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Sarah Killian: The Marching Tides 12
12We check Chuck’srecent call history, but the most recent on the log is Jason’s from our motel room. “Not surprised,” Jason confesses. “Chuck may have been an IT idiot, but I doubt the Marching Tides would be stupid enough to be contacting each other over normal channels.”A quick scan of the apps on the phone and we find a suspicious-looking unnamed app nestled away with just a plain black square for an icon. It requires a username and password to login. Luckily, Chuck being the brain-waffle that he was had his login stats saved in his keychain. Idiot.Sure enough, the app appears to be a Dark Web access point for killers-for-hire. There does appear to be a voice chat feature, which we guess is how Chuck called his contact from the diner, but there isn’t a record of calls made through it, so that doesn’t help us too much.The private messages tab, however, proves much more fruitful. We find a series of correspondences between Chuck and a contact named ‘Gale’.“There was
Sarah Killian: The Marching Tides 13
13Jason and Ibriefly debate whether it’s better to take Chuck’s car for speed or go back to the motel on foot. We opt to split the difference and drive his car back to the diner and then walk back to the motel. That way we can get back relatively fast but still have some more time if the Marching Tides track down his car before they find our motel. Fortunately, Jason knows his way around Vegas far better than I do because I probably would not have been able to find my way back to the diner from the warehouse.Fifteen minutes later, we are back at our motel. As we pass the registration desk on our way to the room, I notice a pimply, twenty-something doofus wearing what looks to be at least $200 sunglasses, even though the sun has long past set by this point, trying to haggle with the desk clerk.“Look man, I know you’ve gotta have some rooms available,” the doofus snaps. “Hotels alwayshave extra rooms on hold in case of emergency.”The clerk responds with a resigned s
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14Don’t give methat judgmental look. Yes, I am fullyaware that sex with my ex will undoubtedly complicate things in an already fucking complicated situation. But—actually, you know what, no. I don’t have to justify my sex life to you or anyone. Fuck that patriarchal bullshit. If I want to hump my ex’s brains out over the corpse of the doofus I just killed—I’m speaking figuratively here ... even I’m not thatmorbid—I will fucking do just that and I don’t give a flying rat’s ass what you or anyone else thinks about it. Take that, Patriarchy. Anyway, once the frenzy of the moment has subsided and we both come to a bit of our senses, we realize we’ve probably taken up too much valuable time. I wouldn’t say it was time wasted, though. We decide we had better skip the pillow talk and get a move on before the Marching Tides track us down.We quickly wash off Doofus’s blood in the motel room shower—our urgency to get out squanders any thought in either of our
Sarah Killian: The Marching Tides 15
15I wake upthe next morning to find Jason’s arm around my waist. Fuck. And there’s that complication thing. Oh, shut up with the gloating. I manage to slide out from under his arm without waking him and slip into the bathroom for a shower. I try to clear my mind and not think about the ramifications of everything but, of course, the brain doesn’t quite work that way. The more I tell myself not to think about it, the more I think about it.First and foremost, I hope Jason knows this doesnotmean we are getting back together. That is the very lastthing I want or need right now. Not just because we are running for our very lives and romantic entanglement is likely only to distract us, possibly fatally, but just in general. Jason and I tried the relationship thing before, and it imploded miserably—regardless of whether you believe his version of events or mine. And let’s be honest, if I couldn’t make that relationship work, I doubt I’d ever be able to make any&n
Sarah Killian: The Marching Tides 16
16Not that Zekehas ever particularly looked goodby my standards, but he is looking particularly miserable now. Aside from several bruises and scrapes on his face, he’s even paler than normal and is particularly bedraggled. If I didn’t know for sure it was him, I’d have thought he was a homeless bum off the streets. “How did you find us?” I ask.“How did you escape H.Q.?” Jason asks, simultaneously.“What in the titty-fucking hell?”we ask, together.“I’ll answer what I can, but not here,” Zeke says, looking over his shoulder with paranoid conspiracy. “There’s a diner around the corner.”I honestly don’t know why diners are considered the American hotspot to have secret conversations in public, but there you have it. It must be something about the mediocre food.Zeke looks as if he’s about to fall over, so we drive to the diner.Once the waitress has taken our orders, I turn to Zeke and say, “All right. Spill. What the fuck are you doing here in Colorado?”Ze
Sarah Killian: The Marching Tides 17
17“Well ... that was unexpected,” Jason says, once we are alone in the car and driving through the night of Grand Junction. “To say the least,” I agree.“What do you make of it?”“I’ve seen the original Mission: Impossibleand just about every spy movie ever made ... So, usually when the former mentor, the only person you think you can trust, suddenly shows up from being presumed dead, that’s rarely a good sign.”“You don’t possibly think he’s tied up with the Marching Tides, do you? Why would Zeke be working to destroy his ownempire?”“No ... I don’t know ... ” I say, thinking of the twitching fingers. Zeke was definitelyhiding something. “I just have a bad feeling ... ”I refrain from revealing that Zeke expressed concern Jasonmight be tied up with the Marching Tides, or might even be the mysterious ‘Rick’, himself. Or, for that matter, that I’m not entirely convinced that Zeke is wrong
Sarah Killian: The Marching Tides 18
18The next morningwe agree that since we’ve decided to cut ourselves off from Zeke we should probably get the hell out of Colorado before he catches on and tracks us down himself. Unfortunately, we realize that if Zeke issomehow tied up with the Marching Tides, we’ve compromised our current mode of transportation by giving him a ride from the dispensary to the diner. But unless we’re going to steal a car or backtrack to L.A. or Vegas, none of which seem like particularly good ways of staying under the radar, we’ll just have to take that risk. Agreeing we should get out of Grand Junction sooner rather than later, we grab a couple of bagels from the motel’s continental breakfast station and hit the road. We figure as we’ve been more or less going northeast thus far we should probably switch it up a tad and instead head south toward Albuquerque, New Mexico.Between stopping for food, gas, and pit stops, the drive takes most of the day so we pass the time discussing our ne
Sarah Killian: The Marching Tides 19
19As promised,we drive into Phoenix around mid-afternoon. Jason navigates us into an impressively affluent neighborhood; the kind that I’m pretty sure would cause most people to start having convulsions if they were to simply lookat the price of a house here. At the end of the street is an estate that makes all the other houses on the block look like slums. Gated entrance, video security cameras, twenty-foot brick wall with ornate barbed metal spikes bordering the entire property. The house itself is hidden behind the wall and a small grove of trees just beyond the gated entrance but you can just make out some turrets poking up beyond the canopy of the trees. It comes as absolutely no surprise to me when Jason confirms that Overkill Mansion is, indeed, our destination.“Like I said,” Jason says with a shrug, “Frank has done well for himself by going straight.”Almost makes me think about going straight, myself. Almost. If I thought there was any chance that there was
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