DELMONICO’S DELIVERS
Hope read the name on the back of the panel truck, her patience draining. She stabbed the small keys on the BlackBerry, spelling out:
caterer? @ gate
and sent the message to Larson.
She’d not returned to the van as Lars had asked. The next time she saw Penny, she’d throw herself onto the road if necessary. She was too close now to go sit with the boys while they played with her life. She’d been through too many months of such treatment. That part of her life was over.
The panel truck was kept waiting while the gate guard, dressed head to toe in black, circled it. Finally arriving at the back, he rolled open the back door and shined a flashlight inside. Hope was prepared for a team of military operatives to storm out, take down the guard, and open the gate. Instead, the powerful flashlight beam found stacked plastic boxes, collapsible tables, flats with serving trays, and bags of ice. His inspection concluded, the guard pulled the rolling door back down. In his haste, he did not secure it, and as he rounded toward the gate, the back door bounced open, first a crack, then a foot or more.
Hope looked left and right. Nothing.
With Penny inside the compound and this truck her best chance at getting inside, she slipped out of the bushes, used the truck to screen her from the gatehouse, and sprinted across the road. She reached the truck’s partially open back door before the gate had fully opened.