Page 70 of Crosscurrent

The Silverado went off — horn, lights, full indignation. Both south-lot heads snapped toward it. The platform asset turned.

"Go," Wade ordered Skye. "Now."

The lobby door didn't move.

Gabe leaned forward over the wheel. The guests already waiting outside were boarding. The car alarm shrieked. And still no Owen or Skye.

"Tom," Gabe said. "Why aren't they boarding?"

"Checking. I don't⁠—"

Skye's voice came over the comlink, barely a breath. "Row three. He's already on the bus."

Gabe's eyes went to the smoked windows and got nothing back.

"Pulling the feed from the last stop now," Tom explained. "Yup. We've got an intruder. Male, gray windbreaker, boarded two stops ago. Paid cash." Tom's voice went flat. "He was already on that shuttle before we left Haven Cove."

Neptune hadn't covered the shuttle stop to keep Owen off the bus. They'd covered it to make sure nothing else did. The smoked glass, the sealed doors, the fixed route to a destination everybody already knew. Every feature that made the shuttle perfect cover made it a perfect box. Neptune was never planning to chase Owen to the airport.

They were planning to receive him.

"Escalade's still on me," Wade said. "Eight miles out and patient."

"Because you were never the play," Cara said quietly. "The shuttle was."

Down at the south lot, both car doors opened at once. Two men got out, unhurried. The platform asset stopped angling and started walking, straight line, toward the queue.

The pocket was closing, and the truck was two blocks of open pavement away.

The platform asset peeled off the queue and headed into the motel.

The shuttle door hissed shut. It pulled out of the portico carrying forty commuters, a man in a gray windbreaker, and their entire plan.

Skye's comlink clicked once. "Going dark." Then nothing.

"Skye—" Tom stopped. "She killed her comm."

Gabe stared across two empty lots at the building. Front covered. Back covered. One operative already through the doors behind them. Two people inside with the notebook Neptune had killed for: no comlink, no weapon, no vehicle.

Gabe stared out the windshield. "Tom. Talk to me about that building."

"Lobby, service hall, fire door to the east alley. Gabe — every exit they have is somebody's assignment."

Through the lobby glass, he caught one last flash of Skye. She wasn't looking at the exits. She was looking at the street. The alley. The hillside above town.

Then the east alley operative appeared around the corner. He stopped, looked up — straight into the drone camera he wasn't supposed to know was there. And smiled.

Neptune hadn't fallen for the shell game. They'd built one of their own.

26

"Options." Gabe ordered over the comlink. "Fast."

Overlapping, half-finished, the comlink channel turning into the world's most motivated brainstorm.

Tom spoke first. "Pull the truck around to the service door and just drive. We'll figure out the rest later."

"That's a no-go," Cara responded immediately. "They'd trap all three of us in that lot."