Invisible Prey

highway-patrol plane, but was told that with one thing or another, nobody could get airborne for probably an hour. “Well, get him going, for Christ’s sake. This chick may be headed for Des Moines, or something.”
    The problem with a four-car tag was that Anderson wasn’t a fast driver, and they had to hold back, which meant they’d either loom in her rearview mirror, or they’d have to hold so far back that they might lose her to a sudden move. If she hooked into a shopping center, and several were coming up, they’d be out of luck.
    “Jenkins, move up on her slow,” Lucas said. “Get off at Yankee Doodle, even if she doesn’t.”
    “Got it.”
    She didn’t get off; Jenkins went up the off-ramp, ran the lights at the top, and came down the on-ramp, falling in behind Lucas.
    They played with her down the interstate, the speed picking up. She didn’t get off at the Burnsville Mall, a regional shopping center that Lucas had thought would be a possibility. Instead, she pushed out of the metro area, heading south into the countryside.
    Lucas could see the possible off-ramps coming on his nav system, and called them out; one of them would fall off at each, then reenter. She didn’t get off, but stayed resolutely in the slow lane, poking along at the speed limit.
    South, and more south, thirty miles gone before she clicked on her turn signal and carefully rolled up the ramp at Rice County 1, two cars behind Flowers. Flowers had to guess, and Lucas shouted into the radio, “She went to Carleton. Go left. Go east.”
    Flowers turned left, the next car went right, and Anderson turned left behind Flowers. Carleton was off to the east in Northfield, but they’d already gone past the Northfield exit; still, she might be familiar with the countryside around it, Lucas thought, and that had been a better bet than the open countryside to the west.
    Now they had a close tag on her, but from the front. Flowers slowly pulled away, leading her into the small town of Dundas; but just before the town, she turned south on County 8, and Flowers was yelling, “I’m coming back around,” and Shrake said, “I got her, I got her.”
    Well back, now. Not many cars out, and all but Lucas had been close to her, and she might pick one of them out. They kept south, onto smaller and narrower roads, Shrake breaking away, Jenkins moving up, until she disappeared into a cornfield.
    “Whoa. Man, she turned,” Jenkins said. “She’s, uh, off the road, hang back guys, I’m gonna go on past…”
    Hadn’t rained in a few days, and when Jenkins went past the point where she’d disappeared, he looked down a dirt track, weeds growing up in the middle, and called back, “She looks like she’s going into a field. I don’t know, man…you can probably track her by the dust coming up.”
    “That’s not a road,” Lucas said, peering at his atlas. “Doesn’t even show up here; I think it must go down to the river.”
    “Maybe she’s going canoeing,” Flowers said. “This is a big canoe river.”
    Lucas said into a live radio, “Ah, holy shit.”
    “What?”
    “It’s the Cannon River, man.”
    “Yeah?”
    “The money that got laundered in Las Vegas, on the quilts—it went to Cannon, Inc., or Cannon Associates, or something like that.”
    Shrake came back: “Dust cloud stopped. I think she’s out of her car; or lost. What do you want to do?”
    “Watch for a minute,” Lucas said. “Flowers, you’re wearing boots?”
    “Yup.”
    “I got my gators,” Shrake said. “I didn’t think we were gonna be creeping around in a cornfield.”
    “Gators for me,” Jenkins said.
    “You guys get a truckload deal?” Flowers asked.
    “Shut up,” Lucas said. “Okay, Flowers and I are gonna walk in there. Jenkins and Shrake get down the opposite ends of the road. If she comes out, you’ll be tracking her.”
    “How do we hide the cars?” Flowers asked.
    “Follow me,” Lucas said. He went on south, a hundred yards, a hundred and fifty, found an access point, and plowed thirty feet into the cornfield. The corn didn’t quite hide the truck, but it wouldn’t be obvious what kind it was, unless you rode right up to it. Flowers followed him in and got out of his state car shaking his head. “Gonna be one pissed-off farmer.”
    “Bullshit. He’ll get about a hundred dollars a bushel from us,” Lucas said. “Let’s go.”
    Flowers said, “I got two bottles of water in the car.”
    “Get them. And get your gun,”