Page 52 of Running Scared
“Does it matter?”Bailey asked, not wanting to talk over him but needing the big picture before he could triage the situation.
“Probably to Dean,” Reg said.“We need to keep it in mind.Okay, then.They travel for about six hours after they drop you off, and as it’s getting dark, they make camp.Now, according to my sources, they are out in the middle of Snakeshit Acres, but what do I know.”
“What,” Bailey joked grimly.“No satellite access?”
Reg gave him a baleful look.“I try not to do anything that can get me convicted or exiled to another country,” he said, with so much sincerity Bailey was suddenly very afraid.
“Understood.So they camp in the middle of Snakeshit Acres, and then….”
“And then…,” Reg murmured, almost to himself, “they camp some more.Why are we camping in Snakeshit Acres, Dean?What’s out there that keeps you and Marcus camping for two nights?Hmm….”Reg grunted and continued to scroll the timeline.“Okay.So, last night they… well, they traveled a little.Didn’t so muchleaveSnakeshit Acres as tour the grounds.And then….”
Bailey frowned at the map with the little red dot blinking.The dot didn’tgo out,which was good because Bailey might have dropped dead right there from heart failure, but it did… fuzz?
“What’s causing that?”he asked.
“Interference,” Reg said bluntly.“Okay, somymap says Snakeshit Acres, but given Dean and Marcus stayed still like mice for two days and now their signals are getting fuzzy, I’m thinking there might be a big building or complex that’s not really Snakeshit in Snakeshit Acres.”
Bailey grunted with relief as he saw the other dot that was Marcus.“It looks like Marcus maybe charged his phone too,” Bailey said.
“He probably kept his off,” Reg told him.“Which makes me think they werereallycamped out.Dean kept his on and charged for emergencies, Marcus shut his off to save battery.And last night, as we slept, they snuck?I mean, itissneaking if it’s late night/early morning, right?”
“Especially if you’re in Snakeshit Acres that’s not really Snakeshit Acres,” Bailey confirmed, both of them staring at the dots and the scroll of activity beside them.
“So they’re in a complex or camp or something,” Reg murmured.“Something with enough of a computer tower or enough electronic equipment to make it harder to track their phones.Given that they camped out next to it for so long, I’m going to assume they want to be there, but what are they doing there?”
And with that, he turned his hazel-eyed gaze to Bailey, who rubbed his stomach.
Oh God.
“This whole thing started when I saw a murder,” he said softly.“And then I saw the two hit men—Russian mobsters, Dean told me.Easily identifiable.And—” He swallowed.“—well known for their ties to the local drug cartel.”
“Oh wow,” Reg said, taking a deep breath.“Okay, so that’s why you got pushed out of the plane.They took you far away from where anybody could see you land, pushed you out, and arranged for pickup.Boom!Suddenly you’rehere,and my family is taking care of you so you don’t have an electronic footprint or a paper trail.Have you told anybody where you are?Even texted somebody?”
Bailey shook his head.“No.Dean told me not to, and my dad too.In fact I turned off my phone once I got picked up.”Dean had told him to do that somewhere in all that rush on the way to the airstrip.To turn off his phone as soon as the plane revved.If his father hadn’t been on the ground to greet him, he might have rethought it, but no, Dean had planned for everything.“I had Val text my friend Sarree when he got back to Texas, so she’d know I was okay, but that’s it.”
“Good,” Reg said, staring at the screen.“Because I think my brother and Marcus are doing somethinghugeand dangerous out in Snakeshit Acres to make sureyoudon’t get hunted down because you saw a couple of Russian mobsters in the middle of cartel country.”
Bailey rubbed his stomach again and thought of Dean, plastering himself along Bailey’s back, holding him so tight Bailey forgot all about holding on to hurt, holding on to escape.
“Oh God,” he muttered.“Reg, he’s got to be okay.”
“I’m putting an alarm on this little dot,” Reg murmured.“The minute it goes on the move again, you and I are taking the family minivan to go greet it.How’s that sound?”
Dangerous.Reckless.The exact opposite of what Dean and Marcus had wanted them to do.
“I’m totally in,” Bailey said, because fuck Dean if he thought Bailey was going to leave him out there in Snakeshit Acres without Bailey as backup.
Meanwhile, Back in Snakeshit Acres
MORNING DAWNEDand they took turns—one of them would scout, one of them would nap, one of them would stand guard.Birdie’s presence made this a lot easier, and Dean thought muzzily when he woke up from his sleep that it was too bad Birdie would never make it in the Bureau.Dean and Marcus could pass for good old American boys—Agent Johnson and Special Agent Johnson—but Birdie would never be anything but Birdie.Besides, an absence of a criminal record was absolutely necessary, and given Birdie’s stories on previous adventures, there was a lot of getting bailed out of the clink for good old Bird.
But that didn’t mean Marcus and Dean didn’t trust the pilot with their lives now.
“Okay, then,” Dean said as the six o’clock meal drew near.“Are we ready for this?”
“No,” Marcus said.“But if we plan too much more, we’ll never do it.”
Dean nodded, because that only made sense.They were speaking Spanish—lightly accented with Russian—which they’d been practicing all day.It was thelightlyaccented that was the hard part—otherwise, they sounded like Boris and Natasha in a Telenovela.
