Page 47 of The Deeper Game
“I should be down there,” he said.
“You can’t just sit there. You said yourself it could be weeks before she goes into labor.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“You’re just two hours away,” I pointed out. A little more, actually, especially if it was rush hour. “And the midwives are there. Don’t they know what they’re doing?”
“They’re the best, but neither of them has delivered a breech as risky as this one. Well, one of them has, but it went badly, which is worse than no experience.”
A car came up the street behind us. The driver, a lone man, matched Travis’s description—somewhat.
Thor slid down in his seat, watching the side mirror. “Too old.”
Zeus called and Thor put it on speaker. Travis wasn’t there, but they’d found evidence in the shed. Definitely him.
“Damn.” Thor clicked off. “How are you doing? You don’t seem freaked out.”
“I was at first, but I know this will be okay. I wish he was there, but hey, of all the people who have threats against them in the world, I think I’m the safest.”
“I’d say you’re safer than the president.” He gazed out at the street, scanning a new car coming down the way. A woman. “It’s hard to believe that anybody would decide to go after you. It’s like poking a hornet’s nest, but then again, people do stupid things. And sometimes people have a death wish.”
Chapter Twelve
Ten minutes later,Zeus and Odin were bounding back through the neighborhood with clear evidence bags. One seemed to contain white butcher paper; the other held what looked like gloves.
Thor and I got out and schlepped into the back seat.
Zeus flung open the driver’s side door. “Not there. But it’s him.”
“Lookslike him,” Odin corrected, getting in the passenger side. “Still circumstantial.”
“We’ll know when we see him face-to-face.” Zeus shut the door quietly. “That shed is completely wired up with cameras. Almost as secure as our hideout, and he dug a lower level. The place is so empty and clean, you almost couldn’t tell somebody was living there.”
“Clean?” Thor asked.
“The man is a neat freak,” Odin said. “Pathologically neat. The mother’s house is even worse. She has plastic over all the furniture.”
“Even the kitchen table,” Zeus said. “The lamps. Disposable plates and utensils. Who lives like that?”
“The mentally ill, typically,” Odin said. “Maybe she tried to keep plastic on the son in a metaphorical sense—keep him pristine. Sexual predators like Travis often have issues around mothers and bodily functions.”
“Yikes,” I said as a white car passed.
“I wonder who wired the shed for him,” Odin continued, snapping on his seatbelt. “Manning? Not a lot of guys will wire up a shed like that and keep their mouth shut. We found all that butcher paper in their dumpster. If we laid it out next to the butcher paper from the package with the feather, pieces would line up. I bet you anything.”
Just then, Zeus peeled out.
“Hey—”
“That was him.” Zeus took a corner and the white car ahead squealed around another. “Gotcha.”
“Take it easy,” Thor cautioned as the driver of the white car started getting more erratic.
“Travis knew, goddammit,” Zeus said. “Somebody tipped him. He should’ve been in there.”
We sped after him onto a crowded surface street. Travis wove in and out through a pack of cars.
“Slow down,” Thor said. “He’s gonna kill someone.”
