Chapter Thirty

Nutsbe was on Cloud Nine.

Time was too short. The ziti buzzer sounded too fast, but he had made the most of every second. Savored every second.

Everything about Olivia turned him on. The only thing that would have made this evening better was if neither of them had obligations, and he could just hold her to his heart. This was definitely new territory for him, and Nutsbe couldn't wait to explore.

But for now, they both had work to do.

After plating dinner for Olivia and watching her safely across the lawn, he'd boxed the food for next door.

Clive pushed the screen wide. "One of my favorite dinners, but that's between us. Milly thinks her mac and cheese is the best."

Nutsbe followed Clive to their kitchen.

"She'll be down in a minute. She's just finishing up something upstairs."

Nutsbe pulled the dinner components from the box and set them on the table.

"I appreciate your looking after the lawn. You did a good job. I like the neat lines. The boy down the street did it most of the summer. He's back at college now. He seemed to mow a patch over here and a patch over there. The grass looked crazy." Clive scowled to show his disapproval. "But getting it fixed up was on my list before you offered. I finally got a good night's sleep last night. First time in a couple weeks. No motorcycles."

Nutsbe stilled, empty box in hand. "I'm sorry, sir. What did you just say?"

"The motorcycles buzzing around for the last couple weeks has been keeping us up, not you?" Clive asked.

"I can sleep through it. Habit from Afghanistan. But what did you say about last night?"

"I slept. No motorcycles."

Fear traced its way out of Nutsbe's bowels and into his stomach, along his limbs. No motorcycles? "Hey, Clive, I'm going to leave you with dinner. You just gave me a thought—something at work. I need to go and figure it out. I hope you'll forgive me." He extended his hand for a shake. "I was looking forward to that game of gin rummy. But I'm going to have to take a rain check."

"Sure. Sure. Anytime. "

"Enjoy the dinner, okay?" And that was his goodbye. He hustled to his vehicle, slammed it into reverse, and jetted to Iniquus.

The pressing thought: Olivia discovered a tracker was on her car this morning. The motorcycles stopped last night.

Could the motorcycles possibly have an idea of the area she lived in but not the exact address? Were they roaming around at night after most people were home and in bed—so past the point of burning the midnight oil at work, as Olivia often did—looking for her car?

Olivia parked her car in her garage. They wouldn't have found it in her drive.

If they knew that Olivia was at the courthouse, they could have placed the tracker on her car at any point from the morning when she parked until the night when he picked it up. They could have followed him from the courthouse, and when he took the car to the mechanic, they might have decided that they needed to put on the tracker. Heck, there was an office supply store in the same strip mall.

Could the stalker now know where she lived and no longer need to ride the streets?

And conversely, wasn't that the exact same scenario for someone trying to track him?

It might even make more sense.

Nutsbe also parked his car in the garage. And per Iniqqus regulations, he consistently traded his vehicle once a week. The motorcycles wouldn't have found his vehicle either.

Did that thought process even work?

Why would the motorcycles buzz the streets if they could figure out with a court docket search that Olivia would be at the federal courthouse for the last week?

Whose name was newly listed with the court? His.

Could an AI program, say from an enemy nation or a self-preserving counterintelligence chief, have searched him out? They didn't catch him at the police station but could have watched him leave the courthouse. And shot at him. Then tracked him when they failed.

Who put the pod in place, and who were they trying to track?

Data was what Nutsbe needed.

And data was what he was good at.

***

Sitting at his desk, his computer humming, Nutsbe searched backward along the route that ended in the ambush. The images at the last camera showed two riders and their motorcycles. He searched for Mickey Pauley in the Department of Motor Vehicles database. The make and model didn't line up. Neither did either of the silhouettes. He did another search for the Offsed brothers' names and images with the police department. Olivia said they were out on parole. He didn't think those men were the ones on the bikes behind them. He looked up their vehicle registrations anyway, and those bikes didn't line up either.

This looked like a dead end.

Still, their riding behavior wasn't normal. If they had thought Nutsbe's driving was erratic, it would have been easier and better to just buzz on around his vehicle and get ahead of him.

He worked backward. The first cameras that he crossed in his vehicle also showed those motorcycles.

But what happened to them after the ambush?

Nutsbe pulled up the cameras on the other side of the road at the correct time and located the two men riding side by side. Their license plates were covered over. Nutsbe followed the bikes along a route back to where he'd first picked them up. Out for a drive and called it a day after witnessing an ambush? He'd know soon enough.

They continued to the first camera that had registered Nutsbe's vehicle on his way to Iniquus. Instead of moving forward to where another camera would pick up their route, one of the men held out his arm, signaling a left turn.

That put them back at the parking lot where Olivia had left her car.

They would have had all the time they needed at that point if they wanted to place the tracker.

Nutsbe's phone wouldn't have received any kind of warning message because his phone wasn't associated with that car.

Were they trying to track him?

Track Olivia?

It didn't matter.

Connecting the dots trying to form a coherent picture, the bikers might have placed the tracker after the ambush when they could no longer follow Nutsbe or Olivia to their destination.

No matter whom they were trying to track, the pod had an end destination last night.

And the motorcycles weren't buzzing the neighborhood last night.

That was enough for Nutsbe to snatch his phone up to call Olivia.

But her phone was in sleep mode.

There was no option to push an alert.

Nutsbe sprang from his chair and raced from the building.

He had to get to Olivia. And warn her.