Georgia drove out to Capron later that afternoon. Driving through Harvard, she passed Harmilda, the fiberglass cow in the middle of downtown that celebrated Harvard’s past glory as the “Milk Center of the World.” Then she drove through Chemung, a small town between Harvard and Capron on Route 173. The town was all clapboard houses and a church, except for the Harleys parked at the gas station. She passed a Ron Paul billboard, then a couple of cell towers.
As she drove into Capron, a dirty layer of snow covered the roads, fields, and trees. She passed small ranch houses, a trailer park, and more churches. How did all these churches survive? She drove past the Village Café, where she’d stopped for coffee before, then turned off the main road. She drove past the field with rusted farm equipment. Unlike the first time she’d come here, when she followed Zoya, it was still light, and no snow was falling.
Another turn took her to what she now saw was Nichols Road. On one side of the road was an open field with spindly twigs poking out of the snow cover. She couldn’t tell what the twigs had been but figured they were either corn or soybeans. The other side of the road was cut by a series of patchy driveways.
She spotted an ADT sign on the driveway Zoya had turned into and smiled. What good was an alarm this far from civilization? It would take hours for anyone to respond. She slowed about a hundred yards past and turned the Toyota around so she was facing the direction she’d come from. The driveway was now on her right. She parked at a sharp angle so that the hood of her Toyota was camouflaged in the brush but she still had a view down the road.
She spent the next two hours watching dusk turn everything purple, then black. She was bored, cold, and irritable. Staking out a farm on a cold February night wasn’t the worst assignment she could imagine, but it came close. Another three hours passed before a scrim of light swam toward her. Headlights. A car.
Although it had to be more than a mile away, she went on alert. Most people had the sense to stay home on a night like this. Unless they had important business. She put on her gloves, grabbed her baby Glock, and slid out of the Toyota. The beam of the headlights, sharper now that they were closer, would expose her at any moment. She plunged through the brush at the side of the road. It led to a dense but narrow stand of trees that edged the property and provided a natural boundary from the road. Just as the twin beams of light reached the spot on which she’d been standing, she thrust herself through the trees.
And heard the trill of a cell phone.