to keep the cartons in sight, so he could track them to their final destination. But the terminal was clearing out. Unlike the international terminal, this one shut down for several hours a night. There were no more outbound flights until the morning, and just a few still to arrive. Favor knew that as the place emptied, he would be increasingly conspicuous, a foreigner hanging around with no apparent purpose. Arielle and Stickney would be just as visible. Even Mendonza didn’t really fit in.
He walked outside and studied the layout.
The terminal had one passenger exit, a set of doors that opened onto a taxi stand and a loading zone. To one side was a freight dock, large enough to accommodate a single truck. Across the street, a parking area. From the spot, one car could watch the passenger exit and the freight dock.
Favor called Mendonza and Arielle and asked them to join him in the parking lot across from the terminal. Stickney was there already, and they all sat together in one of the two cars that Stickney and Arielle had brought.
Favor said, “We can’t hang around in there watching the cartons, but we don’t have to. We can watch from here to see when they come out. It’ll either be through this front door or the loading dock. And it’ll go down soon. This terminal will be closing after the last flight is in.”
“How do you know it won’t be tomorrow?” Mendonza asked.
“It’s blood,” Favor said, “and somebody went to a lot of trouble to collect it. I don’t know why they want it, but I can’t believe that they’ll let it sit overnight, even if it’s on ice.”
“You don’t need all four of us to watch,” Stickney said.
“Correct,” Favor said. “I thought I’d leave you and Al with one car here. Ari and I will park out on the street, where the terminal traffic exits. You let us know what we’re looking for, we’ll latch onto them there. Give them about half a minute, then you hustle up behind us.”
“We really ought to have three vehicles,” Mendonza said. “This looks like a daily routine, right? Wait a day, we can have that third car, do it right.”
“No,” Favor said. “I feel like I already gave away a day yesterday. I don’t want to give away any more. Two vehicles is what we’ve got, so we make it happen with two.”
He looked around at them, checking their faces. He was looking for hesitation, disagreement.
He saw that they were all with them.
“Then we’re on,” he said.
He got into the second car with Arielle and drove out of the parking lot, past the terminal, down the one-way terminal. He found a parking space on the street where the terminal road exited into city traffic.
He pulled in and parked, and waited for the call from Mendonza and Stickney that would ID their target for the tail. Cars and jeepneys surged past his window, moving fast. Favor knew that darkness would help mask the tail, but he would have to hustle to stay with the target. Mendonza in the second car might not be able to catch up. Then it would be just him, hanging with the target while trying to stay unnoticed.
He realized that Arielle was looking at him. She had turned partway toward him and was taking him in, studying him. Smiling.
She said, “Ray, you’re looking good.”
“I appreciate that, but we probably ought to wait until we get to a room.”
“I didn’t say you looked edible. Although you do. I said you look good.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Solid. Squared away. On the beam,” she said. “Good.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he said.
Stickney and Mendonza sat waiting in their car, Mendonza behind the wheel. The parking area was thinning out, and foot traffic through the front doors was light.
A red Honda CR-V pulled up and parked at the curb in front of the terminal. Mendonza watched the new arrival, but there was no movement, and about half a minute later a dark blue Toyota van stopped short of the pickup zone, reversed, and backed up to the loading dock.
Mendonza said, “This may be it.”
A side door opened on the van, and the overhead light briefly illuminated the driver and a passenger, both young men, as the passenger got out and walked around to the back.
At the periphery of his vision, Mendonza caught movement at the red Honda in front of the terminal—someone stepping out onto the sidewalk—but he disregarded it and focused on