Regan refolded the map and set it down on the seat between them. “As near as I can tell, we’ve got about twelve hours of driving ahead of us, Wildcat. Why don’t you take a nap and I’ll wake you around dinner time?”
She started to protest then cut herself off. She was so tired, she was struggling to keep her eyes open and thoughts focused. “Are you okay to drive for now? You got less sleep than I did last night. And you're the one who hates driving with the burning intensity of a thousand suns."
“I’m good,” he assured her with a small chuckle. “And if I think there’s even the slightest possibility I might drift off, I promise I’ll pull over, okay?”
“I love you,” she said softly, settling back on the bench seat as far as she could. “You know that, right?”
“I love you, too, baby. Like crazy.”
He backed out of the parking space, waved to the rental lot attendant, and angled the truck around toward the exit. Trixie was asleep before he’d even merged with the traffic on the main road.
~~~~~~~~~~
“So what you’re saying is there is no such person or company?” Regan asked wearily. He shifted his phone to his other ear and rubbed his tired eyes with his free hand. “You’re sure?”
“It’s been decades, Uncle Bill,” Dan reminded him. “Maybe this Patrick Morris retired. Went out of business. Died, even. All I can tell you is I’m finding no one by that name in any way related to any kinda monument company in Owensboro.”
“If we can’t find him, we could have a huge problem.” He turned as Trixie opened the restroom door behind him and stepped out. “You okay?” he asked her.
“Yeah. Just… you know. Gas station bathrooms. Ick. Who are you talking to?”
“Dan. I asked him to see if he could find an address for Patrick Morris, maker of custom gravestones, but there doesn’t seem to be any record of the guy.”
“Let me talk to him,” she said, holding out her hand and taking the phone. “Dan?”
“Hey, Trix. How are you?”
“As good as can be expected. Are you online right now?”
“Yeah. But there’s no Patrick Morris in Owensboro. Not in the white pages or yellow pages or anywhere else.”
“Is there a Patrick or a Morris Street? Or Road or Avenue or whatever?”
“Uh… hang on…. Yeah. Okay. There’s a Morris Drive, actually.”
“Do a search. Put in ‘cemetery’ and ‘Owensboro’ and ‘Patrick,’ and ‘Morris Drive’ and see what comes up.”
“Ah… oh, damn. There is it. There’s a Holly K. Patrick Memorial Cemetery on Morris Drive.”
“All hail the power of Google,” Trixie mumbled. “You know, probably if Neall had known the internet was coming, he woulda made his clues a lot harder.”
“I’d say they were hard enough. But then I’m not Sherlock Belden.”
“Ha. Ha. Thanks, Watchdog. Do you want to talk to Regan again?”
“Yeah. Just for a second. And Trix? Be careful, okay?”
“You, too. And would you please watch out for my family? Especially Bobby.”
“You don’t even need to ask.”
Trixie gave the phone back to Regan and walked down a narrow aisle to the back of the dusty convenience store. She grabbed two bottles of water from the cooler and carried them up front to pay. When Regan joined her, he was holding a bag of peanuts. “Dan says we should be crossing the border soon.”
“Good. We can find a place to stay and then get going in the morning.” She glanced at her watch and sighed. “Later this morning.”
~~~~~~~~~~
“A funeral. Perfect,” Trixie said softly. “They’re probably in a newer part of the cemetery than where we should be looking, but then again, this could be someone getting buried in a family plot that’s been here for a gazillion years.”
Regan peered through the truck’s windshield at the small crowd gathered around an open grave. “What do you want to do? Should we wait?”
“We could be here an awfully long time if we did,” she pointed out. “On the other hand, maybe that would be the smarter thing to do. Someone could try to use the funeral to blend in while spying on us. I know we haven’t seen any evidence of anyone following us since Philly, but I still have this nagging feeling that they’re out there and watching.” She fell silent for a long moment, thinking. Finally, she glanced over at him. “What if I go look for the marker by myself?”
“No.”
“Hang on. Hear me out. I’ll go find it and you can stay here and watch. See if anyone seems to be paying me too much attention or if someone is following me.”
“If they already know we’re here and they’ve followed us, then they’ll realize what we’re up to if I stay in the truck and they’ll make sure I don’t see them. And if they don’t know we’re here because they haven’t followed us, then it won’t matter and we can go together.”
“Right. Okay, then. Let’s just hope we can find the right grave site quickly and get out of here.”
~~~~~~~~~
“Huh. Have you noticed how these markers have been getting steadily smaller and less elaborate as we go along?” Trixie asked as she knelt down and brushed away some of the dirt that had accumulated around the base of the stone.
“Is that significant?”
“As far as I can tell, everything your dad did had some purpose in mind. Maybe this is his version of a countdown clock? By the time we get to the final grave site, it will be something very plain and simple, designed to be forgettable and not attract any unnecessary or unwanted attention?”
Regan huffed out a frustrated breath. “That sounds as reasonable as anything else. And I’m guessing this means you’re telling me this isn’t the final grave site?”
“No.”
“Well, the dates are wrong again. Is there another inscription on the back?” He stepped around the marker and answered his own question. “No… there’s nothing here.” Frowning, he looked back at her. “Now what?”
“I think this time the clue’s in the epitaph,” she said slowly. “This is the first marker to have one like this. ‘Here I lie, but my heart remains forever with my blessed Penelope in Louisiana.’”
“That means absolutely nothing to me.”
“Other than it looks like our next stop is in Louisiana?”
“Wildcat, Louisiana’s not exactly one of the smaller states.”
“Yeah. I… I need to think about this. Obviously, it’s supposed to tell us something. What about the name? Penelope? That’s not terribly common. Did you have a Penelope somewhere in your family tree?”
He shrugged his shoulders and held up both hands. “Maybe? If this is something my father assumed that I would remember or worse, that Kalin would understand, we could be in trouble.”
“Maybe there’s a Penelope, Louisiana? We need to check a map.” She used her camera to snap two photos and climbed to her feet, looking around. “Let’s get out of here. We may not have an exact destination yet, but we know we need to head south, if nothing else.”
~~~~~~~~~
Eric stepped through the door to the old warehouse, listening carefully for any sounds. He was taking a risk, he knew, meeting Dom in person, but if his suspicions were correct, he couldn’t trust any other form of communication.
“I seem to recall we agreed it would be best to avoid contact while you’re here in New York,” a dry voice said.
Eric stood still, waiting and watching as Dom stepped out of the shadows and into the small pool of sunlight streaming through a grimy window above them.
“What do you know about a scientist named Neall Regan and his work on the SADM project?”
“And as always, right to the point. What interest do you have in Dr. Regan? He had nothing to do with the entities you're currently investigating.”
“So you do know him?”
“Knew. The man died over twenty years ago.”
“And?”
“He’s officially considered a traitor to the United States.”
“Because he stole the project’s prototype.”
“According to official record, he destroyed the prototype.”
“How many people know the truth?”
“Difficult to say. Most of the people originally involved in Project Sandman are dead.”
“Who’s looking for the bomb now?”
“I would assume the same people who’ve been searching for it since Dr. Regan managed to smuggle it out of the lab.”
“Are there any parties outside governmental agencies involved?”
“In all likelihood. No matter how secretive Dr. Regan believed himself to be, clearly someone discovered something or you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“What would happen – hypothetically – if someone did find the suitcase?”
“I’m assuming you mean someone not authorized and sanctioned by the U. S. government?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s just say they'd want to immediately hand it over to the proper authorities or they'd be facing very dire futures, and leave it at that.”
~~~~~~~~~
Trixie unsnapped her seatbelt and drew in a deep breath. “Ready?”
“No. This is crazy, baby. I can’t believe you really mean to do this.”
“It’ll work. Just hold us steady until I can take the wheel.”
Regan kept his eyes on the road ahead. Dense forest ran along on both sides and the shoulders were narrow, dropping away into deep gullies. The last thing they needed was to veer off in either direction.
Trixie slid across the bench seat and carefully pulled herself up onto his lap. She grabbed the steering wheel and nodded. “Got it.” Bracing herself with her left foot, she rose up as much as possible so that he could move over to the passenger side of the vehicle.
The truck slowed briefly as his foot left the gas pedal, but almost immediately, Trixie jammed her own foot down and they resumed their speed. She glanced in the rearview mirror. The black Ford with darkly tinted windows was still there, about two hundred yards behind and matching their pace. “Buckle yourself in and be ready,” she said tersely.
“Ready for what, exactly? What are you planning, Wildcat?”
“I’m planning to lose our tail, as soon as the opportunity presents itself. Which… if we’re lucky will be shortly after we go around this bend.”
The road curved to the right and Trixie scanned the area for any break in the tree line. “Dammit,” she ground out. “Nothing.”
“How do they keep finding us?” Regan asked, turning to look out the back of the truck.
“I’m betting it’s our phones. Somehow they’ve hacked in.”
“So we need to get rid of them.”
“Yep. Feel free to demonstrate your awesome pitching arm again.” She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and held it out to him. Regan lowered his window and tossed it out, sending his own flying after.
They crested a hill and suddenly, Trixie smiled. “There we go… You might want to find something to hold on to.”
“Huh?”
Without any more warning, Trixie slammed the brakes and spun the wheel. The truck skidded sideways for several feet, the tires screeching loudly on the pavement. Regan felt his side of the vehicle lift off the ground as they continued into the turn. It bounced back down and suddenly shot forward onto a dirt road. “Fence!” he yelled, instinctively putting out his hands to brace himself.
“I see it!” She yanked the wheel hard, sliding the truck into another spin. Gravel spewed up behind them as she made a U-turn that sent them crashing through the undergrowth. They barreled out onto the highway, going back the way they’d come, just as their tail raced by.
Trixie pressed the gas pedal to the floor, disregarding the posted speed limit. “Now we just have to hope we can make it to that cross road we passed and make a turn before they see which way we’ve gone,” she told him with a calmness he found rather unsettling.
He swallowed hard, casting her an incredulous look. “At what point were you planning to tell me you’ve been practicing to become a Hollywood stunt driver? Or is delivering flowers a helluva lot more dangerous and difficult than I ever imagined?”
“You can thank the Grandpa Crimper School of Driving for that maneuver. Remind me to send him some kinda appreciation gift when we get back home.” She glanced at him apologetically. “I know how much you hate motorized vehicles in general. I guess this didn’t help much, huh?”
That, Regan reflected in bemusement, was certainly one way of putting it.
~~~~~~~~~~
“Well, this is a much nicer motel than the last one,” Trixie said as she surveyed their room for the night. “And they have internet access. But priorities. If you’ve got a coin, we can flip for who gets the shower first.”
“Hmmm. How ‘bout instead, we share?”
“Why, William Regan. Are you actually suggesting we shower together? I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.”
“You aren’t shocked in the slightest,” he said with a warm chuckle as he pulled her close. “I, however, am shocked you didn’t suggest it yourself.”
“I have no idea what you could possibly mean by that,” she said, still maintaining a wide-eyed, innocent air. “So we’ll shower and, uh…, rest, but then we will need to do some research and see if we can figure out exactly where we’re supposed to be going. What all that ‘my heart remains forever with Penelope’ business is about.”
“Yeah. I’m clueless. I don’t know what my dad was trying to tell us there.” He sighed and rested his chin on the top of her head. “I can tell you that I understand the sentiment in principle. No matter where I am or what happens to me, my heart will remain forever with you.”
“Ditto,” she said quietly. “My heart, my thoughts, my soul… Everything that matters will always be with you.”
~~~~~~~~~~
For nearly an hour, Regan sat on the bed, flipping through the two newspapers they’d purchased in the lobby. It seemed almost surreal to read about such mundane things as a traffic accident and local farmers disputing a new water regulation. All these people, going about their everyday lives, while he and Trixie were in a race against time to find a nuclear weapon his father had stolen and hidden away. Occasionally, he glanced over at Trixie to see she was still focused intently on her laptop screen.
He was just about to suggest she take a break and that they consider going out for dinner when she suddenly slumped down in her chair, letting her head fall back. “Oh. Geeze.”
“Wildcat?”
“I just figured it out.”
“Yeah?”
“Penelope isn’t a person. Well, I guess at one point, she was a person, but in this case, it’s referring to the name of a rose variety.”
He pushed himself off the bed and crossed the room to stand behind her, leaning down slightly to read over her shoulder. “A rose?”
“Yep. And the clue? It’s a town in Louisiana called Saint Rose. Get it? ‘Blessed Penelope’ is ‘Saint Rose.’”
“Do we know where in Saint Rose we’ll find the next cemetery?”
“As far as I can tell, there are two cemeteries to choose from. The good news is, we know which one we want because only one of them has an address that matches the date on the Owensboro grave marker.”
He straightened and stepped back. “I don’t think – no. I know I never would’ve figured that out. And yeah, when I was a kid, my sister always seemed really smart and cool to me, but I’m not sure she would’ve either.” He sank down on the edge of the bed, studying her. “That’s scary enough, to think my father risked so much with no guarantee that his children would be able to follow this ridiculous trail he left. But it’s not what scares me the most.”
“I’m assuming the fact that there’s some miniature nuclear bomb out there somewhere is what scares you the most.”
Slowly, he shook his head. “No. It’s not that. It’s that whoever is behind this apparently knows both of us very well.”
“What do you mean?” Trixie asked, puzzled.
He leaned forward and took one of her hands in his. “Baby, they took those photos and sent them to you. To get you to do whatever they wanted. They called you and told you what to do. Not me, even though this involves my father. That means they knew I probably couldn’t figure this all out on my own, but that if anyone could do it, it would be you. They must’ve been looking for this damn bomb pretty much from the day my dad stole it, but they couldn’t find it with years of searching. And they gave you one week.”
“They gave us one week,” she countered. “I’m sure they believe the reason I should be able to do in a single week what no one else accomplished in decades is because of you. That you’d be able to provide information and clues they don’t have access to. And I’m not really sure they know me that well at all. If they did? They would’ve known that all they had to do was drag you into this mess and of course I’d do whatever it took to solve it. They didn’t need to bother threatening my family.”
“I don’t particularly feel like I’m pulling my own weight here,” he admitted with a grimace. “Especially in the information and clues department.”
“You? Are the only thing keeping me from panicking and losing it completely.”
“Seriously? Because I feel like I’ve been the one doing all the freaking out while you just serenely carry on.”
“That’s only because I’ve gotten pretty good at looking like I’m confident and not worried and uh… serenely carrying on when in fact I’m screaming like a thundering lunatic on the inside.”
He tugged on her hand, pulling her out of her chair. “C’mere, Wildcat,” he said softly.
She climbed onto his lap and rested her head against his shoulder with a slow sigh.
“Baby? You know you don’t have to pretend for me or anything, right?”
“Hmmm?”
“If you’re scared or upset or angry… however you’re feeling, you don’t have to hide it from me.”
“I don’t,” she said, frowning slightly. “At least, I don’t think I do. Not intentionally. I guess maybe there’re some defense mechanisms at play sometimes, but I don’t really feel like I have to hide anything from you or anything.”
“And ‘screaming like a thundering lunatic on the inside’ is actually not necessarily a bad thing, by the way,” he added.
“How do you figure that?”
“I figure any sane person would react that way to the situation we’ve fallen into.”
“Somehow? That almost makes sense to me. A sane person would react like a crazy person to all this madness while a crazy person would be all, ‘Eh? Whatever.’”
“Exactly. Let’s get some sleep, Wildcat. Tomorrow’s gonna be another long day of driving and we have to start with getting another rental.”
She pulled back to look up at him. “Regan?”
“Yeah?”
“I know I’m not always good about telling you thanks, but… thanks.”
“For what, baby?”
“You always say just the right thing just when it needs to be said to make me feel better. I don’t know how you know, but I’m really glad you do.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Dan practically threw the door open to the SPD station and stormed inside. Mauri started and then offered him tentative smile. “Are you here to see the captain again, Mr. Mangan?”
“I drove straight here from Parson’s Mill specifically to see her. Is she in?”
“Yes… but I believe she’s on the phone. Do you want to wait here or…?”
“Let me in the incident room.” He knew his tone was more than just a little rude, but he was tired and worried and past all claims to any patience.
Captain Rand joined him almost a quarter of an hour later.
“Dan? How’s your aunt?”
“Dead.”
Jean blinked, taken aback. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks,” he said shortly. “I can’t get a hold of Uncle Bill or Trixie. They aren’t answering texts or calls. Do you know what’s going on?”
“They’ve gone radio silent. They kept picking up tails so they decided the best thing to do was sever all contact.”
“So now we can’t even reach them?” Dan demanded angrily.
Jean shook her head. “Not at the moment,” she admitted. “Trixie managed to send Di a message through some secret email account only the girls knew about. She and your uncle had to ditch their phones and Trixie warned Di to cancel the account as soon as she read the email. What we do know is that they’ve found the third grave site.”
“And?”
“There was another date. They’re looking for a fourth site.”
“Another one?” Dan asked in disbelief. “How long is this going to go on?”
“I wish I could answer that,” Jean said helplessly. “You know Trixie won’t give up. Not as long as everyone she cares about is still under this threat.”
Dan glanced over at the incident board. Nine photos were lined up – the nine photos sent to Trixie to secure her full cooperation. All of them sent chills through him, every bit as frightening to look at this time around as they had been the first time he’d seen them.
“They killed Maggie,” he said, clenching one fist. “And her husband and probably my grandparents, too. As far as I can tell, there’s only one thing keeping Trixie and Uncle Bill alive right now. They want them to find the bomb since everyone else has failed at it. But if we aren’t ready to help them when the time comes…”
“I know, Dan. It’s all I’ve been concentrating on. We have plenty of people on immediate standby, but now all we can do is wait and pray they can get word to us when they need us.”
She started to protest then cut herself off. She was so tired, she was struggling to keep her eyes open and thoughts focused. “Are you okay to drive for now? You got less sleep than I did last night. And you're the one who hates driving with the burning intensity of a thousand suns."
“I’m good,” he assured her with a small chuckle. “And if I think there’s even the slightest possibility I might drift off, I promise I’ll pull over, okay?”
“I love you,” she said softly, settling back on the bench seat as far as she could. “You know that, right?”
“I love you, too, baby. Like crazy.”
He backed out of the parking space, waved to the rental lot attendant, and angled the truck around toward the exit. Trixie was asleep before he’d even merged with the traffic on the main road.
~~~~~~~~~~
“So what you’re saying is there is no such person or company?” Regan asked wearily. He shifted his phone to his other ear and rubbed his tired eyes with his free hand. “You’re sure?”
“It’s been decades, Uncle Bill,” Dan reminded him. “Maybe this Patrick Morris retired. Went out of business. Died, even. All I can tell you is I’m finding no one by that name in any way related to any kinda monument company in Owensboro.”
“If we can’t find him, we could have a huge problem.” He turned as Trixie opened the restroom door behind him and stepped out. “You okay?” he asked her.
“Yeah. Just… you know. Gas station bathrooms. Ick. Who are you talking to?”
“Dan. I asked him to see if he could find an address for Patrick Morris, maker of custom gravestones, but there doesn’t seem to be any record of the guy.”
“Let me talk to him,” she said, holding out her hand and taking the phone. “Dan?”
“Hey, Trix. How are you?”
“As good as can be expected. Are you online right now?”
“Yeah. But there’s no Patrick Morris in Owensboro. Not in the white pages or yellow pages or anywhere else.”
“Is there a Patrick or a Morris Street? Or Road or Avenue or whatever?”
“Uh… hang on…. Yeah. Okay. There’s a Morris Drive, actually.”
“Do a search. Put in ‘cemetery’ and ‘Owensboro’ and ‘Patrick,’ and ‘Morris Drive’ and see what comes up.”
“Ah… oh, damn. There is it. There’s a Holly K. Patrick Memorial Cemetery on Morris Drive.”
“All hail the power of Google,” Trixie mumbled. “You know, probably if Neall had known the internet was coming, he woulda made his clues a lot harder.”
“I’d say they were hard enough. But then I’m not Sherlock Belden.”
“Ha. Ha. Thanks, Watchdog. Do you want to talk to Regan again?”
“Yeah. Just for a second. And Trix? Be careful, okay?”
“You, too. And would you please watch out for my family? Especially Bobby.”
“You don’t even need to ask.”
Trixie gave the phone back to Regan and walked down a narrow aisle to the back of the dusty convenience store. She grabbed two bottles of water from the cooler and carried them up front to pay. When Regan joined her, he was holding a bag of peanuts. “Dan says we should be crossing the border soon.”
“Good. We can find a place to stay and then get going in the morning.” She glanced at her watch and sighed. “Later this morning.”
~~~~~~~~~~
“A funeral. Perfect,” Trixie said softly. “They’re probably in a newer part of the cemetery than where we should be looking, but then again, this could be someone getting buried in a family plot that’s been here for a gazillion years.”
Regan peered through the truck’s windshield at the small crowd gathered around an open grave. “What do you want to do? Should we wait?”
“We could be here an awfully long time if we did,” she pointed out. “On the other hand, maybe that would be the smarter thing to do. Someone could try to use the funeral to blend in while spying on us. I know we haven’t seen any evidence of anyone following us since Philly, but I still have this nagging feeling that they’re out there and watching.” She fell silent for a long moment, thinking. Finally, she glanced over at him. “What if I go look for the marker by myself?”
“No.”
“Hang on. Hear me out. I’ll go find it and you can stay here and watch. See if anyone seems to be paying me too much attention or if someone is following me.”
“If they already know we’re here and they’ve followed us, then they’ll realize what we’re up to if I stay in the truck and they’ll make sure I don’t see them. And if they don’t know we’re here because they haven’t followed us, then it won’t matter and we can go together.”
“Right. Okay, then. Let’s just hope we can find the right grave site quickly and get out of here.”
~~~~~~~~~
“Huh. Have you noticed how these markers have been getting steadily smaller and less elaborate as we go along?” Trixie asked as she knelt down and brushed away some of the dirt that had accumulated around the base of the stone.
“Is that significant?”
“As far as I can tell, everything your dad did had some purpose in mind. Maybe this is his version of a countdown clock? By the time we get to the final grave site, it will be something very plain and simple, designed to be forgettable and not attract any unnecessary or unwanted attention?”
Regan huffed out a frustrated breath. “That sounds as reasonable as anything else. And I’m guessing this means you’re telling me this isn’t the final grave site?”
“No.”
“Well, the dates are wrong again. Is there another inscription on the back?” He stepped around the marker and answered his own question. “No… there’s nothing here.” Frowning, he looked back at her. “Now what?”
“I think this time the clue’s in the epitaph,” she said slowly. “This is the first marker to have one like this. ‘Here I lie, but my heart remains forever with my blessed Penelope in Louisiana.’”
“That means absolutely nothing to me.”
“Other than it looks like our next stop is in Louisiana?”
“Wildcat, Louisiana’s not exactly one of the smaller states.”
“Yeah. I… I need to think about this. Obviously, it’s supposed to tell us something. What about the name? Penelope? That’s not terribly common. Did you have a Penelope somewhere in your family tree?”
He shrugged his shoulders and held up both hands. “Maybe? If this is something my father assumed that I would remember or worse, that Kalin would understand, we could be in trouble.”
“Maybe there’s a Penelope, Louisiana? We need to check a map.” She used her camera to snap two photos and climbed to her feet, looking around. “Let’s get out of here. We may not have an exact destination yet, but we know we need to head south, if nothing else.”
~~~~~~~~~
Eric stepped through the door to the old warehouse, listening carefully for any sounds. He was taking a risk, he knew, meeting Dom in person, but if his suspicions were correct, he couldn’t trust any other form of communication.
“I seem to recall we agreed it would be best to avoid contact while you’re here in New York,” a dry voice said.
Eric stood still, waiting and watching as Dom stepped out of the shadows and into the small pool of sunlight streaming through a grimy window above them.
“What do you know about a scientist named Neall Regan and his work on the SADM project?”
“And as always, right to the point. What interest do you have in Dr. Regan? He had nothing to do with the entities you're currently investigating.”
“So you do know him?”
“Knew. The man died over twenty years ago.”
“And?”
“He’s officially considered a traitor to the United States.”
“Because he stole the project’s prototype.”
“According to official record, he destroyed the prototype.”
“How many people know the truth?”
“Difficult to say. Most of the people originally involved in Project Sandman are dead.”
“Who’s looking for the bomb now?”
“I would assume the same people who’ve been searching for it since Dr. Regan managed to smuggle it out of the lab.”
“Are there any parties outside governmental agencies involved?”
“In all likelihood. No matter how secretive Dr. Regan believed himself to be, clearly someone discovered something or you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“What would happen – hypothetically – if someone did find the suitcase?”
“I’m assuming you mean someone not authorized and sanctioned by the U. S. government?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s just say they'd want to immediately hand it over to the proper authorities or they'd be facing very dire futures, and leave it at that.”
~~~~~~~~~
Trixie unsnapped her seatbelt and drew in a deep breath. “Ready?”
“No. This is crazy, baby. I can’t believe you really mean to do this.”
“It’ll work. Just hold us steady until I can take the wheel.”
Regan kept his eyes on the road ahead. Dense forest ran along on both sides and the shoulders were narrow, dropping away into deep gullies. The last thing they needed was to veer off in either direction.
Trixie slid across the bench seat and carefully pulled herself up onto his lap. She grabbed the steering wheel and nodded. “Got it.” Bracing herself with her left foot, she rose up as much as possible so that he could move over to the passenger side of the vehicle.
The truck slowed briefly as his foot left the gas pedal, but almost immediately, Trixie jammed her own foot down and they resumed their speed. She glanced in the rearview mirror. The black Ford with darkly tinted windows was still there, about two hundred yards behind and matching their pace. “Buckle yourself in and be ready,” she said tersely.
“Ready for what, exactly? What are you planning, Wildcat?”
“I’m planning to lose our tail, as soon as the opportunity presents itself. Which… if we’re lucky will be shortly after we go around this bend.”
The road curved to the right and Trixie scanned the area for any break in the tree line. “Dammit,” she ground out. “Nothing.”
“How do they keep finding us?” Regan asked, turning to look out the back of the truck.
“I’m betting it’s our phones. Somehow they’ve hacked in.”
“So we need to get rid of them.”
“Yep. Feel free to demonstrate your awesome pitching arm again.” She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and held it out to him. Regan lowered his window and tossed it out, sending his own flying after.
They crested a hill and suddenly, Trixie smiled. “There we go… You might want to find something to hold on to.”
“Huh?”
Without any more warning, Trixie slammed the brakes and spun the wheel. The truck skidded sideways for several feet, the tires screeching loudly on the pavement. Regan felt his side of the vehicle lift off the ground as they continued into the turn. It bounced back down and suddenly shot forward onto a dirt road. “Fence!” he yelled, instinctively putting out his hands to brace himself.
“I see it!” She yanked the wheel hard, sliding the truck into another spin. Gravel spewed up behind them as she made a U-turn that sent them crashing through the undergrowth. They barreled out onto the highway, going back the way they’d come, just as their tail raced by.
Trixie pressed the gas pedal to the floor, disregarding the posted speed limit. “Now we just have to hope we can make it to that cross road we passed and make a turn before they see which way we’ve gone,” she told him with a calmness he found rather unsettling.
He swallowed hard, casting her an incredulous look. “At what point were you planning to tell me you’ve been practicing to become a Hollywood stunt driver? Or is delivering flowers a helluva lot more dangerous and difficult than I ever imagined?”
“You can thank the Grandpa Crimper School of Driving for that maneuver. Remind me to send him some kinda appreciation gift when we get back home.” She glanced at him apologetically. “I know how much you hate motorized vehicles in general. I guess this didn’t help much, huh?”
That, Regan reflected in bemusement, was certainly one way of putting it.
~~~~~~~~~~
“Well, this is a much nicer motel than the last one,” Trixie said as she surveyed their room for the night. “And they have internet access. But priorities. If you’ve got a coin, we can flip for who gets the shower first.”
“Hmmm. How ‘bout instead, we share?”
“Why, William Regan. Are you actually suggesting we shower together? I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.”
“You aren’t shocked in the slightest,” he said with a warm chuckle as he pulled her close. “I, however, am shocked you didn’t suggest it yourself.”
“I have no idea what you could possibly mean by that,” she said, still maintaining a wide-eyed, innocent air. “So we’ll shower and, uh…, rest, but then we will need to do some research and see if we can figure out exactly where we’re supposed to be going. What all that ‘my heart remains forever with Penelope’ business is about.”
“Yeah. I’m clueless. I don’t know what my dad was trying to tell us there.” He sighed and rested his chin on the top of her head. “I can tell you that I understand the sentiment in principle. No matter where I am or what happens to me, my heart will remain forever with you.”
“Ditto,” she said quietly. “My heart, my thoughts, my soul… Everything that matters will always be with you.”
~~~~~~~~~~
For nearly an hour, Regan sat on the bed, flipping through the two newspapers they’d purchased in the lobby. It seemed almost surreal to read about such mundane things as a traffic accident and local farmers disputing a new water regulation. All these people, going about their everyday lives, while he and Trixie were in a race against time to find a nuclear weapon his father had stolen and hidden away. Occasionally, he glanced over at Trixie to see she was still focused intently on her laptop screen.
He was just about to suggest she take a break and that they consider going out for dinner when she suddenly slumped down in her chair, letting her head fall back. “Oh. Geeze.”
“Wildcat?”
“I just figured it out.”
“Yeah?”
“Penelope isn’t a person. Well, I guess at one point, she was a person, but in this case, it’s referring to the name of a rose variety.”
He pushed himself off the bed and crossed the room to stand behind her, leaning down slightly to read over her shoulder. “A rose?”
“Yep. And the clue? It’s a town in Louisiana called Saint Rose. Get it? ‘Blessed Penelope’ is ‘Saint Rose.’”
“Do we know where in Saint Rose we’ll find the next cemetery?”
“As far as I can tell, there are two cemeteries to choose from. The good news is, we know which one we want because only one of them has an address that matches the date on the Owensboro grave marker.”
He straightened and stepped back. “I don’t think – no. I know I never would’ve figured that out. And yeah, when I was a kid, my sister always seemed really smart and cool to me, but I’m not sure she would’ve either.” He sank down on the edge of the bed, studying her. “That’s scary enough, to think my father risked so much with no guarantee that his children would be able to follow this ridiculous trail he left. But it’s not what scares me the most.”
“I’m assuming the fact that there’s some miniature nuclear bomb out there somewhere is what scares you the most.”
Slowly, he shook his head. “No. It’s not that. It’s that whoever is behind this apparently knows both of us very well.”
“What do you mean?” Trixie asked, puzzled.
He leaned forward and took one of her hands in his. “Baby, they took those photos and sent them to you. To get you to do whatever they wanted. They called you and told you what to do. Not me, even though this involves my father. That means they knew I probably couldn’t figure this all out on my own, but that if anyone could do it, it would be you. They must’ve been looking for this damn bomb pretty much from the day my dad stole it, but they couldn’t find it with years of searching. And they gave you one week.”
“They gave us one week,” she countered. “I’m sure they believe the reason I should be able to do in a single week what no one else accomplished in decades is because of you. That you’d be able to provide information and clues they don’t have access to. And I’m not really sure they know me that well at all. If they did? They would’ve known that all they had to do was drag you into this mess and of course I’d do whatever it took to solve it. They didn’t need to bother threatening my family.”
“I don’t particularly feel like I’m pulling my own weight here,” he admitted with a grimace. “Especially in the information and clues department.”
“You? Are the only thing keeping me from panicking and losing it completely.”
“Seriously? Because I feel like I’ve been the one doing all the freaking out while you just serenely carry on.”
“That’s only because I’ve gotten pretty good at looking like I’m confident and not worried and uh… serenely carrying on when in fact I’m screaming like a thundering lunatic on the inside.”
He tugged on her hand, pulling her out of her chair. “C’mere, Wildcat,” he said softly.
She climbed onto his lap and rested her head against his shoulder with a slow sigh.
“Baby? You know you don’t have to pretend for me or anything, right?”
“Hmmm?”
“If you’re scared or upset or angry… however you’re feeling, you don’t have to hide it from me.”
“I don’t,” she said, frowning slightly. “At least, I don’t think I do. Not intentionally. I guess maybe there’re some defense mechanisms at play sometimes, but I don’t really feel like I have to hide anything from you or anything.”
“And ‘screaming like a thundering lunatic on the inside’ is actually not necessarily a bad thing, by the way,” he added.
“How do you figure that?”
“I figure any sane person would react that way to the situation we’ve fallen into.”
“Somehow? That almost makes sense to me. A sane person would react like a crazy person to all this madness while a crazy person would be all, ‘Eh? Whatever.’”
“Exactly. Let’s get some sleep, Wildcat. Tomorrow’s gonna be another long day of driving and we have to start with getting another rental.”
She pulled back to look up at him. “Regan?”
“Yeah?”
“I know I’m not always good about telling you thanks, but… thanks.”
“For what, baby?”
“You always say just the right thing just when it needs to be said to make me feel better. I don’t know how you know, but I’m really glad you do.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Dan practically threw the door open to the SPD station and stormed inside. Mauri started and then offered him tentative smile. “Are you here to see the captain again, Mr. Mangan?”
“I drove straight here from Parson’s Mill specifically to see her. Is she in?”
“Yes… but I believe she’s on the phone. Do you want to wait here or…?”
“Let me in the incident room.” He knew his tone was more than just a little rude, but he was tired and worried and past all claims to any patience.
Captain Rand joined him almost a quarter of an hour later.
“Dan? How’s your aunt?”
“Dead.”
Jean blinked, taken aback. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks,” he said shortly. “I can’t get a hold of Uncle Bill or Trixie. They aren’t answering texts or calls. Do you know what’s going on?”
“They’ve gone radio silent. They kept picking up tails so they decided the best thing to do was sever all contact.”
“So now we can’t even reach them?” Dan demanded angrily.
Jean shook her head. “Not at the moment,” she admitted. “Trixie managed to send Di a message through some secret email account only the girls knew about. She and your uncle had to ditch their phones and Trixie warned Di to cancel the account as soon as she read the email. What we do know is that they’ve found the third grave site.”
“And?”
“There was another date. They’re looking for a fourth site.”
“Another one?” Dan asked in disbelief. “How long is this going to go on?”
“I wish I could answer that,” Jean said helplessly. “You know Trixie won’t give up. Not as long as everyone she cares about is still under this threat.”
Dan glanced over at the incident board. Nine photos were lined up – the nine photos sent to Trixie to secure her full cooperation. All of them sent chills through him, every bit as frightening to look at this time around as they had been the first time he’d seen them.
“They killed Maggie,” he said, clenching one fist. “And her husband and probably my grandparents, too. As far as I can tell, there’s only one thing keeping Trixie and Uncle Bill alive right now. They want them to find the bomb since everyone else has failed at it. But if we aren’t ready to help them when the time comes…”
“I know, Dan. It’s all I’ve been concentrating on. We have plenty of people on immediate standby, but now all we can do is wait and pray they can get word to us when they need us.”