Page 20 of Hotter than Wildfire

Sam’s eyes widened as Harry turned to one of the three top of the line computers on his desk. He punched two keys and a clear image of the street outside their building appeared, crisp and clean.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “There she is.”

The monitor showed Eve running toward a taxi that had stopped to let a passenger out in front of the entrance. A second later the taxi pulled away, tires squealing.

Harry punched a key and the frame froze. He zoomed in on the license plate, highlighted the frame, copied and entered directly into a database he kept current for just such an occasion as this, in which speed was vital.

The database was a roster of TPMS IDs. The Tire Pressure Monitoring System, probably helpful for car safety but fabulous for tracking down vehicles. Tire pressure measurement devices transmitted pressure data constantly to the on-board computer, each car with its separate ID. A safety measure that as a by-product was a quick way to track any vehicle manufactured since 2007.

The cab was a 2023 model Prius.

A soft ping and the ID was on his second monitor, superimposed on a map of San Diego.

“Sam!” Harry ran to the weapons locker, fitting himself with a light Kevlar vest, a shoulder holster with a Kimber 1911 and three magazines hanging from his belt. Comms system in ear.

The gun was taken from the right-hand side of the locker. All the guns there were cold. Unregistered, untraceable. If Montez’s men were around, this was going to be a kill.

He slung a jacket on to cover the whole thing and raced to the door. “Have Henry bring my SUV up from the garage. I’ll call you from the vehicle. Keep following that cab and patch it through to my SUV’s GPS. And kill the security cameras where the cab stops.”

It was Harry who should have been at the computer. He was better at it than Sam. Sam was good at strategy, Harry was good with computers. But he’d have to leave Sam to take care of the monitors because no way was anyone going after Eve except himself.

Sam moved to the chair in front of the monitor. He knew he wasn’t as good with computers as Harry was—few people were—but Harry trusted him to do this.

“On it.” Sam set up the transfer of the image to the onboard computer in Harry’s vehicle. “You just make sure she doesn’t fall into Montez’s hands.”

“You got it,” Harry growled and raced out.

Henry the garage manager must have had his spidey senses working overtime because he had Harry’s Cherokee idling at the curb, driver’s side door opening when Harry burst out of the front doors. Harry peeled out, keeping an eye on the GPS screen.

“She’s going down Lark,” Sam’s calm voice came over Harry’s ear piece.

“Yeah, I can see it.” Harry was driving as fast as the road and traffic would allow. The cab was four blocks ahead of him. The light was still yellow at the intersection ahead.

Harry braked suddenly and pounded his fist on the steering wheel in frustration. A big delivery van suddenly appeared on the cross street, moving slowly. Harry would have run the red light but now he was forced to wait.

Though no sound penetrated the soundproofing in the car, he knew his tires were screeching as took off the second the light changed. Heads turned from people walking along the sidewalk as smoke rose in the rearview mirror.

He was treating the vehicle badly but who the fuck cared. The important thing was getting to where Eve was going fast enough to stop Montez’s thugs from grabbing her if they were waiting for her.

With every second that passed, Harry was more and more certain that she was walking into a trap.

He punched a number on the screen, the office. It took about 5 seconds to get through. All of RBK Security communications went through a proprietory satellite, owned by a company based in the Bahamas, seemingly was located in Mexico, and couldn’t be snarfed out of the air like most Bluetooth-based comms.

“Sir?” It was Marisa, who looked after The Lost Ones. She’d been a lost one herself and she was ferociously protective. No man trying to track down one of ‘her’ girls would ever find out from Marisa that his victim had been to RBK.

“Marisa!” Harry barked. “Did this Nora Charles call from a cell?”

Tapping sounds, then Marisa’s calm voice. “No, sir. She called from a pay phone from…” More tapping sounds. “The Greyhound bus station on West Broadway.”

A light turned yellow up ahead and Harry gunned the engine viciously, pounding his way through the intersection, wrenching the steering wheel to avoid a teenager driving a Mustang. The gap was down to two blocks.

“Thanks, Marisa.” Harry felt a little spurt of relief. If Bearclaw got hold of Eve’s cellphone, they’d trace the number she’d called to RBK. Still, good luck with that. That one number, never used for ordinary business, was also registered in the Bahamas but routed through Canada. They’d never trace her through the number. But they could trace her through the phone itself, if she’d kept it on.

He could only pray that she’d turned the cell off and that she’d been telling the truth about leaving it in the hotel.

The Curtis Hotel, he discovered, as the small red dot that was the cab stopped. With a voice command, Harry immediately superimposed a map of businesses over that spot and saw the name. It was only a block away.

He pressed the pedal down as far as it could go, taking in the scene at the hotel at a glance. One hand on the wheel, the other pulling out his Kimber.