Page 38 of Call Sign: King
Khloe said a small prayer the BSO team would be there waiting for them. Her chances of survival would plummet if they got her out of Toronto.
Chapter Eleven
RYDER
“Axel, you’re ready, right? When they get her out of the van, we may only have a few seconds to get a ping on her location.”
“I’m ready.”
A new voice joined the communication link.
“Last confirmed location on the 401 headed northeast. Got the last hit from the traffic camera on the downtown on-ramp. Facial recognition confirmed it’s our same driver from the initial chase near the hotel.” It was Bing reporting in from the office in D.C.
Thank God. Ryder was on the 401.
“They’re ahead of me, right? Is there any chance I got on the highway in front of them and could stop and intercept?”
“Not sure, but unlikely. There’s a small time delay in the uploads from those cameras, so I can’t trust the timestamps.”
Fuck. “Roger that.”
Better to keep heading to the airport. “You’ve got police converging on the Oshawa airport, right?”
“Already there, although I wouldn’t count on them for a lot other than containment.”
“That’s all I need. I want to take down the bogie myself.”
“That is your secondary mission, soldier. I know you’re pissed but getting her out alive is all we care about right now. Revenge comes later.”
Axel was right.
“Roger that,” Ryder confirmed, stopping short of thanking his friend for being the calm in the storm that he needed right now.
“Texting you a photo of the driver. It’s a grainy shot, but it’s the best I got,” Bing called out.
Ryder’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he carefully fished it out to take a look.
“Don’t recognize him,” he said. “But anyone this pissed at me is gonna have henchmen driving for them.”
“Roger that. I have Diver running the pic through our databases to see if we can get a hit on who the bogie belongs to.”
Axel asked Ryder, “What’s your ETA, King?”
“Not sure. I’m just passing the exit for Scarborough.”
“You’re making good time. I’m counting on the driver keeping it under the speed limit to avoid speed traps.”
Ryder had thought of that too, which was why he’d spent much of his drive at one-hundred-twenty kilometers per hour while keeping his eyes peeled for a white van. Considering it was still technically the end of the evening rush hour, his speed had forced him onto the berm multiple times to avoid rear-ending slower drivers. The only reason he wasn’t going even faster was he knew he’d be no good to Khloe if he crashed before he could get to her. With the rest of his team back in the city, he was the last line of defense now.
Several long minutes went by in silence, giving Ryder too much time to think about what was happening to his wife. Each vision he conjured was worse than the last, making his foot heavier on the gas.
“Hang on, princess. I’m coming,” he whispered to the empty car.
“What the fuck!” The eerie silence on their communication link was broken by an animated Bing cursing.
Ryder’s racing heart lurched, dreading what had made his normally calm technology guru lose his cool.
“I just got another ping on the vehicle from the highway cameras. You aren’t going to like this, but the camera is up north where the 404 and 407 intersect.”
