"The agent will be coming to our house...?" Francine asked to Daniel as her husband finished explaining what he could to them.
The report that somehow the Gambonis had found out that Moe and his family had come to Moon Lake had her on edge. While having Moe bring his family to Moon Lake was more Daniel's idea, that didn't mean she was opposed to having old friends nearby or that she wanted them in danger. She was grateful that the Charlestons were safe for the moment, but the thought and fear of the Gambonis coming into Moon Lake or knowing the Charleston family was in Moon Lake put her on edge. She could remember some of the reports on their early activities when the Brooks family left New York and ultimately settled in Moon Lake, themselves. The prospect of dealing with that sort of violence put her on edge. Especially so soon after Moon Lake had dealt with a rogue werefox.
"Yes... it's more of a cover," Daniel answered, "Since we don't know WHEN the Gambonis will make their move... or even when they'll arrive, we want to keep things low key. Which will mean that food/meal deliveries to those of us waiting to spring the trap on them at the Charleston's will come here so that way the deliveries don't tip them off... particularly as we aren't sure as to what vehicle Marcus Gamboni has. They will come here, which would then look as though WE have ordered food. He'll then go through the house and out the backdoor and then up to the Charlestons.... and the neighbors should have been warned by our dispatch officers to be EXTRA careful, which means no transforming outside until the FBI agents are gone."
Both Peter and Francine nodded to that, which Daniel was glad for. He was about to say his goodbyes and head out to join the agents that were waiting for him at the Charleston house, but he was cut off when Peter spoke up.
"Hey dad... you said that Karen could have visitors if the police can clear them?" Peter asked.
"Yes," Daniel nodded, "though it wouldn't be easy... and probably wouldn't be a good idea to do her induction into were society until AFTER this mess with the Gambonis is finished."
"Well... for the moment I've just been helping her get in contact with the weres that would represent the specific feline weres she might want to join," Peter answered, "and even if jumping through hoops to arrange a meeting would be too much, I would at least like to be able to give Karen a call to let her know how things are going on my end."
"Ahhhh," Daniel commented, "well... they're at Officer Strange's cabin right now. And she has a landline, so there will be no cellular interference... I don't know if she has an answering machine... but if she does you can leave a message. If not... you may not be able to contact her. As I wouldn't think they would expect a call and wouldn't fell they have permission to answer someone else's phone."
"Moe didn't get his old cellphone replaced?" Francine asked.
"The virus is out... but a lot of his old contacts are on there, which will mean if he decides to use them, he needs the phone to contact them," Daniel answered, "How is another question... which I don't have the answer for."
Francine and Peter both nodded.
"Anyway, I've got to get going, as I've been assigned to be Moon Lake's rep among those in the sting," Daniel sighed, "which means I need to be at the Charlestons."
There were a few blinks and then a slow nod as Daniel paused. He then finished by delivering direct instructions to both Peter and Francine.
"Fran... it'll be up to you to hold down the fort and keep things in line," Daniel instructed, "Peter... I'm counting on you to be there to protect your mother and I want both of you to stay safe."
They nodded and with that, Daniel departed through the Brooks' back door and then turned to walk up toward the Charleston home...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Vito was glad to see the last of Morton. The Washington town wasn't bad, and the local crime boss had been helpful in keeping him and Marcus safe, particularly after some of Marcus's more boneheaded antics. But Vito also knew the state was on high alert for them and that the group in Morton couldn't protect them forever, as doing so would hurt them in the long run. Not to mention that they'd already had a close call with someone else who had been at the same hotel as them being busted by law enforcement for something. Vito was told that was just taking care of some "business," but he also got the under pinned message that the local group could and potentially WOULD turn on them if they didn't handle their business quickly and without raising any more attention.
This present run was scheduled to be just that. They would head up to this little town in the Cascade Mountains northeast of Seattle, Moon Lake. The town itself wasn't too hard to find with Google Maps, but it was out of the way, which resulted in Marcus having to play navigator from the passenger seat Marcus would sit and track their route on his phone and update Vito when they came to any place where they had to make a turn. It left the two brothers time to talk and think things over, and as they drove along, Vito did a lot of thinking on how odd the entire situation was.
The center of this oddness was Moon Lake itself. It was a decent sized town, which wasn't too atypical, but its layout made it truly stand out. Based on Google Maps, the official layout was circular. In some ways that couldn't be too bad. For example, Paris had a rather organic and close to a circular shape to it, but the French capital still had a road layout that was fairly normal, essentially dividing the city into smaller squares and blocks with multiple routes in and out of the city. This made for an efficient use of space and allowed for large numbers of people to move in and out of the French capital as they needed to. Moon Lake didn't have that. In fact the closest thing that Vito could compare the town's layout to was a wagon wheel, with one area to the city that would look more normal to it. The rest of the town simply had straight roads that went like spokes from that central point.
Given the mountainous terrain, that would have to mean that either Moon Lake's founders had found relatively flat area in the valley between peaks, did an inordinately large amount of landscaping to level the terrain in the region, or many of those roads had odd dips and bumps as they went up or down hills. The big thing that Vito could tell was that at the outer edges of these "spokes" there was plenty of open land that could fit either houses or small businesses, but according to the map, most of those areas were marked as forest land with homes along the road. There were some cases of either larger homes or buildings, but they weren't common. This made Moon Lake very different from any city that Vito knew, just by its layout. He'd also noted that there were only two streets that connected Moon Lake to the outside world. One ran north and south and the other ran east and west, like a perfect compass. Nearly all of the spoke like roads ended in dead ends. Those that didn't were marked as private roads that lead to farms/ranches outside of the town and two large campsites to the north of a crescent shaped lake on Moon Lake's north western edge.
"We're going to get her," Marcus sang, to the same tune as "We Will Rock You" as they road along, bringing Vito out of his thoughts for a moment.
"Not tonight," Vito answered, "tonight's just a scouting mission..."
"Who said anything about tonight?" Marcus asked back as he looked to his brother, and noted the setting sun in the background, "it's the mission that I'm singing about. We're finally going to get her Moe will pay for making us look like fools."
"But not tonight," Vito reminded his brother, remembering all too well Marcus's haste to deal with a Park Ranger at Mount St. Helens that probably was only coming to see if Marcus had needed help with something. As there were times where Marcus got caught in some sort of proverbial tunnel vision over what he wanted and that lead to dumb decisions. In this, while Vito could agree that Moe Charleston had to go for not respecting the Gamboni's authority, the biggest of his and brother's problems he put on Marcus's shoulders because of how brash Marcus could be, but Marcus had always been the family favorite, and thus Vito and Albert had found themselves in a pursuit across the country for a girl neither wanted and Albert was already in jail for it.
"Of course, I won't forget," Marcus vowed.
"Just making sure," Vito said in a low voice, "because we have a long way to go and Moon Lake's odd layout will make getting out of the town rough."
"Tough?" Marcus wondered, "Google Maps' layout for the town may be odd... but surely they'd have some unmarked backroad or other things... Shoot, some things might even be out of date."
"But at present we don't know this for sure," Vito spoke, "thus why we're making this run now. We'll go in, take a look and see what we need to know. That way if there is a dirt road that isn't marked that will take us to a road we can find it... or if they have a more permanent road in, we can find it. But if not... we'll need to make a U turn and finding a way to do it will need to be done carefully, as the last thing we want is to get lost in this town tomorrow morning."
Marcus nodded at that and kept his focus on the task at hand. They had a long way to go, and while Moon Lake wasn't impossible to get to, it wasn't super easy to get to either. Vito had found the town on Google Maps, but without the right directions, they could easily get lost on the various mountain roads, which wouldn't be easy to navigate, particularly as the sun set and things began to get darker. Finally grabbing Karen Charleston was enough to keep Marcus focused on the navigational tasks that he had, which was something that Vito could tolerate. In this they made their way fairly quietly through Washington State, with Marcus speaking only to let Vito know when they were coming up onto an area where they'd have to make a turn, which proved to relatively few in number, at least when it came to changing roads. The biggest issue was ultimately in following along through the winding roads once they got into the mountains.
Their route had gone east from Morton to Yakima, where they got a bite to eat and were soon on the road again, heading up Interstate 82, before turning onto Interstate 90 near Ellensburg where they headed west. Though, they didn't even stay on that for long as they were soon heading north on State Highway 97 before turning west onto State Highway 2. From there they soon came onto a series of much lower grade roads that hung around some of the mountain peaks quite closely. There were no signs that indicated that they'd changed roads. In fact when Marcus checked between the GPS and maps on his phone and the signs posed on the side of the road, the road number hadn't changed. It took them through some national forest areas and curved around some mountains as it went. Eventually they did come onto Moon Lake and found the road straightening as the lights from the town pierced the darkness and could just be seen through the trees.
Glancing down clock on the dashboard for a moment, Vito noted that with distance covered and that with the last leg of the journey had been at reduced speeds to get there, it was nearly 1:30 AM. He was getting tired, and while Marcus had been dutiful in posting where they were with regard to the map, he guessed that even Marcus was tired. He could se a motel up ahead, and much to his own surprise Vito noticed an "open" sign on the front door. This then begged the question on what to do. Would they continue their scouting run and see how to handle getting in and out of the street where the Charleston's house was, or check into the hotel and go by the map they'd managed to find online in the morning, but move with some measure of rest and sleep.