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

Never mind.

Dammit.

It’s another twenty minutes before the RV slows to a crawl and takes a right turn. From the roughness and the sound of particles smacking into the undercarriage, I’m guessing the new road is not paved.

Jar says, “It looks like…ou…to…ake.”

“Repeat that. You’re breaking up.”

This time when she speaks, the signal is worse, and all I pick up are a few vowels and maybe a syllable or two.

“If you can hear me, I can’t hear you.”

Our comms piggyback on the mobile services of the area we’re in. But wherever we’re headed now appears to have lousy cell coverage. I have a solution for that. I can route my comm directly through my phone and use the satellite function. The only problem is that doing so will only work if my phone has direct line of sight with the satellite, i.e., it needs to be outdoors.

My experience—albeit limited—in the Mercy area leads me to speculate that the dirt road we’re on is actually a driveway and we’re headed to a farm. If that’s the case, we should be stopping any second now.

Only we don’t stop. The Winnebago bounces around for another ten minutes, the dirt road twisting and turning.

When the ride finally ends and the RV’s engine turns off, I experience a few moments of false silence, as my ears adjust to a world without the whine of the motor and the pounding of the road less than a meter under my head.

The first noise I hear is from the Prices above me, making their way to the side door. The RV rocks a little as they exit, and then the door slams shut.

I close my eyes, focus on the sound of their movements, and determine that the family is heading straight out from the passenger side, toward the destination. In the distance, I hear laughter and talking and a splash of water, which leads me to guess this home has a swimming pool. None of the sounds are closer than thirty meters, and some are maybe even forty or forty-five away.

I’m torn about what my next move should be. Part of me wants to slip out and see what’s going on. My initial mission of breaking into the Prices’ house may have been put on hold, but perhaps I can learn something from observing them at the barbecue.

The other part of me is saying I should stay right where I am. The Prices are my ride back to town. I don’t want to find myself in a position where I can’t return to my hiding place before they leave. And I absolutely don’t want to be seen by anyone when I climb out.

I concentrate on the sounds outside again, this time focusing on any that might be near the vehicle. At first everything is quiet, then I pick up the crunch of moving tires from a vehicle heading toward my position. The noise of compacting dirt grows louder by the second, until the vehicle rolls up next to the driver’s side of the RV and stops.

I hear doors open and people getting out.

“The Reubens are here,” a woman says. “I thought you said they weren’t coming.”

“That’s what Lee told me,” a man replies. “I guess their plans changed.”

“Thank God. At least there’s someone we can talk to.”

The man laughs.

Someone else must be with them, because right before they walk off, three doors close in rapid succession. I listen as they walk past the Winnebago and head in the same direction the Prices went, until once more all I can hear is the racket from the party.

If I’m going to get out, I need to do so on the driver’s side since it faces away from the gathering. And with the arrival of the new car beside us on that side, my chances of exiting the storage area without being seen have increased.

I scoot up to the access door and listen. What I hear are the chirps of birds and the sound of a light breeze fanning leaves. What I don’t hear is the approach of another vehicle or sounds of people walking or talking or milling about.

I pull out my gooseneck camera from my bag. It’s basically a long, flexible tube with a small camera lens on one end and a connector on the other that plugs into my phone.

After the two devices are attached to each other, I release the latch on the compartment door and push it slowly upward, my ear attuned to any sudden sounds outside that might indicate someone has noticed the movement.

All remains quiet.

As soon as the gap between the door and frame is wide enough, I slip the end of the gooseneck outside and twist it to look left and right. The space between the Winnebago and the vehicle parked next to us is unoccupied. Even better, the neighboring vehicle is a Chevy Tahoe SUV, so it completely blocks the compartment hatch from anyone who might be on the other side of it.

One of the first things my mentor taught me was to understand that no situation is static. If you come upon an opportunity, you take it, lest it disappear while you’re deciding what to do.

Which is why I open the door wider and slip outside without a second thought, pulling my backpack with me. I don’t want to lock the hatch in place, as leaving the latch undone will make it easier for me to get back inside later. But I don’t want the door to appear to be open, either. I pluck a twig off the ground that’s about as wide as the gap between the hatch and its frame, stick it into the space, and break it off so that the only thing left is the end of the twig in the gap, holding the door in place.

Works like a charm.

I peek through the windows of the Tahoe. About twenty-five meters beyond the SUV is a wide grove of trees, which