We take turns, sometimes in front of the man, sometimes behind, always turning off and finding another point to get back within sight of him, switching often so he doesn’t realize he’s being followed. Jansen directs our pursuit. Apparently, he, his cousin, and Summer pulled similar stunts when they were kids to steal special-order cars. The guy is a veritable well of criminal pasts.
Honestly, Jansen’s full of unusual experiences and skills. He’s one hell of a medic, thanks to his mom’s shit health and their inability to get her treatment. Charming, with an encyclopedic memory of nearly every street in the Twin Cities, and one of the few people who’s willing to discuss the meaning of art with me, even if it’s more from a philosophical perspective than anything.
I’m glad he’s back, even if this version is a little different than before. He’s still impulsive, but less volatile. He’s still energetic, but not frantic, still ready with a joke, a smile, or a hug, whether or not you think you need it.
I’m tailing from in front when I recognize where we’re heading, and knowing why Jansen doesn’t recognize our destination makes me pissed. “RJ? Are you seeing this?”
“Fuck,” RJ mutters.
“What?” Jansen asks.
“We know where we’re going,” I mutter.
“Where?” Jansen asks, annoyed that I’m not giving him the answer right away.
“The storage unit where you almost died,” RJ says, not sugar coating it.
I think, signaling my turn long before Trips’ dad gets there, so he’ll feel more like he’s following me than the opposite. It’sespecially easy now that I know where he’s going. “It can’t be the same unit. There were only medical supplies there.”
“Same facility, then,” RJ says, his voice bitter.
“Makes sense,” Jansen says, somehow less bothered by this than RJ or me. “This way, they only have to bribe one set of staff to let them in under a fake name and turn the other cheek. Emma said the girl at the booth looked about ready to twist her head out of its socket trying not to see who was in the car.”
I drive past the storage facility, slowing as I reach the next traffic light so I catch it as it turns red. Watching in the rearview mirror, the Westerhouse vehicle turns into the facility, as expected. “He’s there.”
“How do we figure out which unit has the blackmail? There have to be hundreds of them,” Jansen asks.
“Park around the corner. I have an idea,” RJ says.
I do, and a moment later, the van pulls up behind my pickup truck, Jansen’s 90s convertible stopping behind it. We pile into the back of the van, only for RJ to push us out of the way, set something on the roof, then dive back inside.
A moment later, the top of the van moves away from us on the screen, RJ’s fingers deftly twitching two controllers.
“Wait, is that the drone I stole from you last year?” Jansen asks, plopping cross-legged onto the bench behind him.
“Yup.”
“I guess I should be glad I gave it back.”
“Yup.”
The drone zooms over the outside of the winding building, catching Trips’ dad as he parks. I’m about to tell RJ to pull uphigher, but then he does, the man a speck on the screen. “Can you zoom in on the camera?” I ask, leaning over his shoulder.
“Yeah, give me a sec. It’s been a while since I’ve played with this thing.”
He toggles the camera out by accident, and a SUV comes into frame, a young woman with her hair in thick black and purple cornrows and a balding white man in a suit walking away from the vehicle. The girl stumbles, and the man pulls her tight to his side. Too tight, based on the girl slipping away like he’s a magnet going the wrong way. Then RJ toggles the right control and zooms in on Trips’ dad as he strolls up the exterior stairs. He looks like he’s visiting a courthouse with a briefcase in his hand and purpose in his step.
The unit he unlocks is smack dab in the middle of the complex, unassuming and easily confused with its neighbors. A great place to hide some pretty damning information.
Once the door closes, RJ lowers the drone until he’s got an angle where we can see the number, Jansen scratching it out on a piece of paper.
RJ zooms back up, and we wait, all of us knowing that we should verify this isn’t his only stop here.
But that’s it. Less than two minutes later, he’s back in his car, RJ tailing him with the drone until it’s clear he’s heading to the mansion.
“Well, that squashes the original plan,” Jansen says.
“We could move it all to a different location first,” RJ says.
