Ten minutes later, she reached the small town of Guadalupe and found what she was looking for. On the right side of the two-lane road was a dealership with an eclectic assortment of used cars parked in a dirt lot underneath black and yellow streamers lining the property. On the left was a facility she suspected was used to store and distribute fertilizer or some other agricultural commodity. But it wasn’t the product that interested her. It was the large warehouse bordering the street.
She pulled the Jeep into the dirt lot and parked it in a space facing the road, then she jumped out, locked it, and quickly crossed the street to duck inside the warehouse. She started a timer on her watch, knowing that at the earliest she needed to be at the Santa Maria airport in forty-five minutes. If the sedan didn’t show in twenty, she would send the signal to her ride and proceed to the pickup.
But as it turned out, she didn’t have to wait even half that. From the shadows just inside the open garage door, Chen saw the silver sedan that had been following her slow as it neared the used car dealership, confirming her suspicion that her pursuer had somehow tagged her vehicle with a tracking device. As the BMW M5 sport sedan came to a stop, the memory of a car running a red light in Long Beach flashed in her mind.
It was hardly the only silver BMW in Southern California, but it was too much of a coincidence to ignore. She leaned forward, straining to see the driver through the dark tint, but flinched when the driver’s door flew open. This time, she needed no help in remembering where she had seen this person. It wasn’t often you saw a muscular Black man in a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt.
“Son of a bitch,” she said. Then she stepped out into the light.
Rick stared with dismay at the Jeep through the windshield. He suspected
“Well, shit,” he said, shifting the BMW into park.
He opened the door and stepped out into the warm California sun, looking across the roof of his car at the metallic blue Jeep resting in a space bordering the street. He walked around the front of his car and approached the lot, stepping over the rusted chain draped between two poles in front of the Wrangler.
The SUV was still warm. Heat radiated from it as he reached his hand into the grill and felt for the tracking device. It was right where he had left it. He pulled it out and slipped it into his pocket just as the front door to the small brick building opened and a thin man with short-cropped dark hair and tanned skin walked out.
“Help you?”
Rick smiled at him, though he didn’t feel much like smiling. “Just looking,” he said.
The man furrowed his brow when he saw the Jeep, obviously questioning whether it belonged in his inventory. “Those four-door Wranglers are pretty nice,” the salesman said, deciding to just go with it.
Rick scanned the lot, looking for a clue that another car had been taken. “Sell many?”
“Not really,” the man said as he neared the Jeep. “Haven’t had one on the lot for some time.”
“How long have you had this one?”
He gave Rick a confused look. “To be honest, I’m not even sure this one’s in our inventory. But I’m sure I can help you…”
“No, that’s all right,” he said. “You didn’t happen to see who parked it here, did you?”
The salesman’s confused look turned into one of suspicion. “Can’t say that I did.”
Rick gave him a placating smile and nodded. “Well, thanks for your time.”
“What did you say your name was?”
He noticed the salesman had remained on the other side of the Jeep and was appraising him with a healthy dose of skepticism. Not that Rick blamed him, but it was interesting to see how quickly he had gone from expecting an easy sale to wondering if Rick was involved in something shady.
“I didn’t,” Rick said. “Thanks again.”
He turned back to his car and stepped over the rusted chain, scanning up and down the street for any sign of his prey. He supposed she could have ditched the Jeep and taken a car from the parking lot next door, but with so many to choose from at the dealership, why would she go to the trouble?
Rick opened the door and slipped into the Napa leather seat. He gave the salesman an uneasy wave through the windshield, then put the car into drive and pulled away from the curb. Consulting his map, he figured he could cut across the Santa Maria Valley and rejoin the 101. He glanced down at the passenger seat to the note he had scrawled.
There was something there, and he needed to pursue it more.
