12. Gauge
GAUGE
“Jesus, how long is she gonna drive?” Plug murmured.
I looked over at the clock on the wall as I stood there, perched in a corner while all of us stared at the projector screen. I groaned when the hour hand ticked up to the twelve. Two hours. We’d sat there for two fucking hours since Sheriff Nielson and his cronies took Char away from us.
God, did she want to get away that badly?
“Where has she stopped so far?” Deac asked gruffly.
Plug typed around on his keyboard. “A gas station, a pharmacy, a grocery store?—”
“Can you pull up camera footage from those places? Maybe she’s doing something specific,” Dallas said.
“Plug,” Deac commanded.
“On it,” Plug said.
As we sat there, camera images and running footage popped up all over the map. We had six sets of them all going at once, with our eyes dancing around the screens trying to keep up with it all.
“She didn’t come out with anything. What did she do?”
“She chews gum. Maybe she stopped to pick up gum?”
“Jesus Christ, how many jugs did she fill up?”
“That’s not a lot of groceries, even for one person.”
“Is she smoking? Is that what that is?”
“Seriously, how many jugs of gas did she heave into her trunk?”
“Hah! She likes honeybuns.”
The gas thing was interesting, though. Most of the stops were mundane, with her coming out with only a few things in her hands.
But as Plug kept running back in the gas station, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
I counted the jugs over and over again as she filled them up and slung them into the trunk of that black van.
Seven.
She had seven three-gallon gas jugs in the back of that thing.
With every stop she made, Plug continued to take notes and pull up camera footage. But nothing jumped out at us. Outside of that weird gas station stop, the only things we knew now were her favorite drinks, snacks, and what town she refueled everything in.
“She’s been so fucking close this entire goddamn time,” I grumbled as I pinched the bridge of my nose.
Three towns. She was three fucking towns away. That was it.
“Well she has to reside somewhere around there, right?” Mace asked.
“She’s walking around like she knows the place,” Rat murmured.
“She seems confident, too. Look at how she stops and talks to one of the workers outside the pharmacy,” Deadlock said.
Deac turned his head toward the man. “You think she’s been there before?”
Deadlock snickered. “She acts like she has. For as long as we’ve lived here, do you have talks with the workers at the grocery store after you’ve walked outside to head to your bike?”
“Nope,” Rico said as he popped the ‘p.’
“She stopped again, guys, hush,” Plug said.
We all fell silent as Plug worked his magic. Well, we tried to anyway.
“I can’t get a good angle, hold on,” he grumbled.
“Where is that, exactly?” Deac asked.
Plug shook his head. “In the middle of fucking nowhere, that’s where.”
“That has to be where she’s staying then,” Rico said.
“Plug,” Deac said curtly.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” he said breathlessly.
“Well, it’s not fast enough,” Dallas said.
“Can it,” I said from across the room.
Deac flashed me a look, but I didn’t care.
Breathing down all of our necks wasn’t gonna get Char back to us any sooner.
My stare held the screen as camera angles popped up and disappeared.
Someone chomped their horse teeth against some gum.
And I swear to hell on high, if they didn’t swallow that shit or close their mouths?—
“There!” Plug exclaimed as he shot out of his chair. “Got it!”
It wasn’t a live camera angle, but it was an overhead topographical picture of the area we were supposed to be looking at.
“The hell is that?” Deac asked as he stood and moved closer to the screen.
Rico shrugged. “Looks like an abandoned complex of some sort.”
“Bingo,” I murmured as I pushed off the wall behind me.
“She’s near the fault line, though,” Plug said as he widened the picture.
He wasn’t joking, either. That abandoned building or whatever the fuck it was had to be less than five miles from that massive split in the earth. It was a risky choice. A bold one. But one that would certainly keep her concealed.
It’s not like anyone ventured over there anyway, unless they really wanted to.
“That’s dangerous territory,” Dallas warned.
“Yep,” Rat said flatly.
“Somewhere she wouldn’t be followed…” Mace said as his voice trailed off.
“Barely anyone goes to that side of the fault line,” Deadlock offered.
“It’s too deep and not walled off, for starters,” Rico said.
Plug’s typing pierced through the conversation.
“Plug?” Dallas asked.
“Just give me a second, I have an idea,” he said quickly.
We all waited on pins and needles as those spindly fingers of his flew a million miles a minute over his keyboard.
It was like a superpower in and of itself, him being able to type that fast. He slammed his pointer finger into a button and a blinding flash caught the corner of my eye.
I looked back toward the projector screen that seemed as bright as a fucking supernova at that point, and found a black and white image staring back at us.
It took over the map and the blinking red dot.
It took over the camera angles running reruns of that woman walking in and out of multiple stores and shops.
I took stock of the walls. The cold, metallic walls.
“Ho-ly fuck, Plug,” Dallas said breathlessly.
“You’re a squirrelly motherfuck, you know that?” Deac asked with a grin.
I furrowed my brow as I pointed at the screen. “Is this?—?”
Plug peered over his shoulder at me. “The inside of the abandoned building she just stopped at? It sure is.”
Rat scoffed. “How did you know that there was?—?”
“Are you guys still really that shocked? After all these years?” Plug asked.
“Wait, that bitch has service all the way out there?” Mace asked.
He was right. While we debated how in the fuck Plug even knew there was a security system in that building to tap into, I watched as that woman looked up and down the hallways. She drew a gun off her hip and dangled it at her side while her other hand held a cell phone to her ear.
“Don’t suppose you have audio to go with this, huh?” Deac asked.
Plug chuckled. “Maybe one of these days.”
I had no fucking clue what we were watching. None of us did. But as her lips moved at a blinding pace, she wiggled that gun around in her hand. She pointed it into the air and jutted it out, accenting some of her words as her face grew angrier.
“She’s not happy,” I murmured.
“Good,” Rat spat. “Fucking bitch doesn’t deserve it.”
And the more she talked, the angrier she grew.
“God, what I wouldn’t give to know who she’s talking to,” Dallas said.
“Plug?” I asked.
The woman moved offscreen and Deac pointed. “Move with her. Can you do that?”
“Phone or camera? Pick,” Plug said.
“Camera,” we all said in unison.
Plug pivoted as she moved up and down the hallways, flashing between camera angles while she waved that gun around in the air as if it were an extension of her hand.
She paced up and down the hallway. At one point in time, she even held the phone right up to her mouth and yelled.
Whoever was on the other end of that line, she really let them have it.
Then she stormed out of view.
“Move with her, Plug,” Deac grumbled.
“I got it, I got it, hold on. She’s changed her route.”
Camera angles flashed, but none of them had her in its sights.
Deac growled beneath his breath as I looked back over at the clock.
I shook my head as time slowly crept by.
Entrenched. We were entrenched in a darkness that seemed completely unrelenting, and the only beacon of hope we were offered called the cavalry just to get away from us.
“There she is!” Rico exclaimed.
I whipped my head back toward the projector screen, only to watch that woman disappear down a flight of fucking steps.
“Plug!” Deac barked.
He kept typing and shifting those camera angles, but none of them tossed us down those stairs with her. “That’s it.”
Deac glowered. “What do you mean, that’s it?”
“I mean, we don’t have any other camera angles. Wherever she’s disappeared to, it doesn’t have a camera that I can hack.”
“Good job, Plug,” I said as I walked up to him from behind and patted him on the shoulder.
“The hell is she doing all the way out there?” Mace asked.
“Being a useless cunt,” Rat hissed.
I squeezed Plug’s shoulder. “Keep this camera angle. I want to see how long it takes her to resurface from that staircase.”
“Deac?” Plug asked.
He sighed heavily before he slammed back down into his chair. “We might as well since we’ve got access.”
Every once in a while, Plug flipped through all of the camera angles he managed to find, just to make sure she didn’t slip back up another staircase.
But it took over a fucking hour before that bitch emerged right back up the same staircase.
She wasn’t on her phone any longer, but she did look like she struggled.
She’d appear and then disappear. She’d reappear and then disappear.
And always with her arm cocked back behind her.
That was until she finally lunged her arm forward.
“Oh. My fucking. God,” Dallas whispered.
“Plug, record,” Deac said as he leapt out of his chair.
Plug chuckled. “Like I haven’t been recording this entire time.”
My jaw unhinged as my hand slid off Plug’s shoulder. “Is that?—?”
“That’s Doc, you guys,” Mace said.
She ripped her arm forward, and a figure stumbled out in front of her. He dropped to the ground, barely catching himself on his wrists before she slammed her foot into the man’s gut. My fists clenched at my sides. My jaw ground together as a rumbling growl worked its way up the back of my throat.
No wonder we couldn’t get in touch with Doc after all this time.
She had him trapped in that fucking basement.
“What is she doing?” Deadlock asked.
She shoved Doc offscreen before disappearing herself.
“Plug!” Deac exclaimed.
“Yell at me one more time and see what the fuck happens,” Plug growled.
Deac whipped toward him. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”
“Plug,” I said as I pinned him with a look.
He simply snickered as he sat back down. “Tell him to shut the hell up then so I can work. I get that you guys don’t like the fact that Char isn’t here, but that’s not our issue to deal with. Spit it out or tuck it in, as you guys always say.”
Deac looked ready to kill the man, but he had a point.
“She wouldn’t,” Rat said.
That pulled our attention back to the projector screen just in time to watch that bitch shove Doc into a room.
The door slammed open as he tumbled backward with nothing but his feet and ankles sticking out into the hallway.
The woman stepped over him. She was now back on her cell phone, and I watched with wide eyes as my heart froze in my chest. She pulled that gun off her hip, disappearing into the darkness of the room, and before any of us could even utter theories, there were three muzzle flashes that ignited the darkness.
Doc’s feet stopped moving.
My eyebrows hiked up. My eyes widened so much that I thought they may just pop out of my fucking head.
The woman emerged back from the room, holstering her weapon as she stepped around the man’s body as if he meant nothing.
My blood boiled as I watched her nod her head.
As she flapped those jowls of hers. My body vibrated with fury as my nails left behind crescent moons against my palms. I watched as she slammed that cell phone to the floor and stomped on it with her heel.
I watched as Doc’s body remained lifeless against the floor as something dark and thick trickled out into the hallway.
And it wasn’t until that little red dot on the map started moving that our President turned toward us.
“Gauge, take two men with you in the van and head to that warehouse. We need to know who the fuck she was talking to on that phone, and maybe Plug can piece that thing together enough to pull something for us.”
I couldn’t move as I stood there, staring at Doc’s fucking feet. She wasn’t gonna even move him? Or bury him? Or dispose of his body?
Did she really feel that comfortable in what she was doing?
“What about Doc?” I asked as I turned toward Deac. “What are we gonna do about him?”
Deac simply shrugged. “Why do you think I told you to take the van? Take Dallas and Mace with you as well. The rest of us can?—”
“I can do this,” Rat said.
“Rat,” Deac said with a shake of his head, “you really need to?—”
“He was my customer,” Rat said as he pointed to his chest. “My customer. I brought him to you guys. I told him that what we did was clean, reliable, and safe. I owe it to him to do this.”
I looked over at Deac. “If he’s strong enough to do it, I’m fine with him coming.”
Deac nodded. “All right, Mace. Stay here with Plug. Rat, you’re with Dallas and Gauge.”
“Hell yeah,” Rat growled as he charged toward the button on the wall. He slammed his hand into it, hissing the wall wide open before he ducked beneath it and scampered down the hallway.
He sounded strong enough when he moved, and that would simply have to be enough.
As I stood there, looking at Doc’s legs as they laid there haphazardly in the camera’s point of view, I grew desperate.
For the second time in my life, I felt like I had no other options.
No other choices. No other plans of action that got Char back at my side except to play this out one day at a fucking time.
So for the second time in my life, I did something out of sheer desperation.
I uttered a prayer up to a God I never once believed in.
Whatever it costs me, keep Char safe.
Because now, we were two bodies deep into this woman’s personal mission and still had no fucking clue as to why.
Or even how to protect ourselves from her oncoming storm.