Free Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay Page B

General Store. We wound our way up 9 North. I wasn't pushing it. I didn't want to arrive too early, and I didn't want to somehow speed past Ted's without seeing it.
    As it turned out, it would have been hard to miss. It was the only thing along that wooded stretch of highway. It was a two-story white building set about fifty feet back from the road, a full set of self-serve gas pumps out front. I hit the blinker, came slowly off the main road, tires crunching on some loose gravel.
    "So this is it," Jan said. "We just wait?"
    I looked at the dashboard clock. Five minutes before five. "I guess." There were some parking spots off to one side, an old Plymouth Volare in one of them. I swung the car around in front of them, backed in alongside the Volare so I'd have a good view of the highway in both directions, then powered down the windows and turned off the engine.
    There wasn't a lot of traffic. We'd be able to spot an approaching white pickup long before it turned in to the lot.
    "What do you think this source is going to have for you?" Jan asked.
    I shrugged. "I don't know. Private memos? Printouts of emails? Recorded phone calls? Maybe nothing. Maybe there're just things she wants to tell me. But it'll be a lot better if she has some actual proof. The Standard's not going to run a word if I haven't got this thing cold."
    Jan rubbed her forehead.
    "You okay?"
    "Just getting a headache. I've had one most of the way up. I feel like I could nod right off, to tell you the truth."
    "You got some aspirin or Tylenol or something?"
    "Yeah, in my purse. I'm going to go in, get a bottle of water or something else to drink. You want anything?"
    "An iced tea?" I said.
    Jan nodded, got out of the car, and went into the store. I kept my eyes on the road. A red Ford pickup drove past. Then a green Dodge SUV. A motorcyclist.
    My dashboard clock read 5 p.m. on the dot. So she had ten minutes from now to show up.
    Whoever she was.
    A truck loaded with logs rumbled past. A blue Corvette convertible, top down, went screaming by, heading for Lake George.
    Then, coming from the north, a pickup truck.
    It was a couple of hundred yards away, pale in color. The way the afternoon sun was filtering through the trees, I wasn't sure whether it was white, pale yellow, or maybe silver.
    But as the truck approached, I could see that it was a Ford, and that it was white.
    The truck's turn signal went on. It waited for a Toyota Corolla coming from the south to get past, then turned into the lot. The truck rolled up to the self-serve pumps.
    My heart was pounding.
    The driver's door opened, and a man in his sixties stepped out. Tall, thin, unshaven, in a plaid work shirt and jeans. He slipped his credit card into the pump and started filling up.
    He never once looked in my direction.
    "Shit," I said.
    I looked back out to the highway, just in time to see a blue Buick sedan drive by.
    "Hello," I said under my breath.
    The car was driving under the speed limit. Slow enough to take in what was going on at Ted's Lakeview General Store, but fast enough not to look like he was going to stop.
    The thing was, I didn't know that it was a "he." The windows were well tinted. It might have been more than one "he." It might have been a "she."
    The car kept heading north and eventually disappeared.
    It was 5:05 p.m.
    Jan came out of the store, a Snapple iced tea in one hand, a bottle of water in the other. She was talking even before she opened the passenger door.
    "I'm in there and I'm thinking, what if he sees his contact and ends up driving away, leaving me here?"
    "There's been no sign," I said. The white pickup at the pump had left before Jan returned. "But there was one interesting thing."
    "Yeah?" she said, handing me my iced tea and cracking the plastic cap on the water.
    "I saw what I think was our blue Buick driving by."
    Jan said, "You're shittin' me."
    "No. It was headed north and kept on going."
    "Do you know for sure it was the same car?"
    I shook my head. "But