“We had a call from a neighbor,” the cop said.
“If you want somebody to verify our investigation, you could call Casey Pugh,” Letty said. “We were here a couple days ago, when the dog bit the Midland investigator.”
“I heard about the dog,” the cop said. “You got something going on right this minute?”
Letty said, “Yes, unless our targets see a cop car with flashing lights. Which would make it harder to run our surveillance.”
“Sorry. I’ll move on. I’ll call that neighbor . . .”
“Is the neighbor on this block? I’d hate to have it turn out to be the people we’re watching,” Kaiser said.
“Yes, it’s . . .” The cop gestured to a house across the street. Letty and Kaiser looked and saw a curtain move.
“Okay. Talk to Casey,” Letty said.
The cop went on his way and Kaiser said, “Hope they didn’t see that.”
“No help for it,” Letty said. “Can’t blame the cop.”
They sat for another hour, watching the needle slowly drop on the gas gauge, and then got movement. A man that Letty recognized as Duran came out of the house, followed by Crain, and they both got in Crain’s truck. An athletic woman and an unknown man—not Low—got into the Jeep. They did U-turns on the street and headed toward the interstate.
“That woman . . .” Letty said.
“Yeah.”
“Right body shape, judging from the photo in the ResistUS! book.”
“That’s something . . . and, hey, stay back,” Kaiser said. “The interstate is a pipe, once they’re in it. We don’t have to be on their bumpers.”
Letty said nothing, and a moment later, Kaiser said, “I may have mentioned that before.”
“Yes. You have,” Letty said.
“Getting snippy.”
“John . . .”
* * *
They stayed close enough to see the two vehicles, moving as a loose convoy, turn south on I-20. Maybe going to the shack, or the arroyo with the hidden truck? With Letty and Kaiser a mile and a half back, they watched as the convoy went through Pecos and Toyah and a couple other small towns, and then another fifty miles onto I-10, the Jeep leading.
“Goddamn it, we could pass them and get the Jeep’s plate, but we’d have to pass Crain first, and he saw this truck in his alley,” Letty said.
“Gonna have to do something. If they head west, like they’re going to El Paso, we’re gonna need a gas stop,” Kaiser said. He leaned over toward Letty, looking at the gas gauge. “We got maybe another eighty or hundred miles.”
The landscape got rougher and drier as they went farther south, mountains ahead, plains fading behind them; all of it was desert. Shortly after merging onto I-10, and with Kaiser and Letty still undecided about what to do, the convoy got off at a local highway, turned left under the interstate, and continued south.
“Way back, now,” Kaiser said. “Way back. Nobody else out here . . .”
Letty stayed way back, barely in touch, but close enough to see the two vehicles slow and turn off the highway on a dirt track that went east toward a range of low mountains.
“Now what?” Letty asked.
Kaiser was peering at a satellite image on his iPad. “That road goes nowhere. It’s a dead end, up in the mountains. There’s a whole snarl of tracks up there. No sign of a house or water or anything, it’s like something for off-roaders, a recreational trail.”
“Follow?”