“Good.” Ethel handed him her phone. “I’ll lose our tail while you watch for directions. We’ll trade places when I know the final destination.”

“I’m a good driver. I could lose the surveillance.”

Ethel shook her head. “It’s not so much that we lose a tail as that it looks like we’re trying to lose a tail. As far as we know, Douglas is following us and reporting our actions. But a person or persons unknown could be following him. We need to appear to be playing by their rules.”

Jesse expected the car to rocket out of the driveway and neighborhood. Instead, Ethel let the car coast to the street and then drove at a speed that would have placed third behind the tortoise and the hare.

“Now, he’ll either have to drop back and stay out of sight or pass us,” Ethel explained. “But if he matches our speed, he’ll draw attention to himself.”

Once they left the neighborhood, Ethel moderately accelerated onto a commercial boulevard. The concentration of strip malls, gas stations, and fast-food chains also created a concentration of traffic lights. She kept stopping and starting as the lights changed until she got what she wanted, a light that turned yellow as she approached the intersection. She slowed, trying to time the change to red. A horn blared behind her as another driver urged her forward so that he could make the light. Ethel stopped on the crosswalk, saw the yellow go red, and then made an illegal left turn across three lanes of traffic. The cross street was clear for the next block, and she did fifty in a thirty-five-mile-per-hour zone. She took another left, effectively circling behind her surveillance like a fox backtracking the hound.

That hound found himself stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic in the middle of the block. With a sickening feeling, Douglas saw the Infiniti take a sharp left against a red light and accelerate out of sight. The maneuver left no doubt that Ethel was trying to shake free of him. And she had succeeded. Now he could only report the setback to Bradshaw. The director would not be happy, but Douglas would be free of his constant oversight and could pursue his own agenda, an agenda that would bring them all to the same place.

Ethel continued breaking the speed limit as she alternated right and left turns in a diagonal route away from Douglas. She glanced at Jesse. “Check Google Maps for the fastest route to I-95.”

Jesse reached out one hand to steady himself on the dashboard as she braked hard into a right turn. “North or south?”

“Doesn’t matter. I just want to put some miles behind us.”

Ten minutes and ten miles later, the first text came—

Go to Montpelier. 23192. Acknowledge and power off phone till arrival.

“Vermont?” Jesse exclaimed.