by Dale Mayer
“Easy, Bristol. Just calm down. This isn’t helping anything,” Tesla told her.
Bristol reached up, smashed the doorframe, the frustration eating at her. She took a deep breath and then tried again. This time the light switched from red to green, and the door unlocked. She walked inside, headed for a cupboard on the far side and pulled out her baby. “You’ve never seen this before. I would really appreciate it if you don’t tell anybody about it.”
They gathered around her, like kids in a candy store. She opened the box and pulled out what appeared to be a common everyday swallow. But it was a mechanical one.
“Oh, my,” Ice said in awe. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It’s actually more than you think it is.”
She brought up her laptop, quickly accessed the server and typed in the code she needed. She plugged the swallow into her USB cable and downloaded the coordinates she needed it to follow. She started the GPS tracker, double-checked it was at full power and said, “I don’t know for how long this can run. It’ll depend on the wind conditions. But I need somebody on the ground right now to follow it.”
“How can anyone follow the swallow?” Ryder asked. “It’s damn near impossible to see.”
She looked up at him, her eyes hard, her gaze almost dark and said, “Exactly.” She pivoted the laptop so they could see the beeping that showed the location it was at. “I set the coordinates for my father’s implant. And just like the drones that follow me overhead,” she said, “this is geared to find him. And it will give us the GPS directions as it travels.”
A moment of silence passed as everybody inhaled that information, then a fervent whisper came from Ice. “Oh, my God. That’s so damn perfect.”
“Shit. Did you actually build that?” Harrison asked, right before his phone rang.
She nodded, snatched up the swallow and laptop, and ran up the stairs. “I have three of them.”
She raced out the front door and did something that made the others wince. She took the swallow and threw it high into the sky as far as she could. The swallow hovered above for the first second. A series of low clicks and taps followed, then it shot off into the sky. “Go, go, go.”
She searched the crowd. “Devlin?”
He was at her side instantly. “What did I miss?”
“I’ll explain as we go.” She tossed him her car keys, not bothering to ask what else he had gotten from the intruder. She trusted he was secure regardless. “We need to go, and now.” He raced to her car. She hopped into the passenger side, calling out to the others. “We’ll need backup.”
“We’ve got it.”
She saw Easton and Ryder run to the jeep. She had no idea about the others. Devlin was already maneuvering her car around the busted gate.
As they shot off down the street, he asked, “Where to?”
“Head toward San Diego. Take the highway. I’ll tell you when to get off.”
“I’m at least ten minutes getting to the highway.”
“Hopefully you won’t be,” she said. “We may not have that long.” She appreciated his foot-to-the-floorboard technique as the car zoomed ahead. “If you don’t know where you’re going, just tell me.”
“I’m familiar with the area.” He shaved off three minutes while she tracked the signal heading straight toward the city. “You want to explain what the hell we’re doing?”
She gave him the short version. Tapping the monitor screen, she said, “This is the swallow. It’s tracking and gaining proximity to my father.”
“What’s the distance?”
“Half a mile. It has a burst in the first thirty seconds as it reaches out for the signal. After that the distance is shortened. If I could figure out a way to keep up the power during all this, I could probably extend the distance.” She felt his stare. But ignored it. She just kept talking. “I think there’s a lot of usability for something like this.”
“You think?” He shook his head. “This is huge.”
“Well, not really. The swallow has to be able to track something. In this case, both my father and I have embedded chips.” She pointed to her forearm at a spot just before her elbow. “We had them implanted a long time ago. That was my father’s security precaution when I was just a toddler. But they are old. He built a tracker, but never bothered to update it, and thirty years of change in technology is a lot. But he never thought his daughter would be creating something to keep him safe.” Her voice turned bitter at the end. “I should’ve kept him safe.”
“You’re doing what you can. It’s a hell of a lot more than most people have. A method to track their loved ones.”
She settled back into her seat. “I should be able to track more than just that. Wait ’til you see what I can find out about his vitals.”
*
Devlin was grateful that Harrison and Rhodes had arrived when they did to look after the intruder and also to give him a quick update on Bristol’s whereabouts. Devlin told them the little bit the guy had shared but left them free to get more. As he ran from the garage, he heard the intruder cry out, “No! I don’t know anything.”
“Well, these two will figure out if you do or not,” Devlin called back.
Once he joined Bristol, the two of them were in her vehicle within seconds, driving after her father.
He was still wrapping his mind around the idea she’d built a drone to track her father. One she could change the code in to track something completely different when needed. The applications were endless. And hers resembled a swallow, but it could be any shape. She presently tracked her father’s vitals to see if he was alive and how he was doing.
Kudos to her and her father. Devlin and his team had come up against ID chips on kids of wealthy families but those were specific microchips for tracking and modern tech devices. Her father had been way ahead of the game decades earlier. Talk about being beyond Devlin’s capabilities. He shook his head. “What you’ve done is fantastic.”
“It would be if it worked,” she snapped. “But so far every damn thing I’m doing has failed.”
He knew the reality, however. He couldn’t give her enough assurances to convince her what a hell of a job she was doing. But those on the outside knew. He wondered if these people ever reached a state of perfection, those with minds that could conjure up ideas and create them. Were they ever satisfied with their products?
He’d once asked Tesla why she wouldn’t stop tweaking the code on her programs. “Why not just build a new one?”
She had laughed and said, “I am. But so many things could be done to improve it that, as I learn something new, I feel compelled to backtrack. At some point the old system becomes faulty. Just too many upgrades and changes in patches. The new software hopefully will be ready to slide in over the top.” She shook her head. “But at this point I can be tweaking and planning for the next upgrade.”
He imagined that was very similar to what Bristol went through on a regular basis. As he thought about the drones she was building, he knew they were actually light years ahead of the others, and that the military would really want them. But he had to stop Brent and this company. Devlin understood the middlemen were making money off people like Bristol. But it was damn time for her to step up and the world to recognize that she did this. And she didn’t need Brent.
Devlin’s contacts didn’t include anybody that high up in the military. But certainly a lot of people were around who did know such valuable people. Tesla’s father had a lot of connections. So did Mason. For that matter, so did Levi. Hell, a lot of former military personnel were in their worlds. Surely somebody knew somebody. If they could get Bristol to connect directly with the military, she could dump the middlemen.
With the work he had seen of hers already, he knew she’d make a killing.
“He’s still alive,” she said in a hard, thin voice. “But his heart rate is erratic and slowing.”
“Slowing? I thought it would be faster from the stress and fear.”
; “I’m afraid they’ve given him a sedative.” She lifted her head and gazed at him.
He glanced at her, but from the almost blank look in her eyes, he figured she saw something she wasn’t telling him about.
“He becomes quite irrational when he’s upset. He’ll lash out, hit, walk away, cry, and yell. He won’t understand, he’ll be upset and won’t be afraid to let anybody know.”
He understood. “It must’ve been a very difficult few years for you.”
“Much harder for him. He just didn’t understand. And no way could I make it any clearer to him.” She started clicking on the keyboard. “I’m getting the coordinates now. It appears they’ve turned off the highway.”
He looked for the exits. “Left or right?”
“Stay in the right lane,” she said. “I need to see what turnoff they took.”
He waited.
Finally she said, “Take the East exit.”
“The sign for it just whipped past. It’s right here,” he said. “They can’t be too far ahead of us then.”
“In a way just barely enough for me to track the swallow,” she admitted. “If they were already at their location, we could map a route. But instead I’m waiting for the location to show up and figure where that is exactly as I don’t have the GPS on Google Maps. I’m taking the coordinates, typing them in and finding locations.”
“Something you can integrate later?”
“Yes, definitely. I’ve never actually had a chance to run this program, so I had no idea what was required.”
He could almost hear the wheels of her brain turning, figuring out a better method. He saw the aerial view on the laptop. And, of course, that didn’t lock on street signs.
He slowed, took the turn, ran the car around the corner and checked behind to see that the other two vehicles were following. Then he merged into the new street, drove down it for another couple miles, and pulled up to a stop light. “Anything new?”
“They’re taking a turn, just blocks up,” she said. Her voice was distracted. Her fingers busy.
He pulled out his phone and called Ryder, quickly relaying the updates. He said, “I’m leaving the phone open on the seat between us. As she gives us instructions, you’ll hear them too.”
Ryder said, “Sounds good.”
“Take a left,” Bristol said.
He pulled up to the fourth block and put on his left turn signal. When there was an opening, he took it onto the side street. They were in a half-business, half-residential district. Lots of suburban businesses on the bottom and apartments on the top. As he drove down the side street, the apartments gave way to small houses and condo complexes.
“The signal stopped.”
He glanced at her, startled. “Have you lost it?”
“No, as in the vehicle has stopped, and so has the swallow. And my father is up ahead.”
Ryder’s voice came through the phone on the seat between them. “How far ahead?”
“Four, three, two,” she counted the blocks. Devlin slowed the car at the next intersection. “The block ahead of us?”
“Yes.”
He studied the street. No sign of the car. Large properties were here, separated by fences high with cedar hedges. Not much visibility. He wouldn’t see the car until he drove in. “Can you see how far down?”
She said, “Turn the corner here, park on the side. I can find the swallow.”
Doing as instructed, Devlin pulled forward, took the left corner and parked around the far side.
She hopped out, remote in her hand, and set up a signal. She turned in a circle and tracked it. “Second house from the corner.”
Ryder said, “We’ll take a walk, one in front, the other in back. We’ll check out the house from here.”
Devlin grabbed the phone. “Right. I’m here with her. You guys stay out of sight.”
She said, “I want to go into the house.”
He shook his head. “You did what you needed to get us here. Your job’s done. Let us take over.”
She opened her mouth, snapped it shut, stared for a long moment, and then nodded. “Let’s hope you do a better job at recovering my father than I did at keeping him safe.”
Devlin shook his head. “We’re so having a talk about that. But later. Right now this is all about finding your father.”
Chapter 14
She stayed behind the tree, leaning casually as she played with the remote in her hand. She knew she wasn’t visible from the house, unless somebody actually came out past the cedar hedge to look. She reached inside, grabbed her laptop, and then sat behind the car, sitting cross-legged with the laptop balancing on her legs. She had the address now. She could get all kinds of information.
She could hear Devlin talking to Ice on the phone, bringing her up to date, giving her the location. Bristol could only hope things went smoothly from here. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to take her father. They wouldn’t let him go so easily.
When he was done with his phone call, she said, “The house is registered to the Sunset Corp.”
“It’s probably a holding company,” he said. “Do you recognize any of the names on the Board of Directors?”
“Looking now.” She sighed. “They own ENFAQ. It’s one of their companies.”
“So that’s the company Brent works for?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Well, that answers that. Chances are it’s the same people then.”
She nodded. Inside she was just plain sad. “I had such high hopes for this. Why the hell are these people such assholes?” She stood, put the laptop back inside the car and locked it. She turned to him. “Now what?”
He gave her a hard glance. “We wait. We trust Easton and Ryder.” Just then the phone rang. “What’s up, Easton?”
“Looks like somebody’s on the second floor. We found the vehicle, in the back garage. Ryder’s inside. He confirmed the damage on the back right-hand side of the car. He’s getting the VIN number for us.”
“Any other vehicles?” Devlin held the phone so she could hear.
“No. But her father didn’t come alone so expect at least two more people.”
“Right. Chances are there are twice that many.”
Easton’s voice changed. “I just saw somebody on the main floor. I can see an open window downstairs. I need to get in and do a floor-by-floor search.”
“Not alone.”
“No, Ryder’s joining me from the garage. We’ll check back in five.” He clicked off.
Devlin stared at the house. He hated to have two men go in. Especially when he was so far away. He turned to study the houses on either side. The one at the corner was for sale. No way to tell if it was currently occupied or not. But if he and Bristol could get into that yard, it would provide better access to the house they ultimately needed to get into.
In a low voice, he said, “We’ll walk over and take a look at the house for sale. Act like a married couple, looking to buy the house. My men are in the house doing a floor-by-floor search.
She gasped. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
He just stared at her.
She said, “Yeah, I get it. You do danger.”
“We do big danger,” he said with a whisper. “Don’t you forget it.” But he winked at her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, tucking her up gently as he led her across the street. They walked toward the house for sale, stood on the driveway and stared.
“It’s actually not all that bad,” she said in a half-strangled voice, her body stiff. She was so close to the house. Were they being watched?
He chuckled. “But not all that great either.”
At his nudge, they walked up to the front door, then around to the back as if looking for the Realtor to see inside. On the other side, out of sight from anybody else, he walked to the fenced side between him and the house where her father was being held. The wooden fence was solid and in good shape—also a good six feet high with an alleyway access.
He
stepped out with her hand in his, keeping her shielded by his body. He peered around at the house.
*
There was no sign of them. But he could see the open window. As an invitation? A trap? He’d seen it all. It was hard to plan for every contingency. But failure was not an option.
The biggest problem was he didn’t want to go in to help search and leave Bristol alone outside. Given what she’d said, there was no guarantee her father would calm down at the sight of her, so they really didn’t need Bristol for that, but it was the best option they had. Her father could potentially be very unruly.
His phone buzzed. That was the signal. The downstairs was clear. In a low voice, he told her that. Immediately she stuffed her fist in her mouth and buried her head against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and said, “Take it easy. That’s good news.”
She shook her head. “How can you do this? My nerves are stretched so thin it feels like butter spread onto bread.”
He gently rubbed her back up and down. “It’s what we do. The nerves and the adrenaline get to us sometimes. However, we’re doing exactly what we need to do.”
A second buzz came through. He pulled his phone out and checked. The text simply read:
One down.
He showed her and watched as her gaze widened. She wanted to peer around the hedge again, but he pulled her back. “It’s a really tough time.”
She gazed up at him, not understanding.
“When people are under attack, their instincts go on alert. They search, looking around for what’s wrong. We don’t want them to look outside and see you standing here.”
She let out her breath and nodded. He had to admit she was good at following orders. He kept her up tight, the phone in his hand, willing her to relax. He could feel the adrenaline rushing through him right now. He wanted to race in there and start pounding people into the ground.
The more unfriendlies who could be taken out, the better. This was also not an official mission. And the police wouldn’t take kindly to them taking this into their own hands. So the least amount of damage, the better.