Evasion

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Four Days Ago

Scott finally managed to track down Nottoff, and had gone as far as driving up to Sudbury to meet up with him.

He had located the man’s phone number, finally, after several hours of digging and searching. The number was unlisted and not in any of the crack-able lists he had access to.

It was even blocked in the hospital record system, in a scramble-code encryption that Scott had never seen before, and never would have expected in simple internal hospital emergency contact information that was already behind a tight firewall.

So when he finally deciphered the scramble-code encryption – a task that took almost a full week of tinkering – he was startled to get a “this phone number is not in service” message.

“Damn!” he’d said, slamming the phone down after the third attempt to call the number.

He knew, then, that he would need to head north and meeting Nottoff face to face.

He’d managed to swing getting the Friday off from work, despite being under a tight deadline at Digi-Life, so he could make the trek up north to meet Nottoff.  He’d done so by spending most of the evening the Thursday night working late on the project.  Not that he didn’t already work late most evenings during this challenge – with looming deadlines, it was easy to still be in the Digi-Life offices until eight or nine at night.

But this time, he stayed there until eleven-thirty, taking care of some of the tasks that he normally would have put off until Friday.

It was a four hour drive north to Sudbury from Toronto; a trip that Scott had become proficient at. He planned on making the best use of the extra work he’d had to put in at Digi-Life and buffering that with the best time of day for making such a trip with a guaranteed time for the lightest possible traffic.

He figured if he went to sleep for a few hours, slept from midnight until three in the morning he could drive north up Highway 400 to Sudbury and be there by seven Friday morning when Nottoff would be getting off shift, according to the schedule.

The highway would be virtually dead that time of night, so Scott would be able to make good time heading north.

And he’d arrive in time to intercept Nottoff after his shift.

It would all work out well.

And it had been working out well.

Until he got about forty minutes north of Barrie, on a lonely and quiet stretch of Highway 400.

That’s when his front passenger tire blew.

It happened suddenly.

First, the tire gauge on his dashboard let up, informing him that he had low tire pressure.  He’d seen that before and knew, based on the sensitivity of this alarm, he could drive for several days before having to actually check the tires.

But not this time.

The low tire gauge went on, and then, within seconds, there was a loud thrump-thrump sound coming from under his car, and the vehicle rocked up and down as if it had one of those hydraulic shocks you’d sometimes see on muscle cars.  The car lurched forward and began to slow.

“Holy shit!” Scott muttered, navigating the car over to the side of the road.

He didn’t even need to apply the brakes.  Taking his foot off the gas petal combined with the additional friction of riding right on his right front rim slowed him down quiet enough.

After fiddling with the spare tire from the trunk for about five minutes, Scott knew he wasn’t going to be able to fix the flat himself.

So he called the Automobile Association emergency number, told them of his situation and explained where he was, approximately, on the highway.