Chapter 16
Melanie awoke with lights and signs of Highway 52 north out of Rochester flying by at 72 miles per hour and asked, “So, how does one disappear without a trace?”
The question surprised Jeremy, he thought for a second and responded, “well, the hardest people I have tried to find start with disinformation. As the chaser you end up following multiple leads designed to throw you off course. By keeping the chaser busy checking leads, you disappear while they are making sure they don’t miss anything. The bigger the file you can create for them, the less time they have to detail in on where you really went. Keeping your hunter busy by searching for you in the wrong place, and make the file on you as large as possible, is the key.”
“Prior to leaving the Rochester area we went south past the airport. This was intentional, without masks, to make sure they saw us going south. Since we were heading toward the airport, they will need to verify flight manifests. The license plates I took from the car in the parking lot were used to cover the plates on the new car John provided. If they see us traveling south on the traffic cameras, as they should, they will find the plate numbers. They will get the address from the DMV and hassle the owner until they realize the plates were stolen.”
“I have enlisted the help of a fellow PI that I trust. He will continue the movement south by working to rent an apartment in my name outside of Saint Louis Missouri. They will need to run a credit check and that should also create a bigger file for anyone that may be following us.”
“We then turned around, heading north to the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area, with masks on. The stolen license plates were removed, and we are going to check into the hotel later under the same name. The big issue we have right now is getting into our room without being seen. Our masks are the best I have ever seen, they fit tight and I should be able to get us into our room without any trouble.”
“All this”, said Melanie, “and we don’t even know if they are following.”
Jeremy was so into the moment that her disbelief really made him mad. “Look”, he said, “we are potentially running from the greatest tracking team ever assembled. If everything John says in the information he gave us is true, we must assume the entire resource base of the United States government is involved and will be looking for us.”
“Wow, that makes me feel better,” Melanie said as she sank down in her seat.
Eagleton’s Land Rover screamed into the parking lot underneath Hamlet Security. His night lead came running up.
“There was a camera up on a computer in the back”, said the lead. “it was from Rochester.”
“So you said on the phone, and there was a second team?”
“Yes sir,” said the night lead, “it appears they drugged the house and were waiting to go in. Our op was taken out. There is tape showing another team prepping to invade the town house, but then the camera angle changed to show tree bark, sir. I believe our op may be dead sir. They shut his feed down and we have no word since.”
“Who else would be chasing those 2? Who would even know those 2 exist? It has to be somebody we know. This has to be internal. It looks like we have a new front to worry about. Who else knows about this?” asked Eagleton.
“Only me sir, I called you as soon as I found it.”
Eagleton smiled. The night lead had an accident on the way home. No one else ever saw the Rochester tape.
Jeremy and Melanie, Mr. and Mrs. Thornton from Prior Lake Minnesota, were getting close to the motel. She had fallen asleep; he was relieved that she had. She could worry so much even he started to think bad thoughts. His mind was racing about everything. Focus! He told himself, you need to get into the room without being seen.
As they got close to the Twin Cities Jeremy had decided to not stay downtown Minneapolis, too many cameras. He drove through Saint Paul and headed east on Interstate 94. As he got close to the river he found a nice motel outside of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Easy in, no one needs to see her, easy out when they are ready.
Melanie awoke as they pulled into the Clear Water Motel and asked where they were. The motel looked like an old Holiday Inn, with a main building and then multiple units around the back. Jeremy explained the new plan to Melanie. Surprisingly, she was ok with it and did not question him. He removed his mask, put his hat on and pulled up the collar on his coat in an attempt to cover up in case of cameras. He could not, of course, pass the ID test with a mask on. Once inside he got a room around back and rented it for a week. He did not know how long they would be here but he was pretty sure it would not be longer than that. He paid with the card John had left for him.
Eagleton waited for information from his local MMG team. The NSA had provided video from the highway cameras showing them going south. They checked the airport but Eagleton was sure the PI would not be that stupid. He, it turns out was not only an investigative attorney, but a PI, and, apparently he interned for John Bettle a few years after the girl did.
His phone rang, “Eagleton”
“The plates belong to someone else. We went to the guy’s home and the plates had been stolen at the hospital parking lot.”
“Damn,” said Eagleton, “now we are not sure where they are headed and if they are under an assumed name. They could have taken the plates off and gone any direction.” Eagleton called his NSA contact and let him know to continue to have the system search traffic cameras in all directions.
Aiah was waiting for an answer. He could not believe it. He was all set, just one loose end, well two, and he would be good to go. If he could have gotten copies of the documents he was sure he could find a way to remove their control. All that planning, the window was open now, he needed to find them or he would need to move forward and take his chances. He hated taking chances. Knowing what would happen in advance had become normal.
About an hour after Melanie and Jeremy got to their room the pizza they ordered showed up. It seemed like years since the Jake’s Pizza incident earlier in the evening. It is amazing how you notice so much more when you are running on adrenaline. Each hour can seem like a whole day; the heightened state of awareness packing more information into your brain than normal.
Melanie came out of the bathroom after her soak in the tub and went to get a slice of pizza. She was relaxed, clean, calm, and hungry. For the first time since getting the call about Jonathan dying she was able to relax, all because Jeremy was here and in charge. Jonathan trusted him, he had proven to be capable and knowledgeable, and so she would trust him too.
Jeremy was surprised when Melanie came out of the bathroom. She had changed somehow. Wet hair, cozy clothes, sweats, and bare feet. It was weird, she had become a sensual being all of the sudden. The shyness, the anticipation, it felt like she was his. Focus, Jeremy, he said to himself, focus. Still he could not help himself, Jeremy and Melanie had been together now for almost a week and he realized that they really didn’t know much about each other. He started asking questions, then answering some; they talked well into the night. As they settled down to sleep, in their separate beds, Melanie asked him “are we going to die?”
“We will go on as long as we can”, he said, “as long as we can,” as he drifted off the sleep.
Eagleton had his group working on an expanding bubble as the time went on. They were looking for people showing up at hotels and motels at specific times depending on travel from Rochester. Every traffic camera was checked. Hotel and motels on the Homeland Security system were checked. The computer could take pictures and match the camera images off just a partial face. The full power of the government was being enlisted, favors were being used up. The MMG had many members that were some of the nation’s best operatives in the NSA, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, and even some other secret organizations without publicly known initials. They had made following or finding terrorists an art. They expanded the bubble, looking for anything out of the ordinary, even seeing the oddity in the ordinary. The traffic camera hits were climbing but the computer could prove most
of them unworthy of human review.
A group of interns from all over the country were being enlisted to coordinate calls out to Hotels and Motels not on the grid. They would pretend to be FBI agents looking for a couple that may have stopped in the night. The battery of questions would include description of the people and the car. They only had a few hours before the bubble got too big or the opportunity for a second move would ruin the trail. Eagleton figured they had another 12 hours, or so, unless the PI was stupid.