Page 103 of Billion-Dollar Ransom

NICKY INSISTED ON driving, and Mike Hardy was smart enough not to argue with her. Not at this ungodly hour.

“We should have stopped for coffee first,” he said.

“No time for coffee,” Nicky replied. “Because if we’d stopped for coffee, sooner or later you’d want to stop to pee.”

“I could have used my empty coffee cup.”

“Not in my car. Also—gross.”

Mike rubbed his eyes. “Am I even awake? Or am I just dreaming about work again?”

“Take some deep breaths and clear your head,” Nicky said. “We’re almost in Palmdale.”

For the past twenty minutes they’d been following a GPS tracker one of Nicky’s agents had slipped into Jeff Penney’s Porsche.

Their day had begun at ten past three with an urgent phone call. One of Nicky’s agents had spotted Jeff leaving his place in an awful hurry, in the Porsche he almost never drove. Nicky had nudged Mike, who was dead to the world. “Penney’s on the move,” she’d said.

Maybe now, after all these weeks, he felt safe enough to recover the ransom money.

Mike had groaned, and Nicky pushed him until he was practically falling out of her bed. Within two minutes, both had pulled on their clothes and strapped on their weapons. Nicky left Kaitlin a note, and they were on the road sixty seconds later, speeding toward the I-5.

Nicky refused to let Jeff Penney and the missing billion in ransom money slip through her fingers.

Jeff had been her favorite suspect from the start.

She’d had zero hard evidence, but her informant on the Big Sur kidnapping (the million-dollar ransom for the comedian and his wife) said they bragged about having someone high up in the LAPD working for them.

Someone with military training. Someone, the informant said, who rubbed everybody the wrong way.

So Nicky had put eyes on Jeff Penney 24/7.

He was good . He went about his normal routine, pretending to be just as frustrated and pissed as the rest of the task force.

He tracked down leads and volunteered to help search the Mount Baldy drop site.

And why wouldn’t he? Jeff had no life outside of work.

At home, all he ever did was drink a few craft brews and watch some wrestling or MMA on TV before falling asleep on the couch.

Nicky was beginning to think maybe she’d been wrong about him.

And then came the call just a few minutes ago, Nicky’s source telling her Jeff Penney was speeding out of town like his ass was on fire.

That same agent had stayed on Jeff’s tail for a while but pulled off the freeway when he started to worry that he’d been made. But that was okay, because they’d slipped that GPS tracker into his Porsche 911 weeks ago.

“Where is he now?”

Mike checked Nicky’s phone, which was mounted on the dash. “Looks like he’s headed into the desert. But why? You think he’s taking the long way to Mount Baldy?”

“No idea, but Penney’s leading this dance,” Nicky said. “All we can do is follow.”

“Want me to call the sheriff’s department, at least? Get a little backup out here?”

“We don’t even know what this is yet,” Nicky said. “Penney could be taking a drive to nowhere to see if anyone’s following him.”

“Or he could be out for a late-night drive to relax.”

“Exactly.”

Mike frowned. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

Nicky glanced over, then shook her head. “No.”

They continued down the empty desert highway—the 138—in silence. Soon they were speeding by the ruins of Llano del Rio. Nicky had brought Kaitlin up here to tour the failed utopian commune from a century ago.

“Gee, Mom,” she’d said. “I guess people have always been trying to escape LA.”

All that remained of that social experiment were a few retaining walls of the meetinghouse and a massive fireplace from the former hotel.

But soon, even those ruins seemed like a metropolis. There was absolutely nothing out here but an endless expanse of scrub and sand and a desert wind that whipped everything into a frenzy now and again.

Dark thoughts crept into Nicky’s mind. Maybe Jeff knew they were following him. Maybe he’d done a sweep of Porsche, found their GPS tag, and was leading them into a trap…

“Nick,” Mike said.

“What?”

“Our pal Penney just stopped.”

“Where?”

“Middle of freakin’ nowhere is where. This doesn’t make sense. Unless he stopped to take a leak.”

“Guess he didn’t have a coffee cup with him. How far away is he?”

“Oh, shit,” Mike said. “I know exactly where he is.”

As soon as Nicky glanced over at the screen, she knew too.