Free Desert Ice Daddy by Dana Marton Page A

second.
    Akeem swore under his breath and got up. He would grab one of Flint’s pickups and bring Taylor back here as soon as they were let go again. It was the best they could do; no point in wasting energy on what-ifs.
    But after a moment of lingering in place, the chopper banked to the left and took off. His instincts prickled.
    “Why didn’t they stop to pick us up?” She came over to the window to look after the helicopter.
    He ran his tongue over his teeth. Good question. Plenty of flat land to put the bird down. Why hadn’t there been a more concentrated rescue effort, for that matter? And back at the boulders, why had the choppers attacked without waiting for ground support to get there?
    It’d looked almost as if their purpose had been to bust up the exchange rather than to capture anyone or save Christopher. Just like right now their purpose seemed to be to locate Taylor and him, but not actually rescue them. Odd.
    “You think they’ll come back?”
    Damned if he knew. If they had wanted to help or harm, they could have done it already.
    “Let’s move on.” He was picking up the sleeping bag, not wanting to waste time.
    “We just got settled in.”
    “I don’t like this.”
    “I don’t want to move.”
    He could more than understand. She had to be sore and exhausted.
    “Just a couple of miles. We’ll find someplace where we can spend the night without being visible from above.”
    “What if we lose the tracks in the twilight? We could end up going in the wrong direction.” That panicked determination was back in her eyes again, like it had been during the firefight.
    He understood. She was afraid that whatever decision they made might turn out to be the wrong one for Christopher. She was holding up admirably, all in all. She had every right to be worried and emotional.
    “If we get off track, it’ll only be by a short distance. We can backtrack tomorrow. It’s a chance we’ll have to take,” he said.
    “Because of one lousy chopper?”
    “Because if they weren’t here to rescue us, then why were they here? Who needs our location? The location of the money.” He stuffed his gear back into the duffel bags, leaving the small tent for last.
    She watched him quietly. And after a moment, she moved to help.
    She’d been right, he thought an hour later as they walked northeast, the direction the pickup had seemed to be heading, judging by the tracks. Tracks he hadn’t seen for the past five minutes. If the ground had been muddy, or made of soft sand, the twilight would have been enough to pick out the tire tracks. Instead, the area was a combination of dirt and small rocks, the shallowimpression the tires had made difficult enough to follow even in full light. They were losing the trail.
    So he made a point in not going too far, not looking for the perfect place, just the nearest clump of acacias that was large enough and thick enough to hide the tent. Another ten minutes brought just such a stand of trees and bushes into view, but another half an hour passed before they reached it.
    They set up the tent in silence. The leaves above filtered what little light was left.
    He didn’t understand how the cops had found them in the vast desert with such unerring certainty. It was as though the chopper had been headed straight to their tent. And how had they found them in the first place, at the boulder?
    Even if Gary had tipped them off to the exchange, Gary hadn’t known where exactly the exchange would take place. Taylor had been given that information little by little, over the phone the kidnappers had left for them. There had to be a locator. He hadn’t found one in the Thermos, and in any case, the Thermos was no longer with them. Chances were that the locator had been someplace else all along.
    He went still with the thought. “Come over here.”
     
    T HE TENT WAS SMALL and dim, and she didn’t know what he wanted from her, but she was too emotionally exhausted to worry about it.
    “If