Chapter 154 Chapter One hundred and fifty-three
ARA
"I can’t believe the nerve of that man. Are you seriously telling me the Feds are just going to let him slip away that easily? He knew we were going to make a move, so he simply packed his bags and vanished?” Nick asked, disbelief written all over his face.
“Very Dracula,” Sasha murmured.
“Very Dracula indeed,” Stuart agreed dryly.
Thayne rubbed his face. Just yesterday we had been in the hospital, trying to have some real husband-and-wife time. But of course, the universe wouldn’t let us have it.
“So we’re waiting for directives from who?” I asked.
“The FBI,” Nick muttered.
I shot my not-so-very stepfather a look. Then I looked at Thayne.
“Thayne… the FBI? Are they fully involved now? They’re really backing us up?”
“Yeah. But I don't even know why. It seems there's more to this case than I ever thought.” He sighed, typing furiously on his laptop.
“Wait a minute…” Stuart suddenly straightened in his chair.
Sasha groaned. “What now?”
“Many weeks ago, I left an old tracker capable of downloading updates and storing them. It was programmed to notify me if similar movement patterns appeared or if the device was transferred—”
“I didn’t watch Star Trek because I got lost halfway through it, and now you’re reading from the damn script.” I pressed my fingers to my temple.
Thayne’s shoulders shook with quiet laughter.
“They didn’t even need trackers in Star Trek because they used tricorders and ship sensors that can detect lifeforms and—”
“I didn’t watch it, Stuart. What’s the update?”
His mouth snapped shut.
Stuart cleared his throat and tapped his tablet.
“The tracker I planted weeks ago just pinged.”
The room went still.
Nick leaned forward. “Pinged where?”
“No, hold on, I'm more interested in the fact that you left a tracker. Where, Stuart??” Thayne asked, his brows twitching.
“I didn't want to tell you because then you'd think there was hope. I tossed it into the only car he uses for movement.” Stuart refused to meet his boss’ eyes as he spoke, and I knew why.
Thayne's eyes looked pretty intense now, and if I weren't his wife, I wouldn't be bold enough to distract him with the wink I sent him. It seemed to calm him down immediately.
“Your job is to do your job without wanting or not wanting.” He said sternly to Stuart who nodded.
“So where's the location now?” Sasha asked, bringing us back on board.
Stuart licked his lips. “Baltimore.”
Sasha frowned. “That’s not possible. His private jet was last spotted in New Jersey without a flight plan.”
“Which means the jet was a decoy.” Stuart’s fingers moved across the screen. “The tracker indicates a data transfer from one device to another about forty minutes ago. Same movement signature.”
My stomach tightened.
“So Slade Senior didn’t run,” I said slowly.
Thayne looked up from his laptop. “He relocated.”
“And he’s still in the country,” Nick finished.
For a moment, nobody spoke. Then Sasha whistled under her breath.
“Well. That’s bold.”
“Or stupid,” Nick muttered.
“Or desperate,” I added.
Thayne finally closed his laptop.
The soft click sounded much louder than it should have.
“If the tracker is right,” he said calmly, “then he’s in that SUV as we speak. But his team has blocked all external access to their GPS server. It's why the tracker notified you of a movement signature instead of the exact location.”
I was confused like I'd never heard English before in all my life.
Stuart nodded. “Exactly.”
Exactly what, please?
“And if the FBI already knows—” Nick trailed off.
“They’ll want him first,” Sasha finished.
Thayne stood. The chair slid back with a low scrape against the floor.
“If the FBI’s involved, then we’ll be powerless if they find him themselves. They wouldn’t intervene if they didn’t have a reason to, which means my father is wanted for a very serious crime.”
“Do you think Jimmy might run too?” I asked.
“If he hasn’t already…” Nick laughed.
“It’ll be a shame if we don’t find Slade Senior because the public want answers. If the FBI thinks Slade Corps is involved in dirty shit, you might be implicated too,” Sasha pointed out, looking thoughtfully at Thayne.
She was right. I hadn’t even thought about it before.
“We need to hack that server,” I said.
“It’s the obvious thing to do, but it’s blocked from both inside and outside. It’s like a safe box with no keyhole,” Stuart sighed.
“Try,” I told him.
He nodded and went silent for a while. By the time he lifted his head again, Thayne and I were the only ones in the room.
“I did it! The tracker is feeding me data now! It says… Baltimore?!” he exclaimed.
Sasha and Nick came running into the room.
“What’s happening in Baltimore?” she asked, her eyes flickering from Thayne's face to Stuart's.
“His current location is Baltimore!” Stuart exclaimed again.
“Can you extract data from the tracker while it's feeding you at the same time?” Thayne asked Stuart.
“There's a first time for everything.” Stuart shrugged and got back to work.
“Araaaaa! The bad man is on TV!”
Mollie’s excited voice in the hallway caused all of us to pause and turn. I thought she was busy with dressing Lenora's hair? What was she doing here?
She bounced into the room and announced in a voice loud enough to wake the dead, “I saw the bad man on TV, Ara. The FBI got him!” She waved the picking comb in her hand.
We all exchanged knowing glances and hurried to the lobby where the TV screen was mounted.
Sure enough, there was a picture of Slade Senior plastered across the screen.
The news anchor was speaking.
“...He was intercepted in Baltimore and will remain in custody until the full extent of his crimes has been determined. Slade Corps has been reported to be the sponsor of the number-one human trafficking warehouse in America. More details will be—”
“Impossible,” Thayne muttered behind me.