Broken Prey

town of Dennison, decided he was getting too far east—the vehicle they were hunting had been heading west—did a quick U-turn and whipped through Dennison again, past the Lutheran church, down a hill, a bank, a Conoco station, a car dealer, all with small lights alone in the night, empty . . .
    His nav system said he was on Dennison Boulevard and then Rice County 31, as though it couldn’t make up its mind. The town lights were fading in his rearview mirror when he saw a car’s taillights flare ahead of him.
    No headlights; just the taillights. He felt a pulse: somebody running?
    “Get the motherfucker,” he muttered to himself.
    He was doing seventy. He shoved the accelerator to the floor, looked at his navigation system. Nothing going south; just a Lamb Avenue going north. He stabbed at the nav system’s scale button, moving it to the largest scale. A thin line came up, heading south, also identified as Lamb Avenue. Had to be a small road, a track. The car without lights, if it was a car without lights, had just turned into the hard countryside. Had he done it because he’d seen the roof light on Lucas’s truck?
    Lucas grabbed the phone, just had time to punch up the Northfield center before he slid into the mouth of Lamb Avenue. “I got a guy running without lights. I still don’t see him. He’s heading south on Lamb off, shit, I think it’s Thirty-One or Dennison . . .”
    “Got you, Lucas. We’ll call dispatch, get some guys down there. Right now they’re all up around Nineteen . . .”
    Lucas punched off and tossed the phone on the passenger seat. He flashed past a bunch of derelict semitrailers, sitting in a farm field, and what looked like an impromptu junkyard. Two green spots came up on the right shoulder, and Lucas had time to pick up the red-striped cat in the weeds, hunting; up a hill, down another, the road narrow, the gravel pounding up under his wheel wells, rattling like hail.
    Came up to the top of a hill and, in his high lights, saw the truck dust. He’d been going through it, but now he realized he could use it to track the man ahead of him. As long as the runner stayed on gravel, Lucas could follow the dust hanging in the still night air.
    A culvert crossing flashed by . . . then a crossroads: which way, left, right, straight? He swung the truck in a circle, realizing that he was losing time, saw the dust hanging over the road to the right, went that way: the nav system said Karow Trail.
    He was pushing the truck as hard as he dared, sliding through curves, flashing past farmhouses and mailboxes; caught in his lights a driveway with four cars parked in front of a metal shed. What if the guy in front of him pulled into a farmyard and just let him roll by? He’d never know . . .
    The nav system was saving him. Without it, he might never have seen the turnoff to the even smaller James Trail. He slowed, went past the intersection, still on Karow, and suddenly was in clear air. He stopped, jammed the truck in reverse, backed up to James, and headed west. More dust, but losing great gouts of time. He needed to call in his location, but the road was so twisty, dark, narrow, that he couldn’t take his hands off the steering wheel.
    Around a bend, around another bend, almost losing it . . . then there, the taillights flickered up ahead, once, twice, then a one-second shot of headlights . . .
    Nothing on the nav system. A driveway? He was coming through a turn, going into another one, and off to the right, he could see vehicle lights of a bigger highway. He didn’t know which one, because the nav-system scale was too large.
    Another flash of taillights, directly north of him, headed toward the bigger highway. He slowed, looking for a side road: and found what looked like a tractor turnoff into an oat field. He pulled into it and saw the tracks cutting across the oats. As his headlights swept the field, he saw another flicker of taillights, and then another . . .
    Somebody out there, running across the open field, heading toward the highway.
    Lucas went after him, bumping now, the truck almost uncontrollable, his speed dropping to twenty-five, to twenty, to fifteen . . .
     
    BUT THERE!
    Headlights flared ahead of him, then disappeared over the rim of a hill. The guy could no longer run without lights. And whoever it was was only two or three hundred yards ahead of him. Lucas flashed on the chase back at the Martin farmhouse. He didn’t dare to hope that it