In Pursuit Of ✔

Worst Road Trip Ever

Lela was right. Agent Rowland kept the car absolutely frigid.

Henley and the Agent were a few hours into their second day of driving. The evening before, they drove only a couple hours south of San Francisco before getting a hotel room for the night.

At the hotel, Henley had the chance to more carefully go through the things Lela retrieved from Henley's apartment. Clothing wise, it was all basic jeans, shorts, t-shirts, underwear, and pajamas. Henley was thankful that Lela had managed to grab her favorite pair of pajamas pants.

The more interesting items, however, were in Lela's school backpack. Lela had shoved a few books into the bag, all that would fit and wouldn't make it too heavy. Henley's phone was long gone, she dropped it when she had been initially taken by her kidnappers, so the books were Henley's only source of entertainment.

Agent Rowland gave Henley a new phone the night before at the hotel. It was a simple touchscreen, and Henley had been instructed to only use it in emergencies. There were only two numbers in it: Agent Rowland's and the C.O.D.E. office in Washington D.C. Agent Rowland also made her commit his number to memory, just in case.

Other than when he gave her the phone, Agent Rowland hadn't said much to her at all since they left the headquarters in San Francisco. Henley had no idea how to strike up a conversation with the silent man, but the lack of any noise besides the sounds of the highway—Agent Rowland didn't even have the radio on—was driving Henley slightly insane.

"Hold on," Henley finally broke the silence when she noticed something odd about where they were driving. "Houston is southeast from here. Why are we going north?"

Agent Rowland glanced over at her. "We're not going directly to Houston."

Henley expected the agent to elaborate a little bit more. He didn't. "And why's that?" she pressed.

"If there's a chance we're being followed, or they get tipped off about where we are, we want to throw them off of where we're actually going."

"Yeah, but it'll take us six months at this rate to get where we want to."

"It should be about three weeks. Some places we'll be spending more than one night."

Three weeks. Three weeks sitting in a frigid car next to a frigid man. "Look, Agent Rowland," Henley said, resigned. "I don't know if you just don't like this assignment, or you don't like me, or something else entirely is up with you. But the least you could do is turn on the damn radio, this is already hard enough for me as it is without having to deal with your attitude." Henley hadn't meant to be rude, but she wasn't sorry for what she said.

After a few moments of silence, Henley made the assumption that she wasn't going to get an answer.

"You shouldn't call me Agent Rowland; it'll draw attention in public."

Henley whipped her head around to stare at the agent's profile. "So what do I call you then? Sir?" she asked sarcastically.

"Nick is fine."

"Hm, I was expecting to have to wait a month to be on a first name basis," Henley muttered, turning her head back toward the window. If she had kept her eyes on Nick, she would have noticed the corner of his mouth twitch slightly upward at her comment. She also didn't notice his hand moved toward the radio controls, so she jumped slightly when a generic pop song filled the silence.

It wasn't long before they got to their next stop, Stockton, and checked into a large, Hilton hotel. The rest of the day passed incredible slowly. After their brief discussion in the car, no further conversation occurred between the two. Lunch and dinner consisted of room service—Henley had a feeling that they would be eating a lot of room service—and after showering and putting on her favorite pajamas, Henley lay on her bed reading The Count of Monte Cristo, a book she had started several times during her time in college but due to its longevity had never actually finished. She had been pretending not to notice the lockbox containing the pistol sitting on the table between her and Nick's beds.