Chapter 5 - Continued

She tucked her long brown hair under the cap and pulled the brim down over her eyes. Deakin ruffled up his shoulder-length hair and opened the window to let it blow in the breeze. Then he looked behind him, trying to figure out which cars were following them. Eden turned onto the access road and followed a long line of cars onto the huge concrete road with five lanes of cars all trying to get somewhere as fast as possible.
“Quick, tell me the highway number I need.”
“The one that says ‘Denton.’ 35N, that’s the one we want.”
Eden concentrated on driving with the flow of traffic. She changed lanes a few times just to make it harder to follow her. Then she slid her little convertible in between two large delivery trucks and climbed the large swooping curve that connected one highway to another. She changed to the middle lane of the new highway and drifted in and out of it as she passed a few cars or let some pass her. Deakin stayed quiet and watched the traffic behind them. Eden exited at the next large intersection and pulled into a large gas station. She drove to the pumps on the far side of the small shop in the center. Deakin jumped out of the car to fill the tank. One yellowish-tan four-door Chevy pulled in after them and stopped out of sight behind the building. No one got out of the car and it didn’t drive away. Deakin stopped pumping and climbed back into the car. Eden drove to the front of the building and let Deakin run in to pay for the gas. Then she turned right onto a large street bordered by strip shopping centers, fast food restaurants, and every other kind of commercial establishment imaginable. For block after block, Eden moved from lane to lane and finally ended in the left turn lane. She whisked through on a yellow light, leaving the tan Chevy fuming behind a long delivery truck and a longer red light. She drove through a large parking lot and returned the way they’d come. They were back on the highway before the other car got a chance to turn left and follow. Deakin relaxed but Eden kept her eye on her mirror and hid her car behind large SUV’s and delivery trucks.
“Keep looking, Deakin. That guy must have had a radio or a cell phone in his car so there could be someone else behind us right now.”
Deakin jerked around in his seat and stared out the back window but he didn’t spot any other trackers. Eden pulled off the highway again and drove into the parking lot of a large auto supply store.
“Stay in the car and I’ll be right back.”
She dropped a heavy bag into Deakin’s lap when she returned and drove to a large restaurant with a full parking lot. She drove slowly through the cars and finally found the right car parked between two large vans. She held out her hand for the bag and rummaged inside it until she found a couple of screwdrivers. Then she slid out of the car and walked to the back of the car. Deakin watched her kneel down on the pavement and take the license plate from the back of the car. She handed it to him and motioned to the back of her car. He switched the plates while she played license plate tag with two other cars in the parking lot. Deakin had changed the front plates while she worked on the other cars.
As they drove away, Deakin looked his question at her. “They surely have the plate number from this car so they’ll probably check motels for the car. Instead of California plates, my car now has Minnesota plates. If we ever get stopped, we don’t know how it happened. Someone must have changed them while we were stopped at a motel or at a restaurant. Total innocence on our part. Toss that bag in the back seat. It stays in the car.”
Deakin looked through the bag and pulled out a can of flat tire fixer, a plastic bottle of motor oil, two flashlights, and an empty water bottle.
“Leave that water bottle out so we’ll remember to fill it up. Now look up the best way to get back to our motel. I want to get out of sight as soon as possible.”
Almost an hour later she pulled into the parking lot of the motel and drove around the entire motel without seeing a tan security car watching from the shadows. She slipped her car between two others and hurried into the building. Eden slowly opened the door to their room and peered inside. No one had been inside the room since the housekeeper had cleaned it. Their bags were still on the closet shelf and the bedspread was smooth and wrinkle-free. Deakin stood at the open door until Eden had looked under the bed and in the small bathroom. Then he entered the room and set the computer on the desk next to the television. Eden fell on her back onto the bed and groaned out loud. She looked up to see Deakin fiddling with his new toy. He dropped down next to her and shoved the door alarm into her face. She pushed his arm away and covered her eyes with her arm.
“Stop that, Eden. You have to know how to turn this thing on and off. What if I’m not here? Now, look, you just have to push these two buttons to set it. To turn it off when you wake up, you push the same two buttons two times. It even has a timer on it but we don’t need that. We’ll just stick it on the door as soon as we get here and turn it off when we want to leave. Remember, push them once to set it and twice to turn it off.”
Eden nodded her head and groaned again. Then she turned over and hid her face in the bedspread. Deakin jumped up and broke out the laptop. He needed his Internet fix and this was his chance. Eden listened to the tiny clicking sounds of his fingers on the keyboard and drifted into a dream-filled sleep. She was lying on a sandy beach all by herself. Clouds scudded across the sky, hiding the sun and the sky. Clicking sounds had awakened her and she turned her head away from the ocean. She scanned the bushes and trees that lined the beach but saw nothing. Then she looked at the waves rolling across the sand closer and closer to her body. As she stared at the waves, she saw hundreds of crabs crawling along the sand under the safety of the waves. The whole mob moved closer and closer to her just as the waves reached for her hand. As she lay there mesmerized by the steady progress of the crabs, she slowly understood the clicking sound came from their claws. They clicked and clacked their way closer to her outthrust hand until the leader grabbed her finger and clamped down hard. Then more and more crabs clamped onto her hand and her arm and then her feet and legs. She was powerless to move in the face of their onslaught and stared at them with horrified eyes. Just as a scream worked its way up her throat and into her mouth, she found herself rudely shaken.
Deakin stood over her with his hands on her shoulders. “Wake up, Eden. You’re dreaming.”
She opened her eyes and stared into Deakin’s calm eyes. “It’ll go away as soon as you wake up. I know. I have dreams all the time and they go away until the next time.”
Eden sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Crabs were biting me and I just let them do it. I didn’t try to get away and push them off me or anything. God, that was awful. I never want to have that dream again. What do you usually dream about?”
She shook like a dog and looked at Deakin as he stared out the window at the parking lot below. “Lots of different dreams. I try not to remember them. There sure are a lot of cars driving around down there.”
Eden glanced at the door, noticed the blinking light of the door alarm, and stepped next to Deakin at the window. As a large tan car pulled into a parking place, she shoved Deakin away from the window and pulled the curtains together. Then she peered out the edge of the curtains and noticed an older man and woman slowly getting out of the car.
“Sorry, Deakin, false alarm. Too bad we can’t see our car from here. I should have parked it farther away from the building so we could keep an eye on it. All I can see are people who look like they’re staying here. Are you having any luck with the computer?”
Deakin looked back at the small screen and said, “I’m waiting and waiting and waiting. This connection is so slow it’s about to drive me nuts. We need to find a better connection. I’ll think of something. Can I have something to eat? I’m starving.”
Eden laughed at the look on his face and said, “Sure, have whatever you want. I have to figure some things out too. Did you bring the map up here? Thanks.”
Eden spread the map out on the bed and traced roads back and forth across it. Finally, she looked up from her scrutiny of the map, and watched Deakin dither around the room.
“What happens if we can’t talk to your ex-father? What happens if we don’t get any good info from your sources on the Internet? Do we have a time frame here? Because I’m going to have to do something about the finances pretty soon.”
Deakin shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe we should have brought my ex-mother with us. Then she couldn’t have called for help after we left.”
Eden shook her head. “I thought of that but decided against it. That’s kidnapping and we’d end up in prison if we were caught. Let’s keep this as legal as we can.”
“Yeah, like what they did to me was legal. Let’s keep that in mind too. That was so illegal they never called the police when I ran away. I could have been kidnapped by some pervert and they wouldn’t have done anything about it. That’s how legal they’re playing.”
“Okay, okay, calm down. Tell me what we’re waiting for from your friends out there in cyberspace somewhere.”
Deakin punched some buttons on the keyboard and stared at the screen. Then, he abruptly turned to face Eden. “Actually, I have some friends who can get into Federal databases. They’re searching for whatever they can find about my real parents. They promised to get me something by today. The last I heard they were digging really deep into some files that were so hot their keyboards were turning red. My parents must have been really important or really terrible to have been buried so deeply.”
“Which are you hoping for?”
“Huh? Oh, really important, of course. Then they might still be alive. I don’t guess I’ve ever given up hope I’ll find them. It certainly got me through the last couple of years.”
He dropped into the chair in front of the laptop and read the words scrolling down the screen. “Eden, come here. Damn, go downstairs and see if they have a printer we can hook up to. I’ll at least save this to disk.”
Eden clicked off the alarm and scooted out the door with the disk in her hand. She returned fifteen minutes later, shaking her head. “No printer to borrow. However, they did have rental computers. Here’s your printout. What does it mean? I read it as it printed out.”
“It means that my friend found out what my father was doing when he disappeared. Evidently he was some big computer programmer for the government. He was listed in the payroll records but there is no mention of which department he worked for.”
“Your mother’s name is on one of those other pages. Did she work for the government too? Maybe on the same job as your father? That could be how they met each other. Has your friend checked immigration files? I mean, your mother’s name is certainly ethnic, for want of a better word.”
“I’ll ask him.”
Eden glanced back at the map and asked, “What small town does your father’s family live in? Should we go there next?”
“I was hoping to have more information before we tried to find them. It would be better to do something rather than just sitting around this room. Rockwall is the name of the town. I have the name and address written down.”
“Pack up the computer and let’s head out of here. I’d rather be moving than sitting still too.”