Page 54 of No Safe Place

This isn’t a college town, I realized. This is a banana republic with its very own dictator.

I shook my head as I thought of Jodi.

And now, lucky me, I have the dictator’s wife, I realized.

I stared at the post office and thought about that, about what I would do if I were in their shoes and mixed up with the suspicious death of a young girl with billions of dollars on the line.

The mercs would be back, I decided. And sooner rather than later as bullshit stories tended to start to stink the longer they stuck around. Especially in the bright light of day.

The town tilted as I banked the drone left and rotated it, looking around for a parking spot. It had to be high up.

To the right was a steeple of the church. Maybe there. Nah, it was too far.

Then I saw it to the left.

“No-brainer,” I said as I piloted the drone at the 5G tower that was atop the building where I was staying.

It took me a little maneuvering to land it on the highest movie poster–sized array, but I managed it two minutes later.

After I was done, I smiled. Now with my trusty drone looking down at the post office lot from about fifteen stories up, I could see everything.

As I watched, the BearCat came back. Four guys in SWAT FBI gear got out of it and quickly headed toward the post office.

The varsity squad, I thought.

They were met by another SWAT guy who was very tall, and the athletic panther-like way he moved was oddly familiar.

“Holy shit,” I whispered.

It was one of the four men in Olivia’s video! The slimmer of the two bodyguards. Had to be.

I nodded. It was all making sense now. Stone had sent his goons to stop Jodi from squealing, and the college security guy and the chief of police were running cover, leaving the mercenaries free to run roughshod.

Staring at all the real cops standing around, I was suddenly pissed.

Not one of them could put it together? How fishy this all was? What the hell was wrong with people today? Even the cops didn’t ask questions? No, I’ll just go along to get my pension. It was as if everyone’s brain—or was it their balls—had been surgically removed.

I watched the bodyguard stand there with his hit team.

No telling what they would do if I gave them the chance.

Which I wasn’t going to.

Because whatever they did next, we would know it immediately thanks to the drone.

And there was something else in my bag of tricks, I thought. Something they weren’t going to see coming by a country mile.

PART THREE

MAKING A STAND

49

Shaw was inside the post office at the head of the staging room. Sitting on a desk with his four men on folding chairs in a loose circle in front of him they looked like hunters around a campfire.

This was a hunting party meetup all right, Shaw thought. Just between him and his fellow top-tier operators from the firm. The sort of meeting that needed a firmly closed door.

Behind Shaw on the Smart Board was a Google Earth view of the restaurant. Alongside that were photos from its website that gave them a feel for the interior layout, and at the bottom were the driver’s license photos of Jodi Cushing and Colleen Doherty.

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