Page 77 of A Fine Line

By the time I’m showered and dressed and make it back down to the work area, where people are milling around, awaiting further instructions.

But there is no sign of Carolina.

I walk over to Darius and ask, “Have you seen Carolina?”

His eyes widen, and he cocks a brow at me. “She’s not with you?”

A shiver runs down my spine, and I grit my teeth as I sputter, “Obviously, she’s not with me.”

I look around the room until I find Nettie, then I walk over to her, grabbing her arm to get her attention. “Have you seen Carolina?”

She shakes her head, her brow furrowing. “No, I thought she was with you.”

I whirl around in the middle of the room and shout, “Has anyone seen Carolina this morning?”

All I get back are shaking heads and murmurs in the negative. A deep sickness settles over me, and I swallow painfully as I look at Matt and say, “Find her.” Then I turn to Nettie. “Check on Flora.”

Nettie nods, already pulling her phone out and pressing buttons as she walks away. Matt’s now staring at his computer, a concerned expression on his face, so I ask, “What is it? Just fucking tell me.”

“How long do you think she’s been gone?” Matt asks.

I shake my head, shrugging my shoulders as I sputter, “I don’t fucking know. Could’ve been an hour or maybe even up to six or so. I don’t know what fucking time I fell asleep. All these goddamn time zones, flying here, flying there, flipping cars, and cleaning up bodies. Jesus fucking Christ, man.”

“She must’ve taken off shortly after you fell asleep because according to this tracker, she’s thousands of miles from here. Which means there’s 0% chance that we will be able to catch up with her before she lands.”

Nettie steps up beside me and says, “Flora’s still here. One of the guys said Carolina was there ages ago and peeked in on her and then took off.”

I glance around the room, fully baffled by why she would take off, knowing we had a plan. “Where the fuck is Lilith?”

Nettie shakes her head, and Dare says, “I haven’t seen her in a while. Or Mickey for that matter.”

“Mickey was here earlier,” Matt interjects. “He’s definitely not with Carolina. But I haven’t seen Lilith at all, and lord knows she’s fucking wily enough to try and pull some shit, though I have no idea why.”

“I’m going to fucking kill her,” I spit out through my clenched teeth. Of all the times I’ve wanted to throttle that bitch, this one takes the cake. That self-serving, overbearing fucking snake.

Nettie gives me a patient and almost condescending look, and I say, “Don’t fucking start with me, Nettie. She was a menace in her previous life, and apparently, she’s gonna be a bigger menace now. We better teach her a fucking lesson before she gets someone killed.”

She inclines her head at me, likely because she can’t really disagree at this point, and I look over at Matt and ask, “So what do we do? Chase her until she lands?”

“Difficult to chase them without a flight plan. I mean, it can be done, but it’s kind of tricky and also kind of dangerous, not that we give a fuck about that. Probably the best thing we can do is try to guess her destination and hope we don’t have to change our course too much once she lands. Or we wait for her to land and then go.”

“There is no fucking way we’re waiting.”

“I figured you’d say that,” Matt says. “They’re prepping our ride. We just have to decide a rough estimate on flight plan.”

“So, we’re going to guess where she’s headed?” Nettie asks.

“More of an educated guess based on likelihood, given her most recent trajectory.”

Nettie gives him a bland look and rolls her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, nerdface.”

He holds up the tablet that shows Carolina’s current location. “These tracking devices don’t give constant real-time information—it’s more of an intermittent ping. Don’t get me wrong; it pings often, so not a lot of time goes by in between, but I can set them up like pinpoints on a map because flight plans don’t zigzag. Once I have enough pins in place, I should have enough data to give a relatively accurate forecast on her ultimate destination. It would be much easier if we knew what kind of plane she was on, but we have to make do with what we got.”

“How long will it take you to figure that out?” I ask him, feeling my left eye start to twitch.

“I should have a pretty good idea by the time we leave here.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

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