“Internal communication, not for dissemination,” the heading said. “At 0900 September 5 two deceased males were found in a wooded area 75 yards from Highway 44 in Mark Twain National Forest, near Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Both men died violently, apparently from knife and gunshot wounds. The men have been identified by fingerprint evidence as prisoners who escaped two years ago from the federal penitentiary at Weldonville, Colorado. Their names are Edison Leonard, age 37, and Lonny Mann, age 41.”

She read the email again as she drove. She couldn’t quite take in the details, or be sure of them after a few seconds. She had no doubt that somebody had killed them in Arkansas, where they had been hiding, and dumped the bodies up in Missouri. The most obvious suspect was Lee Wolf, simply because he was probably the nearest murderer, but unless he had killed them three days ago, he wasn’t around to do it. She had been following him for two days.

If they’d been staying in a compound in the woods with the pack of armed fanatics Lee Wolf had reassembled in Arkansas, maybe they had just pissed some of them off. Or maybe they had been out in Missouri on some kind of errand, and they had offended somebody there. They had been belligerent and violent. Maybe they had just bumped into some of the wrong men to bully. Their bodies were dumped near an army base. They could have found thousands of men there that it wouldn’t be wise to start up with. She knew that she wasn’t going to understand this until the rest of the investigation was done, if ever. She put away the phone and kept her eyes on the road ahead.

A half hour later, the Subaru pulled off the highway at Shreveport. The car glided across the next intersection and into a Mobil station. One of the men got out and started a gas pump, then put the nozzle in the gas tank. The other three were on the way to the restrooms on the far side of the building. Lee Wolf was one of the three, so Leah knew she had no chance to pick him off.

Leah turned off the highway and into the rival gas station across the road and pulled up at a pump. Her rifle was in the back of the car under the floor with the spare tire. She could get her hands on it, but she was surrounded by people getting gas, buying snacks, and coming to and from the restrooms. Both gas stations had surveillance cameras.

Leah had to be closer. She pulled forward past the pumps and drove across the road to the station where the Subaru was stopped. She got out, swiped her card on the gas pump, stuck the nozzle in her gas tank to fill it, and walked.