Free Storm Front by John Sandford Page B

coming up in the rearview mirror, and it gave off a certain vibration. He said, “Shoot,” and looked around the interior of the truck for a baseball cap—anything but the straw hat he’d been wearing—saw nothing handy, but then spotted a farm driveway coming up. He stood on the brake and swerved down the drive, and pulled up toward the house.
    “This is it?” Yael asked, frowning. Instead of an old farmhouse, they were looking at a newer ranch-style house with an above-ground swimming pool and a children’s play set in the side yard.
    “No. I’m just . . .” Virgil was watching the mirror, and fifteen seconds later, Ma Nobles went by in her pickup. As far as Virgil could tell, she never looked down the drive. He put the truck in reverse, backed down the drive, and edged out to the highway. “The woman in the truck ahead of us . . . I’m interested in where she’s going.”
    “This is not about Jones?”
    “No, it’s a different case. Be patient, this won’t take long.”
    —
    T HE HIGHWAY RAN PARALLEL to the Minnesota River, where Ma and her son had allegedly stashed the fake barn lumber. Virgil stayed well back and they drove along four miles, then five, and finally Ma turned north on a gravel road toward the river. Virgil pulled to the shoulder of the road, hooked his iPad out of the pocket on the back of the passenger seat, and called up a satellite view of the area.
    “No bridge down there,” he said. “The road does go along the river for a while.”
    “She made a lot of dust on that road. If you go down there, she could see it.”
    They never had a chance. Ma’s truck reappeared at the corner, and she turned toward them. As she went by, she smiled, twiddled her fingers at Virgil, and continued back toward town.
    “She saw us,” Yael said.
    “I was almost sure she didn’t,” Virgil said. “She never looked at us when she turned off.”
    “Then . . . she has an outlook. They saw us coming behind, they saw us go to the shoulder, they telephoned her.”
    “Lookout, not outlook,” Virgil said. “Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. Which means the real turnoff is somewhere between here and the driveway we turned down. That’s helpful.”
    “She won’t be going there now.”
    “No. And Jones’s place ought to be about a half-mile up the road.”
    —
    J ONES ’ S PLACE WAS just what Virgil had expected from Crawford’s tax-roll information. The house was old, and in poor shape: an early twentieth-century frame farmhouse in need of new paint, new roof, new windows.
    New everything.
    A garage at the end of the driveway had a hayloft and was in the same shape; a machine shed farther down the drive was falling apart, and a head-high stone foundation was all that remained of what had once been a barn. All of it stood on what looked like ten acres, most of it covered with lumpy fescue and knee-high weeds. A cluster of old, arthritic apple trees stood to one side of the house, while overgrown bridal wreath and lilac bushes lined the driveway. A “For Sale” sign, with a “Reduced” card fixed to the top, faced the highway, and looked as though it had been there for a while.
    A black ragtop Jeep sat in the driveway.
    “Here we go,” Virgil said. He pulled in behind the Jeep, to within inches of its back bumpers, pinning it between two lilacs. If anyone managed to get to it, to flee, they’d have to go forward and then across the front yard to get out. Virgil popped the door, got his pistol out of the back, and stuck it in his belt at the small of his back.
    Yael was pointing at the front door like a Weimaraner. Virgil said, “There’ll be a side door. That’s where you go in.”
    She said, “Yes?”
    She and Virgil walked down the driveway and as they did, a slender dark-haired woman with green eyes walked out of the side door and asked, “Can I help you?”
    Virgil took her in. She was pretty in a reserved way, and when their eyes met, they went “clank,” like eyes