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

Chapter 745 has long since disappeared.

The second report came from Petersburg. At 8:12 a.m., a gas station's surveillance camera captured a vehicle matching the description refueling. Miles pulled up the screenshot; the image quality was even worse than the one from Philadelphia. Only the car's color matched, but the license plate and the people inside were unclear.

The third report came from Eppendorf, North Carolina, at 10:05 a.m. A state trooper, responding to another traffic accident on the side of the road, saw the vehicle drive past in the oncoming lane. He later wrote in his report, "At least three people in the vehicle; reflections on the windshield made it impossible to identify faces."

Three eyewitness accounts, spanning nearly four hours and from central Virginia to midwestern North Carolina. This means the Toyota Sienna was traveling south along I-95 at a moderate speed, around the speed limit, like any normal long-distance touring car, attracting no attention.

"They're really good at hiding," Miles said as he ate his second beef jerky, taking small bites, his cheeks twitching, his eyes glued to the screen.

“They’re not hiding.” Lynn sat in the back seat, flipping through the three reports again. “They’re blending in. They’re not hiding from the police; they’re blending in with the traffic. Finding a silver-gray Toyota Sienna in this level of traffic is like finding a single grain of uncooked rice in a bowl of rice. You know it’s there, but you can’t possibly search for it grain by grain.”

Carter started the car.

"Then we need to change our approach," he said, his voice low, as if squeezed directly from his chest. "Instead of following their tails, we need to guess where they'll turn around."

"The Mexican border," Miles said. "Drake said the direction is clear."

“The Mexican border is very long,” Carter glanced at Lynn in the rearview mirror. “It’s over two thousand miles from Texas to California. If they turn west in North Carolina or South Carolina, their destination might be Texas. If they drive all the way to Florida and then turn, it might be Arizona or California. Different routes, different time windows, we need to narrow down our search.”

Lynn leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

Wayne's heart medication had less than seventeen hours left. The hijacking occurred at four in the morning, and it was now just before two in the afternoon. If the target was the Mexican border, at normal speeds, it would take at least ten to twelve hours to travel from North Carolina to the Texas border. Adding the seven hours they had already driven, the total time would exceed twenty hours. Wayne's medication wouldn't last until then.

Unless they don't intend to let him cross the border alive.

Or they have the medicine.

Lynn opened his eyes.

Miles.

"Um.

""

"Did you check the hospitals and pharmacies along the route in Richmond before?"

"I checked. I went through all the major pharmacies and hospital pharmacies from Delaware to Virginia, and there were no cash purchase records for Wayne's drug. But—" Miles swiped his finger across the touchpad, "but there's a possibility they didn't use cash. If someone bought the drug with a health insurance card, that wouldn't trigger our set keywords because it wouldn't be an unusual transaction."

"Chavez's family," Lynn said. "His wife, his adult children, any relatives who might have a copy of his health insurance card. See if they've bought the same medication in the last 24 hours."

Miles' eyes lit up, and his fingers began to move.

"Wayne's wife doesn't have a health insurance record showing she purchased this drug, but I need to check with the dependents in our family insurance plan—we have a daughter here, 35 years old, living in Boston. There's a record in her name that she picked up a 90-day supply three days ago at a CVS in Boston."

Lynn and Carter were both silent for half a second.

three days ago.

"Send me the name, dosage, and batch number of that drug," Lynn said.

"Don't you think this is just a coincidence?" Carter asked.

"I don't believe anything is a coincidence."

Miles sent the message to Lynn's phone. Lynn glanced at it, forwarded it to Drake, and added a note:

Check the distribution records of this batch number in all pharmacies along the Boston to Long Island route to see if any other batches of the same drug have been purchased elsewhere.

After sending the message, he held his phone in his hand and looked out the window.

The roads in North Carolina are wider and flatter than in Virginia, with lower trees on both sides, offering a wider view of the fields in the distance. Some fields have already been harvested, leaving only bare, yellowish-brown stubble; others still have unharvested corn stalks standing, withered and yellow, swaying precariously in the wind. Occasionally, a farmhouse or two can be seen in the distance, its white walls gleaming brightly in the afternoon light.

Carter turned on the radio and tuned it to a local news station. The announcer was talking about the governor's budget, his voice as steady as reading a shopping list. Lynn listened for a few moments, then reached out and turned the radio off.

"I need quiet," he said.

Carter didn't say anything.

Miles didn't say anything either.

Inside the car, only the hum of the engine and the sound of tires rolling over the road remained. After a while on the highway, that sound becomes background noise, like a heartbeat—you don't even notice it unless you're consciously listening.

It took another hour or so to drive there.

After crossing the North Carolina border, we entered South Carolina. The place names on the road signs began to sound unfamiliar, no longer the cities we often heard about in the news, but rather the names of small places: Florence, St. George, Walter Burrell. Each name sounded like the last name of someone who had passed away, written on faded road signs, whitened by the sun.

At 3:12 p.m., Miles' computer emitted that urgent beep for the third time.

"Got it," he said, his voice a half-tone higher than usual. "South Carolina State Police set up a temporary checkpoint near Exit 53 of I-95 because of a multi-vehicle collision ahead, and all southbound vehicles had to slow down. Their license plate recognition system detected a silver-gray Toyota Sienna at 2:58 p.m., with no front license plate and the rear license plate covered in mud. Inside the car—"

'

He paused for a moment.

"There were at least four people in the car."

Carter tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

"Are you sure?" Lynn leaned forward.

"Confirmed. The recognition system captured images of the windshield, the passenger seat, and the back seat. However, the glass is reflective, so there are no clear facial images. The system automatically flagged this license plate as unrecognizable," and then let them through. Because the purpose of that checkpoint was to handle accidents, not to conduct a search."

Lynn gritted her teeth.

What's the closest place to that checkpoint?

Miles drew a circle on the map.

"Walterbury. A small town, about fifteen kilometers west of I-95. From there, they have three options. First, continue south on I-95 to Georgia. Second, turn west on I-26 to Columbia, and then from there take I-20."

Head west towards Texas. Third, continue south to Savannah, then turn west onto I-16.

"Which possibility is most likely?" Carter asked.

Miles turned and glanced at Lynn.

Lynn didn't answer immediately. He looked at the three options on the map, his mind racing with thoughts of time, distance, fuel, Wayne's heart medication, and the package on the roof of the Toyota Sienna, the contents of which he couldn't tell.

“If they’re going to the Texas border,” Lynn said slowly, “the most direct route is I-20 from South Carolina. I-20 runs from Columbia all the way to western Texas, through Atlanta, Birmingham, Jackson, Dallas, and then turns onto I-10 to El Paso. It’s about 1,800 miles in total, and it takes at least 26 hours to drive from South Carolina to El Paso. Wayne doesn’t have enough medicine.”

"So they're not going to Texas," Carter said.

"Or they don't need Wayne to live." Miles lowered his voice, as if afraid someone in the back seat would hear.

There was a three-second silence in the car.

“They need him alive,” Lynn said. “At least for now. If they wanted to kill him, they could have done it on Long Island; there’s no need to risk getting caught driving over a thousand kilometers. They want a hostage, not a corpse.”

"Where are they going?" Carter asked.

Lynn looked at the map.

“Florida,” he said. “From I-95 south to Florida, then west from Florida. The closest point in Florida to the Mexican border isn’t Texas, it’s Matamoros, that piece of land between Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. It’s about 1,200 miles from Jacksonville to Matamoros, 600 miles less than to El Paso. If they don’t get delayed on the road, the whole trip from Long Island to Matamoros takes about 22 hours. Wayne’s medication is just enough.”

Miles has already calculated the route.

"If they don't turn west in South Carolina and continue south on I-95, they'll reach Jacksonville, Florida around 7 p.m. From Jacksonville to Matamoros, it'll take another 10 to 12 hours. They'll reach the border around 2 or 3 a.m. tomorrow."

"We're about the same," Carter said. "If we catch them before Jacksonville, everything will be fine."

If they get past Jacksonville—

"7

"We can only intercept them at the border," Lynn said. "Or worse, we could pursue them within Mexico. But that would involve cross-border law enforcement, which would require diplomatic channels, and by the time the paperwork is approved, they would have already disappeared."

.

Carter pressed the accelerator a little harder.

The speedometer needle slowly passed eighty, eighty-five, ninety. The roadside trees began to turn into blurry green and gray stripes, like a watercolor painting stretched horizontally. The wind rushed in through the cracks in the car window, making a sharp whistling sound. Miles reached out and rolled up the window, the whistling stopped, and only the muffled roar of the engine remained in the car.

They chased after them for the next four hours.

It wasn't the kind of pursuit visible to the naked eye; it was a pursuit navigating the gaps between data and time. Miles refreshed the surveillance information along the route every half hour, and with each refresh, the position of the Toyota Sienna moved forward a little. South Carolina, Georgia, Florida border. Their route was confirmed step by step—they didn't turn onto I-20, didn't stop in Savannah, and didn't leave I-95. They kept heading south, towards Florida, like a warhead launched from the sky, flying along the straightest line towards their destination.

At 6:47 PM, it started to get dark.

The sun slowly sank below the left window of the car, transforming from a ball of orange-red fire into a semicircle, then into a thin, bright line, and finally disappearing completely below the horizon. The sky's color gradually changed upwards, from orange to pink to purple to deep blue, layer upon layer. The uppermost sky was already almost dark, with one star shining the earliest, hanging there all alone.

Carter turned on the headlights.

The beam of light shone on the road surface several hundred meters ahead, making the white lane markings look like two glowing snakes winding their way into the darkness.

Miles was eating his third beef jerky, his cheeks puffed out even more than before, and he was chewing very slowly, as if there was something in his mouth that he needed to carefully discern.

"How far is Jacksonville?" Lynn asked.

"About sixty miles," Miles said, the light from the computer screen making his face look like a bloodless mask. "At this speed, we'll be there in an hour."

"What about them?"

Miles' fingers danced across the keyboard a few times.

"The latest information comes from the identification system at a tollbooth north of Jacksonville. 4:31 PM. They're about two hours ahead of us."

A two-hour difference. Same as in the morning.

After chasing for a whole day, the distance didn't shorten.

Lynn leaned back in his chair and took out his phone. The signal was weak, and Gwen's "You read this first" message was still hanging in the chat, but he didn't click on it. He had already read Hall's email for the third time, and he could remember more parts than the first time, but he still couldn't find the obvious clue: who organized the closed-door meeting involving the federal representative, and why the agenda wasn't even recorded.

He put the phone back in.

Outside the car window, the Florida nightscape was unlike anything they had ever seen on their journey. More palm trees lined the roads, their broad leaves gleaming like open fans in the afterglow of the headlights. The air carried a damp smell, not the freshness of after rain, but a humid, suffocating moisture rising from a swamp.

"We're almost there," Carter said.

At 7:41 p.m., they entered Jacksonville.

It's not in the city center, but at a highway intersection on the outskirts of the city. The lights here are brighter than anywhere else we've passed along the way. GG signs, gas stations, fast food restaurants, motels—colorful neon lights slice the night into pieces. Each exit is like a gleaming promise, telling you that if you stop here, you can eat your fill, sleep well, and temporarily forget what you're chasing.

Lynn didn't let them stop.

"Keep driving."

Carter glanced at him, a look that spoke volumes, but he didn't say anything. He gripped the steering wheel tighter and didn't exit the highway.

Miles turned around from the passenger seat, his lips still covered in bits of beef jerky.

"Lynn, it's almost eight o'clock. We haven't had a proper meal since morning. I'm fine, but Carter has been driving all day. If we stop in Jacksonville for half an hour, grab a bite to eat, and fill up the tank, it won't make a difference."