Chapter 25
Even with umpteen redundant surveillance cameras, at least two of what Tom assured Gabe were the highest quality night-vision military security drones flying overhead, and his Sig Sauer on his hip, the back of Gabe's neck prickled as the pre-dawn chill oozed out of the shadows, wrapping them in Coastal Oregon's version of a gothic mist.
How time flew. A day and a half ago, he'd kissed Cara in this same alley where she was now loading gear into a convoy heading toward people who wanted to kill them.
Yet another reason he was growing to hate this case. Helping Skye—and now Owen—and hoping to score another blow against Neptune were all worthy goals, but there were moments, more and more of them lately, where he wished he and Cara could actually date like regular people.
The lot behind Sugar & Salt at o-dark-thirty was bleak and fog-damp.
The three vehicles—their version of a motorized shell game—waited side by side.
Gabe walked the line, checking doors and gear.
He'd done the same pre-mission walk a hundred times with a badge in his pocket and federal backup a radio call away.
The plan was a good one. Or as good as they could come up with in the time allotted. The three vehicles were the shells, Owen the pea. Neptune would have no idea which vehicle he'd be in. Hopefully, that would divide the bad guys' resources from the opening.
Wade's decoy had a dummy Owen in the rear passenger seat.
Reagan had approached the construction with the same competence she brought to the firearms paperwork.
Fake Owen wore the spare poly-pro. Piper had handled the glasses with an artistic flair Gabe had no idea the brilliant teen possessed.
She'd grabbed cheap readers from Pearl's Mercantile, taping them to the Styrofoam wig head at a slight angle that, Gabe conceded privately, captured something true about Owen's default expression.
Wade had looked at it for a long moment and said nothing, which was verdict enough.
After he finished his examination of the last vehicle, Reagan's little SUV, a square of warm light hit the damp pavement.
Diane was in the left window with her coffee. Beside her — the right window, the alley-side one — Piper stood with Agent draped over her shoulder. The cat appeared comfortable. Piper appeared to be pretending she hadn't been awake for two hours.
She hadn't argued about spending the next few days at Diane's, but she had argued that Agent couldn't stand being alone at night.
Cara had rolled her eyes. Owen reported that the prevailing research suggested felines were not pack animals.
Wade suggested leaving the cat an entire salmon for company.
Skye had argued that apex predators, even miniature ones, preferred their alone time.
But Diane, being even more maternal than Reagan, had easily acquiesced.
Gabe wondered if she wouldn't have taken the feline home every night even without Piper.
Gabe met Diane's gaze. Her smile couldn't compete with the worry lines bracketing the corners of her lips. Yeah. He felt the same. He turned back to the vehicles.
"Running," Tom said through the comlink. "Drones airborne. Route coverage live."
"Let's saddle up," Wade said through his own mic.
Gabe waved Owen over to his truck. In their planning session last night, it had quickly become clear that Wade, a trained escape driver, would be the most logical choice to try and draw Neptune coverage.
He and Fake Owen would take lead. Gabe, with years of pursuit training of his own thanks to the Bureau, would take the real package: Owen and Skye, as well as Cara.
Reagan and Tom would make sure Sophie and David got to the transfer point in Tillamook.
If all went well until there, they'd make another shell game switch.
As he eased his truck out of the alley behind Wade's rust-edged F-350, he went through the contingencies again.
It felt good. There would be issues they hadn't considered, certainly, moves Neptune would make that they couldn't anticipate.
Or moves from his own team that took him by surprise. He could not have anticipated that Owen would respond to a pre-dawn drive through a Neptune gauntlet by explaining the Hanseatic League. In detail.
"The key thing to understand," Owen said, as they turned onto US-6, "is that the Bruges connection isn't incidental.
The reason the convoy strategy worked is that rival guilds assumed high-value cargo required proportionally visible security.
So when the League moved multiple equivalent convoys simultaneously—"
"Owen," Cara said, gently. "You explained this last night."
"I know." A pause. "I find it clarifying."
They'd only made it a block when Wade's voice came over the comlink. "Fake Owen is making me crazy. If he keeps yammering on about the Dano-Hanseatic War, I'm going to knock his head off."
"You can't," Tom insisted, from Reagan's SUV. "We have to assume the enemy has listening devices."
A strangled groan came over the comlink. "You owe me, Nerd. Big time."
Cara laughed, a small, joyful sound that made Gabe's heart stutter.
Gabe pressed on through the dawn light toward Tillamook.
"Yo." Tom came over comms. "Head's up people. We've got a possible bogey pacing us. Black Escalade about eight miles behind our six."
Skye made a sound low in her throat, and Cara caught Gabe's eye.
Owen must have sensed their shift in attention, because he stopped talking.
They only had enough comlinks to outfit the team plus Skye.
Plus, the constant team chatter in his ear would have only confused him, they'd reasoned.
Living with a whole group in your head took practice.
"Closing the gap?" Wade asked.
"Negative." The response came swiftly. "They made eye contact with the cameras, so they know we're watching, but they're hanging back. For now."
Good. Calculating opponents were predictable. Aggressive opponents, not so much.
The Escalade stayed behind them all the way to Tillamook. By the time they reached the edge of town, Gabe was feeling cautiously optimistic.
As planned, Gabe swung into the motel parking lot and headed around the back, where the building shielded the truck from the street for exactly as long as it took two doors to open and close.
Owen and Skye were out before the truck stopped rolling, Skye somehow already at the service entrance, Owen behind her with the cipher notebook clamped under one arm like a man boarding a lifeboat. The automatic door closed behind them.
Gabe looped out the far side of the lot, drove two blocks east, and parked nose-out in a shuttered farm supply lot with a clean sightline to the motel's portico and the lobby glass. He killed the engine.
Now they waited. The plan from here was simple. Owen and Skye would wait in the lobby, posing as guests waiting on the airport run. Once the shuttle arrived, the team would make sure their pursuers’ attention was somewhere else long enough for them to board the shuttle undetected.
Then Wade would peel out, with Fake Owen in place, dragging Neptune’s men on a wild goose chase to the airport.
Tom came over comms. "Four Neptune assets visible at the transit stop. South lot, two, still in their car. Platform approach, one. East alley—"
"East alley?" Gabe said.
"New one. Just arrived."
Gabe groaned silently. Four assets. They'd planned for three.
"Shuttle's two minutes out," Tom said. "Picking our noisemaker now." A rattle of keys. "Gray Silverado, south lot, two spaces off our friends' rear bumper. Aftermarket alarm, insecure firmware."
Nobody asked how.
The shuttle pulled in, gliding to a stop under the motel's portico. The queue shuffled toward the door — the man with the bicycle, a woman with a roller bag, ordinary Tuesday shapes in the gray morning.
"Stand by," Wade said.
The Silverado went off — horn, lights, full indignation. Both south-lot heads snapped toward it. The platform asset turned.
"Go," Wade ordered Skye. "Now."
The lobby door didn't move.
Gabe leaned forward over the wheel. The guests already waiting outside were boarding. The car alarm shrieked. And still no Owen or Skye.
"Tom," Gabe said. "Why aren't they boarding?"
"Checking. I don't—"
Skye's voice came over the comlink, barely a breath. "Row three. He's already on the bus."
Gabe's eyes went to the smoked windows and got nothing back.
"Pulling the feed from the last stop now," Tom explained. "Yup. We've got an intruder. Male, gray windbreaker, boarded two stops ago. Paid cash." Tom's voice went flat. "He was already on that shuttle before we left Haven Cove."
Neptune hadn't covered the shuttle stop to keep Owen off the bus.
They'd covered it to make sure nothing else did.
The smoked glass, the sealed doors, the fixed route to a destination everybody already knew.
Every feature that made the shuttle perfect cover made it a perfect box.
Neptune was never planning to chase Owen to the airport.
They were planning to receive him.
"Escalade's still on me," Wade said. "Eight miles out and patient."
"Because you were never the play," Cara said quietly. "The shuttle was."
Down at the south lot, both car doors opened at once. Two men got out, unhurried. The platform asset stopped angling and started walking, straight line, toward the queue.
The pocket was closing, and the truck was two blocks of open pavement away.
The platform asset peeled off the queue and headed into the motel.
The shuttle door hissed shut. It pulled out of the portico carrying forty commuters, a man in a gray windbreaker, and their entire plan.
Skye's comlink clicked once. "Going dark." Then nothing.
"Skye—" Tom stopped. "She killed her comm."
Gabe stared across two empty lots at the building. Front covered. Back covered. One operative already through the doors behind them. Two people inside with the notebook Neptune had killed for: no comlink, no weapon, no vehicle.
Gabe stared out the windshield. "Tom. Talk to me about that building."
"Lobby, service hall, fire door to the east alley. Gabe — every exit they have is somebody's assignment."
Through the lobby glass, he caught one last flash of Skye. She wasn't looking at the exits. She was looking at the street. The alley. The hillside above town.
Then the east alley operative appeared around the corner. He stopped, looked up — straight into the drone camera he wasn't supposed to know was there. And smiled.
Neptune hadn't fallen for the shell game. They'd built one of their own.