I shifted uncomfortably. “Fine. How we gonna do that?”
“With the very latest in detection equipment. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
Grayson shot me a sour face and reached into his breast pocket. “It’s a newfangled gadget called a ‘cellphone.’”
“Oh.”
Grayson punched a key on his phone and handed it to me. “Here.”
I snatched the phone from his hand, my face burning with embarrassment. “I thought they just gave out GPS signals. Who knew you could track somebody else’s cellphone with a stupid phone app?”
Grayson’s eyebrow shot up. “Everyone except you, apparently. Weren’t you listening to anything Garth and I said?”
I cringed. I really had tried to. But their geek-speak was like chloroform to my attention span. “I guess I kind of lost it when I saw that video of Jimmy.”
“It was shocking,” Grayson said. “What could make someone gain forty pounds in a matter of days?”
I shook my head. “That’s such a guy question. I once gained five pounds just looking through a bakery shop window.”
Grayson stared at me blankly. “So, which way do I turn?”
I stared at the phone, trying to figure out the app. “Sorry. How’s this thing work?”
“I already input Garth’s phone number,” Grayson said. “All you have to do is press the little green button marked ‘Go.’”
My ears went up in flames. “Oh.”
I clicked the button. A map popped onto the display. “Wow. That’s pretty cool.”
“Handy, isn’t it?”
“Oh, look!” I said. “A red dot. And it’s moving!”
“Excellent. We’ve got a bead on Jimmy. Which way is he headed?”
I grabbed some cheater glasses out of the glove compartment and slapped them on my nose. “Uh ... south. Out of town. Take a right.”
Grayson turned the steering wheel to the right, maneuvering the old Minnie Winnie onto a rural state road not much wider than the one we’d just left.
I glanced down at the phone again. “Okay, good. Go straight ahead for a mile or two.”
“Is Jimmy stationary, or still moving?”
“Moving, I think.”
Grayson gave a quick nod, his gaze glued to the road ahead. “Keep an eye on the signal. Let me know when we’re close.”
“I will.”
But as I watched the dark woods flit by the passenger window, anxiety began to grow in my gut. I studied Grayson for a moment, then posed a question.
“Are you sure it’s such a good idea to be doing this without backup?”
Grayson straightened in his driver’s seat, but kept his eyes on the road. “Why would we need backup?”
“Uh...let’s see. We’re alone. At night. On some backwoods road to Hicksville—tracking a young, possibly plague-ridden cop who happens to be armed with a service revolver and a freakin’ sword. Did I mention he’s been acting unstable lately?”
Grayson shrugged. “There has to be a reasonable explanation for Jimmy’s behavior, Drex. And remember, we’re doing this in the service of a friend. Garth asked us to keep the cops out of it for his brother’s sake.”
I blew out a sigh. “I know. Take the next right.”
Grayson shook his head. “There is no right.”
I rolled my eyes. “This is no time to get philosophical.”
“No,” Grayson said. “There is nowhere to turn right.”
I glanced back down at the display. “There should be. It says on the map here that Jimmy’s vehicle is off to the right about three hundred feet ahead.”
Grayson strained to see the road ahead. “If he is, he’s gone off-road.”
I stared at the woods in the fading sunset. Grayson was right. There was nothing to the right or left of us but an uninterrupted thicket of palmettos, cypress, and pines.
“What the?” I pressed my nose to the window pane for a better look. Suddenly, the RV veered off onto the shoulder, causing me to bang my head on the window.
“Ow!” I grumbled. “You could give a girl some warning, you know.”
“You’re the one who’s holding the tracking device,” Grayson said calmly. “What did you expect me to do? Fly over the trees like ET?”
Well, now that you mention it...
“I dunno,” I grumbled. “I guess we’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot.”
I jerked open the door and tumbled out of the RV. “Yuck!” I squealed as I sunk up to my ankles in mud.
“What is it?” Grayson asked.
“Forget it! This place is a bog!” I said as I climbed back in. “We’d better get out of here before we get—”
“Stuck?” Grayson said, then punched the gas.
The tires spun.
The RV shimmied.
But we weren’t going anywhere.
“Great. Just great!” I yelled, and kicked the floorboard with my muddy boot. “We’re gonna need a tow to get out of this mess.”
“Excellent deduction, cadet,” Grayson said. “Call your cousin Earl.”
“What?” I gasped.
Grayson eyed me dully. “You said it yourself. We need a tow.”
“Come on, Grayson! It’ll take Earl hours to get here. We should call someone local.”
“Then Jimmy will find out about our investigation.”
I frowned. “How do you figure that?”
But I already knew the answer. In small towns like these, the local grapevine didn’t have very far to swing. Jimmy would know what we were up to before we could make it back to Garth’s compound.
Still, Earl?
“B...but—” I stammered.
Grayson cut me off. “Given the swampy terrain, we’re going to require Earl’s monster truck to track down Jimmy anyway. It’s a win-win, Drex.”
“Sounds more like a lose-lose, if you ask me.”
Grayson’s cheek dimpled. “The sooner you call, the sooner he’ll get here.”
I swatted a mosquito and groaned. “I know. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Chapter Eight
“Earl says it’ll take him a couple hours to get here,” I said, clicking off the phone.
I glanced over at Grayson. He was busy adding antennae to the smiley faces he’d drawn in the condensation on the windshield.
Not exactly what I’d call a “confidence booster.”
While my partner scrawled a few final flourishes on his windowpane masterpiece, I checked the cellphone display. The blip indicating Jimmy’s location blinked, then faded out before my eyes.
“He’s gone!” I gasped, nudging Grayson with my elbow.
His long, tapered finger jerked on the windshield, spoiling the curlicue on an otherwise impressive alien moustache.
“Earl’s gone?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
