She got out and went to the restroom, and then walked through the arch leading into the food court. She loaded a hamburger, french fries, and a soft drink onto her tray, and added a big cup of coffee with a lid to take with her.

As she sat down to eat, she looked at the big clock on the opposite wall. She had been driving for four hours. She should start looking for a hotel soon. Six hours was a sensible limit. Any more and she might start getting lazy-eyed and stupid. Driving across the country was something to be done with a partner, not alone. It occurred to her that everything she was doing would have been better with a partner. She ate and drank and took her coffee out to the SUV. She arranged everything—coffee cup, jacket, purse, sunglasses—the way she wanted them, started the engine, and eased ahead.

She stopped to refill the gas tank at the station on the far end of the parking lot, and then accelerated up the long entrance lane and launched the SUV onto the turnpike. During her stop the sun had disappeared beyond the horizon. The sky ahead had an orange-red tinge, and the sky she saw in the rearview mirror was already deepening to indigo.

Her large cup of coffee was in the cup holder on the console by her right hand. She thought about the six murders she had committed so far. She had been forced to take Weiss when she had, even though it was not the best time for her. It had taken her some days afterward to realize that it probably had been the best time for her. Weiss was an electronics wizard. Before he would kidnap a girl in a small, open parking lot, he had neutralized the surveillance cameras above the parking lot. She had left his body in the trunk of his own car in his garage, and it might be months, or even years, before he was found. Nobody had been looking anymore except her.

The mess in Buffalo had been terrible. She had gotten Stella Wizshinski, a good woman and a sister cop, murdered in the search for Panko. Nothing could make up for that. She had killed the two men who had killed Stella, but that didn’t buy anything for Stella. And now Leah was being protected from apprehension by the arson fire in the print shop. There could be no trace of her prints, DNA, or even any image on any hidden camera that hadn’t been burned, and the gun she’d used was the numberless Glock that couldn’t be traced.