell phones scattered on the seat next to him. There was a larger bag at his feet that he’d explained contained a drone, though God only knew what it was in Oscar’s genetic makeup that made him think, “Hey, I have to rescue Sylvia, I’ll bring my drone.”
“You’ve got what?” Lancelot asked.
“Sylvia just sent another text.”
Hugo spun in the passenger seat. “What? What does it say?” Though he’d never admit it, with each passing moment, he’d begun to fear they would never find Sylvia alive. The practical part of him—which he hated, presently—couldn’t come up with a logical reason for Alicia to keep her former student alive.
If she took Sylvia because she was angry or felt betrayed, then killing her enemy—something Alicia had done before—was the most obvious reason for taking her.
“Give me a second,” Oscar said, not looking up.
Hugo impatiently studied the man and, as he did, a weird, random thought came to him. “Did you change your hair?” he asked Oscar.
Lancelot shot Hugo a quick “seriously?” look, then went back to driving. “Come on, brother. Get me a location.”
Oscar tapped on the keyboard, his fingers moving a mile a minute now. “I just,” tap tap tap, “neeeeed,” tap tap tap, “to,” tap tap tap, “triangulate the,” tap tap tap, “signals!” With one last hard slam on the enter key, he looked up with a smile. “I got it. Got a location.”
“Hugo,” Lancelot started, but Hugo already had his phone in hand, opening the GPS.
“Way ahead of you. Give me the address.”
Oscar was back on the keyboard once more. “Two seconds. I had coordinates. I need to…there.”
He rattled off an address and Hugo plugged it into his phone, holding his breath for the few seconds it took the system to reconfigure to their new destination.
“Got it!” he exclaimed.
“And?” Lancelot asked. “How far away?”
“Thirty minutes.”
Oscar leaned forward, looking at the speedometer. “It’s the pedal on the right side, Knight. Let’s see if you can cut that thirty in half.”
Lancelot narrowed his eyes at the challenge, even as he accelerated.
Chapter Fifteen
Lancelot slowed the vehicle as they traveled through the sand dunes of some wildlife preserve. The place was uninhabited, and they hadn’t passed another car in the last twenty minutes. This seemed like the sort of place that was probably taken advantage of on rare occasions by wildlife photographers or birdwatchers. Now, in the heat of the day, anyone who might enjoy the primitive beach had gone inside, seeking AC.
According to Oscar, Sylvia’s latest message had pinged between two cell towers, and this beach was the area where those two towers’ signal radius overlapped. Unfortunately, the overlap was miles of beach, and not a flat, easy-to-search beach. The sand dunes created a sort of mountain range with plenty of valleys and hidden low spots. An effective search of the area would take a team of people hours.
