~~~
Bartholomew didn’t knock or make any sort of announcement and it startled Josh a bit when the door on the other side of Peter opened up quickly and the agent climbed inside, tossing a bag in the seat behind the front row left into which he plopped unceremoniously. A small huff of air, as though it had been knocked out of the older agent, seemed to be the only sound to break the silence. Peter waited, looking at the screens as though he needed instruction from the older man next to him.
“So?” Bartholomew slapped his hands on his legs and rubbed as though he were warming them. “Who’s this you’ve brung with ya?”
“Oh!” Peter responded nervously. “This is Joshua Manders. He’s one of our newest field volunteers.”
Bartholomew turned and smiled, somewhat sarcastically at the young boy, corner of his gray moustache twitching a bit. “Uh huh. And I suppose he’s been all cleared for this little…adventure then?”
“Yes. We took care of it.”
The exchange was a little awkward and Josh wasn’t sure Bartholomew was actually getting the answers he wanted, or some slight-of-hand misdirection on the part of Peter.
“We’ll also probably pick up Hattie in East Selkirk too, so there will be four of us.” It seemed another attempt to misdirect Bartholomew before he could ask too many questions about Josh.
“Oh…” Agent B responded, somewhat more pleasantly. “Well, that might be good. At least until we get there. Then what good will these two do us?”
“I don’t know about you, Agent Bartholomew,” Peter said, a little more relaxed, but more forcefully too, “but I think we’d be better off with greater numbers. And there really aren’t a lot of agents even in communication to ask at this point.”
“Probably true,” Bartholomew grumped and then crossed his arms.
Peter started rolling the CCV towards the river and the spot where the aural trail seemed to cross it.
“Best, get going Samuel. I think we need to be done before Christmas Eve for more than just one reason,” Bartholomew barked again.
With that Agent Samuel floored it and the vehicle nearly jumped across the river when it reached the shoreline, continuing to accelerate. Before Josh knew it the speedometer display up on the screen had crossed 150mph again and was still climbing. Just when he Josh was marveling at how the gigantic vehicle seemed to soak up all the bumps and irregularities of the off road at such high speeds, Peter rotated his hand around another virtual knob up on the screen and their acceleration increased tremendously. The boy was pressed deeply into his chair and the speedo flicked past 200 so quickly Josh could barely differentiate numbers anymore and gave up trying to keep track.