The waitress was standing a few feet away holding a huge tray of our food. The doctor took one look at her and calmly said, “We’ll take it all to go. And this should cover our check and any damages.” He politely slipped a couple hundred-dollar bills on the table, stood and escorted us all back to the SUV. Just a few minutes passed before the waitress came out with bags of food. I’m sure she wanted to get rid of us just as much as we wanted to get out of there.
We were being tracked, and more than that, our SUV had been bugged. They heard everything we said for the last twelve hours. I felt too sick to eat. Instead, I was replaying all our conversations in my head trying to remember what we may have given away. Ugh. We talked about everything. It would be easier to think about what we hadn’t given away.
Chapter 28 Margo’s Stand
A little closer. Come on you psychotic freak. You know you want to. Just step a little closer.
Margo silently willed for Dr. Williams to continue his ranting a little closer to her. She figured four more feet and he’d be within range. She was going to try to take out this monster. Her eyes were on his jugular and she was pretty sure she could do some serious damage. If she were lucky, maybe even strike a fatal blow to his throat. At least, that was the unofficial plan.
Her ankles were still tied, but she didn’t care. Her hands were free. If all she did was kill Dr. Williams over there, then the nightmare would be over for her children. Of course, his thugs would finish her off before they even checked their boss for a pulse, but that didn’t matter. What mattered to Margo was that Williams wouldn’t be alive to hunt her children.
“And all this time you lived on that pathetic little ranch in the middle of nowhere? Amazing. I know you must have watched the children carefully for their metamorphoses. I’m anxious to hear all their developments. I feel like a father who has missed more than a decade of my children’s lives.”
And that was just about all she could stomach. So caught up in his one-sided conversation was he that he moved those last few feet, closing the gap between them.
He didn’t even have time to react beyond making a stupid surprised expression on his greasy face. With all the fierceness of a lioness, Margo sprang and attacked. Her hands, though cut and bleeding, were exact in their movements. Knuckles out, she went for a lethal throat strike. She hit her mark. He went down clutching his throat and gurgling.
That was the last thing she heard before she blacked out. The thugs were on her.
Chapter 29 Anyone For a Plan B?
Evan thoroughly checked the rest of the SUV for any more devices that would be tracking, eavesdropping or exploding.
Nothing.
It was just that one piece. And it wasn’t very professionally planted either. Evan only had to lean down a bit and he saw it. A professional would have hidden the device in a much less conspicuous place. It made us all start to wonder out loud about who put it there. I had my suspicions, but it didn’t seem polite to name names, especially when that person had the same last name as the good doctor. Michelle did this.
We had driven off course a bit hoping to lose whoever was following us. Just after midnight, I knew we needed to find a place to let Dr. Andrews rest. He looked exhausted and he was the only one with a license to drive. (Oh, believe me, Evan, Alik and Cole all offered repeatedly to take over driving duty, but only Cole had a driver’s permit. And apparently his dad didn’t want to permit him to drive during this particular point in our ever complicated adventure.)
We had two choices, as far as I could tell. Either find a place to pull over and settle down to sleep in the SUV, or locate a motel and crash there. Considering we had bad guys following us, I felt a little better about voting for the motel. At this point, I didn’t even care if I had to sleep on the floor. It had been an exhausting day.
“I vote for motel.” I yawned loudly.
“I second that,” said Evan.
“Motion carried,” Dr. Andrews joked through his yawns.
A few miles ahead we saw a motel that looked as uninteresting as any of the other hundreds we’d passed so far. Dr. Andrews pulled into the parking lot, walked up to the teller’s desk and checked us in.
He returned to the truck and began driving slowly passed the many identical doors looking for the one to which we had been assigned.
“I’m Mr. Moore, by the way.” We all looked at him through tired, squinted eyes.
“I paid in cash and used an assumed name. If it comes up, thought you should know; we’re the Moore family.”
Alik started to chuckle to himself. He gets giddy when he’s super tired. “The Moore family? Morbid family. Morose family. Monitored, maintained, migrating, metas, mortuary, marred, martyred…tired.”
The last word had him crashing into the first bed he saw. I wasn’t going to bug him about brushing his teeth. I would have felt like a hypocrite, ‘cause little ol’ Meg was skipping the brush, too. I was dog-tired…which reminded me of Maze.