Heat Lightning

her butt and legs had weighed on him. Not a tease, because she hadn’t been wiggling around or anything, but the feeling was there, and lingering.

He thought about Janey, probably home alone and lonesome. And he thought, That would be wrong, Virgil.

But would it really be wrong to bring a little warmth and comfort to a lonely woman? To help someone out who needed…

What a load of self-serving, hypocritical BS.

Mai Sinclair, he thought. Pretty damn good.

9

THE SCOUT sat in the back of a two-year-old white Chevy van, in a cluster of cars under a spreading oak, on Edgecumbe down from the corner at Snelling, watching John Wigge’s house.

Waiting for the lights to go out. Waiting to go to bed. He’d been there waiting, for four hours, since Wigge got home.

The house was a single-story brick-and-shingle affair surrounded by a close-cropped lawn. A tough nut to crack. Wigge was an ex-cop, now the vice president of a high-end private security agency, and he’d taken advantage of the job: there were motion detectors, glass-break alarms, magnetic window sensors that would start screaming with any movement at all. The security panel, set into the wall near the back door, looked like it could launch the space shuttle.

Wigge had taken part in the meeting at Sanderson’s, with Sanderson and Bunton and the unknown man in the backseat of Wigge’s car. With Bunton on the run, Wigge was the next target-but he’d have to be taken outside the house. Inside the house, he had too many advantages.

Now, if he’d just go to bed, they could start again tomorrow.

THE SHOOTER was two blocks from the scout. He sat in silence, not moving. No iPod, no headphones, no book, though he couldn’t have read in the dark anyway. He needed none of that, the artificial support, when he could simply run his memories, smile with them, cry with them, and all the time, all five senses could reach out over the landscape, looking for targets…

Though, when he thought about it, had he ever used taste? He reached back through his memories… and was still there when the light came on in Wigge’s garage.

That was one weakness in Wigge’s security, and the scout had noticed it earlier and brought it to the shooter’s attention. The garage was connected directly to the house, so Wigge could get out and into his car without being seen. But he had a garage door opener with an automatic overhead light. As soon as he touched the button to lift the door, the light went on. If he did that from the garage, rather than from inside the car, he’d be exposed, if only for a moment or two.

The shooter was in the back of the van, in a legal parking space, with the rifle on the floor beside him. When the light came on in the garage, he reacted instantly, dropping the window with one jab of his finger, swiveling the gun up…

The cell phone burped: no sign of life in the garage. The shooter picked up the phone, and the scout said, “He’s in the car,” and “He’s moving.”

And here it came, a big black GMC sport utility vehicle with a ton of chrome and gray-tinted windows of the kind popularized by the Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq. Wigge backed out, paused, watched the garage door all the way down, then backed into the street, aimed at Snelling, and drove away. The shooter waited until it turned the corner, then started after it.

His cell phone beeped, and he put it to his ear, and the scout said, “Straight up Snelling.”

The shooter saw the truck again as it turned down the ramp onto I-94, headed east. He was ten seconds behind it.

JOHN WIGGE was a big red-faced man, bullet-headed and bullet-brained. He’d retired with a full pension from the St. Paul cops, where he’d spent most of his career working Vice. His nickname had been R-A, pronounced “ARR-AYY,” which stood for Resisting Arrest. Sell dope in his territory without Wigge’s okay, run a hooker without a nod from Wigge, and there was a good chance that you’d resist arrest and get your head busted, or an arm or a leg. He’d walked right up to the edge of criminal charges a few times, but he’d always walked away again.

A different proposition than Sanderson or Utecht. Sanderson was like a banty rooster, but a banty rooster was still a chicken. Wigge was not.

Still, the shooter could take him. There was no question about that. If he could get Wigge alone for thirty seconds, or even ten seconds. He had a gun, a lead-weighted sap, a roll of duct tape. Sometimes you had to take calculated risks; and sometimes, if you work at it hard enough, you get lucky.

Wigge merged left, leaving I-94 to take I-35 north, staying in the left lane, picking up speed. Going somewhere. The shooter settled in one lane to Wigge’s right, and fell back until he could see only the top of Wigge’s truck, and let the ex-cop pull him up the highway.

And they kept going, out of the metro. The shooter got on the phone, said, “He’s past 694, still going north,” and the scout came back: “I’m coming up behind you. I’ll take it for a while.”

The scout was in a new rented Audi A6, gave the shooter a wave as he went past. A minute later on the phone: “Okay, I’ve got him.”

They rolled in the loose formation, through the night, then the scout came up again, “He’s slowing down, he may be looking-I’m going on past.”

The shooter slowed, slowed. The scout called, “I’m past him, still going away. He’s definitely looking, he’s going maybe fifty.”

The shooter slowed to fifty, wondered briefly if Wigge had a trailing car. Well, if he had, there was nothing to be done.

The scout: “I’m off. I’ll let him get past me… Okay. He’s still up ahead, still slower than anything else on the road. Look for a trailing car…”

The shooter couldn’t see a trailing car. Couldn’t see Wigge, either.

The scout: “I’m back on. I can see him, way up ahead… I’m gaining on him, again.” Then: “Okay, he’s picking it up. He’s picking it up. Really picking it up…”

They played tag, letting Wigge out of sight between exits, a delicate task made easier by the GPS video/map screens in the Audi. Thirty miles out of St. Paul; forty miles; coming up to fifty. The scout: “He’s getting off. He’s getting off at the rest stop. I have to go by, it’s over to you. I’ll come back quick as I can.”

The shooter slowed again, back to fifty, and then moved onto the shoulder of the highway and stopped. He didn’t want to pull into the parking lot, then have to sit in the truck without getting out. Wigge would be watching the vehicles coming in from behind, which was why the scout kept going. If the shooter waited, he might lose him, but he had to take the chance.

He made himself wait three minutes, then pulled back onto the highway. Another minute to the rest stop, two lanes, one for eighteen-wheelers, one for cars. The rest stop pavilion was a round brick building, sitting in a puddle of light, with a bunch of newspaper stands out front. A couple of kids were wandering around, and a couple of adults, killing time while somebody peed.

And there was Wigge, out of his truck, walking down the sidewalk, away from the pavilion, under a row of dim ball lights. Farther on, sitting on a picnic table, was the Indian, Bunton.

Jackpot.

THE SHOOTER called the scout: “We’ve got Bunton.”

His mind was racing. There were a number of techniques for capturing two men, but the conditions here were difficult. He would need to run a dialogue on them; he would need to convince them that they might save their lives with cooperation…

As he watched, looking at Wigge’s back as Wigge strolled down the sidewalk, Bunton got up, stretched, and