Page 82 of Long Road Home

Jax had met the guy at a training conference for federal agents from all branches, some kind of cooperation thing. Or an attempt at one. They’d been paired up in a door kicking exercise and taken first place rescuing the hostages.

They hadn’t kept in touch much, but just enough he knew he could trust the guy.

“Don’t count on it yet.” Jax headed for the gas station. There was no way to track the location of the other vehicle. Hopefully, they didn’t have the means to track the sheriff’s department through some kind of GPS. He tapped the screen of the phone and called?—

“Maizie?” Kenna said.

“I have a question for her,” Jax said. He took a right turn and headed for the gas station. They needed to be gone before the SUV came back around, or they needed somewhere to hole up.

Maizie picked up. “Pablo’s Pizza Palace.”

“I need the escape special,” he joked. Kenna shot him a look, but he’d have to explain it to her later. He continued, “Does this vehicle I’m in have a GPS transponder? Because if it’s sending our location, I need to turn that function off.”

“Please hold.” Music came across the phone line, through the tinny speaker on the bottom of his phone.

“Someone want to explain what this is?” That was Destain.

Jax pulled behind the gas station and parked out of sight, in the shadows. He cut the headlights but left the enginerunning. A dark-gray cat jumped the chain-link fence out of sight.

Kenna twisted around in her seat. “We need to know if they can track us, right?”

“So you call a pizza place?” Destain didn’t sound any happier than he had the entire plane right. Jax had figured out pretty quickly that the guy was either afraid to fly or nauseous because of it.

Kenna faced forward again. “You have your resources, I have mine.”

The music quit. “Sir?”

“I’m here.” Jax shifted in the seat and leaned forward a little, stretching out his shoulders. He wanted to crank the heat in the car, but that would only make getting out all that much more brutal of a shock. Why did people want to live in the north?

Not that he was going to admit to Kenna that he wasfreezing.

“Your vehicle is transmitting its location,” Maizie said.

“Tell me where the transponder is, and I’ll pull it out.” Jax would have to dig up a flashlight, but no way a cop car didn’t have one.

“I can dig up schematics, but what I’m looking at indicates it might be buried in the dash. Probably so it can’t be disabled easily. I’m working on disabling the signal itself. Burying it with so much interference that there’s no way they can track you guys to…” Computer keys clacked. “Okay, I’m done.”

“We’re clear.”

“Anything else I can help you with tonight, sir?” Maizie asked. “You’ll be getting an email with a survey. If you could give me five stars, then my boss will keep giving me amazing Christmas presents.”

Jax chuckled. “Sure thing.”

“Oh, and if you can tell her, I’m runningeverything. I’ll have a full report as soon as you get to the place.”

The call ended.

Jax pulled out from behind the gas station because this was the last place their location had pinged from. It would be the first place someone searching for them would look. He scanned for big black SUVs and made his way to the drive-through of a fast-food place, then behind the building. He backed up next to the dumpster so he could pull out fast if necessary.

Pilsborough said, “Interesting friend.”

“She comes in handy.”

“But you’re not going to tell us who that was?” Destain huffed. “We can still make trouble for you, using resources outside the Bureau.”

Except that this wasn’t a Bureau operation.

It was theirs, and he’d tagged along.

---