“So let’s grab the utility cart,” I said. “It’s sturdy and fast and—”
“Not yet. I need to know if we’re dealing with two suspects, or a suspect and a hostage.”
He had a point. Those were very different scenarios.
“Which do you think it is?”
He shook his head, agitated. “The answer’s right there. I’ve seen the answer. But I haven’t been able to put it together.”
I knew what he was feeling. Somewhere in the maze of motive and machinations, media and money, there was the thread of a solution. Unfortunately, the security camera footage was grainy and unhelpful. It showed Portia and Quint approaching the Ferrari, its lights flashing as it unlocked for them. Trey’s jaw clenched. I understood. It was like watching a faithful dog lick the hand of an enemy.
He hit the freeze frame, pointed. “Quint has a gun.”
I peered at the image. Definitely a gun, most likely the .357 Trey had spotted in the golf clubs. But once the car was unlocked, neither he nor Portia hesitated. Quint threw himself in the driver’s seat and Portia climbed in the other side…exactly unlike a hostage. I noticed something else—she had her new carry bag with her, the one I’d picked out.
“Two suspects,” I said. “Portia probably has a gun in that bag, probably a LeMat.”
“Does she know how to shoot one?”
“I am sure she does. She pretended otherwise in my shop, but that was an act. Which I fell for, because the next day I sent black powder and caps and—what are you doing?”
Trey abandoned the array for the closet in the corner of his suite. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now I saw the keypad and the industrial lock, and I knew that nondescript closet for what it was—a weapons locker. He punched in the code and the door unlocked with a beep. He reached inside and snatched up two handguns, plus two mags filled with red and black projectiles, each one the size of a marble.
“Paintballs?”
He shook his head. “PAVA tens. Capsaicin powder. Like we used in the simulation, only not inert.”
Damn straight capsaicin wasn’t inert. A hit with one of those would guarantee hours of tears and mucus and hellfire. And Trey was loading up two handguns and a carbine rifle and shoving back-up mags in his pocket.
“Same specs as in the training,” he said. “Pneumatic. Semi-auto. Target accurate to sixty feet, area saturation up to one hundred and fifty, so don’t use it in an enclosed space.”
He snapped the magazine on the side of the rifle. The thing was ninja black and had laser sights. It looked as deadly as an AK-47, which was deterrent in itself.
He handed me one of the handguns. “Do you have your .38?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He started to move past me, and I grabbed his arm. “Don’t you think you should have something with some real bullets in it too?”
“No. But even if I did, there’s nothing to have here. It’s all less-than-lethal.”
“But—”
“We don’t have time to argue about this.”
He shook free and headed for the door. He didn’t wait for me, and I didn’t give him a chance to. He grabbed the keys to the utility cart and his radio. “Jonathon, do you read?”
“Yes, sir. I’m headed your way. Local PD responding with a ETA of eight minutes, GSP scrambling a roadblock and clearing 75.”
“Affirmative. I’m in pursuit.”
“Sir? Did you say…?”
“Seaver out.”
Trey shut the door and jogged toward the cart parked next to a stack of firewood. He threw me the keys and got into the passenger seat. “You drive. I’ll track the Ferrari and monitor the radio. You—”
“Trey!”
He stopped talking. “What?”
“Look at me.”
He exhaled, looked me straight in the eye. He was bleary-eyed, taut like razor wire, but he was in there. I could see him clearly. And he wasn’t hesitating about having me along at all.
I hopped in and cranked up the cart. “Hold on tight.”
Chapter Fifty-two
Trey might have had lousy mantracking skills, but even he could follow the Ferrari. It left huge scrapes in the manicured grass, like the rake of giant fingernails. The kick-up of white grit revealed where it had almost gotten stuck in the sand trap. After that, the tracks took a sharp turn to the right and ran parallel to the edge of thickly wooded rough, disappearing in the distance. From the looks of the untrimmed kudzu, there was no way even a four-wheel utility cart was getting through.
Trey waved his hand at me. “Stop!”
I slammed the brakes. “What?”
“Do you hear the engine?”
I listened. The Ferrari was audible from half a mile, but now I heard nothing. No engine, no sirens, no traffic. Only the light hiss of the rain and our own breathing.
Trey checked his phone. “The signal is gone.”
“How? I’ve got a hotspot on my wrist.”
“The navigational system has blackout areas up here. This could be one. Regardless, it’s not tracking the car any longer.” He pointed off to the right, to where the tracks disappeared. “They found a path around, somewhere down there.”
“We could follow. Or we could cut through on foot.”
Trey got out of the cart. “Through. And then head left toward the ruins.”
He started off into the trees. I followed. Camouflaged by the shifting fog and thick foliage, we moved silently, our footsteps dampened by wet pine straw. I had my .38 in one hand, the pepperball-loaded pistol in the other. And my brain kept pummeling me with one thought: what in the hell are you doing, Tai Randolph?
I knew what Trey was doing. He was showing up. It was what he did. The call came, and he went, his entire mindset condensed to that one Pavlovian reaction. But why was I out here? And why did it feel as natural as breathing?
We threaded through the tangled green kudzu, briars catching on my jeans. These woods felt ominous, like the forests children were warned to avoid in fairy tales. The dread intensified when I spotted the crumbling walls of the ruins looming rust-gray through the
