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“—Do it,” Trent told him.
His spinning head spun faster still. Where was a former prosecutor supposed to find an unlicensed gun? How was he going to protect Leilah? He wasn’t equipped for this.
“When you have clean phones, call the girl with the braids,” Jake said. “If Ahmadi’s smart, he’s monitoring all our communications, but maybe not hers.”
The girl with the braids?
‘Chelsea,’ Leilah mouthed.
Of course. Jake’s fiancée wasn’t officially connected to Potomac or to the driving club. Ryan nodded.
“Understood,” he said.
“Hayes?” Omar said before Ryan ended the call.
“Still here.”
“I’m counting on you to take care of my sister.”
“I will.”
The call disconnected. For a long, frozen moment, Ryan stared down at the phone in his hand as if it were a scorpion.
Then he powered off his phone and held out his palm to Leilah. “Give me your mobile.”
He took both phones into the bathroom and stomped on them until the glass smashed. He had no idea if that served a purpose, but it made him feel better.
Then he grabbed her hand and headed for the door. “Time to go.”
As they ran toward the stairwell, he vowed to keep his promise to Omar. He’d take care of Leilah—come what may.
9
Happy hour started earlyat the Game Day Bar and Grille. Although it was only three o’clock, the restaurant was jumping. Alt-country rock blared from the overhead speakers, the wall-mounted banks of televisions broadcast everything from fishing derbies to cornhole tournaments to reruns of classic football games, and a rowdy trivia game was underway in one corner of the massive space. Leilah skidded to a stop as they ran past. She backtracked and dragged Ryan into the restaurant.
“We don’t have time for potato skins,” he told her.
“Very funny.” She pointed toward the bank machine near the restrooms.
“Yes.” He pumped his fist in triumph.
They each withdrew their daily limit of cash. As she tucked the bills into her wallet, she wondered aloud, “If Ahmadi can track us through our credit cards, can’t he track this, too?”
“Sure. But we’ve already left an electronic trail with the hotel reservation and the call to Potomac. If someoneistracking us, they’ll be able to follow us as far as The Rest Hotel in Harrisonburg. But the trail will go cold here. So long as we don’t use our cards again, we’ll appear to vanish from the face of the earth, and our last known location will be the Game Day Bar and Grille.” He returned his wallet to his pocket and scanned the lobby. “We should move on. Get out of town as fast as we can. We can’t rent a car without a credit card and license. Hitchhiking’s too unpredictable. Let’s find a bus station.”
She gave him a sly smile. “I have a counterproposal. Ahmadi—or whoever is looking for us—will see that we’ve checked out of the hotel and loaded up on cash, right? They’ll know we’re on the run.”
“Right.”
“So the last place they’d look for us is in the shadow of this very shopping center.”
“I don’t follow.” He shook his head.
“Look across the highway.”
He craned his neck to look out the restaurant's large front window. His eyes lit up when he saw it: Another hotel, with its own giant attached restaurant—a Mexican cantina—sat in the parking lot of another shopping mall.
“Who would move right across the street?” he mused.
