he's tracking, and there's only one thing in the world that dog would be interested in finding, and that's Grace MacBride.'
Roadrunner was staring out the big front window as Harley eased the RV forward to keep pace with the dog. Charlie was moving at a dead run, covering ground at an astounding pace for a dog who sat upright in chairs and took his meals at the table like any other fat, slow human being.
Gino was bent over, still breathing hard, waiting for the heart attack. 'That dog nearly killed me. How far has he gone?'
'Over a mile-maybe two.'
'Jesus, he's fast.'
Roadrunner caught his breath when Charlie made an abrupt right onto a narrow dirt road.
'Harley,' he whispered. 'I know where he's going. And you gotta catch him. He's got another three miles to go, and he'll be dead by then.'
'Three miles to where?'
'I just pulled up an old deed on one of those pieces of property Hemmer owns. It has a building on it, and it's less than five miles from Four Corners.'
IT DIDN'T TAKE LONG for Grace to decide that this overgrown field was deserted, and that all the cars parked in the high grass were empty. There were two doors accessing the corrugated steel building-a large, rolling one for heavy farm equipment, and a smaller, man-sized door next to it. Both were chained and padlocked from the outside.
'Stay on her; stay down!' she'd commanded Annie when her friend had tumbled out of the car onto the ground next to Sharon, and Annie had done what Annie always did best. . , wrapped her arms around Sharon and held her still, kept her safe, just as she had held Grace on a few occasions, back in the days when she was the strong one.
While Annie and Sharon lay there next to what had once been Deputy Douglas Lee's patrol car, Grace did what had to be done. She crawled out the back door, around to the front, and pulled the man who had called himself Deputy David Diebel off the console so she could get to the radio and computer. The computer didn't work, and no one answered her desperate radio calls.
'He was telling the truth about the dead zones,' Sharon finally called up from where she lay in the comfort of Annie's arms. Except for the few times that Halloran had touched her, each erotic memory seared in her mind, she hadn't felt genuine caring from another human being in years. Annie had been holding her close-probably to keep her still and silent-but the effect was identical to when her mother had held her as a child, chasing away the demons of the night. Mute tears leaked out of her brown eyes and onto Annie's plump forearm.
While Sharon was sitting up, wiping the embarrassing tears from her cheeks, Grace was wiping blood from her fingers. The radio had been covered with it. She looked up toward the building and wondered if Diebel had been telling the truth about the landline inside. 'I'm going to try shooting off one of those padlocks.'
'There should be bolt cutters in the trunk of the patrol.'
Grace looked at Sharon, a little surprised by the strength she heard in her voice. 'You okay?'
Sharon was already on her feet, collecting her weapon from where it had fallen in the grass beside her. 'Better than that. I'm pissed.' She extended a hand to Annie to help her up, then went to the car, reached into the front seat, and popped the trunk without glancing at the body a few inches from her arm, without even letting her brain acknowledge that it was there. She wiped her hand on her slacks when she was finished, but she never looked at what she was wiping off. Grace and Annie found the bolt cutters in the trunk, then the three of them moved toward the steel building together.
The inside was pitch-black and dead silent, except for a low, distant hum that they couldn't identify. Grace wished for the flashlight, wondered where she had dropped it. She found a bank of electrical switches on the wall and started flipping them up. The annoying buzz of a hundred fluorescents Bickering to life overhead, lighting the enormous space, ended the silence.
The women just stood and stared.
Seven enormous tanker trucks were neatly parked in a row facing the big rolling door. 'Good Health Dairies' was emblazoned in bright blue across their silvery skin.
'Funny place to keep milk trucks,' Sharon murmured.
Annie was frowning. 'I thought milk trucks were those cute little white vans with the cute little bottles jangling inside.'
'These are the bulk carriers. They travel from farm to farm to pick up raw milk and transport it to the dairy . . , oh, shit. Do you think these are the trucks?'
Grace looked at the lumbering, innocent-looking things with their happy blue lettering, thinking what better way to transport something lethal without detection? She pushed the thought to the back of her mind and turned away.
An elaborate computer setup on a desk against the far wall explained the humming sound. She couldn't see the phone but guessed it had to be there. By the time Annie and Sharon joined her, she had tracked the single phone line to the back of the computer and nowhere else.
'No phone set,' she told them. 'The only hookup runs through the modem.'
Annie shrugged. 'Good enough. We'll just sign on and text message Roadrunner, who is probably out of his mind by now.' She jiggled the mouse impatiently and waited for the screen to wake up.
'Don't you need a password or something?' Sharon asked, and Annie chuckled.
'Oh, child, we have so much to teach you.' She sat down in the cracked vinyl chair, frowned at the nonsense appearing on the monitor, then lifted her hands to the keyboard.
'ANNIE, STOP!'Grace shouted suddenly.
Annie jerked her hands up and back and froze. Sharon's eyes were wide, following Grace's terrified gaze around the side of the monitor to a rectangular box of the same color. Only it wasn't exactly a box, just a whitish brick of something that looked like modeling clay, with wires that led to the back of the computer.
'Oh, shit,' Sharon whispered.
Annie was still frozen in position with her hands up by her shoulders. 'Can I move?'
Grace's voice was shaking. 'Just don't touch the keyboard or click the mouse.'
Annie pushed well away from the desk and rolled the chair to the side to see what Grace and Sharon were looking at. She didn't trust her legs yet. 'Oh, Lord in heaven, that's not Play-Doh, is it?'
Grace actually thought about it, but it didn't make sense. Why would anybody set up a dummy explosive and conceal it?
Sharon was coursing through her memories of the bomb squad demonstrating plastic explosives in her Academy class. 'It looks like the real thing.'
Annie laid a hand over her heart, as if to hold it in.
'Did you see this clock?' Sharon asked.
'What clock ?' Grace moved to get a better look at the monitor. Red numbers were blinking at the top of the screen, counting down. Three hours, thirty-seven minutes, forty-two seconds, forty-one seconds. . .
'This thing is counting down the time until ten, when the other two trucks are supposed to blow.'
Grace was staring at the monitor, speed-reading through the lines of text, taking quick, shallow breaths. 'Look at those names halfway down the screen.'
Annie and Sharon scrolled down with their eyes and saw the words that had caught Grace's attention.
Schrader-off-line Ambros-target acquired Ritter-target acquired
Grace hugged her stomach and whispered, 'Oh, Christ, not that,' then broke down and ran toward the trucks. She jumped up on a running board, peeked in the window, then ran to the next truck to do the same thing, then disappeared around the other side.
Annie and Sharon found her on the far side of the trucks, staring at the three empty spaces right next to the big rolling door. She was still clutching her stomach, but now she was rocking back and forth. 'Every one of these trucks has a small computer unit on the dash. The ones in here are turned off, but there are three trucks missing. See the tread marks? Three sets, going right out the door. Back at the lake, that soldier said the Four Corners thing was an accident-truck number one. But he was waiting for two others to get where they were supposed to be, and according to that computer, they're on target. That computer is the control. It sends the signal for the other trucks
