Jesse heard the crack in her voice and remembered her statement in the hospital. Her father had been murdered, and she’d tracked down his killer. He wanted to ask questions but sensed this wasn’t the time.

“The grassy airstrip is on a farm owned by Curt Foster, a retired Air Force colonel. His runway only handles small craft. I’ve a part interest in a Cessna 172.”

“But if we’re forty minutes from the airfield and then have to travel from a Richmond airport to the Finch house, shouldn’t we have just driven?”

“I want to log the flying hours. More important, no one can follow us through the air.”

“Who would do that?”

Ethel took her eyes off the road to face him. “Who indeed? That is the question.”

Jesse didn’t have an answer. They rode in silence with Ethel checking her rearview mirror every few minutes. When they were on I-66 West, Jesse retrieved the mugs and thermal bag. He gave Ethel her coffee, placed his in a cupholder, opened the bag and found a spoon and reusable glass jar of granola mixed into yogurt. There were also two bananas and two protein bars.

The coffee seemed to bring Ethel out of her pensive mood. “I thought we’d save the bananas and bars for the return flight. We probably won’t have time for lunch.”

“Does Mrs. Finch know we’re coming?”

“No. So that’s going to be delicate. I expect Susan’s sister might be staying with her. They’ll be making preliminary arrangements, but I’m hoping they’ll be based at home since things are uncertain as to when Jonathan’s body will be released. Susan and I had met several times before and she asked that I be her contact with the Secret Service throughout this ordeal. That should let me ask some unofficial questions with the goal of finding this backup drive you think might exist.”

“I’ll follow your lead,” Jesse said.

“Good. But be prepared to play with LEGOs and Tinkertoys.”

The landscape along I-66 changed from glass office parks to tract houses to rolling hills. Ethel exited onto Highway 29 and then branched off onto backroads that meandered through horse country. At a silver mailbox marked “FOSTER,” she turned onto a narrow blacktop bordered on either side by split-rail fences.

A farmhouse and complex of barns and stables lay a quarter mile ahead. Jesse saw fifteen to twenty horses grazing in the left pasture. The elegant animals looked like Thoroughbreds. The right-hand pasture was split in the middle with a fenced-in strip of thick, mowed grass. A windsock hung limply from a pole rising thirty feet above its anchoring fence post.

“Is that the runway?” Jesse asked.