“Yeah. Be right over,” Lucas said.
Sherwood was looking in the windows of the oversized SUV when Lucas got there. Lucas got out of the Cayenne, walked over to the big truck. Sherwood shook his head and said, “Completely and totally empty. Not even a piece of paper. Didn’t even bother to lock the doors.”
Lucas looked inside. The truck had a central console and he saw a key fob sitting in a cup holder.
“Hoping it’d get stolen,” Lucas said. He retrieved the key fob andlocked the truck. The mall was a couple of hundred yards south of them. Lucas knew the place was studded with cameras, and even if they couldn’t make out the woman’s features, if a camera had caught her, they might be able to see who picked her up, or which way she went.
“The Bloomington cops have a precinct here,” Lucas said. “Maybe they can get us some video.”
“You haven’t suggested calling St. Vincent again,” Sherwood said.
“It’d take him an hour to get an agent here,” Lucas said. “They’d do the same thing we’d do, so why don’t we go ahead and do it now? We can call him later.”
“You’ve not only annoyed him in the past, you’ll annoy him in the future.”
“A burden I’ll have to bear,” Lucas said. “Besides, they’re probably busier than hell at that farmhouse.”
• • •
The Bloomington copsdid have access to the security cameras around the building, and after some winding and rewinding, spotted the QX-60 rolling into the distant lot.
“There she is,” Sherwood muttered, as the Russian woman got out of the SUV and walked briskly away. She was no longer fashionably dressed, but was wearing what looked like a sweatshirt or sweater over jeans.
“Won’t be going far in that outfit,” one of the Bloomington cops said. “She’d freeze her tits off.”
“Maybe she’s being picked up…” Lucas said.
But they saw no sign that she was looking for someone to pick her up. They tracked her on different cameras past several buildings,until she disappeared to the west, into a residential neighborhood. When they last saw her, she was jogging.
“Not going to the airport,” Lucas said.
“No. She could have parked a lot closer, if that’s where she was going,” Sherwood said. “She’s going the wrong direction anyway.”
Lucas: “But if thatiswhere she’s going, she’s now at thirty-five thousand feet.” He touched the screen: the woman had left the SUV at 8:40. They were now at 12:26, almost four hours later.
“It’s nine degrees out there, with a ten-mile-an-hour wind, according to the National Weather Service,” Sherwood said, looking at his phone. “That’s a windchill factor of minus five. I believe our officer friend is correct: her tits are definitely endangered.”
“Let’s go sit in my truck. I’ve got an iPad,” Lucas said. “Let’s see what we have in the way of motels around here, in the direction she was running.”
“Think we should call St. Vincent?”
“We don’t need to bother him yet,” Lucas said. “We can call him when we figure out what we’re doing.”
• • •
They sat inthe Porsche, called up Google Maps, found there was no good way to cross the interstate highway on foot, and started looking for motels south of I-494. There were thirteen, and possibly fourteen—two were not differentiated on the video map—within reasonable jogging distance. Lucas suggested that Sherwood call St. Vincent, because he had Washington cred, and Lucas tended to piss off the FBI man.
When Sherwood called, St. Vincent answered, the impatience tight in his voice: “We’re moving on them now. What do you want?”
“You think they’re at the farmhouse?” Sherwood asked.
“We’re closing on the most likely one now, there’s no car, but the car is probably in Kansas City, so…”
“We found the car the woman was driving this morning. She left it in a parking lot at the Mall of America. We tracked her on security cameras, and she was jogging and running west when we last saw her.”
“Probably picked up,” St. Vincent said.
“Maybe, but there are about a dozen motels within running distance. If getting out of the farmhouse and finding a new hideout was what all that car-driving was about, she could be holed up in one of them. Lucas and I could do a recon…”
