No Immunity

herself carefully forward and into the cab, slipped the gearshift into reverse.
    In her mind she saw the engine starting, feeding power to the back wheels evenly, the back wheels taking hold, and the truck rolling gracefully back onto the road.
    She turned on the engine and eased up on the clutch. The truck groaned.
    “Goddamn you, Jesse, you cheap bastard!”
    The truck lurched again. She could hear the shriek of the wheels as they spun backward, the dull groan as they dug into the ground. The truck jolted back hard. The engine stalled.
    The last jolt had brought all four wheels onto firm ground.
    The fear and panic she had pushed aside engulfed her. She sat, heart pounding against her chest wall, chest wall banging into air that felt like cement. She reached for the handle to roll down the window and cool herself off and almost had the pane lowered before good sense returned. She wasn’t going to die in a desert mine shaft, but on the other hand she was still in the middle of the desert on a road that was leading nowhere. She had almost forgotten about Sheriff Fox and her escape from him at the mortuary. This was still his territory and he’d still be looking for her. In the open, empty land the sound of her engine would reverberate for miles.
    Jeff Tremaine had vanished. “Jeff’s in deep enough,” Connie had said. Deep in something connected to the dead woman? Connie wanted her out of town to protect him. Were the stakes high enough for Connie to kill her? She would find that out face-to-face, or die trying.
    She turned on the engine and headed in the direction Connie had taken.

CHAPTER 34

    “It’s like looking for a pebble on the track while you’re sprinting to the finish line,” Reston Adcock grumbled. He could barely hear himself over the noise of the Cessna’s engine. Any other time he’d be so caught up in flying, he’d feel the roar flowing over him like air over a wing. He loved the whole gestalt of soaring over mountains small as the ridges on his knuckles and men too tiny to see, the cool, round feel of the throttle giving way to his hand, the instruments responding to attitude and altitude. Takeoffs posed the most danger, but landings were the real challenge, and that first notch of the flaps was when he really came alive. Oil exploration used to be like that. But now the big challenges were financial. He wasn’t driving through the forests gauging the spot to set the explosives, he was driving to the visa office greasing the palm to get his operatives into the country. He wasn’t watching for poisonous snakes ready to drop from branches, he was looking over his shoulder for spies from Sunoco, BP, Phillips, Nihonco. Now if he flew the Cessna at all, it was likely to be over the flats to Oklahoma City or Houston, as exciting as driving an empty freeway with cruise control.
    Even this flight would have been a no-brainer if it weren’t for Simkin.
    He keyed the mike to activate Simkin’s runway lights. As soon as he spotted the two strips of light, he pulled back on power and when his air speed was within flap range, put on the first notch. All thoughts of Simkin were gone now as he focused on the sequence of bringing the plane down on the dim, rough dirt.
    But as soon as he had shut down the engine and pushed open the door, it was Simkin who was on his mind. And there he was, running like a bullmastiff toward the plane. Adcock had barely lowered himself to the ground when Simkin clapped a thick arm around his shoulder. Simkin’s breath was coming in huffs. “Come on, we’ve got to move fast. There’s been a problem. Car’s over there.”
    Adcock looked around. The strip lights had run their time limit and gone out. There was no light in any direction, and he knew he could spot one miles away. “Problem, how could there be any—”
    “Navy. I told you this was their land, right?”
    “Near their land, you said.”
    “Well, see, normally they don’t care. They’ve got close to a million acres here. Don’t need more than a city block for their office and barracks. Not like they can dock a destroyer or a nuclear sub here.”
    Simkin was wandering. Adcock had forgotten that infuriating habit of his. The guy lived alone. He could talk to himself all day, as much as he loved hearing the sound of his own voice. If Adcock didn’t cut him off—“So what’s with the navy now?”
    “I don’t know, Resty, not exactly. Whatever they do here they keep dead quiet. Maybe it’s