Unexpected: Day 8

Word Count: 54,066

Summary of Events:

After driving around Brussels for over an hour Hilton noticed that the car needed more fuel, and so sought out a petrol station, where he sent Meinwen in to pay for the fuel and buy some snacks, while he filled the car and mused on what they should do. When Meinwen returned to the car she urgently told Hilton that she'd heard the driver of a car that'd arrived at the station after they had speak in the same language and with the same accent as she'd heard in the telephone box. When the car left without paying for its fuel, Hilton followed it, hoping as much as Meinwen was that Dr. Stiles was in the car, and they'd found his kidnappers. They followed the car southward out of Belgium, and through Paris, with Meinwen sleeping off and on, as the fact that it was the early hours of the morning was making her tired, but she did try to keep awake so Hilton wouldn't fall asleep . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

A sign — coupled with glowing lights ahead — proclaimed that they were imminently at Tours. Meinwen hoped desperately that the car they were following would stop so that she could get some sleep, and she was sure Mr. Sheahan-Carrington was hoping the same thing.

“How awake are you feeling?” he asked as they rounded a soft curve in the motorway.

“Not terribly,” Meinwen admitted.

“So you wouldn’t want to get behind the wheel?” he asked.

“No,” Meinwen replied. “I’ve never driven right handed before anyways.”

“Until I climbed into this car at Charles de Gaulle I hadn’t either,” he replied.

Meinwen startled. “But you seem so confident, you haven’t seemed to be struggling with the change at all.”

“Oh I’ve been struggling plenty,” he replied. “I’ve just kept it in here.” He tapped his head with his forefinger.

“Oh,” Meinwen said.

“Following someone else also helps,” he added.

“I guess it would,” Meinwen said.

“So it might be an idea for you to take over and just follow them,” he said.

“I’ve never tailed anyone before either,” Meinwen said.

“This is my first time at that too,” he said. “I feel like I’m only having success because I’ve watched a lot of films with tailing in them.”

“Oh,” Meinwen said.

The motorway went through a pair of soft bends that were almost like a long chicane before a small sign displayed a series of wavy lines and the words La Loire on it.

Moments later the trees surrounding the sign ended and Meinwen could see lights reflecting off the water. She’d thought the Loire was a river.

“Seeing how we’re both struggling to stay awake, though, hopefully they’re stopping here,” Mr. Sheahan-Carrington said.

“Yes,” Meinwen agreed. “I’m absolutely shattered.”

She did, nonetheless, manage to keep herself awake as they followed the car off the motorway they’d been on and reached another reasonably major thoroughfare that had an abundance of trees down its centre boulevard.

At what seemed to be a reasonably major intersection in the road they turned left and carried on down a less treed road that certainly didn’t seem like the quickest route through the city. That probably would’ve been the road they’d been on crossing the Loire.

The car ahead of them signalled right and turned into a car park. Mr. Sheahan-Carrington signalled left and thus turned, where he carried on to the next intersection before turning around and drawing up along the kerb facing the hotel their quarry’s car had turned to park at, stopping only when they were in a position that they could see that car park.

“What are we doing here?” Meinwen asked.

“We’re going to watch and see if Dr. Stiles is with them,” Mr. Sheahan-Carrington replied. “As I’m certain that at least by shape we should be able to recognise him from a distance.”

“Then what are we going to do?” Meinwen asked.

“Well, that looks awfully like a hotel, so I’d suppose we could stay there, in a room on the southern corner here so we can see their car,” he replied, pointing at a building close to them. “Then we can sleep.”

Meinwen nodded. That sounded reasonable.