Cam's laugh helped relieve my tension, and I felt myself dial it down just a notch. "Maybe twenty minutes or so, why? Are you sure everything's okay?"
"I don't know," I answered. "I know it's weird, but would you mind if I rode my bike back up to the High School and got a ride home with you? I'm at a gas station about a mile away, the clerk said."
“Of course.” Cam asked, concern in his voice. “I can come get you though. I can be there in five minutes. Are you safe?”
I thought that was such a strange question. Was I safe? "Yeah, of course. I'm in the gas station right now. Seriously, Cam, I know I'm just being a nervous Nellie, but I'd feel better if I could just catch a ride with you. Let me get up there, and we can laugh about it on the ride home, okay?"
His voice was still uncertain, but I heard him sigh in agreement. "Okay. Just stick to the main road, if you're at the station I'm thinking of. Are you at a Circle K?"
"Yeah, that's the place," I said. "Don't worry, I probably just got freaked out."
“Okay, I won't. Hurry, and you can have the guys give you compliments again at the end of practice.”
I laughed, my bad feelings forgotten temporarily. “Okay. I love you."
"Love you too babe."
Chapter 18
Cam
When Melina went to bed, tired out from the hard exercise, I got on my laptop.
My laptop never left my sight, ever. If the wrong people ever got a hold of the contents of the hard drive, national security would have been the least of my concerns. If I thought I could have assured my safety by just taking a shotgun to the fucking thing, I would have, but I couldn't. The same thing that was causing me to lose sleep and perhaps even endanger Melina's life was the same device that had the tools I still needed to keep us both safe. If my enemies knew they could safely snatch the thing without harming it, they’d have put a bullet in my head in a heartbeat.
I'd had a connection into the police traffic camera system since three days after I'd moved to T or C. It was, in fact, one of the reasons I'd chosen the city. The town, in an attempt to balance the money that traffic tickets brought in with the cost of a large police force, had long ago used an infusion of cash from the government to install nearly a hundred different traffic cameras at many major intersections. Of course, the police being on older computers, like much of the city, meant that security was a joke.
Using the time code of when Melina called me, I accessed the nearest two cameras, one of which was only a few hundred feet from the gas station that Melina called me from. The second camera was a bit further back, and if her story was as I thought, I didn't know if I'd get a good shot of the situation, but I could hope. Unfortunately, Riverside Drive was one of the roads that didn't have a lot of cameras on it, so I didn't have anything from there.
I started my review from ten minutes before Melina called me, just in case the timestamps weren't synchronized. I sat up closely when Melina came on the screen, hauling ass on her bike. She may have been sensitive about the size of her thighs, but even I hadn't realized just how strong she was, the way her legs were pumping the pedals was impressive. I took my eyes off of her as she pulled into the gas station, looking for the black Lincoln that she said followed her. It was just like she'd said, a late model black Lincoln. When it drove by the gas station I saw the car slow for a second before accelerating toward the camera. Just before it did I froze the image, checking the license plate. It was a long shot, a lot of professionals would pair a rented or stolen car with a false set of plates, or plates lifted from another car, but it was worth checking out.
Panning the image up, I was worried when I saw that I couldn't get a clear image of the interior of the car. I backed it up, frame by frame, but the windshield didn't clear at all, which told me that the car was outfitted with Faraday glass. The invention had a long, technical name that probably took some tech-head a day and a half to think up, but operations folks like me called it Faraday glass. Like the Faraday cage it was named after, Faraday glass prevented electromagnetic energy from entering the vehicle. To anyone who looked at it from the outside, the windshield would look like it was catching a glare from an overhead light or maybe the sun. Unlike a real Faraday cage, though, someone inside the vehicle could look out without any problems at all.
Faraday glass is expensive, plain and simple. It's cheaper to build the whole damn car to be bullet proof using the latest ceramics instead of putting in Faraday glass. It was also a highly protected secret, which narrowed down the people who may have been tracking Melina, or more likely me, down to one of two groups.
Tapping the computer, I pulled up a chat program. I pinged my target, waiting for him to get back to me. It was just after midnight Langley time, but I hoped he was still awake.
My wife is wondering what the hell I'm doing out of bed at this hour to answer a text message.