Page 48 of The Deeper Game
Travis went through a stoplight, nearly causing a crash. That’s when the sirens started.
“Damn!” Odin said. “Hang back.”
We slowed, moving in behind a cop car. Two more cop cars came in from the side to join the first. Zeus slowed to the speed limit. The chase got farther ahead, and soon the cherry-red lights disappeared.
Odin fired up his police scanner app. “They’re taking Bentham Road. Go west on 28th.”
Zeus did a U-turn and took 28th, going on to follow Odin’s ever-changing directions. We turned left and right and left.
A helicopter sounded overhead.
“Do you think they know who they have?” I asked.
“Could be,” Zeus said.
“Hold on,” Odin said as the voices through the radio got frenetic. “Shit. He crashed.”
“Bad?” Thor asked.
Odin shook his head. “Unknown. Zeus, turn up here. Here—this light.” He directed us to the crash site.
It took a while to get there because the crash had slowed traffic in both directions. Red lights lit up the palm trees and houses. By the time we neared, they were loading Travis into an ambulance and we saw only a flash of him, all bloody and twisted. They were waving people past.
“Did you see him, Thor?” Zeus asked. “What do you think?”
“Doesn’t look good,” Thor said. “From the look of his car, he’s lucky he’s not dead.”
“He preferred to risk death and arrest,” Odin said.
I finished his sentence in my mind:He preferred to risk death and arrest over dealing with the God Pack.
We arrived home exhausted and dirty. Matteo called to say that things had gone as usual. It was nearly closing time.
Thor called the hospital and finagled an update on Travis. Critical but stable.
I was surprised to see Odin and Zeus, both wearing latex gloves, smoothing out the crumpled butcher paper from Travis’s garbage. They had the paper from the feather package already laid out to compare to this new evidence.
Zeus looked up and caught my eye. “Just to be sure,” he said. “You know how thorough we like to be.”
I smiled. Such professionals. It was a little bit sad, to think of all the things they could’ve been. The work they’d done back in the agency had probably saved countless lives.
“What’s that look?” Zeus barked.
“No look,” I said.
“Go meet us in the hot tub,” Odin said, not looking up.
I headed for my room instead and took a shower. When I got out to our back porch, my guys were already in the tub, which made a peanut-shaped hole in our wood-slat deck. You could see the setting sun glinting through the trees all around us.
“What took you so long?” Thor asked, sliding all the way down. The tips of his longish blond hair grazed the water.
I undid the belt to my fluffy robe, swishing my toe in the warm water. “Girls take longer with everything.” I peeled off the robe and stepped into the delicious and bubbly warmth.
Zeus snorted.
“But it’s always worth the wait,” I added as I sunk down next to Thor.Heaven.
“I’m glad you’re safe,” Thor said, sliding an arm over my shoulders. “No blood on our hands. We didn’t have to carry out vigilante justice. Travis is on his third strike, so he’ll stay inside.”
