Chapter 6: The Tracked Luggage
The tiny red LED light on the matchbox-sized tracker seemed to pulse in time with my frantic heartbeat. Beep. Beep. Beep. In the quiet, predawn gloom of the Ford's cab, that rhythmic mechanical heartbeat felt like a death sentence. Arthur didn't need to chase us; he didn't need roadblocks or highway patrols. He had simply handed me a leash and let me walk myself right out into the open country while he watched the little blue dot move across a tablet screen back at the estate.
"Get it out," Sarah whispered, her voice tight with panic as she leaned across the bench seat. Her hands hovered over the dashboard, shaking so badly she could barely find the hazard light switch. "Claire, throw it out the window. Throw the whole bag out!"
"No," I said, a cold, hard resolve suddenly freezing over the panic in my chest. If I just threw the tracker out here on the desolate highway shoulder, Arthur's security team would register the stationary signal instantly. They would know we had found it. They would know we were wise to the game, and they would change their tactics from quiet observation to aggressive interception. "If we throw it out now, they'll know we know. We need a dead drop. We need something moving faster than we are."
I reached into the torn inner lining of the leather bag, my fingernails snagging on the dense foam padding until I managed to pry the magnetic tracking unit free from its hiding spot. The plastic casing was smooth, cool, and frighteningly modern.
"Drive," I commanded, pulling myself back up onto the passenger seat and slamming the glove box shut. "Don't stop, Sarah. Just drive toward the interstate. We have to ditch it somewhere they won't look twice."
Sarah threw the truck into gear, the old transmission grinding in protest as we rocketed back onto the empty two-lane asphalt. The highway stretched out ahead of us like a gray ribbon cutting through the dense, fog-draped pine forests of the northern county. For twenty miles, neither of us spoke. The rhythmic blinking of the tiny red light inside my coat pocket felt like an unexploded bomb pressed against my ribs.
As the sun finally broke over the horizon, painting the sky in sickly shades of bruised purple and watery amber, a massive long-haul semi-truck appeared ahead of us, crawling slowly up a steep incline in the slow lane. Its massive dual tires kicked up a spray of greasy road water from the overnight rain.
"Pull up right beside it," I told Sarah, my hand gripping the door handle. "In the blind spot. Just for three seconds."
Sarah didn't ask questions. She pressed the accelerator, pushing the groaning Ford up alongside the towering trailer of the semi-truck. The roaring drone of the eighteen-wheeler swallowed the sound of the wind rushing past our windows.
As we matched speed for one precarious, heart-stopping moment, I rolled my window down, pulled the GPS tracker from my coat, and hurled it with every ounce of strength I had directly into the open, slatted bed of a passing flatbed utility truck loaded down with scrap metal and old auto parts that had just merged behind us. The device bounced once against a rusted bumper and disappeared beneath a pile of discarded mufflers.
"Did they see?" Sarah breathed, her knuckles white on the steering wheel as she dropped our speed and fell back behind the traffic.
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"They'll be tracking a pile of junk heading south toward the state capital," I said, leaning back against the headrest, my breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. "By the time they realize it's stationary in a junkyard, we'll be miles away."
Yet, even as the immediate danger of the tracker receded, a heavier truth settled over us. If Arthur was willing to plant surveillance inside my personal luggage, it meant he had eyes and ears everywhere. We couldn't trust hotels, we couldn't use credit cards, and we couldn't stay on the main highways much longer. The deeper we drove into the rural backcountry, the more isolated we became, but it was the only way to stay off a grid that was entirely owned by the Vance family.
