Read Online Following Fabian by Holley Trent - Free Book Online

wouldn’t be heading toward the airport because he still had a job left to do. He still needed Jacques .
    “Shit.”
    She pulled a wide U-Turn and headed back toward the motel. She passed it, and two miles up the road, found Fabian queuing up outside a visitor’s center, waiting to board a bus toward the Badlands.
    “Slick,” she muttered, and edged the car around a massive pothole in the lot.
    She idled the car in the loading zone and pressed the horn.
    The entire group of tourists turned to look, but most got bored fairly quickly and resumed their former conversations. Only Fabian continued staring, and Astrid couldn’t be sure at that distance, but she thought she saw him rolling his eyes.
    She honked again, snapped the fingers of her right hand, and pointed to the passenger seat.
    Fabian shook his head, but strode toward the vehicle all the same. When he paused at the driver’s door, she motored down the window.
    “Get in.”
    “No. Go home.”
    “You know what? You—” She grunted and gave the steering wheel a little pound. Where was a stress ball when she needed one? She had about twelve of the damned things at any given time, and Dana made sure she always carried one on her person. She’d brought one with her on the trip, but something about the gel composition led to its confiscation by TSA at the Raleigh-Durham airport. She’d need to find another one, and soon, or that steering wheel would be reduced to a small pile of metal, vinyl, and foam.
    Deep breaths. Deeeeep breaths. Don’t be that woman. You’re not that woman anymore. You’re bigger than your anger. Be like the ninja monk. Deadly, but calm.
    Deadly, but calm.
    She drew in one frosty inhale through her nose, and forced it out through her lips, never taking her eyes off the defiant absconder.
    “Please. Get. In. The. Car,” she said.
    He shook his head. “I go on bus.”
    “Why?”
    “I will…” His mouth opened and closed around the words that didn’t come out. Finally, he shrugged. “I can.”
    “You can’t . Not unless you plan on putting a bullet through the guy’s head from a distance, which isn’t what we want. We want to take him alive so we can find out the extent of all the dirt he has done over the past forty years. Besides, even if I thought the bullet-through-his-head idea was a good one, between the two of us, I’m way more qualified to take that shot. Nine times out of ten, I hit my target, and that one time left over, I get close enough to make them hurt really bad.”
    Fabian’s eyebrows made a slow creep upward.
    “You don’t understand a damned thing I just said.”
    “You say I can’t , and…” He raised his shoulders and let them fall.
    She sighed. Eventually she’d have to get around to reading that damned dictionary cover-to-cover. She wouldn’t have a handle on the grammar, but she’d know the words. For now, a touch would have to do. She held out her hand, and he pulled his own from his pocket and grasped her fingers.
    “You can’t do this by yourself. I understand the compulsion. Really, I do. Dana gets on us all the time for us trying to do shit without backup. I thought you wanted him caught, though. Turned in.”
    “Maybe now I feel like him sitting in a jail cell waiting for a trial or extradition is a fate too good for him.”
    “You think he needs killin’?”
    Fabian didn’t have to answer. His twitching cheek told her everything she needed to know.
    She lowered her voice to a near whisper as a Rapid City police officer strolled nearer the vehicle. “Why don’t you get in the car and we’ll talk about it?”
    “I don’t want to wait hours or days to get after him. I think it’s critical now that I’ve disappeared that we move. They’ve probably already started shifting their camp.”
    “Let’s talk about it. Come on. We’ll go get a good dinner and call that federal agent so we can get Dana off my back. Then we’ll make a good plan. Please.”
    Was she begging? She