Playing A Losing Game

by MF Bishop

  Chapter Seventy Five

  The shakes lasted a long time. His arms would stop, then his legs would start, his feet hammering against the floor of the van. Oh God, he thought, is this it? Alexa's going off to be killed and I'm in such a damn funk I can't do anything but shake? Alexa would calm herself by breathing. He tried deep breaths, in, hold, exhale slowly. Do it again, you cowardly sonuvabitch. He did it again, and again.

  Ten breaths, twenty breaths. He stopped shaking. Now think. Blank. Nothing. Breathe a little more. Another car honked, so he pulled the truck around the corner and parked.

  This was no mugging. Those big ugly guys were pros, and they weren't after money. Enterprise Magnetics. Howard Green was behind this. As he swung the truck toward the Northeast, he was seized by a thought. If Alexa was somewhere else and he went to that huge building, even if they didn't catch him and kill him, it would take hours to search. If he guessed wrong, Alexa wouldn't have a second chance.

  He clutched the steering wheel in an agony of indecision. What choice did he have? She could be anywhere. Probably somewhere in Northeast, but that was a big place. It wasn't as though he could just look at a map...look at a map and see where...see where she was....

  "Christ on a crutch," he muttered. If Alexa was carrying the computer, if she remembered it, and if she could turn it on. He dug into her purse, pulling out the gun, sunglasses, three health nut bars and a tampon holder. No computer. He stuffed the junk back into the purse and slipped the gun into a jacket pocket. The locations of the mobile units were tracked by a central computer. The DC Cellular computer building was on 4th Street. The tires of the Astro squealed as he pulled away from the curb.