Doyle was rousing in the passenger seat. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, his expression blank and focusless. His mind, Wolgast knew, was reassembling his awareness of where he was. He looked back at Amy quickly, then turned to face forward again.

“Looks like some weather ahead,” he said.

The thunderheads had risen to a boil, blocking the sunset and sinking them into a premature darkness. At the horizon, beneath a shelf of clouds, a haze of rain was falling through a band of golden sunlight onto the fields.

Doyle leaned forward to examine the sky through the windshield. His voice was quiet. “How far away you think that is?”

“I guess about five miles.”

“Maybe we should get off the road.” Doyle checked his watch. “Or turn south for a while.”

Two miles later, they passed an unmarked dirt road, its edges lined with barbed-wire fencing. Wolgast stopped the car and backed up. The road crested a gentle rise and vanished into a line of cottonwoods; probably there was a river on the other side of the hill, or at least a gully. Wolgast checked the GPS; the road wasn’t on it.

“I don’t know,” Doyle said, when Wolgast showed him. “Maybe we should look for something else.”

Wolgast turned the wheel of the Tahoe and headed south. He didn’t think the road was a dead end; there would have been postal boxes at the intersection if it were. Three hundred yards later, the road narrowed to a single lane of rutted dirt. Beyond the tree line they crossed an old wooden bridge that spanned the creek Wolgast had foreseen. The evening light had gone a sallow green. He could see the storm rising above the horizon in his rearview mirror; he knew, from the blowing tips of the ditch grass on either side, that it was following them.

They had traveled another ten miles when the rain started to fall. They’d passed no houses or farms; they were in the middle of nowhere, with no cover. First just a few drops, but then, within seconds, a downpour of such force that Wolgast couldn’t see a thing. The wipers were useless. He pulled to the edge of the ditch as a huge gust of wind buffeted the car.

“What now, chief?” Doyle asked over the racket.

Wolgast looked at Amy, still pretending to sleep in the backseat. Thunder roiled overhead; she didn’t flinch. “Wait, I guess. I’m going to rest a minute.”