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

Chapter 746 New Coordinates

"It will be bad," Lynn said.

"Won't."

"You don't understand the logic of pursuit." Lynn's voice wasn't loud, but every word was like a nail driven into the car. "When you've been chasing someone all day and the distance hasn't shortened at all, if you stop for half an hour, they'll have an extra half hour of travel time. Half an hour is fifty kilometers on the highway. Fifty kilometers on the border could be the entire area of ​​a border crossing."

Miles opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Carter didn't say anything, but he didn't go out at the next exit.

The car continued south.

After Jacksonville, 1-95 begins to veer westward. It's not a sharp turn, but a slow, almost imperceptible arc, like a great river naturally bends across a plain, not because it wants to, but because the terrain ahead forces it to.

Miles' computer rang again.

"They were spotted at a checkpoint south of Jacksonville," he said, a hint of surprise in his voice. "They didn't stop in Jacksonville. Just like us, they went straight through."

Lynn frowned slightly.

"They're also in a hurry."

"They've been driving since four in the morning, almost sixteen hours now," Carter said. "Even with three drivers taking turns, they can't keep going like that. They're bound to stop somewhere."

"Maybe they've already stopped," Lynn said, "somewhere we can't see them."

Miles shook his head.

"I've reviewed the data along the route, and there wasn't a gap of more than forty minutes. The longest they stopped at a gas station was ten minutes, where they filled up, bought some things, and continued on their way. They were doing the same thing as us."

"They're gambling," Lynn said. "Gambling that we can't catch up, gambling that the loopholes at the border are bigger than we thought, gambling that the recipients on the Mexican side are more patient than we thought."

"The recipient?" Carter glanced at him in the rearview mirror.

"A kidnapping of this scale couldn't be accomplished by a few people on a whim. They have powerful backers. Someone is waiting in Mexico to pick up Wayne, or to take what they've taken from him."

"What is it?"

Lynn shook her head.

"have no idea."

At 9:23 p.m., they passed by Detonabic.

At 10:05 p.m., I passed by the outskirts of Orlando.

At 11:41 p.m., we passed through Port Saint Lucie.

Each time they passed through a city, Miles would update the data, and each update told him—the target was ahead, the distance hadn't shortened, and had even widened slightly. Because Carter needed rest. Not because his willpower was failing, but because his body had reached its limit. Driving for nearly fifteen hours straight, with only two breaks—one for ten minutes and one for eight—his eyes were already bloodshot.

"I'll drive," Lynn said.

Carter didn't refuse. He parked at the next rest area, moved to the back seat, reclined it, closed his eyes, and was snoring in less than thirty seconds.

Miles was still looking at the computer, but his eyelids were drooping. He took a sip of water, splashed some on the back of his neck, jolted awake, and became clear-headed again.

When Lynn gripped the steering wheel, it felt different.

The steering wheel of this car was a bit heavier than his own, providing more direct feedback. Every crack and pebble on the road could be transmitted to his hands through the tires and steering column. His left hand gripped the nine o'clock position, while his right hand was positioned between three and four o'clock. The wound under the dressing was slightly painful from the pressure of the steering wheel's reaction force.

He doesn't care.

He increased the speed to 110 km/h.

12:37 a.m.

They entered Florida's "Space Coast" area. The road sign pointed to Cape Canaveral, indicating a left turn. Lynn didn't look at it. His eyes were fixed on the darkness ahead, a darkness completely different from New York's—no skyscrapers blocking the sky, no neon lights illuminating the clouds pink, just the highway, car headlights, and an unbelievable number of stars overhead.

Miles suddenly sat up straight in the passenger seat.

"Wait a moment."

"What's wrong?"

"I received a data packet." Miles' voice changed, becoming sharp, as if someone had whispered something he didn't want to hear in his ear. "It didn't come from our system. It came from another source."

"What source?"

"I don't know. It's encrypted. But the sender tag says—" He paused, "someone you know."

Lynn tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

"Open."

"Fully opening it requires cracking the encryption, but I can look at the metadata first. The metadata shows that this data packet came from a mobile device, located in—" Miles' fingers flew across the keyboard, "located in Fort Pierce, Florida."

The location five minutes ago.

Piersburg. Right in front of them.

"Open it," Lynn said again.

Miles's fingers began to tremble, but he kept typing. A progress bar popped up on the computer screen, moving at a snail's pace.

"The encryption is too strong; it will take time."

"how long?"

"Maybe five minutes, maybe an hour. I don't know."

Lynn pressed the accelerator even harder.

At 1:12 a.m., they passed by Piersburg.

The encrypted file on Miles' computer still wouldn't open. The progress bar was stuck at 43%, completely unmoving, like a dead worm on the screen.

Lynn glanced at Carter in the back seat through the rearview mirror. Carter was still asleep, his snoring quieter than before, his breathing deeper and heavier. He didn't wake him.

The car continued south.

The place names on the road signs began to feel both strange and familiar: Veroo Beach, Stewart, Hobby Bay. Each name contained the word "beach" or "bay," meaning they were getting closer and closer to the coastline. The air grew increasingly humid; even with the car windows closed, the smell was noticeable, like someone had hung a huge, damp rag outside the car.

2:03 AM.

Miles finally opened the encrypted package.

His face was illuminated by the screen light, making it look like a sheet of paper.

"Lynn," he said, his voice unusually low.

"explain."

“This isn’t intelligence.” Miles turned the computer screen towards him. “This is a real-time location. Not from that Toyota Sienna, but another signal. Someone is using this data packet to tell us the location of another person.”

Lynn quickly glanced at the map on the screen. A blue dot was moving on I-95, about forty kilometers ahead of them.

"What is that?"

"I don't know," Miles' voice trembled, "but when the data packet opened, a line of text popped up. I'll read it to you—'You've got the wrong car. The person is in this car.'"

'

The carriage was silent for a full five seconds.

The only sounds were the engine, the tires rolling over the road, and Caterpillar's even breathing in the back seat.

"What do you mean?" Miles' voice was almost a whisper. "That Toyota Sienna we've been following all day, maybe Wayne isn't in there?"

Lynn's eyes were fixed on the blue dot on the screen.

Forty kilometers away. A twenty-minute drive.

"Carter." Lynn's voice wasn't loud, but the snoring in the back seat stopped almost immediately.

Carter sat up, his eyes shifting from sleep to wakefulness in less than a second.

"What's going on?"

"We've chased the wrong person," Lynn said. "Someone's feeding us new coordinates. It could be real, or it could be a trap."

How do you determine this?

Lynn gritted her teeth.

"Don't gamble," he said. "Let's split up. You take Miles and keep following that Toyota Sienna, I'll go after this new landmark."

""

"Alone?" Carter's voice rose. "You're going to chase after a car that might be carrying three mutants?"

"No need for a direct confrontation," Lynn said. "I'll first confirm the location, make sure Wayne is really inside. If he is, I'll call for backup. You guys take care of that Toyota Sienna and come over immediately."

Carter stared into Lynn's eyes in the rearview mirror for two seconds, then nodded.

"Keep communication open."

"Won't."

At the next exit, the car stopped. Lynn got out, Carter climbed from the back seat to the driver's seat, and Miles shared the location of the blue dot on the computer to Lynn's phone.

Lynn stood by the roadside, the night wind blowing from the east, carrying the salty smell of the sea and an indescribable stench. His coat clung to his body in the wind, and the wound beneath the dressing stung coldly in the breeze.

Carter glanced at him through the car window.

"careful."

Lynn nodded, turned around and hailed an empty taxi that had pulled out of the rest area. The driver was a middle-aged Black man wearing a baseball cap. He glanced at Lynn sleepily and asked, "Where to?" Lynn gave him the intersection ahead of the blue dot.

As the car drove off, Lynn glanced back at Carter's vehicle. The dark gray SUV had already turned around and headed south, its taillights growing smaller and smaller in the night until they were finally obscured by a row of palm trees along the roadside.

The taxi driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror.

"Traveling so late?"

"Work."

"What kind of job involves driving on a Florida highway at 2:30 in the morning?"

"Chasing someone."

The driver glanced at him, thinking he was joking, and chuckled twice. Then, realizing he wasn't laughing, he swallowed his laughter and focused on the road.

The taxi drove on I-95 for about fifteen minutes. Lynn kept staring at the blue dot on her phone; it wasn't moving very fast, about 90 kilometers per hour, and kept going forward without any sign of exiting the highway.

"That's the exit up ahead," Lynn suddenly said. "Go down."

The driver signaled, slowed down, and exited the road. The exit led to a two-lane county road with no streetlights, lined with low shrubs and palm trees. Moonlight shone on the road, turning it a cool, silvery-gray hue.

The blue dot on the phone is also slowing down.

It exited the highway. At the same time as Lynn, it exited at the same exit.

Lynn's hand reached for the gun at his waist.

"Stop the car," he said in a low voice.

The driver applied the brakes, and the taxi stopped on the side of the road. The engine was still running, and the headlights illuminated the road surface dozens of meters ahead, revealing the sign of an abandoned gas station. The words on the sign were no longer legible, leaving only a rusty piece of sheet metal swaying gently in the wind.

Lynn paid the fare, got out of the car, and closed the door as quietly as possible.

The night wind picked up. It was quieter here than on the highway, with no background noise from traffic or the buzzing of neon lights. There was only the sound of the wind, the rustling of leaves, and the distant call of some unknown animal, sounding like a bird but not quite, its drawn-out notes echoing back and forth in the empty night.

He walked along the county road, his right hand on the gun, his finger not inserted into the trigger ring, but already resting outside the protective ring.

The blue dot on my phone stopped.

It stopped moving about 300 meters ahead.

Lynn slowed her pace.

He took his phone out of his pocket and glanced at the blue dot's location on the map. Ahead was a fork in the road; one path continued south, the other turned west into a more remote direction. The blue dot stopped in the middle of the fork.

He turned off his phone screen, put it back in his pocket, and walked along the roadside ditch. The ditch was half full of water, not flowing water, but stagnant water that had accumulated after rain and was slowly evaporating. A layer of green duckweed floated on the surface, startled by his footsteps, and something darted about from under the duckweed.

He walked about two hundred meters and saw it.

A car was parked at the intersection.

It wasn't a Toyota Sienna, but a dark-colored Ford Explorer, bigger, more boxy, and more like the kind of vehicle used by law enforcement. The front of the car faced south, the engine was still running, and white smoke billowed from the exhaust pipe, like a slowly dissipating mist in the night.

The car lights were off.

This is abnormal at night. Very abnormal.

Lynn crouched down by the drain, hiding himself in the shadow of a bush, and pulled his gun out of its holster.

There are people in the car.

He saw a figure in the driver's seat, an outline, broad shoulders, head slightly tilted to one side, as if talking to someone in the back seat. The back window was tinted with dark film, so he couldn't see inside, but Lynn could sense movement there, someone moving slowly in the back seat, as if their movements were restricted by something.

Wayne.

Or not.

He needs to be closer.

Lynn moved forward along the drainage ditch for about fifty meters, stepping on the grass with each step, trying not to make a sound.

The night wind helped him; the sound of the wind blowing through the broad leaves of the palm trees drowned out the rustling of his footsteps.

When we were less than a hundred meters away from the car, the lights inside the car came on.

It wasn't the headlights, but the reading lights inside the carriage. In that instant, Lynn saw what was happening in the back seat.

three people.

A man sat in the middle of the back seat, his hands bound in front of him, his head bowed, his gray hair reflecting a greyish-white light under the lamp. He was an elderly man, wearing dark pajamas and barefoot.

Wayne.

A woman with light-colored hair sat next to Wayne, her profile flashing briefly in the light. Lynn's heart skipped a beat. It wasn't Victoria, but the contours of her face had a similar, carefully crafted feel. She was holding something and feeding Wayne something.

The person in the driver's seat didn't turn around, but Lynn saw his hand moving.

Then the lights went out.

Darkness once again swallowed everything.

Lynn gripped his gun tighter, intending to move a little closer, when the Ford Explorer's engine suddenly roared, the front of the car lurched to the left, the tires slipped on the gravel road, kicking up a cloud of sand, and then the whole car was launched as if it had been launched, swerving sharply into the westbound side road.