The tracking device goes on the car on a Tuesday.
Donahue does it himself. Not a technical team — himself, in the hospital parking structure at six-fifteen AM, in the forty seconds it takes for the security camera at the north entrance to complete its rotation cycle. He has timed the rotation three separate days to confirm it. The device is the size of a matchbox. It goes under the rear wheel well on a magnetic mount.
He walks to his own car two rows over. He drives away. He does not look back.
For the first three days, the data is unremarkable. The car goes from the hospital to Fishtown and occasionally to South Jersey and once to a grocery store in Germantown that makes sense geographically for nothing but that Gideon has clearly been going to for a while. No unusual stops. No long intervals in unexpected locations.
On the sixth day, the car stops in Germantown for forty-two minutes at eleven PM.
This does not correspond to any of Gideon's documented social or professional obligations. The neighborhood is not one that has any particular connection to anything in Gideon's mapped life.
Donahue sits in his studio apartment and looks at the location data on his laptop. He looks at it for a long time.
Forty-two minutes. A specific location in Germantown. Eleven PM.
He types the address into a property search database. The result is a storage facility. Not a chain — an independent operator, small, six units.
He does not go there immediately. He notes the location. He continues watching.
On the eighth day, the car does not go to Germantown.
On the ninth day, it does. Twenty-nine minutes this time.
He sits very still with this information.
He writes in his notebook: Storage unit — supplies? Equipment? Documents?
He underlines equipment.
He thinks about the logistics of what Gideon does. The specific supplies it requires. The things you would store off-site, away from your home, away from your hospital, in a small independent facility in a neighborhood you have no other connection to.
He does not move on the storage unit. Not yet. The moment he moves on it, Gideon will know the surveillance is active, and an active Gideon is a different problem than a passive one.
He waits.
Patient. Always patient.