Page 29 of Desperate Creed

“The two men were friends,” Maggie told her. “They might have hacked into a computer system and found something they weren’t supposed to find.”

There was a long pause.

“Okay,” the detective said. “I think you better start telling me everything you know before I share anything more.”

21

Nashville, Tennessee

Frankie felt the adrenaline drain. Coffee no longer helped. It just made her have to pee, and she didn’t want to stop unless she needed to fill the tank. Which meant gas station toilets and gas station coffee.

Earlier, she’d called Hannah using one of the burner phones to tell her she was driving down instead. Frankie told her about the men at the airport, how she recognized the one by the scar on his neck.

“Hannah, they knew exactly what gate. How is that possible?”

Hannah was one of the calmest, steadiest people Frankie knew, but she could hear the worry wrapped tight in Hannah’s words.

“Just come on home, girl,” she told Frankie. “Be careful. Be smart. We’ll figure this out. And please, just let me know where you are. Even if it’s a quick text.”

For the first four hours Frankie constantly checked her rearview mirrors. She took unnecessary exits only to loop back onto the interstate. The whole time she watched to see if any vehicles stayed with her. She kept telling herself it was crazy to think they could have followed her from the airport. But then they had shown up inside the exact terminal at her flight’s gate. Was it possible they had access to her credit card information? That still didn’t explain how they knew what flight she’d booked.

Who the hell were these guys?

She shook her head and said out loud, “Tyler, what kind of mess did you get yourself into?”

Maybe they’d laugh about it someday.

She met her eyes in the rearview mirror and shook her head, again.

You know he’s not okay. Why lie to yourself?

Maybe because she still had too many hours to go, alone and on the road. How did she forget it was a fourteen-hour drive from Chicago to the panhandle of Florida? In her defense, it had been over a decade since she’d driven the route. The rare times she went down to visit her father she had taken a flight that amounted to a couple of hours.

Her rental car didn’t have a GPS. Her mistake. In her hurry, she’d forgotten to request one. She was just grateful to have a black Ford Escape waiting for her, right in stall I-24 with the key FOB and papers on the driver’s seat. When she got to the exit booth and handed the printout, along with her driver’s license, the attendant barely glanced at it.

For the first time since Tyler’s phone call, she could breathe.

But it was short-lived. She had barely left the maze of rental car companies and felt like she was driving in circles, not sure what exit was needed to escape the swirl of interstate junctions that all seemed to lead to O’Hare. Quickly, she realized she needed directions.

She had pulled off into a fast food parking lot and tucked her smaller vehicle between two large SUVs. She’d never used a burner phone before and panicked when she realized it didn’t have Internet access and couldn’t even connect to Wi-Fi. She caved in and turned on her cell phone after promising herself that she wouldn’t. But she desperately needed GPS just to get out of Chicago.

Later, at one of her first gas station stops, she asked the clerk if they had any road maps. He stared at her as though she were a Martian. Finally he told her “no.” Then he added that the McDonald’s up the road had free Wi-Fi access. She simply said, “thanks,” not wanting to see the look on his face if she told him she couldn’t use her cell phone. Despite her screw-ups, she knew the last thing she needed was to be memorable in case someone did come along behind her, asking about her.

Now here Frankie was, seven hours outside of Chicago. She passed an exit for Nashville. Signs announced there would be more exits for the city in the next several miles. Ordinarily, there’d be a few more hours of sunlight, but dark clouds were rolling in from the west. Frankie had noticed the temperature and humidity raised a notch with each stop for gas, fogging up her sunglasses as soon as she got out of the car. Only halfway to her destination, and exhaustion had begun to seep into her veins.

“Face it, Frankie,” she told herself in the rearview mirror. With the darkening sky, she’d removed the sunglasses and could see her puffy eyes. “You don’t have the energy to drive through thunderstorms.”

Back at the gas station where she’d asked about maps—just outside of Indianapolis—she’d taken the clerk’s advice and stopped at the McDonald’s. She hadn’t eaten anything except an apple back at the airport. At the McDonald’s, she had backed into a spot under a tree where she ate and watched every vehicle that came into the parking lot. If the man with the scar was following her, she’d see him before he saw her. Or so she told herself.

The comfort food had not only settled the acid in her stomach, but it had also calmed down her anxiety a notch. Enough so, that she had dug out her cell phone charger and plugged it in. She turned on the phone no longer admonishing herself. But this time, she had looked up the rest of her route and jotted down notes including cities, exits and how many miles in between. It was a straight shot down I-65. That shouldn’t have been difficult to remember, and yet, she felt more vulnerable without the GPS to direct her. Before she left the parking lot, she had sent Hannah a quick text:

JUST OUTSIDE INDIANAPOLIS. SO FAR, SO GOOD. XXOO

Now Frankie glanced at her watch, ignored that the stupid thing was telling her how many steps she was behind. Indianapolis was five hours ago. No wonder she was tired and hungry.

She started looking for exits with hotels. Not a motel, she decided. It had to be someplace with more than one door between her and anyone following. The hotel could be off the interstate but with an easy escape route. And someplace with more security than a guy at a front desk. Room service would be nice. She didn’t want to leave once she settled in. And just in case they were tracking her credit card, she still remembered Gordon’s number.

“Be smart,” Hannah had told her.