Page 34 of Beachcomber Danger

“They were never locked—are yours?”

“Hell yeah.” Dane met the driver’s eyes in the mirror. The man had the audacity to smile and shrug. He was growing to dislike the Secret Service. A lot.

With his eyes on his side mirror, Agent Vale spoke up.

“I’m spotting a car following. Pulled out from the lot behind us.”

“Is the driver male with a baseball cap?” Dane asked.

“Affirmative.”

“We’re not in the military, Agent Vale, are we?” Dane needed these two to step back from their take-no-prisoners war-zone attitude.

“No sir.”

“I see him,” Shana said. “He’s the same guy we spotted earlier. Same nose and jawline.”

“How can you tell from this distance?” The agent driving the car, whose name they didn’t get, wasn’t standing on ceremony.

Shana said, “the mirror is special.”

Dane wanted to kiss her for that wisecrack. He leaned over and looked in the mirror with her.

“It’s him, all right.”

They neared the police station and veered into the parking lot.

“How are we staging this?”

Shana answered the agent. “I’ll take one of your guns and pretend to hit you. Then Dane can pretend to kick Agent Vale and we’ll take your car and—”

“You’re taking the car?”

“Don’t worry, Agent Warren. You’ll get your car back in due time,” Andrews said.

“This is all very irregular,” Agent Vale said as the car pulled to a stop outside the station. “Normally we’d have backup and the officers at the station would—”

“Never mind,” Andrews said. “We’re not running this regulation and chances are the target isn’t going to worry about it. They’ll buy into the escape.”

“If not—”

Dane said, “Never mind that. They can’t take a chance. Either way they’ll follow us. That’s the point.”

“Where are you taking them?” Andrews said. “We’ll meet you.”

“We’re not taking them anywhere. We’re losing the guy.”

“That’s a negative—”

“Think about it, Andrews. We have nothing on him if we take him now. We’d have to let him go and he’d be onto us. If we lose him, he’ll still think Shana and I are assassins and he’ll focus on finding us. He and his partner will still be in play and we’ll eventually get them for trying to kill me and Shana.”

“We don’t want him to get another shot at the President.”

“We don’t have him for taking a shot at the President. You have him—and hopefully his partner—identified now. Surely you can stop them now that you know what they look like.”

Andrews went quiet. “Let me check on this.” He went offline for a few beats while they sat in the car in the lot with the engine running and pretending they were talking on the phone.

“We can’t stay here. That’ll make the target more nervous than anything and he might leave.”

Dane was watching the man a block away sitting in his car. The car pulled out.

“It’s go time. He’s on the move.”