American comic book: I, with my abundant martial virtue, love to do good to others.

Chapter 744 Three New Reports

Lynn leaned back in his seat, watching the road signs rushing past the window. New Jersey road signs are green, with white lettering reflecting the sunlight. They were heading south, in the same direction as the SUV, only almost five hours later.

Five hours.

On the highway, a five-hour gap means the other person is already nearly 500 kilometers ahead. 500 kilometers—the distance from New York to North Carolina, and from North Carolina to South Carolina. If they hadn't stopped, if they had changed cars in Philadelphia and continued south, they might already be past Richmond, or even near the border between Virginia and North Carolina.

"Miles," Lynn said.

"Um."

"You just said their diesel Grand Cherokee has a range of 700 kilometers. From Long Island to Philadelphia is about 180 kilometers. Even if they drove directly from Long Island to Philadelphia, they would still have more than half a tank of gas left. They're not changing cars because they're out of gas, but because they want to change their identity."

Miles nodded.

"Then the next car should also be an inconspicuous car, suitable for long-distance driving. Not a sports car, not a luxury car, but a car that can be blended into the traffic on the highway and not be noticed."

"A black Honda Odyssey," Carter suddenly said.

Both of them looked at him.

Carter stared ahead expressionlessly.

"I once followed up on a case where the other party changed cars and got a black Honda Odyssey. They're everywhere, and the police just ignore them."

Miles was already typing on the keyboard.

"I'll mark this information. If similar vehicle models, the same direction, and the appropriate time window appear in the subsequent monitoring data, the system will mark it."

Lynn's phone vibrated.

He looked down.

It was an email from Hall. The attachment was a compressed file, the filename a combination of dates and letters. He opened it; inside was a schedule arranged by date, from six months ago to today, each entry accurate to the minute. Meetings, phone calls, business trips, private dinners, golf tee times, doctor's appointments—Harrison Wayne's life was broken down into hundreds of rows of data, densely packed in a spreadsheet.

Lynn scanned from top to bottom.

In the last three months, Wayne's schedule has noticeably decreased. Previously, he was out and about four or five days a week, but in the last three months, he's only had an average of two to three public appearances per week. This isn't retirement time—a 62-year-old isn't quite ready to retire completely, and with Wayne Group having just signed two new major contracts in the past six months, he should be busier.

He continued scrolling down.

Two months ago, a record was highlighted in yellow by Hall's people.

"October 2nd, 3 PM, Wayne Building, closed-door meeting. Attendees: Federal representatives (specific names not recorded). Agenda: Not recorded. Duration: 90 minutes."

Federal Representative.

No names, no departments, no agenda.

Lynn made a mental note of it. He closed the email, locked the screen, and looked up. Sunlight streamed through the car window onto his face, making the upturned corner of the dressing look like a small piece of amber glass.

Carter glanced at him in the rearview mirror.

"Is there something?"

"I don't know yet," Lynn said.

The highway forked ahead, one continuing south to Philadelphia, the other turning southwest to Trenton. Carter didn't slow down, heading straight for Philadelphia. In the left lane, an 18-wheeler truck had been driving alongside them for several seconds; the vibrations of its diesel engine transmitted through the road into the cargo bed, even the seats were trembling slightly. The truck driver glanced down at them, expressionless, then stepped on the gas, the front of the truck lurched forward, and it overtook them.

Miles' computer beeped again.

"I've got access to Philadelphia's traffic monitoring system," he said, a hint of smugness in his voice. "Although the official request for assistance hasn't arrived yet, I can use a data request to retrieve video footage from all the exits near I-95 between 4 and 5 a.m. this morning. It will take a little time, but it's much faster than waiting for their official response."

"How long?" Lynn asked.

"About fifteen minutes. Philadelphia's system is slow to respond, but it handles a large volume of data."

"Do."

Miles lowered his head, all ten fingers working simultaneously, the keyboard clattering like rain for over ten seconds before suddenly stopping. He stared at the screen, two lines of constantly updating code reflected in his glasses.

The scenery outside the car was starting to look less like the suburbs. The building density was increasing, there were more "GG" signs, and the name Philadelphia was appearing on the road signs. Carter slowed down a little, from 110 to over 90, not because he wanted to go slower, but because there were more cars on the road.

"There's a rest stop up ahead," Carter said. "Want to stop?"

"Keep going," Lynn said. "Miles, keep digging for data. Carter, after Philadelphia, we have two options. One is to continue south along I-95 through Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond, and the other is to turn west onto I-76 towards Harrisburg. The former is the shortest route, but it has the most surveillance and the fastest police response. The latter is farther, but the population density along the way is lower, so the probability of being noticed is also lower."

Which option do you think they will choose?

Lynn looked ahead.

"If it were me, I would choose I-95. Not because it's closer, but because the road is wide enough and there are enough cars. A regular SUV or Honda Odyssey would be easier to disappear into the morning rush hour traffic than on any side street. Their advantage isn't speed, it's concealment."

Cardi nodded without saying anything.

The car continued south.

Philadelphia’s silhouette rose on the horizon. Not the spectacular silhouette of skyscrapers piercing the skyline, but a gentler, more old-fashioned urban line, with the occasional spires of tall buildings peeking out from the low skyline, gilded with a pale golden halo by the late October sun.

The trees along the roadside grew more numerous, then fewer. Vast open spaces, warehouses, auto repair shops, fast food restaurant signs—then, in a fleeting moment, all traces of the city receded, leaving only the road itself, like a gray ribbon stretching straight south.

Lynn glanced down at the time on her phone.

Nine forty-seven.

They had been away from Federal Plaza for almost an hour, and their target was at least four hours ahead of them. Four hours on the highway meant nearly 400 kilometers, which meant the other party had already passed Baltimore and was probably in the northern suburbs of Washington.

Perhaps more than that.

If they kept driving without stopping after changing cars, they might have already arrived somewhere in Virginia.

Lynn put his phone back in his pocket and closed his eyes for a moment. Not because he wanted to sleep, but because he wanted to rearrange all the information in his mind. Long Island. Four in the morning. The door lock melted from the inside. High-temperature vitrification marks. At least three mutants. Heart medication. Mexico. The project from three years ago was halted. Unidentified individuals from three years ago. Monitoring reports from three years ago.

Three years.

Every line is converging towards the same point in time, but he still doesn't know who is standing at that point.

"Lynn," Miles' voice came from the passenger seat.

Lynn opened his eyes.

"The Philadelphia surveillance data is in." Miles' tone changed, becoming more tense and focused. "I found something. At 4:43 a.m., a dark SUV exited the highway at Exit 27 of I-95. Two minutes later, at another intersection nearby, a silver-gray Toyota Sienna entered the highway from the same direction."

Lynn sat up straight.

"Where's the license plate?"

"The car in front has a license plate, which is the one we've been chasing. The car behind doesn't have a front license plate. The rear camera captured the rear, but the license plate was covered in mud, so the number wasn't visible."

Carter looked up from the steering wheel and glanced at Lynn in the rearview mirror.

"I changed cars."

“Yes,” Miles said, “and the window of opportunity was only two minutes. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision; they parked the car there beforehand.”

Lynn leaned forward, his fingers resting on the headrest of Miles' chair.

"Toyota Sienna, what color?"

"Silver-gray or light gold, the light isn't very good in the early morning, so the color might be slightly off."

"Can we track it down?"

Miles was already working on it. His fingers flew across the keyboard, and several windows popped up on the screen, each loading a different data source.

"I'll try heading south along I-95. If they don't change cars again, the cameras on the toll road will eventually catch them somewhere."

"How long will it take to get the results?"

"If you're lucky, ten minutes. If you're unlucky—" Miles didn't finish his sentence.

The carriage fell silent, with only the sounds of the engine and Miles' keyboard blending together, like two instruments of different pitches playing their own parts in the same room.

Carter increased the speed a little more, and the speedometer needle passed the speed limit line, but he didn't care.

Lynn looked out the window.

The sunlight grew brighter. The sky south of Philadelphia was cleaner than in New York, with fewer clouds, and the sky was a pale blue, like an old cotton cloth that had been washed too many times. To the right of the highway was a patch of low bushes, with occasional glimpses of rusted railway tracks, and withered yellow grass growing in the gaps between the sleepers.

He suddenly remembered Gwen.

It wasn't because she had anything to do with the case—it didn't seem to—but because of the taste of the coffee in her apartment kitchen. It was bitter. No sugar. Brewed in a moka pot. The taste lingered on his tongue for a long time, so long that even in the speeding car, with the wind blowing in from the window and his lips dry, the taste hadn't completely dissipated.

He suppressed the thought.

Now is not the time to think about this.

Miles' computer rang again.

This time the sound was different; it wasn't a notification tone, but a more urgent, vibrating buzzing. Miles' face was illuminated by the screen light like an overexposed photograph, and his eyes behind his glasses widened slightly.

"Found it," he said.

"Where?" Lynn and Carter asked almost simultaneously.

Miles turned the screen toward Lynn.

The screen displayed a screenshot from a tollbooth's surveillance camera, timestamped at 5:31 AM. A light-colored Toyota Sienna was emerging from the toll lane, its front facing south. The windshield reflected the light, obscuring the view of the occupants. However, there was a very small, irregular bulge on the roof, as if something had been temporarily strapped to the roof rack.

"What is this?" Lynn pointed to the bulge.

Miles zoomed in on the image three times.

The pixels weren't enough, but the outline became slightly clearer. It wasn't an original part of the roof rack; it looked more like a long, rectangular object tied to the roof, wrapped in a dark tarpaulin or blanket, about one to one and a half meters long.

The two of them were silent for half a second.

“Wayne was taken away,” Lynn said. “Not killed. They took him with them. Is that thing on the roof big enough for an adult to lie down in?”

Miles shook his head.

“Not enough. 1.2 meters is too short; a grown man lying on it would have his feet sticking out. Unless—” he paused, “unless Wayne isn’t lying down.”

Carter glanced at them from behind the steering wheel.

"That's not a person tied to it," he said. "It's something else."

Nobody knows what it is.

But everyone was thinking the same question—what was worth tying to the roof of the car and taking away, risking being immediately noticed by any experienced police officer?

Lynn stared at the blurry screenshot, at the silver-gray Toyota Sienna, and at the package on its roof, the contents of which were unknown.

"Keep chasing," he said.

Carter stepped on the gas.

The car headed south, further south, towards Mexico.

The further south you go, the heavier the air becomes.

It wasn't heat, but a stifling, oppressive feeling rising from the ground, mixed with the smell of sand and diesel fuel. The trees lining the road had been replaced; the northern oaks and maples were gone, replaced by shorter pines and grayish-leaved shrubs, their branches covered with a thin layer of dust. It was still light, but the sunlight was beginning to slant, slowly sliding from overhead toward the west, casting a whitish metallic glow on the dust on the car's hood.

Carter had been driving for nearly seven hours straight.

They stopped twice. Once at a gas station in Delaware, the three of them took turns using the restroom. Miles bought three bottles of water and a bag of beef jerky at the convenience store, Carter filled up the tank, and Lynn stood outside the car making two phone calls. One was to Drake to confirm that the assistance request had been sent to the Maryland and Virginia State Police; the other was to Gwen, but the call didn't go through and went to voicemail. He didn't leave a message.

The second stop was at a rest area south of Richmond. It was already getting dark. The rest area parking lot contained seven or eight cars and two RVs. A yellow school bus was off, and the driver wasn't there. Carter closed his eyes in the car for ten minutes. Miles plugged his laptop into the rest area's free Wi-Fi and downloaded three new reports from the Virginia State Police, all about the self-harm incident involving the silver-gray Toyota Sienna.

The first report came from Fredericksburg, Virginia, at 6:40 a.m., when a light-colored Toyota Sienna was on I-95.

He was spotted near Exit 118 by an early-shift patrol officer. He didn't stop him because there was no official notice for assistance at the time.