Storm Front

reminded Virgil of his childhood, sitting around in lawn chairs on a hot summer Fourth of July, waiting for the light to die so the fireworks could start. He called Awad three times and Bauer another three, asking, “Anything yet?” and being told, “No,” just like when he was a kid asking, “Don’t you think it’s dark enough?”
    Just as when he was a kid, the light finally died. There was a storm front off to the west, and while they couldn’t yet hear the thunder, they could see the far-distant flashes of lightning; just like when he was a kid, waiting with suppressed excitement for the big winds and the storm. Virgil changed into combat gear—jeans and a T-shirt—and with the three of them feeling restless, they all got together and cleaned up Virgil’s kitchen, keeping an eye on Ma’s truck. At eight-fifteen, the truck started to move.
    “Let’s go,” said Shrake, and he and Jenkins jogged out to their vehicles and took off. Virgil watched them go, and then called Awad a fourth time: “Anything yet?”
    “Nothing yet. We are ready here.”
    “Raj, if you guys fuck with me . . .”
    “Virgil, my friend, we are in your hands, you are not in ours,” Awad said.
    “Keep that in mind,” Virgil said, feeling a little mean.
    —
    M A TURNED onto the road outside her house, and thought,
What a great country night
. She could hear frogs in the roadside ditches, smell the humidity mixed with the gravel dust. The western sky had gone black, with flicks of lightning moving closer, but to the east, the stars were bright as headlights.
    A gorgeous night, but pregnant with the feeling that something was about to happen. She’d had the feeling before—waiting out a tornado watch, or heading out to a roadhouse late at night, wondering what would happen in the next few hours. What?
    She also had the feeling of being watched, and instead of creeping her out, it made her feel secure. Virgil was out there somewhere, she thought.
    —
    J ENKINS AND S HRAKE headed out into the countryside in their separate cars. Jenkins had the tablet tracker, kept one eye on that and one on the road. He had a radio plugged into his cigarette lighter, as did Shrake and Virgil, and they could use them like intercoms, with the press of the button.
    Ma started out going north from her house. Jenkins watched the illuminated dot crawl along a country road, then pause at a T intersection. He pushed the button on the radio and said, “She’s stopped.”
    Virgil: “Where?”
    Jenkins told him, and Virgil followed it on a Google map. “Unless she comes straight back, she’ll have to go east or west from there. If she goes east, she’ll be up against the river, and you guys will be right on top of her, and pretty quick,” he said.
    Jenkins said, “She’s moving again, she’s headed east. We’re taking 169.”
    They watched her for twenty minutes, zigzagging around the countryside, making stops, taking small roads apparently to check her back trail; eventually, apparently satisfied that she was alone, she ventured out on Highway 169 and turned south toward Jenkins and Shrake, who were less than a mile away when she made the turn.
    “We gotta get off,” Jenkins called to Shrake. “Right up ahead, whatever that is, right next to those cars.”
    They never found out what the business was, some kind of manufacturing plant, Jenkins thought. The parking lot was mostly empty, but a half-dozen cars sat facing what might have been the office area. He and Shrake pulled into the line of cars and killed their lights. Ma went by a half-minute later, and they gave her a half-mile, and then pulled out behind her.
    They all went south on the highway, until Ma slowed, then pulled into the parking lot at the same Perkins restaurant where Virgil and Ma had met the week before, to discuss lumber.
    Shrake, who was driving a pickup, pulled into the parking lot, rolled past Ma, and parked. Jenkins, in his Crown Vic, pulled off the highway, two hundred yards away, and killed his lights.
    —
    M A SAT in the parking lot for just over a minute, and Shrake called and told Virgil, “It’s another fake pickup. . . . She probably . . . Wait a minute.”
    As he was talking, a white Range Rover pulled in next to Ma’s red truck.
    “We’ve got that white Range Rover.”
    “Ah, jeez, I’m coming, I’m coming,” Virgil said. “That could be the Israeli Mossad with a gun.”
    Virgil was in his truck, waiting downtown for the nine o’clock