The Darkness of Evil (Karen Vail #7)(86)

Vail groaned. “I can’t.” She fished it out and sat up quickly. Too quickly.

“Sorry I went off the grid.”

“Jasmine?” Vail glanced at the number. “You using a different phone?”

“I think I saw my father. He was a block away, but if it was him, that’s too close for my taste. I freaked, holed myself away. Tossed my phone again. Sorry.”

“I want to meet with you, tell you what’s been going on. Ask you some questions.” And ask you one more time to accept police protection.

“How about now? Have you had dinner?”

Vail closed her eyes. Shit. “Uh, actually I haven’t.” She glanced at Robby, who was now sitting up as well, shaking his head no. “If you don’t mind me bringing my fiancé along, I’d love to have dinner.”

“I don’t know, Karen. I—”

“I’ve got a concussion. I’m not supposed to drive, especially at night.”

“What happened?”

“Your father happened. A couple of right hooks.” Or backhands. Who remembers?

“You serious?”

“Robby’s a federal agent. You can trust him. Where should we meet you?”

“There’s an Indian restaurant on New Hampshire at M Street. Rasika. It’s a wedge-shaped building and the bar sits in the corner with walls that are all windows. I can keep an eye on both streets, make sure my father’s not coming. And he’s not likely to look for me in DC.”

Does that mean she’s been staying somewhere in DC? Or maybe she is now.

“On our way. Give me some time to get out there.”

Vail hung up and dialed her compatriot in her other life, FBI Supervisory Special Agent Aaron “Uzi” Uziel, head of the Washington Joint Terrorism Task Force—and fellow black ops team member.

“How’s my favorite redhead warrior princess?” Uzi asked.

“At the moment, you don’t want to know. But I need your help and I don’t have a lot of time.”

“You know all you’ve gotta do is ask.”

“I need some kind of tracking device,” Vail said. “Something tiny that I can put on someone, something they won’t know is there. It has to give me the ability to find them if I need to—and without them knowing.”

“I’ve got just the thing.”

“You do?”

“No. I just thought that’s what you wanted to hear.”

“Uzi, I’m not really in the mood.”

“Yes, I have something you can use. You really doubted that I’d come to your rescue? I’m your knight in shining armor.”

“Robby’s sitting two feet away.”

“Right. Tell him I said hi. And that I didn’t really mean the knight thing. Just a figure of speech.”

“I’m headed into the city to meet the target. Can you bring it to 23rd and M?”

“I will cancel my dinner plans and meet you there.”

“Oh—sorry.”

“Just kidding. No plans. I’ll be there in … twenty?”

“That’d be great. I do miss working with you, Uzi.”

“I know.”

ROBBY DROVE AND PARKED in front of a bus stop on the corner. Uzi pulled in behind them and Vail and Robby got out. It was a relatively dark street, with only a couple of streetlamps on the entire block.

Uzi kept his headlights on and, judging by his expression, immediately noticed the condition of Vail’s face.

“What happened?”

“Don’t ask,” Robby said as he gave Uzi a shoulder hug.

“Seriously. You okay?”

“Nothing a little time, Tylenol, and ice won’t cure.”

He gave her a long look, then reached into his leather overcoat and pulled out a small case and popped it open, revealing a tiny device. “GPS tracker. Stores locations internally but also transmits and triangulates a signal using local Wi-Fi networks. It’s not 100 percent accurate but it’ll get you pretty close—assuming there are active Wi-Fi networks nearby.”

Vail took it from him. “Does it need a power source?”

“All electronic devices need a power source. But this is a low power unit and it’s fully charged, so it’ll last about a month.”

“Plenty of time.” Better be.

“One last thing. Give me your phone.”

She handed over the Samsung, and he tapped a few times then handed it back. “Open that Find/Me app I just installed.”

Vail did as instructed. “Okay, now what?”

“It has to initialize and communicate with the tracker. In a few seconds you’ll see a string of coordinates. GPS coordinates. If you ever want to see where that device is, or where it’s been for the past week or so, open the app and let it download the data from the server. If it takes a long time to connect, there’s something interfering with the signal. Could be any number of things. You can try moving to a different location, but it may not be you. It could be where the tracker is.”

She saw the numbers populate and then tapped them and a map loaded, showing their current location. Perfect. “Thanks, Uzi.”

“This is a beta, but it’s performed very well so far. Next version will have cell capability so tower pinging can be used for positioning as well as burst updates to the server. We’ll be able to tell if its signal is being interfered with and determine the interference type.”