Page 69 of Crosscurrent

"Let's saddle up," Wade said through his own mic.

Gabe waved Owen over to his truck. In their planning session last night, it had quickly become clear that Wade, a trained escape driver, would be the most logical choice to try and draw Neptune coverage. He and Fake Owen would take lead. Gabe, with years of pursuit training of his own thanks to the Bureau, would take the real package: Owen and Skye, as well as Cara. Reagan and Tom would make sure Sophie and David got to the transfer point in Tillamook.

If all went well until there, they'd make another shell game switch. As he eased his truck out of the alley behind Wade's rust-edged F-350, he went through the contingencies again. It felt good. There would be issues they hadn't considered, certainly, moves Neptune would make that they couldn't anticipate.

Or moves from his own team that took him by surprise. He could not have anticipated that Owen would respond to a pre-dawn drive through a Neptune gauntlet by explaining the Hanseatic League. In detail.

"The key thing to understand," Owen said, as they turned onto US-6, "is that the Bruges connection isn't incidental. The reason the convoy strategy worked is that rival guilds assumed high-value cargo required proportionally visible security. So when the League moved multiple equivalent convoys simultaneously⁠—"

"Owen," Cara said, gently. "You explained this last night."

"I know." A pause. "I find it clarifying."

They'd only made it a block when Wade's voice came over the comlink. "Fake Owen is making me crazy. If he keeps yammering on about the Dano-Hanseatic War, I'm going to knock his head off."

"You can't," Tom insisted, from Reagan's SUV. "We have to assume the enemy has listening devices."

A strangled groan came over the comlink. "You owe me, Nerd. Big time."

Cara laughed, a small, joyful sound that made Gabe's heart stutter.

Gabe pressed on through the dawn light toward Tillamook.

"Yo." Tom came over comms. "Head's up people. We've got a possible bogey pacing us. Black Escalade about eight miles behind our six."

Skye made a sound low in her throat, and Cara caught Gabe's eye. Owen must have sensed their shift in attention, because he stopped talking. They only had enough comlinks to outfit the team plus Skye. Plus, the constant team chatter in his ear would have only confused him, they'd reasoned. Living with a whole group in your head took practice.

"Closing the gap?" Wade asked.

"Negative." The response came swiftly. "They made eye contact with the cameras, so they know we're watching, but they're hanging back. For now."

Good. Calculating opponents were predictable. Aggressive opponents, not so much.

The Escalade stayed behind them all the way to Tillamook. By the time they reached the edge of town, Gabe was feeling cautiously optimistic.

As planned, Gabe swung into the motel parking lot and headed around the back, where the building shielded the truck from the street for exactly as long as it took two doors to open and close. Owen and Skye were out before the truck stopped rolling, Skye somehow already at the service entrance, Owen behind her with the cipher notebook clamped under one arm like a man boarding a lifeboat. The automatic door closed behind them.

Gabe looped out the far side of the lot, drove two blocks east, and parked nose-out in a shuttered farm supply lot with a clean sightline to the motel's portico and the lobby glass. He killed the engine.

Now they waited. The plan from here was simple. Owen and Skye would wait in the lobby, posing as guests waiting on the airport run. Once the shuttle arrived, the team would make sure their pursuers’ attention was somewhere else long enough for them to board the shuttle undetected.

Then Wade would peel out, with Fake Owen in place, dragging Neptune’s men on a wild goose chase to the airport.

Tom came over comms. "Four Neptune assets visible at the transit stop. South lot, two, still in their car. Platform approach, one. East alley⁠—"

"East alley?" Gabe said.

"New one. Just arrived."

Gabe groaned silently. Four assets. They'd planned for three.

"Shuttle's two minutes out," Tom said. "Picking our noisemaker now." A rattle of keys. "Gray Silverado, south lot, two spaces off our friends' rear bumper. Aftermarket alarm, insecure firmware."

Nobody asked how.

The shuttle pulled in, gliding to a stop under the motel's portico. The queue shuffled toward the door — the man with the bicycle, a woman with a roller bag, ordinary Tuesday shapes in the gray morning.

"Stand by," Wade said.