Deductions

Agent Stevens stiffened as he glanced in his rear view mirror.

“Do you have a compact?” I asked Panacea.

“Do I look like somebody who wears makeup?” she said irritably.

I stared at her and after a moment she sighed and pulled one out of her backpack.

“I keep a spare for Vicky,” she admitted. “She forgets things sometimes.”

Flipping it open, I carefully looked through it to scan the traffic behind us. My mind started analyzing traffic patterns; there was the expected set of people heading for Medhall, some others who looked like they were headed for downtown.

There were three vans though that didn't fit the usual patterns. Most of the traffic heading for Medhall tended to be the nicer cars; Medhall was one of the few employers in town that paid good wages, and the people who worked there tended to take advantage of that and drove the nicest cars they could afford. The traffic downtown tended to be in worse condition, but still relatively nice. They were starting from a better part of the city, after all.

But the three vans following us were all battered and looked like they belonged in the parking lot of Winslow instead of Arcadia. One was a battered old van stripped down to the primer in spots. Another was a dull olive green; the third was covered with mud and might have once been black. The license plates of all three of them were obscured by mud which looked like it had been deliberately applied.

Two of them were moving in a coordinated fashion, but the third seemed to be following the first two rather than us.

“Two factions,” I told Agent Stevens. “The two in the front are together and the one in the back isn't with them. It's likely that they're coming for Panacea, but there's a small chance it's me they are looking for.

***

Rational