Jake nods in agreement. “Understood?”
I lick my suddenly dry lips and nod. “Understood.”
Jake stares me down for a long moment, as if he’s assessing my response and deciding if I can be counted on in a pinch. Whatever he sees in my eyes seems to satisfy him.
“We’ll need wheels to get Brittany away in a hurry if we end up springing her,” he tells me.
“We’ll leave you with the car and the shotgun,” Max adds.
I swallow. Mama always warned me to be careful about what I volunteered for. This certainly fits the bill, yet I don’t regret my impulsive offer to go along, no matter how much the prospect of what may lie ahead terrifies me.
Jake steps back from the chair and mutters, “We need our fucking heads examined.”
Max shoots him a sardonic look before he finally releases my arm. “Just point and shoot that thing if you need to,” he tells me matter-of-factly.
I nod slowly. “As long as Brittany isn’t around.”
They exchange a concerned look. At the mere thought of me with a gun, or at the idea that I might end up in a situation in which Brittany is nearby and I have to shoot?
“Right,” Jake finally says. “But if Brittany is there, she should be coming out with us.”
“And if you’re not with her?” I ask.
They stare back at me without comment.
I realize that will only happen if Jake and Max have been taken out or are otherwise occupied, leaving me alone to face one or more armed gangsters.
“That shouldn’t happen,” Jake assures me.
Shouldn’t.
Chapter Thirty
It hasn’t taken me long to disregard my first directive of the night. It’s been almost an hour since I dropped off Jake and Max on the shoulder of a secondary road. They are now making their way through several hundred yards of forest to our target, an old country farmhouse a few miles into Wisconsin. My instructions were to drive around the back roads while they crept through the woods. I did so for about ten minutes before my nerves got the better of me. What if I got into an accident or attracted attention from the local cops? What if the beaten-up old 2009 Dodge Journey Max had requisitioned from his son broke down? Max assures me it runs much better than it looks, but the rust spots, dents, and scrapes adorning its oxidized black paint don’t inspire much confidence. Looking on the bright side, aside from the Illinois plates, it fits right into the neighborhood.
I’ve pulled into a little stand of bushes off the side of the road about three miles from our target. From here, the Journey should be pretty much invisible from the crumbling asphalt road—not that there’s much traffic. The evening air is cool and heavy with humidity. The rain has stopped for now and the sky is clearing, but the ground is still damp. Water drips from the trees, and there’s a little haze hanging ten or twelve feet in the air. It will develop into ground fog in the coming hours. I’ve stopped obsessively checking my watch. What’s the point in tracking every single minute that crawls by? For maybe the fiftieth time, I heft the shotgun and mimic aiming and shooting until the motion feels somewhat familiar—or at least not totally foreign.
It’s eleven thirty-seven when the tip of what will be a full moon finally edges above the horizon. Jake and Max should be in position; they’d timed their excursion through the woods to arrive just before moonrise so they’d have darkness for their approach and moonlight to operate with after arriving. As we were on the evening when we spirited Papa out of the country, we’re dressed head to toe in black, complete with ski caps pulled low over our foreheads and ears. Just like any other self-respecting SWAT team, we’re outfitted with the latest personal cell phones to coordinate our stealth mission. As if on cue, mine vibrates in my jacket pocket.
The text from Jake is a simple letter A. I don’t respond. I’m to keep off the phone unless some sort of emergency arises that Jake and Max absolutely have to know about—bad guys coming, tanks, the plague, that sort of thing. The text notifies me that Jake and Max are in position at the farmhouse. It also signifies that I’m to move to my initial post, which is a stand of trees in a turnout about two miles from the farmhouse. Our plan is a little threadbare from this point forward. Jake is carrying our one piece of technology, a compact directional listening device they hope will give them an idea of what’s happening in and around the farmhouse. We’ll see. Jake browbeat J.P. Duclos of the FBI into agreeing to give him a heads-up if the FBI Hostage Rescue Team deviates from its scheduled assault on Target One, with the understanding that the information was for his ears only.
“She’s gonna have my ass if she finds out you’re with us,” Jake had warned me in the car on our way here.
“J.P. is a woman?” I asked.
Jake nodded. “Yup.”
“I’ve never heard a woman called J.P. before,” I said. Rather stupidly, now that I think about it.
Jake smiled. “Exactly. She claims it helps the troglodytes to accept her bio and reputation without having to sort through their sexist baggage. Seems to work most of the time.”
Max had chuckled and told Jake, “When she finds out that we’re out here, she’ll have your balls, too.”
“If so, she’ll be the first woman to show any interest in them in years,” Jake retorted with a laugh.
The exchange had loosened the tension in the car for an instant, but not by much. I could use another break in the stress that begins to squeeze my chest when text B arrives
