Map to Redemption

Day 2 (Part 2)

Jake's look caused Lyra to glow with happiness. His words and emotions were suffused with warmth, and for a moment, she stopped breathing as they bathed her with love, approval, and admiration. Whatever her expression, it made Jake grin like a Cheshire cat, and a variety of feelings swept through their bond in quick succession. She was about to question it when her phone rang.

"This must be Richy," she told him, seeing the blocked number on her screen. She answered the call and hit the speaker icon so that Jake could hear.

After Richy went through his speech about how he would kill them all using his most threatening voice, Lyra took a deep breath and spoke.

"Ri–"

She stopped speaking, because the consternation she felt from Jake distracted her. Then she looked down at her phone and saw that Richy had hung up, anyway.

"Juno's peacock!" Lyra exclaimed, restraining herself from throwing her phone out of the moving car.

Jake remained silent, pensive. She ascertained his disappointment, and put a hand over his. "Jake, I'm sorry. It was an impulse that I should not have indulged."

"Perhaps not, but I do not think that he heard you."

They were at her motel now. They trudged inside, each lost in their own thoughts. Once inside, Lyra pulled food out of the tiny fridge while Jake plugged Hannah's phone into a charger and set it on the nightstand. They shared a premade deli sandwich Lyra had bought the day before, chewing thoughtfully.

The quiet stretched on as they waited for the phone to charge enough to turn on.

"Lyra."

She shook her head to clear her thoughts, then turned to meet his umber stare.

Jake gently wiped some mayonnaise from the corner of her mouth, smiling gently.

"I said that the phone is charged sufficiently for me to attempt a brute force login," he told her, and Lyra could not help but wonder how he made such a technical sentence sound so cute.

She watches in fascination over his shoulder as Jake connects Hannah's device to his laptop, ready to crack the PIN so he can access it. She doesn't understand any of the code scrolling across his screen, but it feels nice to rest her chin on his shoulder while he works.

Soon enough, the phone is unlocked. Jake can now turn on GPS, which will activate location sharing with Richy's burner phone. She smiles at him. "Oh, it's done already! That was so much faster than when you had to do it remotely."

He responds to Lyra with amusement in his voice. "It is much faster when I am in front of the phone. And now, we can see where Richy is."

Jake opens a map program, a blue marker traveling along a road. "Richy is moving toward the west side of town. There are some condemned buildings in that area. It is a reasonable assumption that he would go there. We should head out."

"Oh! Let's go!" Lyra watches as Jake mirrors Hannah's phone to his own so they can leave hers behind, allowing Richy to believe that they are still in the motel. They rush to Jake's car again.

He presses the gas pedal to the floor, trying his best to reach the area before Richy arrives. But as they race toward the intersection, they see Richy get there just before they do. Jake immediately slows down, stopping the car across the street.

They huddle in the car, trying to duck down as Richy walks toward an old office building. Once he goes inside, they exit the car quietly and approach the front doors.