Notes

Soundtrack suggestions:

Jocelyn follows the group to Burgo Nuevo:
- Leaving at night - James Horner, Mighty Joe Young (from 00:35 to 01:35).
- Visions and arrest - Bear McCreary, Foundation (Up to 02:00).

Jocelyn spies the couple at the inn and sends her message:
- The Quest of Erebor - Howard Shore, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (extended edition) (Starting from 01:07).

-o-

"Hé bé! That was quite a dinner...," Brice sighed.

"You said it," Austin said.

While the cooks cleared the table, the veterinarian and the ACU commander had gone to the terrace to finish their glasses. Juan, Valentine and Wheatley had also left. Whereas the first had returned to the camp and the third to the bungalows, the second, following an order from Austin, had accompanied the couple and the DPG trio to the minibus, in order to ensure that no other excesses occurred within the compound itself. If a fight between Alexander Singer and the couple broke out on the road or in town, it wasn't going to be Site D security overseer's problem. As for Jocelyn, she had left the table as soon as she had finished her slice of flan, without saying a word. The others had just seen her heading for the stairs.

"Do you think she went upstairs to her room and is now crying?" Brice asked his colleague.

"Probably. She was stupid for inviting them though. She knew a fight had high chances of breaking out."

"You did nothing to fix things."

"I plead guilty. I couldn't help it."

"They should have eaten at Aurelio's. We would have dined in peace and so would they."

"Because of Lockwood, we have to deal with Red Sonja and Conan the Barbarian, snoopers and troublemakers."

"Like you might have noticed, they're not the only snoopers... The dyke is one too. Luckily, Pedro didn't tell her that the Compys were actually alive. On that matter, you knew what they did with them in Alajuela?"

"I never got an answer. I just received a message telling me that Torres needed Compys for a special project, I gave you the word and that's it..."

"I just hope Juan won't snitch about that... I should have never told him about what I did."

"He won't. He knows when to be reserved and can keep a secret, but Jocelyn wasn't very credible when she acted like an ingénue."

"Anyway, all of that is behind us. At least I hope so."

"And Wheatley who rubbed it in with his innuendo... The worst is I don't even know what happened between him and Torres on Nublar. All I know is that the latter and the board have pissed him off and that he was on the verge of sending us packing when we contacted him a few weeks ago."

"The worst was Alexander. That guy is stupid, but so stupid!"

"Like an Edaphosaurus?"

"Exactly! We told him "No, just shut up!" but he persisted."

"I pity those who will share his cabin aboard the Arcadia."

"You can laugh. You're going to the United States by plane with the very last animals. As for me, I risk having to deal with him for a week in the ocean. And there will also be the other two along with Owen and Claire. If things go on like this evening, someone might end up thrown overboard before we're off the coast of Mexico. I think it's going to be festive aboard the Arcadia..."

With their eyes turned to the lower terrace and the paddocks beyond, the two men had not seen Jocelyn, dressed in a sweatshirt, descend and pass through the canteen quickly to reach the courtyard. She crossed it but before passing its door, she waited for the group to climb into the minibus.

When the latter left, Jocelyn trotted to her car, sat behind the wheel and started the engine, taking in her turn the oaks driveway.

On her left, she saw the lights of the bungalows and on her right, those of the camp and she saw several people coming and going between the tents. Looking back ahead of her, she saw the crossroads as well as the gate and its adjoining sentry box beyond.

Shit, the gate! I had forgotten! If the watchman tells Joel that I left, he will think that, after this shitty dinner, I went out to drink in a bar or worse, visit a male prostitute to cheer me up. He's going to be a pain in the ass with that. I know that my marriage is hanging on by a thread but still! I'm not like Claire, that whoremonger!

As she approached the gate, she slowed down and after glancing in her direction, the sentry opened. Jocelyn passed without thanking the guard for a wave, pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her head and accelerated to try to catch up with the minibus she had lost sight of.

He must be wondering why I'm leaving the estate right after the group.

She reached the road and after a quick glance to her right, she entered it, heading to town. Further ahead, she saw the minibus again but bit her lower lip due to the presence of another car between her and it, and annoyance gave way to irritation when she noticed that the latter was driving at a dozen kilometres per hour below the authorized limit.

Probably a little old man, the manager supposed with a sigh.

After estimating the distance between this car and the minibus, Jocelyn cocked her head leftwards to look at the left half of the road. Seeing no headlights coming from the opposite side, Jocelyn overtook the vehicle and went to insert herself between it and the minibus. However, she slowed down in order to not be too close and be seen by its passengers.

The first buildings of Burgo Nuevo then appeared on both sides of the road and they soon arrived near the crossroads downtown. The light being green, the minibus crossed it but just after, the light turned orange and then red.

"Shit…," Jocelyn hissed between her teeth, hesitating between going through a red light or stopping at the line.

She chose to continue and as she crossed the line, she mentally crossed her fingers and hoped that other road users would see her and react in time. Fortunately, Burgo Nuevo was not San José and sometimes, there was no one at this crossroads. And Jocelyn was aware that doing the same in a city like New York or even Palo Alto would have been suicide.

She jumped when she heard a horn blast, that of a motorist arriving on her right and who had been forced to urgently brake, stopping only a few centimetres from Jocelyn's passenger door. She looked at him for a moment and saw him waving his hands angrily.

"Fuck you asshole!" the manager exclaimed.

But looking back in front of her, she noticed the presence of a surveillance camera high on a pole, aimed at the intersection.

"Fuck…"

Enrique and his bloody cameras! If I'm lucky, I'll be back in the US when the cops will send the ticket.

Jocelyn arrived in sight of the Cañada de las águilas soon after and parked alongside the sidewalk as the minibus dropped off the group.

Let's hope that they don't recognize the car.

While preparing to lean over to the passenger seat and pretend to be looking for something in case anyone looked her way, Jocelyn watched the minibus drive off, the couple entering the hotel first with Claire walking with a brisk step, then the DPG trio a few seconds later, as Alexander seemed to want to leave at least a few meters between him and the fallen park director.

No wonder. I thought they were going to hit him earlier.

Then Jocelyn waited, for several minutes that seemed endless, waiting for the couple to come out. When they walked back out the door and headed downtown, Jocelyn ended up torn. On the one hand, she was satisfied that she was not going to receive a ticket for nothing but on the other, she saw her fear taking shape little by little.

She followed them out of the corner of her eye and once they were far away enough, she started the car again and followed them as quietly as possible through the town's centre, up to the Laden Mule inn.

While the couple finished crossing its parking lot, Jocelyn got out of her car and also walked towards the inn's entrance but did not enter. If the inn was full and if the only free seats were near their meeting place, the couple would notice her and all this improvised tailing operation would fail. However, large windows looked into the dining room. Maybe she could see them through.

Jocelyn then took a cigarette and her lighter from her pocket and, pretending to be a inn patron who had gone out to smoke, she approached the windows.

She saw the couple walk into the dining room and scan it for a moment before finding their contact, a moustachioed fortyish man sitting in the opposite side of the room.

Pivoting in order to have the windows on her side, she watched them join the man, who seemed satisfied to see them, and sit down opposite of him, with their backs to the windows. Ignoring who the moustachioed man was and thinking that the latter would not recognize her, even less with a hood over her head, Jocelyn let out a sigh of relief. She would be able to observe them without fear, especially since there were other tables with customers between them and the window. Moving a few steps to the side, she managed to find a suitable angle, with which she could see the man, the table and the couple's hands.

It's perfect.

She saw Claire put her phone on the table and their contact grabbed it to look at what was displayed on the screen. He nodded, spoke and Claire then took out a sheet of paper which she unfolded on the table before the eyes of the moustachioed man. He inspected it carefully, muttered something, and looked up at the couple. He exchanged a few words with them and held out his hand. Claire and Owen shook it hesitatingly and then left him.

Jocelyn quickly moved away from the inn, got back inside her car, drove south and parked in the parking lot of a supermarket on the town's outskirts, where she would be away from the couple's path and could relax for a moment. Once her car stopped, she let out a heavy sigh, pulled out her phone, and started typing a message with shaking hands.