Page 114 of Agency

“Do we know if they were able to track the GPS?” Jericho asked, still not turning to face us.

“Likely,” I said. “It’s digital, boss. There’s pings, there’s trails, there’s god-only-knows-what on there.”

“So it’s safe to assume they know where we are?”

“Safe,” I replied. “And they can probably figure out where we’re headed. I can’t see staying here as an option. The safe house is no longer safe.”

Jericho didn’t speak for another long heartbeat, and that short moment might as well have been hours as Andrew, Ambyr, and I all exchanged uncertain looks. We were there, in the eye of the storm, and there was no good way out.

“Billings,” he finally said, with a nod that was clearly to himself. He turned back around, locked eyes with each of us and again nodded.

“Billings it is. Let’s lock and load, folks.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Ambyr

Populated by less than one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand souls, Billings would have been little more than a blip in nearly any other state. But, here in Montana, the small city was like an orchid in the desert, its population-pedals unfurling into an ever-expanding metro area nestled within the Yellowstone Valley. Pushing and growing, they’d finally spread all the way north to the Rimrocks, the edge of the canyon boxing them in. Some neighborhoods had grown up beyond this ridge, but, so far, the natural formation more or less contained Billings.

Aunt Val had built her place along the Rimrocks. Backed on the northern side by the sheer-faced cliff, her multi-acre piece of land sloped gently back and up, until her yard collided with the fifteen-meters-high, stone obstruction. Below that craggy face, her home was modern styled–all brightly lit windows with drawn shades. The fading sun caressed the house’s austere, almost harsh angles, which seemed a perfect accompaniment to the desert flora populating the sand and rock-strewn front yard.

I didn’t even want to know the price of this place, if only because then I’d begin to grasp how much money I’d brought in for her over the years as she’d worked me like a pimp works her girls.

Her own niece. Practically her own daughter.

Well, I was ready to show her exactly how that could backfire.

Now, as Andrew and I climbed out of the Durango, parked at a diagonal across the driveway’s entrance, and adjusted the barrels of our tactical-sling strung carbines to angle lower beneath our oversized coats, we exchanged glances.

His dark eyes were flinty, alert, frosty. Everything you wanted a partner in a structure breach to be.

We left Jericho and his bum ankle in the SUV to guard our rear. From there, he could see down both sides of the road, and warn us of any incoming hostiles.

With another glance and nod, Andrew and I began our approach on Aunt Val’s house.

???

The last eight hours had been a whirlwind.

We’d driven as straight through from Jericho’s childhood home as we could. No periodic stops to stretch limbs or grab a bite to eat–just 85-90 the whole way. The hard driving had really pushed the aging Durango’s engine to the limit as we ripped down the highway, stopping only for gas, and almost nothing else. Andrew had even pounded on the door of one particularly disgusting truck stop bathroom at one point, barking about how we’d already filled up, and what the fuck was I even doing in there while they were ready to go?

“Pissing, asshole!”

“Do it in a bottle like the rest of us!”

“Wrong plumbing, fucker!” I’d shouted back through the metal door, while rolling tissue-thin toilet paper around my hand.

Still, I’d been back in the Durango less than two minutes later.

On the bright side, Jericho and I were getting along after last night’s butt-stinging night of passion, even if staying seated in one place for so long had turned into its own kind of torture.

Sure, we hadn’t spoken much on the drive, but that was true of everyone in the SUV. The tension over the coming mission had been thick enough to butter bread with, and all the men’s eyes had grown distant. I didn’t need to look in the mirror to know my own had done the same. But, as I rode up front with Jericho for the first time ever, his hand had snaked across the console to grab mine. His thick, leathery, rough fingers had intertwined with my own in a quiet sign of camaraderie.

I’d glanced over at him, but he hadn’t glanced back. And that, too, was its own sign. After all, I’d been his prisoner just last week. For him to now take his eyes off me? That was like the mouse trusting the lion.

The feeling in the SUV bed been different, too. No longer did the cloud of my previous mistakes hang over us. Instead, the miasma had been replaced by the feeling of going to war, a feeling I hadn’t experienced since my time serving in the sandbox. This might as well have been a hummer we were rolling in, and we might as well have been a tightly knit fireteam of a larger squad.

The only time the four of us really did speak was to lay out our plan.