Minute Zero by Chris Jayne

Author:Chris Jayne [Jayne, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inferis Press

Chapter 21

Saldata

Wednesday

1:00 PM Eastern Time

Miami, Florida

* * *

“We got a hit after her picture hit the news.” Rossi was back, and he didn’t bother to hide his frustration as he looked at Saldata across the office. “It’s not good.”

Saldata was expecting this. “She’s not in Miami, is she?”

“A hotel clerk at a Country Suites in Gainesville IDed her. She was there around 11:00 on Monday night.” Rossi put his laptop on the desk, opened the lid, and hit a button.

Saldata watched a grainy security video of a woman arguing with the desk clerk. It was definitely her. She was wearing the same stylish jacket and skinny jeans she’d had on when she was in his kitchen on Monday morning. There was no sound, but he didn’t need any. Dovner looked tremendously tired but also furious. Whatever she and the clerk were arguing about, Dovner lost.

“Gainesville P.D. sent someone out to talk to the clerk,” Rossi explained. “She wanted to check in with no ID. He said no, wouldn’t give her a room.”

“Then what happened?”

“She left.” Rossi shrugged. “We can guess she went somewhere else, but we’ve got no proof right now.” He took a deep breath. “There’s something else. She went to Vanderbilt University. In Nashville, Tennessee, and lived there for a couple years after college, still has friends there. Not a lot and from her social media accounts, no one that she’s in touch with very often, but she definitely still knows people. Knows the area.”

Saldata considered this new information. When people went on the run, they almost always ended up going to some place they knew, where they felt comfortable, even if they hadn’t been there for a while. He inclined his head towards the computer. “And this was when?”

“Around 11:00 on Monday night.”

Saldata did a quick calculation. “Almost forty hours ago.” He grabbed for a notepad. “And if she even drove half of the time since then, twenty hours, and did 60 miles an hour, that’s 1,200 miles.” He lifted his eyes to Rossi. “How far is it from Gainesville to Nashville?”

“Less than that.” The muscles in Rossi’s throat worked as he swallowed. “A lot less.”

Saldata eyed Rossi coldly for a moment, then flipped to a map program on his computer. A few swift keystrokes, and he had answers. Nashville was less than 600 miles from Gainesville. Hell, that was a one-day drive. And 1,200 miles from Gainesville? Saldata typed quickly and cursed at the answers he was getting. 1,200 miles brought one to cities as far away as Chicago, Dallas, New York. Even Boston was just a few miles over that number. The Mexican border, for certain. And that was if she’d driven twenty hours out of the forty since she’d been spotted in Gainesville.

However, if she’d driven thirty hours, Denver, Santa Fe, New Mexico, hell, even the Canadian border were all in reach. Saldata knew (because he knew things like this) there were still plenty of places people could quietly drive across into Canada at one in the morning without showing ID.

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