She pulled the Jeep into the dirt lot and parked it in a space facing the road, then she jumped out, locked it, and quickly crossed the street to duck inside the warehouse. She started a timer on her watch, knowing that at the earliest she needed to be at the Santa Maria airport in forty-five minutes. If the sedan didn’t show in twenty, she would send the signal to her ride and proceed to the pickup.
But as it turned out, she didn’t have to wait even half that. From the shadows just inside the open garage door, Chen saw the silver sedan that had been following her slow as it neared the used car dealership, confirming her suspicion that her pursuer had somehow tagged her vehicle with a tracking device. As the BMW M5 sport sedan came to a stop, the memory of a car running a red light in Long Beach flashed in her mind.
Could it be?
It was hardly the only silver BMW in Southern California, but it was too much of a coincidence to ignore. She leaned forward, straining to see the driver through the dark tint, but flinched when the driver’s door flew open. This time, she needed no help in remembering where she had seen this person. It wasn’t often you saw a muscular Black man in a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt.
“Son of a bitch,” she said. Then she stepped out into the light.
24
Rick stared with dismay at the Jeep through the windshield. He suspected TANDY had made him in Pismo Beach, and ditching the Jeep for a clean set of wheels all but confirmed it. He glanced down at his phone and saw the blue beacon of the GPS tracker pulsing from the used car dealership on his right.
“Well, shit,” he said, shifting the BMW into park.
He opened the door and stepped out into the warm California sun, looking across the roof of his car at the metallic blue Jeep resting in a space bordering the street. He walked around the front of his car and approached the lot, stepping over the rusted chain draped between two poles in front of the Wrangler.
The SUV was still warm. Heat radiated from it as he reached his hand into the grill and felt for the tracking device. It was right where he had left it. He pulled it out and slipped it into his pocket just as the front door to the small brick building opened and a thin man with short-cropped dark hair and tanned skin walked out.
“Help you?”
Rick smiled at him, though he didn’t feel much like smiling. “Just looking,” he said.
The man furrowed his brow when he saw the Jeep, obviously questioning whether it belonged in his inventory. “Those four-door Wranglers are pretty nice,” the salesman said, deciding to just go with it.
Anything for a sale, right?
Rick scanned the lot, looking for a clue that another car had been taken. “Sell many?”
“Not really,” the man said as he neared the Jeep. “Haven’t had one on the lot for some time.”
“How long have you had this one?”
He gave Rick a confused look. “To be honest, I’m not even sure this one’s in our inventory. But I’m sure I can help you…”
An honest used car salesman after all, Rick thought.
“No, that’s all right,” he said. “You didn’t happen to see who parked it here, did you?”
The salesman’s confused look turned into one of suspicion. “Can’t say that I did.”
Rick gave him a placating smile and nodded. “Well, thanks for your time.”
“What did you say your name was?”
He noticed the salesman had remained on the other side of the Jeep and was appraising him with a healthy dose of skepticism. Not that Rick blamed him, but it was interesting to see how quickly he had gone from expecting an easy sale to wondering if Rick was involved in something shady.
“I didn’t,” Rick said. “Thanks again.”
He turned back to his car and stepped over the rusted chain, scanning up and down the street for any sign of his prey. He supposed she could have ditched the Jeep and taken a car from the parking lot next door, but with so many to choose from at the dealership, why would she go to the trouble?
Rick opened the door and slipped into the Napa leather seat. He gave the salesman an uneasy wave through the windshield, then put the car into drive and pulled away from the curb. Consulting his map, he figured he could cut across the Santa Maria Valley and rejoin the 101. He glanced down at the passenger seat to the note he had scrawled.
CAL POLY FACULTY?
There was something there, and he needed to pursue it more.
Rick turned left on West Main Street and waited until he had passed the residential neighborhoods on both sides of him before picking up his phone. He was tempted to call Punky again but figured it would just go straight to voicemail, and he wasn’t sure he could handle the frustration. He had decided on calling his supervisor to update him on the surveillance, but he stopped when he saw a message waiting for him in the secure portal.
“What now?” he groaned.
He logged in and waited for the message to download, glancing up at the straight stretch of road in front of him. He saw nothing but commercial fertilizer tenders and other large trucks on both sides of the road cutting between fields of broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce. A glance in his rearview mirror revealed the distant grill of a Kenworth semitruck, distorted by the heat shimmering from the pavement.
“Yeah, the M5 was a good choice,” he said, chastising himself for borrowing the low-slung BMW sport sedan.
He lifted the phone to his face and cursed when he read the message he should have caught earlier.
1. NAVY LT COLT BANCROFT. TOPGUN INSTRUCTOR.
2. ABOARD COD FOR NORTH ISLAND.
Rick exited the portal and dialed Punky’s number. “Come on, kid. Pick up!”
To his surprise, she answered his call after one ring, and he heard the Corvette’s exhaust rumbling beneath the wind noise. “Uncle Rick!”
“Have you seen the latest?”
She ignored his question like she usually did. “Is everything okay? Did she make you?”
He didn’t want to tell her that she had made him and that she had ditched the marked vehicle and was in the wind, so he took a page out of her playbook and ignored her questions. “Listen, she knows the pilot’s name. He’s on his way back from the ship.”
She paused, then said, “He’s with me.”
“With you?”
“Yeah, I’m taking him someplace safe.”
“Punky…”
A flash of movement distracted him from completing his thought, and he glanced up into the rearview mirror in time to see the red-and-white Kenworth logo filling his rear window. Instinctively, he stomped his foot on the gas to feed fuel to the twin-turbo V8, but the subtle lag was just enough to delay accessing all six hundred horses, and the semitruck had already reached ramming speed.
In the instant it took his turbochargers to spool up, the Kenworth veered to the left as if to pass, then pulled even with his rear wheels. He recognized the signs of an impending classic PIT, or Pursuit Intervention Technique, but not early enough to stop the truck from darting back into his lane and clipping his tail.
He felt the rear end give out and tried turning into the skid, but it was too late. He lost control.
Punky held the phone against her ear in horror as she listened to what sounded like a car accident unfolding on the other end. She heard screeching metal, the faint tinkling of glass, and the pained grunts of her partner and father’s best friend.
“Uncle Rick!” she screamed.
The call ended, and she quickly hit redial.
“What’s going on?” Colt asked from the passenger seat.