If the initial vehicle motion didn’t activate them at the same time, a lag occurred. The lag actually worked in the surveillance team’s favor if it was long enough. A seven-second lag gave them what appeared to be real-time coverage. A skilled countersurveillance expert like Gray couldn’t use the fifteen-second “dark” period to disappear in a covered parking garage or other preplanned evasion route.

“Gray might be on the move,” he said.

Rudd scanned the parking area in front of Starbucks, expecting to see a black SUV backing out or driving in the opposite direction. Instead, a silver sedan drove by on the other side of the double row, its movement matching one of the trackers. The other still hadn’t moved.

“Shit,” he muttered.

“What’s wrong?” asked his wife.

“Stop behind that white SUV. I think he gave us the slip.”

“How? The tracker is moving, right?” she said.

“One of the trackers is moving, and it just passed us,” said Rudd.

He hopped out the moment she stopped and followed the tracker to a parked minivan. The tracking app put the transmitter inside the vehicle. Or under it. He lowered himself to the pavement and searched underneath, spotting the garage remote–size, black rectangular box lying in the middle of the parking space. He pressed his body into the gap between the asphalt and metal chassis, stretching his arm until his fingertips grazed the tracker. After a few more tries, one of them nearly dislocating his shoulder, he retrieved the tracker. He stood up a little too quickly, a sense of light-headedness and vertigo overtaking him.

“You okay?” asked Jolene.

He nodded, leaning against the car parked next to the minivan to keep his balance. An SUV pulled into the empty space on the opposite side of the van, which he surmised had moments before been occupied by the silver sedan. Gray had placed one tracker on the sedan and tossed the other under his own SUV before backing out—carefully so he didn’t run it over. He could have put them both on the silver sedan and let the owner of the car lead them around for a while, but that diversion could have ended at an office just down the street.

Instead, he’d split the trackers, keeping one in place in an attempt to convince them he’d found only one. Ten minutes after the silver sedan took off, he could have slapped the other one on any car leaving the strip mall and sent them on a second pursuit. Rudd looked around, wondering if Gray was watching him.