Halfway here, Beth had begun to regret that she hadn’t just taken up the offer to use the Council credit card and buy all new items when she got to British Columbia. Now she wished she’d turned around then and headed back to the Enforcer house.
“Only twenty floors to the parking garage,” she muttered to herself with disgust as the doors closed. Shaking her head, she glanced down at everything she was carrying. She had an overnight bag over each arm, one with a pair of jeans, two T-shirts, a hairbrush, perfume, deodorant, her toothbrush, and all those other things a girl needed for a short trip. The second bag held another pair of jeans, a pair of black dress pants, more T-shirts, a dressier shirt, and the always-handy little black dress.
Beth had packed the first bag and started to leave, only to realize that Mortimer hadn’t told her how long this job might take or even what it entailed. Concerned that it might take longer than a day or two as she’d originally assumed, and that simple jeans and T-shirts might not suffice, she’d packed the second bag. She’d then also thrown a pair of high-heeled shoes and running shoes into the grocery bag that presently dangled from her left wrist, and then had packed away the set of her favorite knives, two custom-made guns, and her iPad into the zipped-up black carrier that dangled from her right wrist.
On top of all that, Beth was carrying a box filled with food that would go bad if she didn’t return within a day or two. If Mortimer told her that she should only be twenty-four hours or so, then she’d simply put it in one of the refrigerators in the garage behind the Enforcer house and bring it back on her return. However, if he said this job would take four days or more, she’d give it to Sam to either use or drop off at the nearest homeless shelter so that at least someone would get to eat it.
The elevator dinged again, and the doors opened. Beth glanced up at the panel to see that it was only the nineteenth floor. She started to scowl, and then pushed away from the wall and moved quickly off the elevator. She would take the stairs. It would be faster, and what she was carrying wasn’t really heavy, at least not to her. It was just awkward. The bags on either side bulged outward, bumping into the wall if she got too close on either side, and not having her hands free was a pain, as she learned when she reached the metal door to the stairwell.
“Brilliant,” Beth growled as she stared at the doorknob she couldn’t turn. Sighing, she set the box on the floor, half straightened to open the door, held it open with her foot, and bent to pick up the box again.
Huffing out a sigh, Beth started down the stairs at a jog, careful not to get too close to the wall or the railing to avoid bumping against one or the other and upsetting her stride. It was much quicker than the elevator with all its stops, and she managed to reach the parking level relatively quickly and without further delay. Beth had to set down the box again to open the door to the parking garage, and then to open the door of her red Ford Explorer and stow her gear inside, but soon she was inside and on her way.
It wasn’t until she pulled out of the parking garage that Beth recalled the two missed phone calls. She almost pulled over to see who they were from, but a glance at the digital clock on the dashboard made her decide against it. She’d already taken much longer than she’d expected, and was going to have to do a bit of speeding on the way back to make up time. Even then Mortimer would no doubt be waiting on her.
The idea made her cluck her tongue. Beth hated to be late for anything and was generally ridiculously early to avoid it. That wasn’t going to be the case today, she acknowledged unhappily, and then forced herself to take a couple of deep breaths to relax. There was nothing she could do about it. She should have had more than enough time to get there and back. But things simply had not gone to plan. Life could be like that sometimes.
Having encountered so much construction and so many detours using the back roads to the apartment, Beth chose a different route back to the house, one that put her on the highway for the better part of the drive. It was the route she should have taken on the way out, she supposed. But she liked to avoid the highway if possible. Mostly because she thought the drivers here were crazy. They drove too fast and then too slow and then too fast again, like they did not understand what cruise control was. And—Good Lord!—every time she turned around, someone was switching lanes without bothering to signal or see if anyone was already in that lane.
Beth noticed the semi pulling a flatbed of steel girders before it became a problem. It merged onto the highway from an on-ramp ahead of her, but she was in the middle lane so didn’t think anything of it until it suddenly swerved into the center lane just as her front end drew even with the back of it. Beth instinctively hit the brakes and started to turn the steering wheel left but, spotting the blue sedan in that lane, immediately jerked the steering wheel right instead and stood on the brakes, hoping for the best.
Seeing the steel girders coming straight at her head, Beth quickly threw herself to the side, intending to lie flat across the front seat. Unfortunately, she’d forgotten about her seatbelt. She was reminded of it when it snapped tight, holding her in place as the front windshield exploded.
Three
“Do you know where Beth lives?”
“Aye,” Scotty answered as he steered the SUV down the driveway. He’d got a lot of information and even maps before flying to Canada. And he’d insisted on driving again. It had seemed obvious from their first drive out to back up Beth that Donny was not comfortable with speed, and he had a bad feeling speed would be of the essence again here.
The young immortal accepted that news without comment, but did eye him curiously. After a moment, though, he said, “You probably want to take the highway. It’s summer and the road crews have everything all torn up. She would have taken the highway to avoid that.”
Scotty merely grunted. He’d planned to take the highway anyway. It was the only route that had been included with the info he’d been given, and had been listed as the fastest. Which was good, since he felt a certain urgency to get to her quickly.
Donny fell silent for a bit then, and Scotty was just turning onto the ramp leading to the highway when the lad suddenly asked, “What if she’s already on her way back and we missed her?”
That was a real possibility and something he hadn’t considered. Scotty frowned over it as he merged onto the highway. Once he was safely in traffic, however, he said, “We have trackers on our vehicles in the UK. Do you have anyth—”
“We do too!” Donny interrupted with excitement and pulled out his phone.
Scotty grimaced as the other man called Mortimer. If he’d thought of the trackers back at the house, he might have saved them this trip. At least he would have if all was well with Beth, he thought as he listened to Donny explain what they wanted to Mortimer.
“He’s opening the program,” Donny announced.
Scotty merely nodded, his concentration on the lanes ahead and the flow of traffic.
A good ten minutes passed before Donny said, “He has it up and sees both our vehicle and hers. He says she’s on the other side of the highway, coming our way—” Donny cut himself off abruptly and waited, and then asked with concern, “What?”
“What is it?” Scotty asked tersely.
“He says her vehicle appears to be stopped in the middle of the highway. We should pass her in a couple minutes.”
Scotty’s mouth tightened. It would be more than a couple of minutes if the slowdown in traffic was anything to go by. The people ahead in all three lanes on this side of the median were slowing to gawk at something, and he suspected it was whatever had stopped Beth’s vehicle. Even as he thought that, the traffic on the other side of the median dropped off abruptly, from a steady flow of vehicles to almost nothing. Which meant something had brought oncoming traffic almost to a standstill.
Probably an accident, Scotty thought and shifted into the outside left lane while he had the chance. He wanted to see Beth’s vehicle and be sure she was all right and hadn’t been involved in whatever was holding up traffic on the other side.
“Looks like an accident,” Donny said a moment later.
Scotty merely nodded, his narrowed eyes switching between the road and the accident ahead on their left. There were three lanes of traffic on the other side of the median too, but a flatbed trailer was presently across the two lanes farthest from them, leaving only the inside lane nearest them open. However, the cars weren’t whizzing out at one hundred ten or even the speed limit of one hundred kilometers an hour. They were crawling through the opening, the drivers rubbernecking it all the way.