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you ask about anything strange?”
    “I’m not sure, Farren just seemed unusually preoccupied most of the day yesterday. He didn’t say anything was wrong. Things just seemed . . . I don’t know . . . different.” Nancy paused. “But he seemed okay to you, didn’t he?”
    “He was fine.” Hawk reaffirmed his decision not to disclose anything that had happened yesterday. “Is there anything I can do to help you track him down?”
    “I don’t think so. Hopefully he just forgot to let me know he wasn’t going to be in the office. He had a meeting that he missed, but I don’t think it was a big deal.” Nancy had worked with Farren a long time. Her concern was apparent. “If you hear from him, tell him to give me a call.”
    “I’ll do it for sure. Please tell him the same from me.”
    “You’ve got it, Hawk. Talk to you soon.”
    Hawk hung up the phone, already planning his next move.
    He’d been to Farren’s home a couple of times for dinner. The drive was about forty minutes from Celebration. Next stop: the Rales residence.
    Striding down the hallway, he walked past Jonathan’s office.
    “Hey there, boss,” Jonathan called as Hawk was two strides past the door. “I was serious this morning when I told you if there was anything I could do to help, I would Are you sure you’re all right? You look like you were in a brawl.”
    Hawk had almost forgotten about the soreness in his face. Rubbing his hand tenderly over his eye, he winced at how painful it was.
    “I’m fine.”
    “I just worry about you sometimes, we all do. You never ask for anything and you don’t usually complain. But if you want to or need to, you’re entitled, and we can take it. We won’t think anything less of you if you want to be human like the rest of us,” Jonathan subtly opened the conversation for Hawk to unload.
    “Just a long day. I started tired and never got my second wind.”
    “See you tomorrow, Hawk. Enjoy your evening,” Jonathan said.
    “I’m planning on it. See you in the morning.” Hawk moved back down the hallway. Stepping out into the afternoon sun, he noticed that the only cars in the parking lot were his, Jonathan’s, and one he didn’t recognize.
    He hit the key ring to automatically unlock his door, then swung it open and slid down into the seat. Firing up the engine, he pulled out of the lot and turned toward the interstate.

C HAPTER F IVE
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Day Two
Evening
     
    T RAVELING EAST ON INTERSTATE 4 through Orlando, a driver exited the interstate behind Grayson Hawkes’s Mustang and followed the preacher toward Lake Adair and Edgewater Drive. They passed shops and stores, grocery stores, coffee shops, restaurants, and specialty shops of the sort that spring up in prime real estate areas like College Park.
    Hawkes pulled up beside a solid wooden gate. He glanced into his side view mirror and waited for the car behind him to pass before opening his door. The driver circled the block and found a secluded place to park and watch. From there, Hawkes could be observed scratching his head and staring up at Rales’s house. The home was located above a boutique along Edgewater Drive. The preacher tried opening the gate, which was locked. He then scaled the wooden fence and disappeared behind it. A few minutes later he came back over it and paced the sidewalk for a few moments before driving to Gabriel’s, a local sub shop where he ordered a sub, a bag of chips, and a large coffee.
    Hawkes slumped at his table apparently not noticing the car that had been following him on his College Park trip. It was the same car that had passed him just before he got out of the Mustang at Farren’s house. Now the car sat parked along the street where the windows to the sub shop faced outward. Had Hawkes looked up and out the window he would have seen a set of dark glasses hiding the eyes that closely watched him. The eyes behind the glasses perched on the nose of this person had also watched Rales, Hawkes, and the