Mercy (The Night Man Chronicles Book 3), Brett Battles [best books to read in your 20s TXT] 📗

The sedan does turn onto Central, though. By this point, Jar and I are only a block and a half behind it. I stop (normally, not California style) at the intersection with Central and make the turn.

Evan and his friends blow right past the McDonald’s and Wendy’s and Sonic and KFC—which are all closed—and continue toward the south end of Mercy. No more than a handful of other cars are out, so I ease back on the accelerator and let Evan’s sedan grow its lead on us to nearly two blocks.

Time and again, I anticipate them turning off the road into one of the neighborhoods, but they keep going straight. When it becomes clear they are planning on heading into the countryside, I say, “Do you have goggles?”

“Yes.”

She digs into her bag and pulls out a pair of night vision goggles. They’re not the fanciest pair we own, but they’re more than adequate for my needs.

I angle the truck toward the side of the road like I’m going to park, then turn off our headlights. As soon as we’re dark, I pull on the goggles and press down on the gas again to continue our pursuit.

If Evan and his friends were professionals, I would have to do a lot more than douse our lights to hide our presence. But they’re not, so my little trick should be adequate enough to make them think they’re on the road alone.

Four miles outside town, they turn right onto a county road, and three-quarters of a mile after that, they slow and then stop in the middle of the asphalt. I take my foot off the pedal, shift into neutral, and let our truck roll to a stop without touching the brakes.

Jar has pulled out binoculars from her backpack and trained them on the sedan.

“Are they getting out?” I ask.

“No.”

“Then what are they doing?”

“I cannot tell for sure. If I had to, um…guess, I would say they are talking.”

It’s nearly another minute before the sedan starts moving again. When it does, it’s traveling at only about half the speed as before, giving me the sense they’re looking for something.

We match their pace.

After about four hundred meters, the sedan turns left.

“Is that a driveway or…”

Jar checks the map on her computer. “It’s a road.”

When we reach the intersection, I’m not sure I should take the turn. The road is two-laned but narrower than the one we’re on, and is cracked and dotted with patches. I don’t want to be caught on it if Evan and the others decide they’ve gone the wrong way and suddenly come back.

I stare at the taillights of the sedan. The vehicle is about a hundred and fifty meters away, still moving slowly.

Screw it, I think, and take the turn. If the sedan comes back this way, so be it. We’ll just make sure they don’t see our faces.

Newly plowed fields surround the road for the first half kilometer, after which a grove of trees, maybe thirty meters thick, springs up on both sides. When the sedan reaches the farmland just past the grove, its brake lights flash on again.

Once more I let the truck roll forward on its own momentum. The sedan swings to the side of the road, and all of its lights go off.

I tap the accelerator enough to get us just inside the grove, then pull the truck off the road.

Jar is holding the binoculars to her eyes again. “They’re getting out.”

“All of them?”

A pause, then, “Yes.” She goes quiet for a few more seconds. “They’re crossing the road. And…are walking into the field.” She stares through the glasses for another moment before lowering them. “The trees are in the way. I can’t see them anymore.”

I had a friend in college who grew up in the desert, south of Palm Springs. He’d tell us about the high school parties they had out in the middle of nowhere, away from town. “The best part,” he’d say, “was that we could get ourselves into trouble and out of it again, without our parents or the police ever being the wiser.” I have to admit, I was a little jealous. Being a city kid, our parties were always at someone’s house, which were more often than not shut down before they could really get going.

I’m wondering now if Evan and his friends are heading to their version of a desert party. Perhaps a kegger at a barn, where they could make trouble without anyone else knowing about it. The only problem with this idea is that there aren’t any other cars around.

Maybe it’s just a party of four.

This would be a great opportunity to break out the drone, but it’s back at the duplex. Which means if we want to know where Evan and his friends are going, we’ll have to follow on foot.

I throw the truck into reverse. This turns on the backup lights, but I’m no longer worried about being spotted by Evan. There’s more than enough growth between us to block the lights from his and his friends’ view.

Once we have backed out from the trees, I turn onto a dirt road—really more of a path—that runs between the grove and the farm field abutting it. I kill the engine. Now, if Evan and the others leave before we do, it would be highly unlikely for them to see our vehicle.

Jar and I climb out, jog back to the main road, and move down it toward the now empty sedan. It’s breezy tonight, the cool wind blowing from behind us and rattling the leaves in the trees.

When we reach the far end of the trees, we stop, and I use the binoculars to scan the field where the others went. I spot them walking along the edge of the farm next to the trees, about halfway to the back end of the field. Unlike where we left the truck, there is no path here, only a meter-and-a-half strip of