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ready for a big flood of tears. Like she was tragically disappointed, maybe with him, maybe with herself.
    “You must think I’m crazy,” she said.
    He turned his head and looked hard at her, top to toe. Strong slim legs, strong slim arms, the expensive dress. It was riding up on her thighs, and he could see her bra strap at her shoulder. It was snow white against the color of her skin. She had clean combed hair and trimmed painted nails. An elegant, intelligent face, tired eyes.
    “I’m not crazy,” she said.
    Then she looked straight at him. Something in her face. Maybe an appeal. Or maybe hopelessness, or desperation.
    “It’s just that I’ve dreamed about this for a month,” she said. “My last hope. It was a ridiculous plan, I guess, but it’s all I had. And there was always the chance it would work, and with you I think maybe it could, and now I’m screwing it up by coming across like a crazy woman.”
    He paused a long time. Minutes. He thought back to a pancake house he’d seen in Lubbock, right across the strip from his motel. It had looked pretty good. He could have crossed the street, gone in there, had a big stack with bacon on the side. Lots of syrup. Maybe an egg. He would have come out a half hour after she blew town. He could be sitting next to some cheerful trucker now, listening to rock and roll on the radio. On the other hand, he could be bruised and bleeding in a police cell, with an arraignment date coming up.
    “So start over,” he said. “Just say what you’ve got to say. But first, drive us out of this damn ditch. I’m very uncomfortable. And I could use a cup of coffee. Is there anyplace up ahead where we could get coffee?”
    “I think so,” she said. “Yes, there is. About an hour, I think.”
    “So let’s go there. Let’s get a cup of coffee.”
    “You’re going to dump me and run,” she said.
    It was an attractive possibility. She stared at him, maybe five long seconds, and then she nodded, like a decision was made. She put the transmission in D and hit the gas. The car had front-wheel drive, and all the weight was on the back, so the tires just clawed at nothing and spun. Gravel rattled against the underbody and a cloud of hot khaki dust rose up all around them. Then the tires caught and the car heaved itself out of the ditch and bounced up over the edge of the blacktop. She got it straight in the lane, and then she floored it and took off south.
    “I don’t know where to begin,” she said.
    “At the beginning,” he said. “Always works best that way. Think about it, tell me over coffee. We’ve got the time.”
    She shook her head. Stared forward through the windshield, eyes locked on the empty shimmering road ahead. She was quiet for a mile, already doing seventy.
    “No, we don’t,” she said. “It’s real urgent.”

    Fifty miles southwest of Abilene, on a silent county road ten miles north of the main east-west highway, the Crown Victoria waited quietly on the shoulder, its engine idling, its hood unlatched and standing an inch open for better cooling. All around it was flatness so extreme the curvature of the earth was revealed, the dusty parched brush falling slowly away to the horizon in every direction. There was no traffic, and therefore no noise beyond the tick and whisper of the idling engine and the heavy buzz of the earth baking and cracking under the unbearable heat of the sun.
    The driver had the electric door mirror racked all the way outward so he could see the whole of the road behind him. The Crown Vic’s own dust had settled and the view was clear for about a mile, right back to the point where the blacktop and the sky mixed together and broke and boiled into a silvery shimmering mirage. The driver had his eyes focused on that distant glare, waiting for it to be pierced by the indistinct shape of a car.
    He knew what car it would be. The team was well briefed. It would be a white Mercedes Benz, driven by a man on his own toward an