He smiled at me in return. “Definitely not. First one in a while though. I’m actually excited about it! At least, I will be for the first fifteen minutes or so, until I remember just how boring stake-outs tend to be. So what do you know?”
I recounted everything I’d found out with Chief Gary, and then discovered on the smugglers’ social media profiles. “So I figure if we get onto I84 they’ll eventually drive past us to get to I5.”
“That’s probably correct. We’ll find an exit with a bridge, park there and look down at cars heading west on I84. If we see their car, we’ll follow it. How’s that sound?”
“Great,” I nodded enthusiastically. “The only thing is, I’m not sure what kind of car they’ll be driving.”
“What about the post he did from the desert?” Jason asked. “Can you get any information from that?”
“Hmmm,” I said, opening the post again on my phone. We were in luck! The steering wheel on the phone, which was obviously in view, showed that the car being driven was a Toyota. “Ok! We know it’s a Toyota. And it looks to be kind of high up off the ground, so I’d say a truck or SUV rather than a sedan.”
“All right, so now we have something. Go through the rest of the photos and see if you can find a picture that might have it on the outside, if we can narrow down the model and color I think we’ll be golden; traffic in the middle of the night won’t be that heavy, and we should be able to approximate when they’ll show up.”
I did as Jason asked as we drove out of Willow Bay. Sure enough, I eventually found in Kerry’s Instagram feed a picture of her with a red Toyota Rav4–newish, but not brand new–in the background.
“Ok, we’ve got it. We’re looking for a three-to-five-year-old red Rav4.”
“Awesome,” Jason grinned. “We’ve got ourselves a stake-out!”
As much as I’d like to say the entire trip to the interstate was interesting, the fact of the matter was I was completely exhausted after barely sleeping the night before and having a pretty exciting day today as well. I ended up passing out before we even reached the highway leaving Willow Bay, and when I finally woke up, the clock on the dashboard read that it was just after midnight.
“Well hello there, sleepyhead,” Jason told me as he sipped from a Red Bull. I’m glad you’re up, this means I can open the chips without feeling bad about waking you up,” he said, reaching behind him and grabbing the bag.
“Urgh, where are we?” I mumbled, still feeling half asleep.
“We’re in the Benson Lake parking lot,” Jason replied. I looked out the window and saw headlights in the distance; a moment later a truck passed about twenty feet in front of us. “We’ve been here for about an hour. Don’t worry, I’ve kept an eye out. No red Rav4s yet.”
“Thanks,” I told him. “Sorry for falling asleep. I guess I’m not the greatest stake-out buddy ever.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jason replied, reaching in and grabbing a handful of chips. “You were obviously completely exhausted. I had Red Bull, and even if I didn’t, I don’t really have anything to do tomorrow. It’s better that you get some sleep.”
“I feel better now,” I replied, grabbing a Red Bull myself and drinking half the can in a single gulp. I stared out the window and realized just how good a spot Jason had chosen.
“Wow, you’re basically a stake-out expert. This is great! I never would have thought to come here.” The parking lot for the lake was literally in the middle of the highway; pedestrian tunnels allowed people parked here to access the lake. Directly in front of where we were parked was the westbound highway, and this exit had streetlights lining the road as well so we could see clearly the make, model and color of any car coming past.
Jason grinned. “You’re going to love me even more. I went out to stretch my legs when we got here, and I found an old abandoned construction zone sign on the shoulder of the highway, along with an old traffic cone. I made sure no one was coming and went and put it up, so most cars will possibly slow down just a little bit when they drive past.”
“Geez, why have I been taking Sophie with me on adventures? You’re so much better at this stuff than she is,” I said, and Jason laughed.
“All right. Now all we have to do is sit and wait, and hope they actually come this way.”
I reached for a bag of chips of my own.
Chapter 18
Four hours later it was the middle of the night, the adrenaline of the stake-out had worn off, I’d eaten way too many chips and I was starting to get antsy that we hadn’t seen them yet.
“What if they don’t come this way?” I asked Jason. “What if we just sit here until sun-up and they’re long gone? Maybe they took an inside route and went straight to I5 from the south.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. Those routes might normally be faster, but there’s a lot of construction work happening on a lot of the minor highways right now to prepare for winter. They’re going to want to come this way not only because it’s going to be faster, but because near construction zones there tend to be more cops, and the last thing they want is to get pulled over if they have smuggled animals in their car.”
“That makes sense,” I said.
“Still, you’re right. It’s a very real possibility. Assuming Trevor took the photo a few minutes before he posted it on Facebook, they should be coming by in the next hour at the very latest, assuming they stopped for dinner somewhere.”
“Great,” I muttered, stifling a yawn and popping open another Red Bull. Jason knew what he was doing when he’d bought a dozen of them. Unfortunately, I’d already had to go out and pee outside a couple of times because of it.
Suddenly a pair of headlights came toward us. That in and of itself wasn’t the least bit strange; we’d seen hundreds of cars and trucks go by in the last few hours, but what was strange was that it seemed to slam on its brakes as soon as it saw the old construction sign Jason had put up, like they absolutely didn’t under any circumstances want to get caught doing over the speed limit. Plenty of cars going by had simply straight up ignored the sign.
As soon as I saw the deep red color and the familiar shape of the Toyota Rav4, I perked up. I tried to peer inside and noticed a wavy-haired woman driving and a male passenger before the car got out of view.
“I think that’s them,” Jason said, starting up his car and pulling out onto the freeway behind them. Luckily there weren’t any other cars around, so we didn’t need to stay right on them. Jason left a hundred feet or so between us, to keep them from getting suspicious.
I wondered what would happen if they made it to I5 and up into Washington. After all, I couldn’t leave the state.
“Did you find out anything about the assault Matt Smith was involved in?” I asked Jason suddenly, remembering that I’d asked him to look into that.
He grinned and looked at me in reply. “Yeah. It’s a funny story, that one. The short version is that Matt Smith crossed the river into Vancouver, and decided to go to a bar there. Apparently there was a girl he liked, and he didn’t exactly take kindly to her telling him off. She was just hanging out with friends and apparently he was being a huge creep.”
“Gee, I’m shocked,” I replied sarcastically.
“So the girl ends up calling her boyfriend, who shows up and tells Smith to get lost. He leaves the bar, but waits in the bushes for the girl’s boyfriend to leave, and tries to beat him up. Unfortunately for him, Smith was completely drunk at this point, whereas the guy was stone cold sober, and had about a hundred pounds on him. Smith ended up with a broken nose and an arrest on his record.”