Rosaria waits, and then Baker says one more sentence.

“Ma’am,” Baker says, “Captain Cornwall, she killed that prisoner.”

CHAPTER 43

I CHECK my watch, see I have two hours to make my phone call to the kidnapper of my beloveds, and I’m only an hour away from Three Rivers, Texas. That gives me sixty minutes to scope out the address, do a brief surveillance, and then get the job done—freeing a prisoner from that house and taking him…well, taking him to the criminal who took my Tom and my Denise.

I allow myself a brief moment of satisfaction. The drive down from Alabama through Mississippi, Louisiana, and now Texas has been grueling. I was able to stop and sleep for a while, but there’s not much on the interstate to break up the monotony but flat farmland, swampland, and industrial landscapes clouding up the horizon. Somewhere along the way I also stopped off at a huge Walmart Supercenter to steal and switch out license plates. Not much of a camouflage, but it’s the best I can do. Twice road construction has slowed me down, but I’ve been able to make up the time without getting the attention of any law enforcement.

Now I’ve passed through the high-rise obscenity that’s Houston, and I’m on US Highway 59, heading southwest through heavy rain. Earlier I spotted the anvil shapes of heavy thunderstorm clouds racing across the flat fields, and the torrential rain has been pacing me for at least twenty minutes, the flashes of lightning in the near-black clouds reminding me of those long, dark nights at FOB Healy in Afghanistan, seeing tracer rounds emerge from the nearby rocks and ravines, as the Taliban continued their daily quest to eject the newest invaders from their homeland.

As I hear the booming thunder, I try to suppress the memories of the rocket and mortar attacks, the explosive rounds dropping in and exploding while I huddled in the bomb shelter with the other noncombatants.

The traffic has been light in the past hour or so, but now it starts to thicken. I sit up and try to stretch my aching back.

Up ahead, more taillights flickering red.

I don’t like it.

I see my speed start dropping, from seventy miles per hour to sixty to fifty and now in the forties, and I really don’t like it.

What the hell is going on?

I try to peer to the side and just see the traffic slowing down even more, the taillights flickering red and then staying steady red.

The Wrangler’s speed continues to drop.

Thirty-two.

Twenty-nine.

Twenty.

Ten.

Three.

Full stop.

Damn it!

Horns around me blare, and I just squeeze the steering wheel hard, knowing honking my horn won’t do a damn thing.

But I honk it anyway.

I wait.

All right.

Maybe a traffic accident, or a jackknifed truck, or a sinkhole in the road.

Something.

Check my watch.

Five minutes have passed. That means I’m already five miles behind.

We stay stock-still.