They reached the hotel and slowed to a quick walk. Nox took out his room key. In the distance, people crowded around the three drunks. The lights from the restaurant reflected in the falling mist, creating a halo around the building.
Nox opened the door. “Quick, pack it up. Three minutes. Whatever you can’t get in three minutes, we leave.”
Luca shoved the computer, the phones, his clothes, and anything else he grabbed into the duffle. Nox added his meager belongings. They hurried to the van. Police lights pulsed in the distance.
Luca’s insides dropped. Telling himself he had nothing to be afraid of didn’t quell the nausea rising in his stomach. He opened the passenger side and stuffed the bag behind the seat.
Nox started the van.
Luca shut his door and snapped his seatbelt. Nox left the lights off as he drove to the farthest exit out of the motel parking lot and pulled onto a side road.
Wailing sirens grew louder. Red and blue lights flickered through a thin row of trees. Nox sped up. He took a left onto another road where there was only the night and the occasional porch light from neighborhood houses.
Raindrops replaced the mist. “Do you think they’ll follow us?” Luca turned in his seat.
Nox flipped on the wipers. “If they can figure out which direction we’re traveling.”
Wind pushed at the van.
“What are we going to do?”
“Lie low, wait for them to lose interest.”
“What if they don’t?”
Nox exhaled a frustrated sound. “Let’s not worry about that yet.”
“I feel like this is my fault.” Hell, Luca felt like all of it was his fault. He ran a hand through his hair.
“It’s not. I promise you.”
Luca nodded, knowing even in the dark, Nox would see him.
*****
The colonel had pulled some serious strings for there to be a room waiting for Reese at the hospital and get him examined as soon as he walked through the ER doors. And it was practically an act of god he’d settled down in a new hotel room within the next two hours.
The need for sleep hadn’t dissipated, but the inability for Reese to shut off his brain solidified as soon as he received the results of his examination.
All these years Reese had had no fear of the erratic rhythm his heart beat. A sound he usually fell asleep by. One so common he sometimes forgot it was there. Now it was a warning. Without extreme measures, he would die.
The hospital wanted him to stay and go directly to surgery. And if the surgery were successful, he’d only have six-to-eight weeks of recovery time.
For a few moments, Reese almost convinced himself it wasn’t as bad as they made it out to be. That he hadn’t been living a lottery drawing on his life with every pump of the muscle inside his chest. Then Colonel Harrington told Reese he’d make arrangements to not only have his house taken care of but to have the surgery paid for.
Reese wasn’t naïve enough to believe it was a completely selfless act. They needed him, they needed his experience with the information they’d recovered from the mainframes, and now strategy on how to track the Anubis and stop them.
The fact the colonel was willing to arrange for the surgery to be covered was a testament to how badly that need was and cemented how close to the edge Reese walked with death.
But did Reese deserved to be saved?
After everything he’d done or hadn’t done. After all the people who suffered because he thought it would change the world for the better. Did he have the right to think he deserved to live?
Reese rubbed his eyes swiping away the grit and returned to the data files the tech boys had managed to recover from the computers. They’d uploaded the information to an off-site location available to Phillips, Harrington, and now Reese.
He even had his very own government-issued laptop to view it on. That’s how he knew he’d been promoted from necessary to invaluable.
Reese accessed the folder with years’ worth of reports, some done by him, others by Echols. He had no idea what he looked for or if there was anything to be found. He scrolled past the weekly interviews with Koda.