Lag Delay (Grace Parkowski Thrillers) by Ryan M. Patrick

Author:Ryan M. Patrick [Patrick, Ryan M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Manhattan Beach, CA

Parkowski twiddled her thumbs while DePresti fumbled to get the battery out of his phone. Finally, he gave up. DePresti chucked the cell phone out of the car’s window into a bush outside the house they were parked in front of.

“What was that for?” she asked.

“Whoever attacked us on the pier, they can track us through our phones,” he explained. “I’ve seen it in movies.”

“In movies,” she repeated, incredulous at the suggestion.

“And I know that anything transmitting via an antenna can be triangulated,” DePresti said. “So I want to be better safe than sorry.” He looked at her. “Grace, this is serious business now.”

“No shit,” she responded. “We almost just died.”

He didn’t have a response.

“And Dr. Pham…”

His silence continued.

“What now?” Parkowski asked.

“We need to get out of here,” her boyfriend answered. “And we can’t go back to my house or your apartment. We don’t know if we were the intended targets or not.”

“Ok, so we go to the police?”

“We can’t go to the police,” DePresti argued. “We have no idea who those four people were on the pier. They could be from our government, a foreign government, an NGO, or a corporation coming from God-knows-where. For all we know, they could be in cahoots with the local cops.”

They sat in the car quietly.

“Can we go to one of our friends’ houses?” Parkowski asked.

DePresti considered it. “That’s not the worst idea. Reggie lives at the far side of Manhattan Beach up by El Segundo off of Rosecrans. He’s working from home today. Let’s pay him a visit.”

He started to back out of the parking spot and froze. “Cop car,” DePresti said quietly.

Parkowski saw it in her side’s rear-view mirror. The black-and-white SUV was coming towards the Subaru slowly, its lights on, but no siren blaring.

She sat as still as she could manage with her heart beating a thousand times per minute. Had they been caught? Why else would a police car be here, blocks away from a recent massacre? They had to be coming for them.

There was nothing they could do. Parkowski and DePresti sat motionless as the police SUV approached.

But it didn’t stop. Instead, the car with the flashing lights slowly passed their parked Subaru and continued down the residential street.

DePresti let out a short laugh.

“What’s so funny about that?” Parkowski demanded.

“I forget just how big the government is sometimes,” her boyfriend explained. “If the shooters on the pier were in cahoots with the government somehow, it’d take a dozen people to get through all of the layers needed to get down to the local cops. And that takes time, which means we have a chance to get out of this.”

“And if they’re not part of the government?” Parkowski asked. “I have a hard time believing that the U.S. government would indiscriminately murder people in broad daylight.”

“We’ll come to that if we have to,” her boyfriend said. “Right now, let’s just get out of here.”

He deftly pulled out of the parking spot and started driving north toward his friend’s apartment.

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