He smiles, feels something stir within him. “Thanks, babe. You’re gonna make the rest of my shift fly right by.”

His wife whispers, “Be safe, come home, okay?”

“Okay.”

He picks up the driver’s license, registration, and Armed Forces ID from the seat, and just waits one more second.

What’s bothering him?

The Wrangler is parked, the engine is off, the driver is sitting there with both hands up on the steering wheel—

That’s it.

She’s sitting there, hands up on the steering wheel, like she’s guilty of something, like she’s done something wrong and she doesn’t want to raise any suspicions.

Huh, he thinks, opening the cruiser door. Sorry, driver, you’ve just done the opposite.

Hancock slowly walks to the Wrangler, one hand holding the paperwork, his other on the butt of his pistol, ready to pull it free in a second’s notice.

CHAPTER 32

I LOOK again at the highway patrolman coming at me via my Jeep’s side-view mirror, and his face is still flat, impassive, and I don’t like it. He seems to be trying to look cool and collected, and it’s having the opposite effect on me.

My right hand is still curved around the Ruger revolver.

I start to tear up.

This cop doesn’t know it, but whatever decision he’s going to make in the next sixty seconds or so is going to determine whether he gets shot on the side of this empty Tennessee highway.

Hancock positions himself again safely behind the open window, and passes in the paperwork to the driver, who seems very relieved to get it back, and then he lowers his head and says, “Everything looks fine, miss.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You in the Army?”

“I am.”

“What’s your rank, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Captain.”

“Wow, that’s impressive,” he says, looking again in the rear seat, seeing the stuffed duffel bag, and then back to the passenger’s seat, with open maps and atlases on top of the black leather bag.

Where her hand is resting, inside.

All right, then.

He pulls his pistol free but does so quietly and without moving much, so the driver won’t notice. “Mind telling me where you’re going, ma’am?”

A slight hesitation. “Chattanooga.”

“Really? I didn’t know there was an Army base in Chattanooga.”

“There isn’t,” she says. “I’m taking a few days’ leave, meeting up with an old girlfriend of mine from school. Going to spend a few days relaxing and pampering ourselves at a hotel.”

“Uh-huh,” he says, the pistol calmly in his hand.

The duffel bag.

He imagines his wife, LuLu, spending a few days with a girlfriend. Would she just dump a bunch of clothes into some ratty duffel bag? Or pack up nice and neat?

Enough.

Hancock steps back, brings up his pistol, and says in a clear and loud voice, “Ma’am, show me your hands. And then exit the vehicle.”

No reply.

“Ma’am?”

Then the damnedest thing happens. From the driver’s side-view mirror he can make out her face, and she’s starting to cry.