Now it was her turn to say, “Huh?”
“What is it?” Dan was suddenly on point. She could feel the tension radiating from him like he was a live wire. As she casually followed the direction of Zoelner’s stare so as not to draw too much notice to herself, her instincts and training allowed her to immediately spy what had snagged his attention.
“We’ve got a skinhead packing heat at three o’clock,” Zoelner said, and Penni noticed he’d gone eerily still. No part of him moving. Even the wind refused to tease the ends of his hair. Then he started cataloging the guy’s features, and the quick, businesslike descriptions told her he wasn’t talking to her or to Dan. “Looks Eastern European. No neck. Has one of those narrow skulls suggesting he won’t be winning any Academic Decathlon championships.”
A quick glance at his left ear revealed the tiny, flesh-toned earpiece. Part of her wondered who was listening in. The other part of her lightbulbed the fact that she’d landed herself in the middle of a live operation, despite having been assured by the folks back at Black Knights Inc. that Dan wasn’t too busy to talk to her.
Great. Just…grrrreat! Never let it be said that life in Penni Land wasn’t chock-a-block full of twisty, turny excitement.
“I see him,” Dan muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets and glancing away so it didn’t look like all three of them were staring at the guy crossing the square not twenty feet away. “A lot more brawn than brain.”
“More like a blunt-force object,” she added helpfully, “as opposed to a precision instrument.”
“That’s him in a nutshell,” Dan said. “Chelsea? You got an angle on his face?”
So it was Chelsea listening in. Whoever the hell Chelsea was, she was obviously somewhere close with a camera in hand. Instinctively, Penni reached over to her left side where her service weapon was kept in a shoulder holster.
Only…it wasn’t there.
And boy, oh boy, it was one heck of a momentary shock to feel nothing but ribs beneath her fingers. For the first time in a really long time, she felt completely, inexplicably vulnerable. No big surprise she didn’t particularly care for the sensation.
She couldn’t hear what Chelsea said to Dan, but she figured it was a negative on getting a bead on No Neck’s face, because Dan cursed, grabbed what was left of her ice cream, and lobbed it into a nearby trash can.
“What the… Hey!” she complained, her heart breaking as she watched the top scoop smash against the metal side and slide over a huge glob of bubble gum. Before she could say more, he wrapped a hand around her arm and started pulling her after No Neck.
Okay, okay, she felt like griping, hoisting her purse back onto her shoulder when it slipped to dangle from her elbow. I know how to play the game of cat and mouse. No need to manhandle. But she’d always prided herself on being a smart woman, and Dan’s patience seemed to be scraping the bottom of the barrel today. And since her arrival—surprise!—didn’t appear to be helping matters, she simply asked, “So what’s the plan?”
“We have a drone in the air,” he said. So Chelsea wasn’t close with a camera; she was sitting in a control center at a console or in a room somewhere with her laptop open. “But because of the direction he’s facing and the surrounding mountains, we can’t get a wide enough angle,” he continued, lacing their fingers together so it looked less like he was frog-marching her across the square, and more like they were a happy couple out for a stroll.
A jolt of awareness shot up her arm when his wide, callused palm touched hers.
“We need to snap Skinhead’s photo,” he told her, increasing their pace, “so we can run his mug against the facial recognition software back at BKI and Langley.”
It’ll be fine if you fly to Peru, Becky had said when Penni balked at the thought of hopping on a plane and distracting Dan from whatever he was doing. He’s just twiddling his dick down there, anyway. Has been for nearly three months now.
Twiddling his dick, huh? Well, Penni had five choice words for the woman: “drone,” “facial recognition software,” and “Langley.”
As they hustled across the square, she was tempted to glance into the sky even though she knew the drone was probably flying so high there was no way for her naked eye to see it. Zoelner abandoned them, cutting to the left and picking up his pace in an attempt to outflank No Neck and get ahead of him. It was a classic tailing technique. Put one party in front. Another behind. And trade places if and when necessary.