A Maze of Glass, Chapter Twenty One, Pt. 3
They turned right. They rode Summit to Crescent to Witchcraft Road. Zoe turned them onto Puritan and when the SUV approached the arc of pavement leading up to Witchcraft Heights Elementary, Zoe hit the brakes. “Go!”
Side doors slid open, the passenger door popped. Jill and Karen, Niveah and Eliot and Dimitri, they raced uphill toward Omar’s rented SUV in the school parking lot. Nobody said goodbye because nobody had the time. Zoe watched them ascend for a few seconds and allowed herself a deep, filling breath. They’d gotten through the second detour without incident. Hitting the button that automatically closed the open doors, Zoe eased the rental back into drive.
The magic she’d felt building in her sixth sense flared. The spell activated, whatever and wherever it was, and latched onto either her or her vehicle. Driving the speed limit, she left the drop-off point behind and continued northward out of town.
She had one last stop to make before switching cars again and heading out to the meet-up. Hopefully it wouldn’t take long.
Throwing off her hat and shaking her hair loose, she headed for the highway. As she approached the massive intersection of various off- and on-ramps and turn-offs, her enemies appeared in the rearview. A black sedan and a white van, both with tinted windows, accelerated toward her. The sedan hung back, keeping a car between itself and her SUV, while the van pulled up close in the lane to her left. Its front bumper hovered near-adjacent to her rear bumper. She wondered who waited behind the darkened glass.
When the light turned green, she didn’t get on the highway. She drove forward, out toward rural Massachusetts, while her tails shed all attempts at camouflage and glued themselves to her rear. She almost stomped the brakes just to spite them. Instead, she waited until the traffic died out and a suburban side-road opened up on her left. Turning into the development, she pulled over and turned on her hazard lights.
The sedan parked behind her while the van parked ahead of her and on the other side of the street.
Two men in suits climbed out of the sedan. They looked like government agents by design—while privately employed, things worked best if witnesses perceived them as having the extreme authority and unapproachability of federal agents. The two men, both white with short hair, approached Zoe’s SUV. In the sideview and rearview mirrors, she noticed holsters and mystical tac-packs barely-hidden by their jackets.
With her left hand, Zoe rolled down the window. With her right, she gripped her sidearm.
Zoe didn’t recognize the man in the suit, but he recognized her.
“She’s one of ours,” he called back to whoever else waited nearby, listening.
“Agent,” she said.
“Agent,” he replied, at her window. He angled himself to peer over her shoulder into the rest of the vehicle. “This vehicle was seen carrying subjects of a sensitive operation.”
“Am I the subject of a sensitive operation?” Zoe asked, flat-faced.
“No, no, of course not…” he trailed off, frowning at the emptiness behind Zoe.
“I’m extracting,” Zoe said. “Up to Oceanrest for an emergency de-brief and then…you know how it goes.”
“Get out of the car.”
Zoe’s eyebrows arched. “Really?”
“We have to run a check.”
Zoe sighed theatrically. Unbuckled her seatbelt. Chuckling and shaking her head, she levered off the safety on her sidearm. “Alright, if that’s how we’re doing this…” she pushed the door open and stepped out of the car.
Suit #1 gestured at Suit #2 and whoever else waited in the sedan. Suit #2 approached the SUV with his eyes closed, doing his best to focus all of his attention on the feedback provided by his sixth sense. Maybe he was searching for some kind of major invisibility ritual or a ward against notice, some kind of trick she could’ve used to hide her passengers from sight. He put his hands on the frame and whispered incantations for insight.
Suit #1 kept his hands on his waist, his right hand near his poorly-hidden holster. Zoe did the same.
“Someone wiped a whole team of the Belgian’s operatives,” Suit #1 said, watching her. “Honestly, some of us think it was pretty impressive. Assuming the woman who did it can get away with it.”
“How do they know it was a woman?”
“Some shitty CCTV footage.”
“What if it was a guy in a wig?”
“Even more impressive, then.” Suit #1 didn’t seem impressed. He didn’t seem amused, either.
“Well, she won’t get away with it, in any case.”
“You don’t think?”
“Against the Belgian’s apparatus?” She snorted faux-amusement. “Against ours?”
Suit #1 nodded.
Suit #2 stepped away from the hood and folded his legs, sitting lotus in front of the car. Eyes closed, he continued whispering incantations. Sweat glistened across his face. Focus knit his forehead. A soft, sixth-sense hum vibrated through the ground. A few minutes later, shirt soaked with sweat, Suit #2 stood and shook his head. “She’s clean.”
Suit #1 nodded, dropping his hands from his waist. “Sorry to bother you, Agent.”
“Emergency SOP is still SOP.”
She got back in the SUV and waited for both other vehicles to leave. Waiting for her heart to calm down, Zoe leaned back in her seat and lit a cigarette. Blowing smoke at the ceiling, she almost laughed.
Last stop accomplished.
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