~~~~~~~~~~
“Honor? Principle? Reason? These words are wasted. He does as he pleases, and his only higher law is her.” Connor Ridley, Shadows Fall
Impatience was not a state of being with which Karen was unfamiliar. It was, in point of fact, a standing family joke that in her childhood upon being informed that “patience is a virtue” she had responded with a to the point “it isn’t mine.” She didn’t think, however, that she had ever been quite as impatient in her life as she was as she sipped at her long since gone cold cup of coffee in the town in the middle of nowhere diner where she waited for Will to arrive to “retrieve” her.
“Retrieve” was his choice of word; it was not hers. She hadn’t been particularly pleased that he had opted to use it (no matter how appropriate it might have been). It made her sound like some sort of a wayward pet. He sounded angry as well -- in that barely controlled first I’m going to look you over and make sure that you aren’t injured and then I’m going to lay into you with a lecture to end all lectures kind of a way. The kind that parents use when you are eight and decide to run away from home only to get brought back by the lady down the road who caught you curled up on her back porch swing trying to settle in for the night.
She hadn’t been particularly pleased with that tone either (which was why she had now hung up on him a grand total of three times). She was sure it would have been more by now, but she had stopped answering the phone twenty minutes ago. She supposed that she should cut him some slack. He was probably thinking that she had been reapprehended. She just needed a few minutes to breathe. It hadn’t been her best day ever. She had strictly followed the just do policy that Lia had laid out for her, and it had gotten her this far. She wasn’t going to stop looking over her shoulder until she had some familiar faces surrounding her though (and maybe not even then).
She realized that it hadn’t been the best of ideas to go traipsing off to the Walsh hideaway in the woods (although in all fairness, she hadn’t understood just how isolated that house was until she had been under lockdown pondering how there were no neighbors to hear anything that might happen inside its walls), but if she had gotten from Lia what she was becoming more and more convinced that she had gotten from Lia, then it had been worth whatever early graying might have been induced (they did, after all, mass produce hair dye for a reason).
It was easier to not think about all the ways being in the middle of nowhere with someone as lacking in basic human standards as Wyatt Walsh was could go wrong when you weren’t there anymore. It would be even easier when she wasn’t sitting with only the barest protection of a roadside restaurant’s sparse number of customers as witnesses. She went back to thinking about Lia instead. The other thoughts just made her jumpy. The girl was either a world class actress with impeccable lying skills or telling the truth about how important it was to get that jump drive to Anna.
Anna was getting the jump drive either way. Karen had already decided that. Even if she was wrong, Anna would figure out they were being duped quickly enough. It would be no lasting harm done. They would, at least, know for certain that the Lia bridge had gone up in flames. But, and maybe she was a completely naive fool, she didn’t think that Lia had conned her. What would have been the point? It wasn’t like they needed to track them to figure out who was involved in the little anti-Meredyth Walsh resistance. Lia already knew that. She knew where they set up camp. She knew how they worked. There wasn’t anything about how they went about what they went about that Lia couldn’t already tell anyone she cared to let know.
There was nothing to be gained from the whole set up unless it was just an elaborate way for Lia to mess with all of their heads. Karen sincerely doubted it, but she couldn’t completely disregard the possibility. Time would tell. Also, could it possibly drag any slower?
She was grateful that Will and Connor had already been on their way when she had made her first phone call. She had Lia (by process of elimination because it wasn’t as if there was anyone else who could have done it) to thank for that. She had killed some of her time sitting and pretending to still sip at disgustingly room temperature coffee scrolling through the history on her phone. Someone had used it to send a text message with the location of the diner she was sitting in to Will hours ago (before she had even gotten out of the Walsh house). There were twenty or so one after the other frantic voicemails from Will in the aftermath of that text. (There would likely be twenty or so more by the time she decided to actually answer the phone again.)
Tramping through the countryside trying to follow the directions she had been given to get here had eaten up a fairly large chunk of time (hiking and Karen did not mix and should never be involved in the same sentence let alone actual intersections of reality ever again), but she still had another hour or so before her rescue party arrived (that being because Connor was driving; Will behind the wheel in his present state of agitation would likely have led to no arrival of her rescue party what with the inevitable wreck and all).
She would be in a marginally less agitated mood if she was driving herself back instead of waiting to be collected, but her car was farther away than Will was at this point (not to mention the whole not running issue). In retrospect, she could see that the hitchhiking portion of her adventure had just added another dimension of potential fail to her undertaking, but she had been too focused on getting where she was going to care at the time. She wasn’t going to think about that. (She definitely wasn’t going to think about what Will would have to add to his indignation when that part came out either.)
Her phone rang again (it was a fairly steady occurrence). The waitress wiping down the counter gave her a curious look. She might as well see how long she could last before hang up number four. It was, however, not Will. It was Anna.
“Are you currently captured by ruffians and speaking to me under duress?” That was unexpected.
“Um . . . no.” Karen almost felt that she should have phrased that as a question.
“Are you currently perturbed with Will’s behavior and avoiding speaking to him?”
“Um . . . yes.” She admitted.
“Get over it and pick up the phone. He’s currently convinced that you are bleeding in a drainage ditch. I’ve dealt with him for the past 36 hours. He’s your problem now.”
“Wait!” Karen would deal with the discovery that Anna was both sarcastic and somewhat funny later. She had more important things to focus on now.
“What?” The other woman sounded less than pleased to be speaking with her. Karen wasn’t going to hold that against her. She probably thought she had good reasons. The problem was that there was no gentle way to go about breaking this news. Besides, gentle wasn’t Karen’s style.
“I saw Lia. She insisted I give you something. It’s a jump drive, and she says you’ll know what to do with it when you see what’s on it.” There was a dead silence for a few moments, and Karen actually looked to see if her battery had gone dead. It hadn’t.
“Do you want to say that again?”
Glimpse: The Complete Trilogy Page 47