Virgil hit speed dial to Pescoli. “He’s on the move.”
“Where?” she asked, her own voice rising. “What the hell is happening?”
“He did it, he burned the place. Where is the team?”
“It’s there. It should be there.”
“Oh, crap. Drake’s gone for the Jeep,” he said, watching as Drake hopped into the rig and tore out, spraying gravel and speeding away, not toward the main road and into the SWAT team.
“He’s in the Jeep, heading away from the main road. Driving toward the dead end. Where is he going?”
He watched the vehicle stop at the Weekses’ place, though with the coming darkness and trees, his sight line wasn’t clear. He heard shouting and within seconds flames shot skyward.
“He just blew up the Weekses’ mobile home.”
“Where is he? Still there?” she asked, her voice tense.
“I can’t see. Call Burch. Tell him.”
She hung up and Virgil said to Johnson, “Bet we find a body in Weekses’ place.”
“No bet,” Johnson said.
Below them, they spied the headlights of what had to be Drake’s Jeep, heading due west, away from the main road, toward the dead end.
“Where the fuck is he going?”
Virgil had a sinking feeling. He called Pescoli and when she picked up, said, “Is there some kind of timber road at the end of the dead end? A logging or mining road? Something that no one uses?”
He heard the yelling of the SWAT team now.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” There was dread in her voice. “Yes. The Long Mining company had some access road here, been closed for years.”
“Why else take off in the Jeep? Why torch the BMW? The faster vehicle.”
“I’ll call Burch.”
Again she rang off.
“You’re probably right,” Johnson, who’d overheard his part of the conversation, said.
“Here come the feds.”
Below them the SWAT team streamed up the road toward the burning buildings, in good military order.
One minute too late.
• • •
REGAN WAS WAITING IN HER Jeep when flowers called again. He gave it to her in a nutshell. The burning buildings, the stranded SWAT team, his belief that there might be a back way out.
“And he’s got a rifle. I think he couldn’t let the rifle burn, because we’d still be able to check it, and he doesn’t know we never found a slug when Cain was shot.”
“I’m going,” she said. “No way is he getting out of here.”
“Careful,” Flowers said. He made no effort to talk her out of it, though she’d be one-on-one with Drake. “Don’t forget the rifle. He’s armed.”
She didn’t know of a back road out but knew if there was one, Drake couldn’t go east because of the river and the bluff on the far side. He’d have to go west, sooner or later, to cut the highway, and it probably wouldn’t be far.