“Hey, look, man,” said an irritated voice from the back of the bus, “we’re ten minutes late. I’ve got to make a connection in Odessa.”

“Keep your shirt on,” the driver told the anxious passenger. It was none of his business where the old man wanted to get off. But he still didn’t feel good about it as he pulled back out onto the interstate. This was lonely country. He kept his eyes on the figure in the rear-view mirror until it had vanished from sight.

As soon as the rumble of the bus had been swallowed by the horizon, Jake turned to examine his surroundings. Getting off the bus outside of town had been his own idea. It was a precaution Mandy would have approved of.

Jackrabbits ruled this country, he suspected, along with coyotes and foxes and vultures. A trio of turkey buzzards made a circle in the sky off to the north, considering something dead. Not a good welcome, he thought. The landscape was flat in every direction, an endless gray plain of gravel, stunted brush and an occasional lonely mesquite. Even the road looked dirty. That made the blue sky appear all the more attractive.

It was warm but not too hot, breezy but not too windy. In another couple of months this barren desert would be transformed into a Gobi-like plateau of subzero temperatures and freezing gales.

The desolation didn’t really bother him. Jake had always liked open places. His own home had stood alone among bare rolling hills for many years. It wouldn’t be long before Riverside expanded to encroach on his little hill, he knew, surrounding it with modular housing (as the trailer people euphemistically liked to refer to their abodes), condominiums and industrial “parks.” Especially now that the dump had been cleaned up.

He marveled at the presence of barbed-wire fencing on either side of the interstate. As if there was anything out here to protect. An occasional car or big truck emerged from the vanishing point at either end of the interstate to shoot past him in blurs of color and steel and fiberglass, all in a rush to come from someplace and get somewhere else. Those traveling eastward were uniform in their indifference to his out-thrust thumb.

He didn’t relish spending the night by the side of the road. The weather could change abruptly out here. But at least no one could sneak up on him.

It was mid-afternoon when a big, boxy, four-wheel drive slowed and pulled over next to him. Bronco or Blazer or somesuch. Jake wasn’t much on model names, not since the fifties.

The young couple inside looked tired, but the girl leaned out to give Jake a cheery hello. Her hair was jet black and her cheekbones were promontories below her eyes. Part Indian, how much and of what tribe Jake couldn’t imagine.

“Car break down, old timer?”

He shook his head as he approached the truck. “Got no car. I was on a bus.”

“Well you sure should have stayed there.” Her husband sat stolidly behind the wheel, listening with interest. The truck idled roughly. “How the hell did you manage to get yourself dumped way out here?”

“Down on my luck,” Jake told her, glad he didn’t have to lie. “Had an argument with the driver, too.”

“That’s tough. Where you headed?”

Jake hesitated only briefly. If these were hirelings of those who sought him so intently they wouldn’t be bothering with this friendly small talk. They’d have tried to yank him into the truck by now.

“East,” he said simply.

“We’re on our way into Fort Worth. See if Jim here can get a job. You can ride in back if you don’t mind bouncing around with luggage, dirt and some oilfield stuff.”

“Any port in a storm,” he said gratefully. She slid forward on her seat and pulled the back toward her, making a path for him. He clambered in. Two suitcases made a serviceable if hard backrest, but there was enough room for him to stretch out.

“I’d like to offer you kids some gas money.” The engine of the truck groaned as it shifted into a higher gear and they pulled back out onto the highway. He looked around. The road was empty in both directions. No one had seen him climb into the truck.

“Thanks,” said the girl, smiling back at him. “We’re okay cashwise. Jim’s worked most of the fields between Van Horn and Beaumont. If we have any trouble we’ll sneak off the road and scavenge some drip.”

Pickett frowned. “Drip what?”

She laughed. “Explain it to him, honey.” The driver began to enlighten Jake as to the nature of what flows out of the ground in west Texas and to what uses it may be put. He was a soft-spoken, intense sort. Jake liked him right off. He liked both of them.

Huddy rubbed first the left eye, then the right, then yawned and walked over to the soda machine. After staring at the selections for a minute he turned and walked away, deciding he wasn’t really thirsty so much as he was impatient.

There was activity among the men around him. Across the street a bus was pulling into the Ft. Stockton station. Trailways. He considered the soda machine again, then checked his watch.

There was one other stop outside the city and it was also being watched, but if Pickett stepped off to get something to eat or just to stretch, Huddy suspected it would be here in town.

He’d sent Ruth back to Houston to wait for word from him and to check on the niece’s family. Actually he just wanted her out of the way. She distracted the team he’d assembled, and he didn’t want any distractions around when they contacted Pickett again.

There would be no overt approach this time. There were two men in the crowd milling around the back of the station who carried loaded hypodermics in their pockets. One or the other would surreptitiously slip up behind Pickett and inject him before he even knew he was being attacked. It should all be over in seconds. The liquid in the hypos was very powerful.

Huddy felt it was hours but it was only minutes later that Pickett’s bus pulled into the station. Huddy checked the number on the side of the bus. Yes, this was the one they’d kept track of all the way from Benson. Around the station men shifted their positions, readying themselves as the word was passed.

Huddy tensed as the passengers began to disembark: a large black woman with a pair of hyperactive kids, an elderly couple, young men and women wearing backpacks and vacant expressions, one tourist couple who by their accents Huddy thought must be from Ireland. Then the driver.

The bus, as near as Huddy could tell, was now empty. Of Jake Pickett there was no sign. One of his people silently mounted the rear bumper and checked the bathroom in the back.He shook his head negatively. Not hiding in there.

The rest of the team watched him expectantly, waiting for a hint on how to proceed. Huddy quickly moved forward and confronted the driver before he entered the station.

“Excuse me.”

“Hey, this is only a ten minute rest stop for me, mister. You mind if I have my coffee?”

Huddy reached into a pocket, pulled out a wallet and extracted a twenty. “Have a coffee on me.” He handed it to the incredulous driver. This kind of thing only happened in movies and cop shows; not in real life. But the twenty was real enough.

“I’m looking for an old man,” Huddy explained as they entered the station and headed toward the cafeteria. “Slightly above average height, pot belly, deep voice. Talks short and concise. Not too bright.”

The driver thought a moment, then said, “I know the guy you mean. Not with me anymore.”

Huddy’s eyebrows rose. “What do you mean, ‘anymore’?”

“Hell, he got off way back up the highway. Hours and hours ago.”

“Where?”

“That’s funny, you know. That’s why I remember him so easily.” He entered the cafeteria, held the swinging door for his benefactor. “Hi, Marge,” he said to the waitress. She nodded in recognition, automatically went for the coffee.

“It was just outside Kent, I think. Or maybe it was before Kent. Somewhere around there. I let him off on the side of the road. Empty country, mister.”

“He didn’t get off in town?”

“Nope. Said some people were going to meet him.”

Huddy’s mind fought to make sense of this utterly unexpected new development.

“Of course he might’ve been lying for all I know. None of my business why he wanted out right there. Maybe his ticket had run out and he didn’t want to fight with the agent down the line. I wouldn’t have hassled him, though. Nice old guy. But he wanted out, so I let him out.”

“Shit,” Huddy said tightly. He turned and rushed out of the cafeteria.

“Hey,” the driver called after him, “don’t you want some coffee?”

The waitress filled the upturned cup in front of the driver. “What did your friend want?”

The driver shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me, Marge. Some folks. You know. You still married?”