“His new car is a pickup truck, a black Dodge Ram 2500,” Lin reports through the speaker of my SynTech smartphone on the desk of our motel room. Evan and I got the room for the night in the same complex where Jeff abandoned the van, the one near the Eazy-Stor. It gives me a chance to do a truly comprehensive sweep with my bots on the off chance that he stayed here and left any traces. I’m laying on one of the double beds, searching room by room as we get our update from Lin.
“The windows are tinted, that’s why the facial recognition didn’t catch him leaving town,” Lin’s voice says from the desk by the bed. “Once I got the surveillance footage that showed him getting into his new car, I reran my traffic cam search. There were only six Rams that were the right color leaving the city during the right time window yesterday, and only one had a cargo that could have been your stolen equipment. He’s going east again, on the I-70 freeway towards Kansas City. He changed the license plates on the truck after the video from the storage place. I’ll text you the serial on the new ones.”
“The serial?” Evan asks, taking a seat at the desk chair.
“The numbers and letters on a license plate. It’s called the serial,” she says.
“Sure?” I say. I never knew there was a name for those, but she probably looked it up. “Anyway, see if you can find where he stopped next. If we can get there soon enough, maybe we can catch him before he does another test batch.”
“Another test batch?” Evan asks, raising an eyebrow. “Is that what we’re calling Jeff’s murder sprees now?”
“No, sorry,” I say, sitting up. “I know it’s important to call things what they are. I’m just tired.”
“It’s OK, Noah. We know what you meant,” Lin says. “ We’re already working on tracking him. I’m pulling down more traffic feeds now. Alan arranged the access. He’s very good, you know, and very devoted to you. You chose a good assistant. We’re going to pull an all-the-night here.”
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“All-nighter. And yeah, I know he’s great,” I say, “I owe him a bonus. He’s been going above and beyond on this stuff.”
“You get some sleep. I’ll have results in a few hours. Just call me when you wake up.”
“You’re the best, Lin,” I tell her.
“I love you,” she says. I love it when she says that. I love it even more when she doesn’t care if other people hear it. She doesn’t do it often, though she’s working on that. I know it’s a little uncomfortable for her. Not that she doesn’t love me. I think it’s just a cultural thing.
“Love you too,” I say, floating the phone to my hand and disconnecting.
Evan looks over at me and grins.
“What?” I ask.
“You two are at the ‘tell each other you love each other in front of other people’ stage!” he gushes.
I throw one of my pillows at him, hoping to knock the goofy smile off his face, but he catches it easily.
“Evan, I swear sometimes you are a teenage girl in a giant man’s body.”
“I’m just so happy for you!” he says, getting up and laying the pillow back on my bed.
“Yeah, we’re so cute. I know,” I say with exaggerated exasperation.
“You really are!”
“I learned it all from you and Valerie,” I say. “Now help me search this place. The only interesting thing I’ve seen so far are the roaches.”
We search every room carefully and don’t find anything. I’m still not even sure which room Jeff had been in or if he even stayed here at all. At least we get the roaches cleared out.
“How much sleep do you need?” I ask Evan once we’re done.
“At least five hours,” he replies.
“Five hours it is,” I say, setting an alarm in my console. “See you in the morning.”
Evan sacks out almost immediately. He’s always had an amazing talent for that. I toss and turn much longer than I would have liked, even with electrochemical stimulation from my implant that usually knocks me right out. Images of the corpses keep creeping into my mind’s eye. I’m glad that in a few hours I won’t remember those anymore.