Iain and Leo snored in harmony by the time we crossed the river into downtown Memphis. Not that I blamed them. It was a long, flat, boring road, and none of us had slept much. Adrenaline—and the breakfast burritos we’d stopped off for—kept me going.
I rehearsed what I would say to Robert in my head. Now that I knew he’d only fired me because he’d been forced to, it gave me hope that we may be able to get something back. I was surprised that my thoughts turned to the research partnership rather than the romantic one, but it seemed indecent to remember the episodes on the office sofa with one of my colleagues in the car.
Before I could follow that train of thought, a semi passed us, its horn blaring, and the noise startled the guys awake.
“What in the hell?” asked Iain. Leo just blinked sleepily in the backseat.
“Just a lorry,” I said, using the British term for large truck. “Did you come up with any good inspirations while you dozed?”
“Not a one.” Iain checked his cell phone. “Oh, bugger!”
“What?”
“Robert texted me back. He said he’s out of town on business.”
“He’s not here?” Frustration and relief warred in my chest at the delayed confrontation and possible reconciliation.
“That’s not all. He said that he’d like to meet you at your manor this evening at midnight.”
“Oh, crap. That means we have to turn around and drive all the way back.”
“Wait a minute,” said Leo. “He’s out of town on business but can meet us in Crystal Pines? Where is he?”
“Didn’t say,” replied Iain, “but you have a point. I think that we’ll find more from our Doctor Cannon than we expected.”
I spotted an exit, but I had to think fast. This one or the next one? The impetus of seeing Robert again made up my mind for me. Without worrying about my turn signal, I swerved into the next lane and on to the exit ramp.
The blast of a horn startled me, and an out-of-control tractor trailer swerved into the lane where I had just been, crashed, and burst into flame on the other side of the bridge.
“Son of a…” I looked at the plume of black smoke and pressed my foot to the gas, running the red light to get away on the access road as fast as I could. I couldn’t get the image of what my car could have looked like out of my mind. If I hadn’t taken the exit, I would have been trapped by the bridge supports, and we would have been crushed.
“Should we try to help him?” asked Iain as he twisted around to get a better look.
“Are you nuts? He was after us.” Instead of left to get back on the interstate, I turned right and headed into town, hoping that amidst the smoke, no one had seen us. I wiped my trembling hands one at a time on my jeans to make sure they wouldn’t slip off the steering wheel, and I was grateful for that rest stop a half hour before.
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s the trailer part of the truck that burst into flame, not the cab.”
“She’s right,” said Leo. “I watched it. I took an oath to help people, but I’m not itching to go back. They tried to squash us.”
We darted through quiet neighborhoods, careful not to drive too fast or attract attention. My tag was still for Shelby County, Tennessee, so no one would have reason to notice us.
“Are we going back to Crystal Pines?”
“Yes, but we’re taking back ways. I’m going to use the I-55 bridge, not the I-40 one to get back into Arkansas, and then we’re staying off the highway. Hopefully they think they did us in back there. It’ll take them a while to figure out they didn’t.”
“How did they know we were here? Did you see anyone follow us out of town?”
Another shot of adrenaline hit my heart, and I slowed the car. “Good question.” I thought for a moment. “Robert may have set us up. Or someone’s cell phone is tapped, and they can intercept messages. Turn your phone off.”
Iain did as I suggested, and I turned mine off as well. Leo didn’t have one. I pulled into a small road between two new neighborhoods and stopped the car in the shade of an oak tree.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to think for a moment.” I spotted the manila folder from Galbraith and opened it. Inside, we found a sheaf of papers in my grandfather’s handwriting. Iain looked over my shoulder.
“Joanie, this is—”
“Just what I had asked him for.”
“We have to get back. This work is incredible.”
I put my hand on Iain’s arm, which trembled with excitement. “That is just what they were hoping we’d do. And I bet we’d have found a nasty surprise when we got there.”
Comprehension dawned on his features. “Galbraith set us up yesterday.”
“And again today. I bet they have Lonna and Gabriel, too.”
“How do they know how to find us?”
“It may be the cell phones, or I bet there’s a GPS in the car or on the car. The bomb squad could have planted it while Galbraith was talking to us.”
“So they’ll know that we weren’t killed by the tractor trailer.” He licked his lips and looked out the window.
“We need to find the GPS and hide it here.”
“Why here?”
“This is Robert’s neighborhood. They’ll think we’re headed to his house.”
We searched the car, lifted seat cushions, and emptied the glove compartment. We emptied the trunk, checked under the spare tire, and lowered the backseat in case it was nestled in the space under the bottom of the seat. Finally, with a flashlight, we saw it: a black box with a blinking red light magnetically attached to the underside of the car.
“So it wasn’t the phones.” Iain reached for it, but I stayed his hand.
“Think about the explosives,” I said. “What if it’s designed to trigger something if the magnetic seal is broken?”
He looked at me as though he was trying to decide whether I was crazy paranoid or very shrewd, but he didn’t move. “What do we do?”
“Get our stuff, walk around the corner, and rent a car. How much cash do you have?”
“Barely any. I didn’t have time to change much.”
“Leo?”
“Used all mine this morning.”
I checked my bag. Inside, a strange envelope peeked out, and I recognized it as the one Galbraith had left me for expenses. I had stuck it in a drawer in the night table in my bedroom. I opened it, and several hundred dollar bills fell out. I hadn’t packed it, but I didn’t have time to worry about who had.
“This should cover it.”
“No one’s going to rent a car to you without a credit card,” Leo pointed out. “And what do you want to bet that all of ours are being tracked?”
Iain pulled out his wallet and flipped through his cards. “Not this one.”
“What is it?” It looked like a regular Visa card to me.
“This is my university faculty ‘emergency’ card. My chair gave it to me when he heard I was coming in case I needed some cash quick.” He smiled. “I have a tendency to get into sticky situations. It goes back to the university, not to me, so it’s unlikely that it’s being tracked, particularly since the account is overseas.”
“I think this qualifies as an emergency.”
Within half an hour, we were on our way on the back roads to Crystal Pines.
Our trip proceeded without incident, but it occurred to me that they might be watching the roads around Crystal Pines. Whoever “They” were. Minions of Hippocrates Pharmaceuticals, most likely. I had a feeling that Galbraith was in on it, too. I had fixated on Peter Bowman as my enemy, and he may well be, but I had focused on the wrong lawyer.
I pulled the car over and parked it behind some trees about a mile beyond the gatehouse. We hadn’t come across another car for miles, and although I couldn’t see too far back from the road, I didn’t think anyone had spotted us. However, darkness was falling, and I didn’t want to be caught by surprise by another vehicle.