Free Alpha's Captive 04 - Haven by V. M. Black Page B

triangulate where we are and send half the state after us. Let me figure out a route, and we’ll turn it off and keep it off, okay?”
    Harper hesitated.
    “It’s important, Harper.”
    “Okay,” she said, reluctance in her voice.
    “And we need to pick up another burner as soon as we get a chance.”
    “Okay,” she repeated.
    Levi studied the map. He zoomed in and out along the route for a moment, committing it to memory. He turned off the phone before returning it to her. “Six miles to your first exit.”
    “Sure thing,” Harper said, plugging in the charger.
    “Keep a lookout for a place to hide until dark,” he added.
    “Because that worked so well the first time?” she asked, but the usual bite of her retorts was somewhat dampened.
    “We’re driving a stolen red and whi te Mini Cooper in the middle of rural Pennsylvania,” Levi said. “We don’t really have much of a choice.”
    “Whatever you say,” she said. “But the guys who are after you have seemed to have had an unnatural amount of luck on their side. It’s like they know exactly where to look.”
    No kidding. They’d found them in the barn, found them at the Walmart, found them on the river….
    Levi spat a curse and grabbed her purse, digging through it quickly .
    “What is it?” Her eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror.
    “The dagger,” he said. “It has to be the dagger.”
    He’d been so busy running that he hadn’t stopped to think. Stupid, stupid, stupid….
    He found the dagger, then with a little more digging in the depths of her purse, he found her tweezers and his lock pick set, too. He examined the sheath and hilt first, trying to find a loose jewel or a tiny hidden chamber. He pulled the blade out and looked closely it, then poked inside the sheath with the lock picks. Nothing.
    Finally, he unscrewed the pommel again and pulled the cotton wadding all the way out with the tweezers. But it was just ordinary white cotton, the same kind that was in a pill bottle, kept dry by a narrow rubber gasket. He peered into the hollow space behind it and didn’t see anything, but when he prodded with a lock pick, something moved. He dug harder, trying to dislodge it, and all at once it came, sliding into his hand.
    A black plastic cylinder with a seam along one side, i t was barrel-shaped and only slightly larger than a round for his luger. It looked so innocuous. But Levi knew it was anything but. He pushed an edge of a lock pick into the seam and twisted. It came open, revealing a tangle of wires, a tiny battery, and a small chip inside.
    Stupid. Terminally stupid.
    “Damned paranoid bastard,” he said. “That’s what I’d do, right? You’ve got data you don’t want to lose, and you hide it away. Wouldn’t you track the thing you hid it in, just in case?”
    “What is it?” Harper repeated.
    “We’ve been carrying around a GPS locator,” he said, snapping the device closed again.
    “ What? Throw it out!”
    Levi put it carefully into his pocket. “I don’t think so. Let’s find a gas station. Plant it on somebody else. That should buy us a little time.”
    Harper’s forehead creased. “What if we get them shot?”
    “Mortensen’s too careful for that,” he said. Then he remembered the barn doors. “Well, maybe.”
    Still, t here had to be some way….
    Out of the window, the road was long and straight with nothing but trees alternating with fields on either side. Except, far ahead, his werewolf sight made out something on the shoulder.
    With sudden inspiration, he said, “We’ll stick it on a semi, okay? They won’t try to go after a semi with guns blazing. They’ll at least do a bit of investigating first, right?”
    “All right,” Harper said steadily. “Where are we going to find a semi?”
    Levi grinned. “Dead ahead. Time for some more fast talking, Harper.”

Chapter Two
     
    A s soon as Levi pointed it out, Harper made out the shape of the big rig, parked on the side of the road. The driver