Jabba was scrutinizing him, unsure about whether or not to say anything more. Matt noticed it.
“What?” he asked.
“I don’t know, dude. I mean, I hate to say it, but it doesn’t look good. It’s been two years. If Danny didn’t pull a disappearing act to be part of this, I don’t see how they could have kept him locked up and muzzled all this time. He would’ve found a way to reach out to someone, to sneak a word out, don’t you think?”
“Not if they know what they’re doing.”
“Two years, man,” Jabba added with a slight wince.
Matt stared ahead, frowning. Suddenly, he was feeling a tightening in his chest. He didn’t know what was better—to find out Danny was actually long dead, or that he was part of all this willingly. Part of something that had gotten his own best friend killed and his brother accused of his murder.
“No way,” Matt finally said. “He’d never want to be part of something like this. Not if he knew what they were really doing.”
“Okay,” Jabba accepted and turned away.
They motored on for a mile or so, then Matt said, “Get us another lock on Maddox’s car, will you?”
“Okay, but we really shouldn’t be using this,” Jabba cautioned as he pulled out his iPhone.
“Just don’t stay on any longer than you think is safe. You can be in and out in less than your forty seconds, right?”
“Let’s make it thirty,” Jabba said and nodded reluctantly. He pulled up the tracker’s website. He didn’t need to key in the tracker’s number—it was now stored on a cookie. He waited a couple of seconds for the ping to echo back, then zoomed in on the map.
“He’s stationary. Somewhere by the name of Hanscom Field,” he told Matt. “Hang on.” He pulled up another website. Punched in his query. Waited a couple of seconds for it to upload. “It’s a small airport between Bedford and Concord. And I’m logging off before they track us.” He killed the phone, checked his watch—twenty-six seconds total—and turned to Matt.
Matt chewed it over quickly. A small airfield. He wondered what Maddox was doing there. He also liked the idea of maybe being able to surprise Maddox and get up close and personal with him outside the man’s comfort zone.
He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It wasn’t far, even with the holiday traffic building up. A half hour, forty minutes maybe. “That’s just outside the ninety-five, isn’t it?”
Jabba’s face sank. “Yep,” he shrugged.
“Check it again in fifteen minutes or so, will ya? Keep making sure he’s still there.”
Jabba nodded grimly and sagged into his seat, sucking in a deep breath and anticipating the worst.
MADDOX HUNG UP with his contact at the NSA and scowled. He scanned the skies instinctively for the incoming jet, but his mind was now preoccupied elsewhere.
He’d received three consecutive calls. The first one was innocuous enough: The learning software had delivered on its promise, and the targets were just north of the city, heading into town. The second call told him the targets had changed direction and were now heading west on the Concord Turnpike, which, with hindsight, should have raised an eyebrow, but hadn’t. The third call, though, was seriously troubling. The targets had turned north once they’d hit I-95, and were now less than five miles away from the airfield.
Which was, again, seriously troubling. For the simple reason that Maddox didn’t believe in blind luck any more than he believed in coincidences. And it was the second time Matt had managed to track him down that day. Which meant he was either psychic, or he had an advantage Maddox wasn’t aware of.
Yet.
His mind did a one-eighty and ran a full-spectrum sweep of everything that had happened since he’d first come across Matt Sherwood. He shelved details he thought extraneous and focused on establishing causal links between that first encounter and the present moment and running them against the background skills he knew Matt possessed.
All of which colluded to draw his attention across to his car.
He took a half step closer to it, his eyes scrutinizing it as his operational instincts assessed what the likely culprit could be.
And frowned at the realization.
He wouldn’t have time to have the car checked out. Which meant there was a chance he’d have to leave it there for now. Which pissed him off even more. He really liked that car. He checked his watch. The jet’s arrival was imminent.