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He gave Danny his exact location. “Are you close by?”
“On it,” Danny replied.
Ryder turned right at the next light.
“Where are we going?” Nathalie’s voice was tight.
“We’re taking the long way to your home.”
He caught sight of a deep blue Ford Mustang GT sliding in behind the Explorer. His mobile rang.
“I’m behind your tail,” Danny said.
“I see you.”
“Virginia plate. I’m sending the photo to Nathan. How do you want to play this?”
Ryder spied a bank branch up ahead. It was after hours, and the car park sat empty. “I’m pulling into the bank. If he keeps going, follow him. See where he goes.”
“Roger that.”
Ryder took his time.Let’s see what you do.
He turned into the bank. The Explorer tapped its brakes but kept going, Danny’s blue Mustang behind him.
Ryder had a bad feeling the person in the Explorer didn’t need to stay behind him to know where he was. “Stay in the car,” he ordered Nathalie.
There was something he needed to check before they returned to her home.
The wind had picked up, swirling dust and an empty polystyrene cup across the asphalt. Gray clouds played hide and seek with the sun as it dipped in the western sky.
Ryder explored every nook and cranny of the exterior of the Suburban, then eased down and slid beneath the vehicle. Using the flashlight on his phone, he scanned the undercarriage until he found what he was looking for.
A tracker. Hidden better than the one he’d pulled off Nathalie’s car.
Someone had learned their lesson.
He eased out from beneath the Suburban, brushed off his clothes, and climbed back inside. Reaching past Nathalie to the glove box, he took out the penknife he stowed there and used it to remove the tracker’s battery.
“Someone put that on your car?” Nathalie stared at the tiny device like it was a grenade with its pin removed.
It some ways, that’s exactly what it was. “It would seem so.”
The rules of the game had changed.
His mobile rang with a call from Danny.
“I lost him.” The former SEAL’s voice reeked of frustration. “He must have figured out I was tailing him and ran the light near the entrance ramp to the Beltway. By the time I got through, he was nowhere in sight.”
“We’ll see if Nathan has come up with anything. I’m taking Nathalie home.” Ryder hung up with Danny and immediately dialed Nathan.
“The plate was reported stolen an hour ago,” Nathan growled before Ryder even had the chance to say hello. “The GPS tracker from Nathalie’s car was sending location data to a cell phone with a prepaid phone card and a dummy email address.”
“I just removed a tracker from my vehicle,” Ryder told him.
Nathan swore. “We know someone’s watching Nathalie. Now they’re watching you. Be careful, amigo. Shit’s gettin’ real.”
Ryder Montague.