Page 19 of Mike

When her target traveled straight thru Hampden without stopping, Joe knew there was no time to waste. The car was on a direct path to Frankfort, and if that weren’t for nefarious purposes, Joe would eat her dirty boots.

She picked up her pace and began to run.

Joe had speed-traversed plenty of trails before, and even though this one was a little rougher than what she was used to, she was able to move quickly. But her attention must have wandered as she finally came within sight of her car, because her boot hit a root, and she went sprawling.

“Uhhh,” she grunted, as she hit the ground.

Attempting to catch her breath, she took instant stock of her condition. She’d managed to mostly catch herself on her hands, which had taken the brunt of the damage. Before she moved, she examined them carefully. They were scuffed up a bit by the sticks and stones where she’d landed, but there were no big lacerations she could see. Good. Time to regroup and get her ass in gear.

Joe sat up, and as she did, a sharp sting on her chin had her hissing. She sent up a questing probe, and… Her fingers came away bloody.

Goshdangit. She didn’t have time for this. She looked at the pointy-arsed rock at her feet that was the culprit, and knocked it askew.

Getting up as fast as possible, scolding herself for being careless, she jogged a little more gingerly to her car. Once there, she slid into the driver seat, reaching into the glove compartment to pull out a napkin, holding it firmly against her cut as she examined her phone feed again.

Flock. There was no doubt in her mind, now. Her perp was definitely headed to the quarries.

She quickly punched the address into her GPS, and saw that it would take her forty minutes to get there, if she obeyed the speed limit. Without wasting another second of time worrying about her chin, she dropped her car in drive, and navigated one-handedly out of the park.

It wasn’t easy staying on the road and keeping her cut from dripping while having one eye on the app showing Cameron’s progress. But when the perp’s car, did, indeed stop twenty feet from where Mike was parked, Joe was finally able to acknowledge she’d been right, put her phone down, and punched the gas. Her goal was now getting to the site as swiftly as possible, and in one piece.

When she turned onto the road for the quarries, Joe realized she needed a plan, and pulled over beneath some trees.

First things first. Where was Cameron, or Cameron and company?

She activated her phone again, and looked at the screen.

Crawblammit!

Her perp was on the move again, taking a different road out of the quarries, clearly having finished what he’d come for. Which had to have been sabotage of some type to Mike’s vehicle. Her job had just changed from preventing damage to Mike’s truck, to fixing whatever had been done so the man wouldn’t kill himself navigating the treacherous roads home.

Joelle’s guess was that the brake-lines had been cut, since it had taken the perp or perps so little time to do their deed. If they’d attempted to vandalize the steering column, they would have had to break into the vehicle to mess with the controls, and that would have taken a lot longer. They could have set an incendiary device in that amount of time, but Joe doubted it. Neither Cameron nor Melanie looked like they had the brain power to rig explosives.

Joe pulled back onto the egress into the quarries, but this time slowed her roll. The damage to the truck, whatever it was, had clearly already been done. And it still being early afternoon, Joe hoped it meant whatever Mike was doing here, whether swimming, hiking, drilling, or a combination of all three, he wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.

The minute Joe pulled into the main parking area, she breathed a sigh of relief. She saw what was most certainly a SWAT team command bus, as well as more than four dozen vehicles, all sporting law enforcement stickers of one kind or another. So, Mike was drilling with his peeps. Which meant he probably wouldn’t be back to his truck—which she easily spotted in the middle of the grouping—until the following day.

Still, she wouldn’t take any chances. She extracted her firearm from her glove compartment, tucking it into her waistband before getting out and eyeballing the area. Not a soul stirred within her line of vision.

Sweet. Joe had plenty of time to play mechanic, then get the schell out without Mike ever knowing she was there.

Mike had just completed his second rappel down the high quarry wall, dressed not for the weather in his black BDU’s and bullet proof vest, carrying a full pack of rocks as well as his AR-15. It was damned hot, and he was ready to shed some layers when the motion alert on his phone went off. He wiped the sweat from his face because…yeah. He needed to at least see the screen. Not that he expected anything momentous, but… When he saw that the alarm was continuing to complain, he knew it wasn’t just a bird landing on his truck this time. Someone had to be messing with it.

“Chief,” he yelled over to Mason, who was timing the individual descents down the rock face. “Someone’s engaging with my truck.” He didn’t have to say more, because he’d already explained to Mase about the spy shit that had been planted at his house.

“Go,” Mason barked. “You want backup?”

“As soon as you can spare somebody.” He looked aloft and saw the rest of his squad on top of the cliffs, but he didn’t want to wait.

“Six minutes behind you,” Mason stated, knowing exactly how long it would take for the next person to come down.

Mike took off, shedding his pack as he ran by the team’s home-base. Goddammit. Even at a run, he wouldn’t reach his vehicle for another nineteen minutes. The units were training in a remote part of the quarries, so as not to have to interface with any of the park’s regular visitors.

He also ditched his AR, but kept his handgun in its shoulder harness in case he met up with any serious trouble. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it and create a scene. No matter. He’d catch whoever was dicking with him, and there’d be hell to pay.

Reaching the parking lot twenty-one minutes after his initial alert, Mike didn’t see a damn thing. Nobody was at his truck, and there were no people milling about in the dirt lot. What the fuck?

He pulled out his phone and looked at it again, shaking his head. The time elapsed between the first alarm and the last was just under eight minutes. That meant whoever had put hands on his truck, they were long gone.

---