“How did they find us?” Imogen asked as we stood on the pavement behind the rest stop. Large trucks lined up this way in two rows with their engines idling. Nothing else was around us except the highway.
I shook my head to answer her question. “I don’t know. The truck stop is full of people. Did someone call?” But that brought up the same questions as before. How did they know who we were or who to call? And how did they have enough time to get here? We didn’t have wanted posters with our mug shots hanging up somewhere. Did we?
Nothing added up.
The Grandmaster had connections all around the world, but we were only dealing with one of his enforcers. Unless the Grandmaster lied and was really behind the attacks and the kidnapping. How big was their legal ring of connections?
It just made little sense. If Corbin were here, he’d put all the players into a spreadsheet, run the math, and pull the strings. But I didn’t have my smart brother or his computer. I’d always been the one with more street smarts to save us both.
I had to protect Imogen at all costs. She was too beautiful, inside and out, for the world to lose. I also didn’t think my heart would survive the loss. It wasn’t only my life on the line.
I stared into her eyes and grabbed her face, laying my palm against her chin and bringing her close. It wasn’t a good time, and we had more pressing issues at hand, but I needed to let her know the way she made me feel. I never planned to let her go. “Imogen…”
How did I sum up the depth of my feelings for her with only words?
She stepped closer. “Yes?”
I moved my feet, trying to get as near to her as possible, and the sole of my sneakers scuffed against hers. Wait.
Our sneakers.
We wore all our old clothing to the rest stop. It might have led them right to us. Stupid, Cyrus.
Our old sneakers might continue to lead them wherever we ran next. I’d turned down flip-flops when Imogen pointed them out because I remembered Corbin running through the Pelican Bay woods in a pair of pink flip-flops and wanted to save my dignity, but none of that mattered now.
We left our old clothes in the showers, but now we needed to ditch the shoes.
The pieces connected in my brain even without Corbin’s computer to lay the trail. “We kept our shoes.”
Imogen looked at me, waiting for something more, but my brain was still working out all the implications. Modern technology had grown leaps and bounds in the last decade. They made cameras the size of a pea for easy hiding in your home. You could most definitely have a GPS tracker you slipped into someone’s pocket.
“Yeah, we did. So what?” Imogen asked, staring at me like she expected me to explode at any moment. “What are you talking about?”
I lowered my hands to her shoulders and squeezed tightly, trying not to shake her but freaking out over the discovery. We couldn’t stop them tracking us here, but we could put them off our trail in the future.
“What if they’re able to track our clothing?” I asked. “It could’ve been in a pocket, on our shirts, or even our shoes. Hurry and take off your shoes.”
It all made sense now. The way they’d been able to stay on us. To know our every move and to show up the places we stopped. How did I miss it? I put both of us in danger because I hadn’t taken the time to think of all the possibilities.
I dropped Imogen’s shoulders and leaned over, kicking off my shoes and throwing them in a blush.
She didn’t move. “Seriously?”
The woman had been kidnapped from a parking garage outside her job, thrown onto a boat and set sail for Florida, only to escape and be on the run for the last day and a half, but she questioned whether these men would put a tracker on her?
“We don’t have time,” I said, reaching down. She lifted one of her feet slowly, allowing me to slip her shoe off. I tossed it behind us with mine in the bushes.
Imogen paused before lifting her other foot, leaving me to tug on the laces. “Cyrus, it’s a truck stop parking lot.”
“So?”
“I’m a nurse. This is worse than an egg salad sandwich from a truck stop vending machine.”
I chuckled, tossing her second shoe behind me and hearing it bounce off the building to fall into the bushes. There was no time for laughter. “Save theFuturamajokes until after I save you.”
If I wasn’t already falling for the woman, hearing her make a classic cartoon joke sealed the deal on us. Once we survived this, I was definitely finding time for aFuturamamarathon with Imogen in my arms. Corbin hated the show.
“Are you sure?” she asked, gazing back at her shoes longingly.
