Clearly has no sense of security. Anyone could do practically anything to a car left out in the open that way. The irony of that thought put a smile on his face. Some people aren’t as smart as they like to think they are.
He made as if he was going between two other cars, turning in at a red SUV, then ducked down and worked his way behind the vehicles to the gray Lincoln. It took him only moments to place the device on the undercarriage of the car. Then he made his way back to the red SUV—what a horrible color for a car—and then ambled back the way he’d come as if he had all the time in the world.
Once behind the wheel again it took him only a moment to turn on the tracking display. The tiny blinking dot on the map assured him the device he’d just placed was working.
He sat back, kept the brim of his hat down, and waited.
His reward came about ten minutes later, when the “three amigos” came out of the building. Another suitcase joined the first in the trunk, and in barely a minute, the Lincoln was back on the road, this time headed west.
He hung back some distance, giving his quarry room. Confused, he kept driving when the Lincoln left Waco behind, still heading west. He was nearly a half-mile back when the Lincoln turned left, now heading south.
Nothing out here but fucking fields and cow turds. Still, the tracker was working, so he followed. He passed a roadhouse that seemed to be doing a good business, but that dot kept heading south and so he did, too. He frowned when he came upon a wooden sign that announced a place called Lusty. He was close enough now to see the Lincoln up ahead as it turned onto a street and pulled to a stop in front of the tiniest house he’d ever seen.
His three targets emerged from the Lincoln, taking themselves and the two suitcases inside. He drove another few blocks and saw the town was ending. The tracker still blinked but showed no movement, so he hadn’t even driven out of range.
Turning his car around, he drove back through the small town. Just ahead, the Lincoln pulled out, drove two whole blocks, and stopped at what appeared to be a small grocery store.
This place must be home, then. “Weird name for a town, Lusty. Weird, but easy to remember.”
Now that he knew where his quarry was based, he could head back to his motel and plan. There wasn’t much to this Lusty. He was a smart man and sure as hell knew how to plan an op—something that in his opinion was an overrated skill. Who couldn’t figure out the best way to get what you wanted?
He would watch, and he would wait. He might come in the middle of the night and see if he could get eyes and ears in that tiny house. That might be interesting. And how hard could it be? He’d check out the pawnshops and see what they had in electronic surveillance equipment. He’d only brought a couple of trackers with him.
Yes, he would plan it all out very carefully. And when he was ready, he would strike.
He aimed his car back toward Waco. He’d passed a motel not far from the turn he’d taken off the state highway. He’d get his stuff from the city and move to that motel and use it as his base so he could be closer to his target’s home.
Everything was finally coming together for him.
“Assholes won’t see it coming, but they sure as hell are gonna know it’s been there.” He laughed at his own joke then drove back to the Texan city that, for the last couple of weeks, had been his new home.
Chapter Six
“This place is amazing.” Mary felt as if she was in one of those big box stores—except for the absence of a line of cash registers. It was so huge she felt tiny. And having heard the tales her cousins-in-law shared on the way over, she also felt humbled.
She thought she’d understood how different Lusty was before she moved here. Now she knew it wasn’t just different, it was special.
“It’s been one of our more successful ventures,” Samantha Kendall said. “Our first iteration of a storage place for things that others might use was a barn at the original site of Adam, Warren, and Amanda’s first farm—the one Warren lived at when he first came to the area from Philadelphia.”
“He wanted to be well outside of the larger city so that he could be private with his lover.” Mary understood that, but more, she marveled that the two men were brave enough in those harsh times to be true to themselves and each other.
“Now, we generally start at the bedrooms—the master bedroom and one or two secondary ones. I think, in the case of Christopher, we’ll do that. I did consider just furnishing the master bedroom, but I don’t know how his mind and his heart are doing at the moment. A breakup is one thing, but this…losing the love of your life to a horrible disease is something entirely different.”
Mary felt her conscience twinge. Usually, she was happy enough to leave well enough alone. She very rarely shared confidences or things she discovered about others. But perhaps in this case, since the person who’d been the source of her secret insider information could no longer be hurt by her revelations, she should speak up—at least to her aunt.
“Sometimes a breakup can be like a death,” she said. “The death of hopes and dreams, of the future once joyfully imagined.” She watched her aunt and wasn’t disappointed by what she saw in that woman’s eyes.
“Indeed.”
