Sheltered

Chapter 48

Savanna opens her eyes to the bright world, quickly shutting them again to trap out the light.
Realizing she's alone, she slowly sits up in bed.

She starts when a brown paper bag is tossed onto the foot of the bed. A McDonalds bag.

"Morning, sunshine." Luke trills, lighting a cigarette.

She sighs. "Morning. What time is it?"

"Late."

"The sun is literally blinding me. It's not late."
Savanna groans.

"It's oh eight hundred hours."
He pauses, smiling.
"I set my watch to twenty four hour time." He explains like a young boy talking about his new toy car.

"Cool." Sav reaches for the bag. "Thanks."

Lucas nods absentmindedly.
"Ready to go?"

"Where?"

"Shopping."

Savanna gives him a confused expression.
"Shopping."

"Mhm." He pats the holster on his belt.

I want one of those... Savanna thinks to herself. Then she remembers the events of the previous night. No I don't.

Luke seems to recognize her disturbed expression.
"Let's get going, lovely." He calls softly, pulling out a flip phone.

"Can't that be traced or whatever?"
Sav asks as if she has an IQ of 200.

"No, I made sure it's safe."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"We narrowed the signals, Griff. We have a much more precise location on Peterson now."
Drew coughs, his notorious black curls bouncing.

"Nice job, dude." Griffin gives Drew a fist bump from his seat at the desk.

"How's Ian?"

"Doing well, nothing new."

"Cool, cool." He nods, avoiding eye contact.

Griffin catches on. "Drew." He makes intense eye contact, his light blue eyes perfectly resembling Ian's.

"So they're actually shopping." Drew blurts our under pressure.

"Oh." Griff's eyebrows jump up. "Where the hell are they?"

"Still far from Laredo. But uh, they're at the gun mall." He grinds his teeth.

Griff smiles, but somehow not a happy one at all. "Have you ever been to the gun mall?"

"No."

"They have so much shit there. It's the biggest black market weapons trade in Texas." Griffin sighs, trying to release his worry and anger.
"They have everything you can think of, Drew. AKs, machine guns... hell, they even sell suicide pills at practically every corner."

"Okay." Drew nods.

"Damnit, Drew!" He slams a fist on the desk.
"We need them out of there, we don't need them heavily armed when they get to the border."

"No offense, Griff, but have you met Sav?
She can barely hold a rifle."

Griffin stands up, sighing. "We have no idea who she's with. That's almost more dangerous than if we knew she's with a pro sniper."

"She could be."

"Exactly, Drew, exactly! Not helpful! Get the damn tracking team to work, this is B.S."

"What do you want us to do, sir?"

"Get a name on that signal and get back to me by tomorrow. I have a feeling we'll have to send out our snipers."