Collision Course (22 page)

“They’d
tell me I was damn smart to pick a woman who could come to my rescue.” He
finally had his breathing under control and his stomach had settled. Being
alive sure beat worrying about wounded pride. “Where are we going, by the way?
Not your house or the motel.”

They
were out of town now, on the two-lane highway, and Casey had increased their
speed. “We’re getting away from here as fast as we can. I have a place we can
go but I have to check it out and I can’t take the time until I’m sure no one’s
on our tail.”

“And
where’s that?”

“Tell
you in a minute.” She made a sharp right turn onto a narrow farm-to-market road
and floored the accelerator again.

Trey
clung to the oh-shit handle and offered up silent prayers they wouldn’t meet
any oncoming traffic. Casey made two more turns before she seemed to ease up a
little.

“Where’d
you learn to drive? Practicing for the Indy 500?”

She gave
a short, dry laugh. “Scoff if you will, but I’ll bet those suckers have no idea
where we disappeared to.”

“Are you
kidding? We—you—left them out cold in the parking lot. I’d give a nickel to
find out what happened when they came to.”

“Depends
how long they were out.” She eased up on the gas a little and blew out a
breath. “Worst case, they made it to their vehicle and got the hell out of
there. Now they’ll be trying to pick up our trail. Best case, they were still
out when my folks arrived. They’d have had Ben Russell on them in a heartbeat.”

“Meanwhile,
want to tell me where we’re going?”

“Yeah,
but the first thing we want to do is get rid of your laptop.”

Trey
froze. “Are you kidding me? Everything I’ve dug up is on there. Jesus, Casey.
All my evidence.”

“You
saved it in an Internet file,” she reminded him. “And even if you hadn’t, my
friend can dig out information ten times better than anyone else. I probably
should have said so in the beginning, except you were so adamant about not
contacting anyone.”

“But—”

“No
buts. They’ve identified the laptop. That’s how they found you. They could have
fed a virus back to you, the kind that can morph into a GPS locator.”

“Fuck.”

“No
kidding.”

In
another few minutes, they came to a wide place in the road marked by a
combination gas station and convenience store. Casey turned in and pulled up at
the side of the building.

“See the
big trash container at the far corner?” She pointed.

“Uh
huh.”

“We
don’t have time to dismantle the laptop and take out the hard drive. We just
need to make sure if they’ve got a little locator bug in there it leads them
here and stops. Get out the computer, bang it on the ground a few times then
dump it with the rest of the garbage. Do it,” she insisted when he still sat
there. “Come on, T.J.”

He did
as she instructed, feeling as if he were killing an old friend. He feared he’d
thrown all his work down the drain, despite her reassurance.

“Now
what?”

“Now we
go see my old friend, Joe Panko.” She pulled out onto the highway again and
made a left turn at the intersecting road.

“Okay,
I’ll bite. Who’s Joe, where is he and why do we want to see him?”

“I’ve
known him since my feebie days. He got out because, like me, the bureaucracy
strangled him. Now he’s making a fortune testing software for governments and
high-level corporations. And he lives in a damn fortress.”

“Exactly
where is he? And what makes you think we can drop in unannounced?”

She
rubbed her hand across her forehead. “He’s up in the panhandle. We’ve got about
a seven-hour drive. We could cut it short if we took the interstate but we’re
safer on the back roads.”

“Okay.
Safe is good. Definitely.” He was still trying to absorb the morning’s events.

“When we
get into an area with better cell service, we’ll use your orphan phone to call
him.” She slid a glance over at him. “Joe sees conspiracies everywhere so he
has a security system better than the one protecting the president. He has to
turn it off to let us in.”

“And he
won’t mind us showing up?”

She
smiled. “Joe and I bonded. We were both kind of outcasts. He said any time I
needed him to give him a holler.”

“So now
we’re hollering?”

“Now
we’re hollering.”

Trey was
still shaken by the encounter with the two men.

“You
know, by now those two guys will know who you are,” he pointed out, “and have
the license number for your truck. I’m sure they have a better tracking system
than the cops.”

“Thought
of that.” She made an abrupt left turn onto a narrow road topped by asphalt
badly in need of some repaving. “We’ll fix the now.”

Out the
windows, all he could see on either side were the empty stretches of
pastureland and rolling hills from which the Hill Country took its name.

“You
planning to ditch the truck and make us walk?” He was only half joking.

“Trust
me. We have options, and walking isn’t one of them.”

The
house seemed to rise up out of the prairie grass, worn and weather-beaten,
unlived in. Trey glanced over at Casey, puzzled. But then she drove toward the
far side of the house and the hulks of rusted cars and trucks in the overgrown
weeds.

Casey
reached into the console between the seats and pulled out a screwdriver. When
she hopped out of the truck, Trey followed her.

“Let
me,” he told her when she crouched in front of one of the old vehicles.

“I can
do it.”

“Casey,
I don’t think there’s much you can’t do, but at least let me feel a little
useful.”

She
handed him the tool then stood by while he switched out the license plates.

“I’m
surprised they left them on the junkers.” He stood up, passed her the
screwdriver and brushed off his hands.

“They’re
all expired. Come on. Let’s get going. We need to find a place with a strong
enough cell signal so we can call Joe.”

*****

Leo
Holland had a motherfucker of a headache, a lump on his skull and a bruise on
his ribs the size of Pittsburgh. Walter Price wasn’t doing much better. They’d
been out cold when customers, wondering why the restaurant hadn’t opened, had
come around to the rear and found them. Before they could get their wits
together, someone, thinking they’d been attacked, called the sheriff. It had
gone downhill from there.

They’d
gone from being victims to being suspects before they could turn around. They
told Sheriff Russell they were in town on a private matter. Price gave him the
story they were hunting for a business partner who’d backed out of a deal and
disappeared with all their cash. They’d tracked him here but he’d managed to
coldcock them when they weren’t expecting it. But Sheriff Ben Russell wanted to
know the name of the man and where Casey McIntyre was. Why she hadn’t opened
the restaurant. They were sure he didn’t buy their professed ignorance of her
but he couldn’t squeeze anything out of them. Still, he’d had a deputy trail
them out of town while he set up a search for Casey.

At
least, Holland thought, they’d learned the name of the female with the vicious
moves. If Haggerty stayed with her in that truck they had something to track. A
big if, though.

Both men
were silent until they crossed into the next county. Price, the driver at the
moment, pulled off the road when Holland told him they had a strong signal on
their cell phone.

“I’m not
anxious to make the call.” Holland tried to swallow the taste of fear lying on
his tongue. Bennett might have forgiven them one screw-up, but two? Their ass
was grass. “Maybe we could keep going until we hit the border and hide out in
Mexico.”

“Oh,
right.” Price scowled at him. “Right into Tobias Serrano’s hands. Smart move.
Brilliant idea.”

“Bennett’s
going to tear us a new one when we tell him what happened.” Holland shifted in
his seat. “Maybe you should make the call.”

“Uh uh.
You’re the go-to guy. You get to give him the news.” He checked his watch. “And
you’d better get on it. Those yoyos have a big head start on us by now.”

“Fucking
shit.” With a slightly trembling hand, Holland pulled the burner phone from his
pocket and punched the speed dial for the one number programmed into it.

“Is it
done?” Bennett asked. “You have him, right?”

Holland
ran his finger around his collar, which suddenly choked him. “Uh, not exactly.”

Bennett’s
roar was so loud even Price jumped and paled.

Holland
launched into the details, wishing he could beam himself to another planet.

Chapter Thirteen

“So
you’re saying they found me through my computer?” Trey still couldn’t shake off
the aftermath of the episode although they’d been on the road for two hours.

“It’s
the only way,” Casey told him. “He’s got to have a very sophisticated
programmer if they could pinpoint you even to the restaurant.”

He
frowned. “Then…why didn’t they catch me before? I always worried I’d tripped
some signal when I first breached the firewall. Why didn’t they trap me then?”

“Can’t
say, except they must have upped their security in the last twenty-four hours.
Inserted something special.” She wiped a palm on her jeans before gripping the
wheel again. “Maybe they were so arrogant they didn’t think anyone could break
in. Or more to the point believed
you
couldn’t do it.” She slid a quick
glance at him. “How
did
you do it, anyway?”

He gave
a short laugh. “My misspent youth. I had a computer geek for a college roommate
who taught me the finer points of hacking. I’m damn lucky he didn’t get us both
tossed in prison.”

They
drove a bit longer in thick silence.

Finally
Trey asked, “So where does Joe Panko live? I don’t even know where the hell we
are, except on a lot of back country roads.”

“And a
good thing,” she told him. “You can bet your very nice ass they’ll have eyes on
the major highways. I’ll bet they’re frustrated out of their little evil minds
they can’t get a read on the license plate.”

“Yeah.
Bennett knows enough cops he could reach out to. He could feed them some line
of bull, and who wouldn’t want to do the great and powerful Charles Bennett a
favor?”

“The
next thing they’ll try is a search for pickups in dark grey. I hope to be at
Joe’s before they can get themselves in gear.”

“And
Joe’s would be where?” he asked again.

“Texas
Panhandle. In a little town I’m sure no one’s ever heard of, in a fortress that
doesn’t encourage casual drop-ins.”

“But
he’s just going to open his doors to us?” Trey couldn’t keep the skepticism out
of his voice.

“Nope.
In about fifteen minutes, we’re going to hit a town about the size of Connolly
where I’m going to buy a burner phone and let him know we’re coming.” She
smiled. “I’ll bet when he gave me his number all those years ago and said to
call him if I needed him, he didn’t expect me to take him up on it.”

He
didn’t know quite how to phrase the next question. “Did he…were you…I mean, oh,
fuck it. Never mind. It’s none of my business.”

She
reached over and gave his thigh a quick squeeze.

“No, we
weren’t,” she answered his unspoken question. “Lovers, I mean. Just good
friends. I knew him from the FBI. He left because he wanted to focus on his
computers and programming and he felt the bureaucracy restricted him.”

“Was he
right?”

She
shrugged. “Partially. But Joe marches to his own drummer. He was never cut out
to be a suit and tie guy, anyway.”

When
they stopped to buy phones, they also went through a fast food drive-through.
Neither of them had eaten yet and while Trey didn’t think he could swallow
anything with the bubble of fear still lodged in his throat, starving himself
didn’t appear to be a good option.

They
parked at the back of the restaurant parking lot while they ate and disposed of
their trash. Then Casey called her friend, smiling when she disconnected.

“What
did he say?”

“After
he got over the shock of hearing my voice?” Her lips turned up in a small grin.
“He said come on down. He’d be waiting.”

“No
questions? All you told him was you had a problem and needed his help. Not much
else.”

“Joe
gave me his private number as a friend, knowing I wouldn’t abuse it. When I
told him I had trouble, he didn’t waste time asking for details. Time enough
when we get there.”

“Want me
to drive awhile?” Trey asked. “You could give me directions.”

“No, I’m
good.” Casey rubbed her hands over her face as if to scrub her nerves awake.
“Anyway, Joe lives too far off the beaten path for me to tell you how to get
there.”

He
couldn’t help but agree with her as they rocketed along more narrow country
roads with few markers. The terrain had become flat, unrelieved by anything
except houses set in the middle of nowhere and windmills reaching skyward like
metal aliens, their blades spinning like mad things.

“Jesus,
who lives out here?” he asked. “Lunatics?”

Casey
laughed. “You’d be surprised. Dairy farmers, hog farmers, people in oil and gas
exploration. And wind farms are popping up everywhere because there is such a
strong, constant airstream here.”

“No
shit.” He stared out the window as they drew closer to one of those things.
“They look like aliens lined up to attack the planet.”

“What
they do might save the planet.”

“So,
your friend, Joe. I’m gathering he’s not into cows or pigs?”

She
chuckled again. “Hardly. He has an electronic setup that would make the NSA or
the CIA drool. He does work for private clients, the optimum word being
private. With his security system, it’s pretty hard for anyone to sneak up on
him.”