The File

The File ~ Chap. 23

Tate

The trip to the bank was a success.  I went in, got a hundred in cash, and left, all with no problems of people realizing who I was and calling the police—or worse, my mom.

I hopped back into the car with Cole, who had a death grip on the steering wheel.  His knuckles were white, and I almost thought the bones were going to pop out.  I placed my hand over his.

“Cole, you can relax,” I soothed, trying to rub his hand and loosen his muscles.  “Everything went fine.  No one had a single clue.  We’re…well, we’re not as important to find as we thought.”

“Tell that to Cognizant and Oblivious,” he muttered.

I smiled.  He looked at me and smiled back.  We sat there for a moment, gazing into each other’s eyes, my hand still over his.  But then I snapped out of it and looked away, embarrassed.  I quickly folded my hands in my lap.

Cole cleared his throat a few times before speaking.  “Time to get moving, I guess.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

We weren’t even in Bloomington yet.  We had only stopped for gas, and since the gas had basically wiped out our money supply when we had entered a town, we had decided it was the best time to get some extra cash.

Cole made his way back to the highway, and I put the map on my lap.  It was annoying to twist the huge thing to hold it right, but once that was good, I instructed Cole on where to head, never looking at him again.  By eight thirty, we still hadn’t arrived at Bloomington, but were very close.  I told Cole to pull onto the exit that would send us through a town that would finally get us to our destination.

Not our final destination, of course.  We were still a while away from that.  But we were getting there.  Wherever “there” was.  I still needed to figure out the city the port was in.

Just as I remembered that, I noticed a sign on one of the stores we were passing.  It was an Internet café.

“Cole, stop!” I exclaimed.

He quickly put on the brakes.  “What?  What’s wrong?”

“There’s an Internet café,” I explained.  “If we go in there, we could figure out where the navy port is.”

He slowly pressed the gas again, apologetically waving to the car behind us.  “Not a bad idea.  Good catch.”

I looked away as I blushed.  When Cole parked in the café’s parking lot, I got out and led the way inside.  I quickly found an empty computer and went online.  I searched navy ports in the U.S.A., and found a link to a website called Navy.com.  Very convenient.  The page I was sent to had a map with a few locations pinpointed, and I found exactly what I was looking for.

Cole was leaning over my shoulder and saw it too.  “Norfolk!” he excitedly whispered.

I nodded, pretty excited myself, and clicked on it.  It gave us a picture of the area, and a short description.  We skimmed through it.  Both Cole and I gaped as we read the last sentence.

“‘New York City is less than a day’s drive,’” he read aloud.

“You have got to be joking,” I breathed.

We had been on our way to New York City for our field trip, but then the guys had caused me—and then Cole—to jump out of the train.  If we had only been able to finish our trip, we could’ve had an easier time getting to the navy port.  And all of what we had just gone through would’ve been avoided.