Cautious for now

You briefly considered taking all the risks you could possibly take now that you were here but you took a moment to compose yourself and decided against it, knowing that you could always try something more dangerous just before you left at the end of the weekend.

You did look up the description of the explorer upgrade you had got to help with scenarios like this.

Upgrades the current KDK distance feature to now work in conjunction with a minimap. The map will be accurate within a 25m radius of your current location and will show the position of all subjects within that radius. Subjects outside can still be tracked using the original distance feature.

But you were still slightly out of range from where the car was currently.

“I think it’s best that we stay far away if we are planning on staying a while but if it’s just a quick drive by before we go to the hotel, then I should be able to figure out which house it is for certain” you explained, feeling more anxious than you expected.

“Whatever you want to do is what we will do. I do have a suggestion but we don’t have to if you don’t want to” Grace said, turning fully towards you now that you were parked.

“Yeah sure” you replied, happy to not have to think at the moment.

“We can just do a loop of the block and come right back here. You’ll get a quick look at the house and I’ll look for any spots further down that we could maybe sit in for a while but still be out of sight” Grace suggested.

You seemed to realise with just the one idea that you were being way more serious than you most likely needed to be, even to the point where you could be making yourself more suspicious in the process. A car sat parked on the street wasn’t going to be noticeable unless you kept leaving and coming back, only to then park again further down the road.

“For now let's just go down the road and leave it at that, if I know the exact address then I can look it up later and figure out the best place to settle down for a while when we come back tomorrow” you responded, annoyed at yourself for not just doing this in the first place and saving everyone some time.

“Sure thing” Grace said with a smile, noticing the attitude change and starting the car back up.

Again the nervousness came back but you tried to stomp it down and got your phone ready, bringing up the map on the KDK to show where your subjects were. The two dots for both Emma and Grace popped up as Grace turned the car to head down the street, giving you some relief that the upgrade was working.

You did have a momentary worry that it wouldn’t pick up your father as he was an NPG subject, but that worry quickly vanished when a third dot appeared and you got within the 25 metre range.

“This one coming up on the right…now” you warned, looking up to briefly see a typical suburban house like any other.

The brief glance you got gave you time to check the number on the door which was 42 and all you could see was that there was a light on in the room at the front and not much else. You did check the neighbours houses just to make sure you got the right number each going up to 44 and then 46 before you were sure you had the right one.

You didn’t spot anything else out of sorts and you were off the street and heading to the hotel before you knew it. Nobody in the front yard to greet you and no signs that someone had seen you drive by. The fact that you knew your father was inside thanks to the KDK was something you couldn’t tell Grace as she believed you had no way of knowing that but seeing the car in the drive was enough to make an educated guess.

“I didn’t see much” Emma admitted, looking your way now that you were out of the area.

“Neither did I but I think that’s for the best tonight” you replied, getting enough information to work off of for now.

The rest of the journey was a bit quieter than before while both Emma and Grace left you to your thoughts but you didn’t want to drag the mood down and potentially ruin your chances of having something happen while at the hotel, the time they had given you to think now perfect for you to devise a plan.

You didn’t think Grace would leave you alone with Emma any time soon without a valid excuse but you didn’t think you would need long for you to get her in on anything you could set up. You hadn’t fully put together what you wanted to do as you didn’t have all the details yet but with a basic plan starting to form in your head, you managed to come up with an idea to get yourself some privacy.

“If we are gonna be staying in the car for a while tomorrow we should probably stock up on stuff right? I don’t know what time we are planning on getting up but we could save ourselves rushing around if we wanted to get some stuff now” you suggested, a valid idea even if you did have an ulterior motive.

“Sure, anything you had in mind?” Grace replied, latching onto a new topic if it meant taking you were happily talking again.

“Just some snacks and some drinks. I don’t think we will want to sit there for ages if the tracker, and the car itself, don’t move from the house so I don’t think we will need a lot. Plus if it does move then we might not have the chance to buy what we want on the fly” you said, catching yourself with the tracker comment.

“Oh I want some sweets if we each get to choose something!” Emma added, making sure she had at least one thing of her own choosing.

“Fine, we can do that. I think saw something close by on the map earlier…” Grace relented as she tried to navigate through the town as best she could.

Sure enough, she had been spot on and you were pulling into the parking lot of a store after barely any time had passed.

“Right, what do you two want?” Grace asked, immediately getting a lot more demands from Emma than she probably expected.

You stuck with something simple that you knew would last you for a while instead of something that would be gone within an hour, a reservation that Emma clearly didn’t have.

Grace did one final check to make sure she looked presentable after having been in just her underwear earlier before she got out, giving the two of you a look when she turned around to close the door as if she was unsure about leaving the two of you alone.