Chapter 7 #5
I look at the map, feeling thoroughly stupid for the second time in less than half an hour. “Let me guess,” I say resignedly. “The wind’s out of the south-east?” How could I have forgotten to check the wind direction? Thank fuck for Ellie.
“Yes. And looking at the three-day forecast, it’s going to stay that way. Elinor, you can use me as your weatherman anytime you like.”
I study the terrain in that area. It’s only lightly wooded, and the highway cuts through at the perfect angle.
“This is good, right?” Aidan asks. “With the wind blowing in that direction, even I’d probably be able to pick up scents from those properties.”
“It’s good,” I agree. “I can drive relatively slowly through town”—I trace the route with the cursor—“and see what I pick up. If I time it for the right part of the day, there will be plenty of people around, and a lot from the outlying properties might be running errands. Lots of things to see and smell, and if I don’t stop, nobody will take any notice of me.
Then I continue on along the highway to here”—I stop the cursor at a bend—“and pull over. If the wind is blowing steadily, I’ll only need a few minutes.
Ten at the very most. I expect to be able to tell you how many hellhounds—and beings of other species—live in this general area”—I move the cursor in a cone shape, estimating wind vectors—“and specifically whether Tish and any elves are there or have been there recently.”
“How recent is recently?” Noah asks.
“Depends,” I say honestly. “Has it rained lately? How long were they there for? Did they spend much time outdoors, or inside only? If all factors are in our favor, maybe two weeks. Ten days is more likely, but it could be as little as a week or just a few days if they used the portal inside, never left the building, and stayed for only an hour.” I scan the surrounding area.
“On the plus side, there are no towns or factories or pig farms that I can see out this way. Nothing to dilute or overpower the scents.”
“The last time it rained in the area was nearly three weeks ago,” David says, “but they did get a light snowfall a few days after that, and there’ve been some pretty heavy overnight frosts.”
“So we hope they’ve spent a lot of time there,” I say, shrugging. “This is still our best option to gather any kind of information.”
“What happens if someone’s driving along the highway, notices you’ve pulled over, and stops?” There’s a lot of concern in Sam’s voice. Aww. Our friendship will endure time, distance, and grumpy boyfriends.
Hey, that’s pretty catchy. Maybe we can make it our official BFF slogan or something. We can have T-shirts printed.
“There’s a rest stop here. Nobody will question me stretching my legs with a phone held to my ear,” I tell him.
“Won’t they want to know why you didn’t stop in town?” Noah counters. “It’s not that far and would be a more logical place to stretch your legs.”
“That’s what the phone’s for. They’ll assume I pulled over to answer the call. Which is also why I’m going to be driving an older vehicle, not our rental. Something that doesn’t have Bluetooth.”
“I’ll put some extra cash in your account,” David advises. “You won’t be able to use your credit card at a used car lot.”
“Not the kind I plan on visiting, anyway,” I agree.
“Wait, go back to pacing at the rest stop,” Noah demands. “Won’t that leave a nice big concentrated pool of your scent for them? I thought we were trying to avoid that.”
“We’re trying to avoid having my scent saturate the area because I’ve spent a lot of time there.
It especially becomes an issue if I’m moving around.
A strange hellhound in the area, lingering near them but not introducing himself?
That’s suspicious. But someone taking a break at a rest stop… well, what’s unusual about that?”
“They’ll have your scent,” Noah protests.
“And it means nothing unless they’ve met me personally before.
I recognize Tish’s scent because I smelled it on Sam, then again at the office when they took you.
I know what the elves smell like because I’ve never smelled anything like that before.
I’ve been to Oregon before, yeah, but it was a long time ago and I never visited Beker County.
The chances of there being someone there now whom I’ve met before are so slim I wouldn’t know how to calculate them. ”
“Not that you’d know how to calculate them if they weren’t slim,” Andrew interjects.
“That’s not helpful, secondary BFF. And not true. I can ask David just as well as everyone else can.”
“Asking me to calculate odds does not count as calculating them yourself,” David insists. I ignore him.
“Chill, Noah. This is a good plan.”
“What happens after you’ve had a good sniff?” Aidan asks, leaning in to look at the map again. This time, his shoulder brushes mine, and adrenaline, already on stand-by at the thought of tomorrow, floods through my veins.
Look at my lap. Look at my lap. C’mon. He’ll already be able to smell my arousal, but I want him to see my hard-on that’s just for him.
“Alistair?” He turns his head to look at me—sadly, at my face, not the impressive hard-on that’s all for him—and he’s so close, so very close…
I lean in.
He jerks back, his eyes widening as he casts a panicked glance toward the laptop.
Shit. When I shared the map, did I do the thing that would still show us in a little box? Or did I full-screen share the map?
I hold my breath for a second. If my team saw what just happened, I’ll hear all about it. There’s no way any of them would keep their mouths shut. Not even David.
Well, maybe David. He wouldn’t want to embarrass Aidan. But he’d find some way to jab at me about it later.
“Alistair?” Sam repeats. “Can you guys still hear us?”
I think we might be safe. I clear my throat.
“Uh, yeah. Sorry, I got distracted.” Please don’t ask by what.
“By what?”
I sigh, casting around for something plausible. “Grapes.”
“You got distracted by grapes?” Sam sounds a little dubious. “Were you eating?”
Since when has he been so nosy? I mean, seriously, who cares whether I was eating the grapes?
“No, I was just looking at them all bunched up on the stem and thinking that from the right angle, they could almost look like testicles.”
Aidan chokes on a grape. I pound him on the back, something it seems I should get used to doing—someone needs to teach the man to chew his food properly—while a cacophony of weird sounds come through my laptop speakers.
For the record, I don’t think grapes look like testicles.
Well… not really. Only from certain angles and if the grapes are the right shape.
“Anyway, what were we saying?”
“I don’t know, but it’s put me off grapes,” Noah mutters. “Uh… what happens after you’re done at the rest stop?”
“Oh. I get back in the car, keep driving down the highway to here”—I grab the mouse and trace the cursor over a turnoff about twenty miles further down the road, outside the limits of Beker County—“where I turn around and go back the way I came. I’ll slow down as I pass—”
“Wait, what?” Noah asks. “You’re going back? Why?”
“As I was saying,” I say patiently, “I’ll slow down as I pass the point where I stopped, see if anyone has been in that immediate area since I was there, then continue on through town and stop on the other side, right about here.
” I circle another bend. “We know there are persons of interest in the area near the first stop, but it’s unlikely all the community members in the county live in that one spot.
We might be able to gather some useful information at the north end of town, too. ”
“Is it safe?” Aidan asks doubtfully. “Won’t it raise suspicion if they smell you again?”
I shrug. “Potentially, but probably not. At this stage, I’m an idiot who missed the turnoff to”—I trace back up the highway north of town—“route 82. This is an arterial road and gets a lot of traffic. It’s also the main route to dozens of little towns in the area.
There are a lot of reasons why I might go both ways through the county—and that’s why I’m not just doubling back right after the first stop.
The extra driving time makes it look like I’m actually going somewhere.
Plus, I love driving in the country. There are so many amazing smells, y’know? ”
“So if someone approaches you at the second stop, are you going to fake another phone call?” Noah still doesn’t seem convinced.
“No, I’m going to have a crumpled old paper map and be swearing about how all these damn turnoffs look alike.”
“What if they suggest you use your phone GPS?”
“Aside from the fact that cell coverage can be spotty in those areas for those who don’t have a satellite phone—which they don’t need to know I do—I don’t trust it since the time it told me to turn left now while I was in the middle of a bridge.”
“I remember that,” Sam murmurs. “It was scary how vicious she sounded.”
“It’s a computer-generated voice,” David argues. “It can’t sound vicious. And it probably meant for you to turn once you got off the bridge.”
“Except…” I lean closer to the camera for dramatic effect, then remember they can’t see me. “…there was nowhere to turn left at the end of the bridge unless I wanted to bounce off a tree. And you weren’t there, David. Believe me, she was vicious.”
“Wait, this actually happened?” Noah demands. “I thought it was just part of the story you’d tell!”
“The story of Alistair’s life.” There’s a hint of laughter in Andrew’s voice.
“Getting back on topic,” Aidan says, “you stop for a second sniff north of town.”
“And then I come back to Portland and we make plans.” It’s pretty simple, really. “I’ll check in with you all as much as possible during.”
“I really hate this plan,” Gideon says thoughtfully, and I flip away from the map screen and look at their faces again. “The expected outcome is lackluster, and if anything goes wrong, we don’t only risk losing Alistair but also any advantage we have.”
“We have an advantage?” Aidan asks dryly.
“Time,” Percy tells him. “We need as much time as possible to keep investigating and find as much information as possible. If Tish and the CCA decide to move now… Well, we don’t even know what we’re up against.”
“Let’s hear it for time, then.” Aidan sighs. “What else can I do? I’m feeling a wee bit useless right now.”
“ Not useless,” I insist. “Your presence this morning was invaluable. And we might have time for you to drive me around Portland this afternoon while I stick my head out the window and smell for elves.”
“Man, I wish I could be there to get video of that,” Andrew says. “Any chance you’ll take some, Aidan?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Aidan promises.
“Hey!” I’m being betrayed! “I will be working for the safety and betterment of life as we know it, and my secondary best friend is trying to make fun of me for it! Shame on you! And as for my—”
Whoops.
I fake a cough. “As for Aidan, there can be no greater shame than being ridiculed by the leader of my own species!”
Phew! Good thing I’m quick.
I glance at the screen and see all eyes focused on me.
Uh-oh.
“So are we ready to wrap this meeting up?” I ask. Distract, distract.
“Uh… yeah.” David looks down at his notepad, where he undoubtedly has a neatly itemized list. “Noah and I are going to continue with our research. Aidan, if you have any bandwidth, we could use your help.”
“Absolutely,” Aidan promises.
“Gideon and Percy are going to interrogate our captives again. You’re sniffing around Portland today and then buying a car and driving out to Beker County tomorrow to sniff some more.
Andrew and Elinor are running the office, and Sam’s coordinating everything.
” David looks up. “Can we agree that our goal for the next twenty-four hours is to gather enough information to come up with a plan?”
“Yes.” Andrew’s gone all serious. “We can’t keep waiting. Tish is going to move eventually, and we have to be ready—or we have to move first.” He shakes his head. “I have a very strong feeling that we should be moving first.”
I sit up straighter. I’ve only experienced Andrew’s vaunted instincts once, and it meant the difference between David and Ellie being injured rather than David dying.
It also allowed us to take the two captives who are now giving us so much information.
I’ve heard many other stories about times his instincts made a dramatic difference, so if he thinks we need to move first, I’m with him on that.
Percy seems to agree. “Tomorrow evening, we meet again,” he orders. “Be ready to come up with a plan to move forward.”
There’s a chorus of agreement, then the call ends.
I turn to Aidan. “We need to talk.”