“While you’re thinking about it, it’s getting done. If your grandmother wants to have a conversation with me about it, I’ll make myself available.
“I don’t like these damn systems,” he added. “I don’t like the whole idea of them. But right here, right now, it’s necessary.”
“I don’t like being rolled over this way.”
“Don’t blame you a bit. It sucks, and I’ll apologize after that son of a bitch is in a cell. If it’s any consolation, when he gets done here, he’s putting one of these systems on my place. I don’t like it any more than you, but you spend time there.”
She turned back, dropped into a chair. “It makes me feel helpless.”
“That’s stupid, and you’re not. You dented his shield, remember? Now you’ll have one, and he won’t dent yours.”
He sat across from her.
“Part of you still feels coming here, living here makes you a failure, a weak one. That’s bullshit. Coming here, starting over after what happened to you is what proves you’re strong. Strong enough, Morgan, that when someone hands you a shield, you take it and you use it.”
“It’s really unfair when you’re logical.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “It’s just been a day, and still has a ways to go.” She dropped her hands back on the table. “I got an update from the FBI.”
“Okay.”
“I need to walk. Can we just walk around? I need a little Zen.”
“Sure. Give me a second first.”
When he took out his phone, she pressed her fingers to her eyes again. “You have to get back to work. We’ll do all this later.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Give me a second.”
He rose, moved away. As he worked with his assistant on some rescheduling, he wondered why a sensible, grounded woman like Morgan found it so hard to accept help.
When he walked back, he held out a hand. “Let’s walk.”
“They don’t have him. I should get that out of the way first.”
“But?”
“He wasn’t in the hotel room when the police went in, but a lot of his things were—clothes, IDs, electronics. And the car he’d gotten when he sold or traded his last victim’s was in the hotel garage. They have the name he used to book the suite. He’d gone out shopping, had some lunch. They have credit card receipts.”
She paused by the fountain, so they stood a moment. He waited while the water fountained and the sunlight struck the copper.
“From the time stamps, they posit he saw the police going into the hotel when he was walking back from his lunch—charged on the card under the new name. It was all about the timing.”
Miles rounded it up. “So they have what he left in the hotel room, have the car.”
“Yes, and more. He walked some distance, caught a bus. They had his new description from the hotel—from witness statements and the lobby cameras. He caught a bus—and they have him on that camera, too. And from where he got off and when, they believe he stole a car from a Walmart parking lot. They have the make and model of the car, the plates. He used the ID he had when I met him to buy gas. They found the car in long-term parking at the airport in Omaha, Nebraska. That’s where they are now.”
“He’s running.”
“That’s what they said, yes. They’re canvassing hotels, motels, car rentals, stolen car reports in Omaha. He didn’t go into the airport. They seem sure of that. He may have stolen another car from that same lot. They’re not sure yet.”
She hadn’t just dented Rozwell’s shield, Miles thought. She’d obliterated it. And that worried him.
“He lost his tools, his equipment.”
“He was carrying a laptop bag when he left the hotel,” Morgan told him. “He has something, but since he used the Luke Hudson Visa card for gas, they think he doesn’t have any ID on him that isn’t compromised. For now.”
“He’d need supplies to make more, and a place to hide while he does. He’s in or around Omaha, Morgan, and you’re not.”
“I know. And I know they’re frustrated. I could hear the frustration in Agent Beck’s voice even though she’s good at sounding very matter-of-fact. Frustration that they were so close, minutes really. And excitement that they were that close.
“So … that’s where we are.”
“He screwed up, and he has to know it.”
He may have felt frustration, but all Morgan heard in his voice was satisfaction. “For someone who knows so much about tech, he didn’t remember to disengage the tracking system. He used the blown ID for gas when he should’ve risked going in, paying cash for it. It would’ve taken them longer to track him that way.”