She walked past the car, crouched as though she had dropped something, stuck a transponder onto the bare metal gas tank, and felt the magnet stick. She pretended to pick something up and put it into her pocket, stood, and headed for the ladies’ room, going the opposite way around the building from the way the men had gone.

While Leah was in the ladies’ room, she turned to the tracking app on her phone. She saw the red dot that symbolized the transponder she’d put on the Subaru. As she watched, the red dot moved slightly, and then stopped, as though the driver was waiting for an opening in the traffic or the signal to change, and then pulled out.

The dot returned to the interstate highway and up the eastbound side.

When she returned to her car, the tank was full and the pump had clicked off. She put the nozzle back on the pump, got into the driver’s seat, and went after the Subaru. She hoped that they were going to stop and sleep somewhere, because she was having terrible trouble staying awake.

It had been a hellish trip for her. The Subaru had taken numerous side trips through dozens of small towns, driving slowly like tourists sometimes, and taking long detours through business districts. The Subaru doubled back a few times, so Leah had been afraid they might have spotted her. They had changed drivers a few times, but Leah couldn’t.

Now that she was able to follow them with her phone, she didn’t have to be close enough to see them, but she couldn’t let them get so far ahead that she lost their signal. She would go fast until she caught up, and then she’d drop back and be invisible. Leah caught up enough within the next ten minutes, saw the Subaru, slowed a bit so she couldn’t be seen, and then relied on the transponder’s signal.

She followed the Subaru from a distance. It was moving toward the Shreveport airport. The signs appeared more frequently. Finally, there was one that said, “RENTAL CAR RETURN.” The Subaru took it.

“Oh crap,” she said. It was puzzling that they were here at all. It was a destination they could have reached on the first day. Now were they going to fly somewhere?

She followed the Subaru until it swung into the lot for one of the rental car agencies. She pulled into a striped space near the entrance, jumped out, and dodged up the nearest aisle of parked cars.

As she was walking across the concrete floor of the rental structure, she could see that one man was going to fetch a car and the other three men were waiting by the rental kiosk with their luggage. One of the three was Lee Wolf. She sped up and gave them a wide berth, moving to intercept the one going for the car.