Page 52 of Talk to Me
Seventeen
LOCKE
Louisiana.
I fucking hated Louisiana. My nose started running the second we deplaned in Shreveport. It was like I was allergic to the air. The route would have taken twelve to fourteen hours to reach via vehicle. McQuade had another plan.
He knew a guy.
Honestly, I didn’t ask for more information. It would probably have added heartburn to my allergies. Remington spared me a look when McQuade drove us to a private airport. The small plane didn’t look sturdy enough to take a hard draft of air, but McQuade just strode away from his SUV and tossed his bags inside.
No one was there to greet or challenge us.
“You certified to fly a plane?” Don’t ask me why I had to utter that aloud. Surely, he was. Or he would have had a pilot meet us. A pilot was another witness, another person who could be turned or conversely, turn us in. Not something I wanted to keep one eye over my shoulder on while we were tracking down Patch.
Fallon.
Her real name was Fallon. It was such a soft, almost lyrical name. Elegant.
McQuade didn’t say a word until he was in the pilot’s seat. “You staying on board if I say no?” He was already flicking switches after putting a set of headphones on.
Remington stowed our bags as I stared at McQuade. The man was just fucking with me. Right?
“He’s a mercenary. He undoubtedly has many undocumented skills.” Remington’s crisp accent didn’t make that option sound like an improvement.
Undocumented could also mean unproven.
“Just don’t crash before we find her,” I’d suggested before pulling the door closed and securing it. This part I was at least familiar with.
“So crashing afterward is fine?” McQuade smirked. “Good to know. Buckle up.” He was already talking to someone on the headset and ignoring us. Did I want to sit up there and see what he was doing or sit back here and pretend?
Remington settled into a seat and pulled the cross straps on. I mirrored the action. Then Remington kicked a pack over to me. I eyed it, then him.
“Parachute,” he said, a faint smile on his face as the plane began to accelerate.
Everyone was a funny guy.
A little over two hours later, we were touching down at another airport outside of Shreveport. My allergies were incensed, but I ignored them as I checked the maps for the coordinates of our destination.
The facility, if any, didn’t show up anywhere except in one old, time-stamped map from about ten years earlier. It had the look of some kind of factory, but there was nothing registering it anywhere.
As of now, it didn’t exist.
“Black site,” McQuade said over his shoulder as I briefed them. “We have as much as we’re going to get. This is going to be an on the fly operation. Locke, you’re going in with me. Remington, you’re on overwatch.”
“I’m also the exit plan,” Remington stated.
“Once we have Patch, we’re going to extract on the run. You are definitely the exit plan, we’ll need you to bar the door once we’re out.” McQuade had barely glanced at the photos I’d been able to find. “Everything we know about the facility says it’s located right at the edge of a swamp. Our exit strategy needs to involve not going through it. Particularly if we don’t know Patch’s condition.”
“No arguments here. I don’t like stagnant water or alligators.” Most of my jobs didn’t involve getting physical with others, or worrying about being shot. I liked the mental exercise and the challenge of overcoming the obstacles in my path without alerting anyone or anything.
This was not going to be the same.
“Your primary job will be getting us past security. If I have to shoot our way out, I’m fine with it.” McQuade sounded more like he was discussing meal plans for after the theater than a raid. “I don’t want to alert them on the way in. If they have orders to kill her rather than letting her escape, I don’t want them to have the heads up.”
Made sense.
“I’ll bring my gear,” I said. “It also means you might have to be patient. If we can snag someone on the way in who has a security card I can slice, that would be better.”