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At the sound of the voice on the phone, her heart fell.
“Allen here. We can’t make it to Ryansville.”
“What?” Carrying the cell with her, she peered out the window, but saw only a curtain of white. “I just heard on the radio that the roads are still okay.”
“Nope—we’ve already got a sheet of ice, and the snow has started. I can’t walk two feet from my door without falling on my rear. Interstate 94 just now closed from Fargo clear down to the edge of the Twin Cities. We can’t send DEA agents from either location.”
Frustrated, she paced her small apartment. “If the agents can’t make it, then the drug shipment won’t get through, either.”
“Unless the driver heard about the weather change and drove like crazy to beat the storm. With the freeway gates closed on the east side of Fargo, he might have tried following the snowplows on state highways. Not that it would help. We hear the roads up there are filling in with drifting snow as fast as they’re cleared.”
“Maybe you should run a check with the state highway patrol for accidents in case our suspects had trouble. I’d think they would’ve holed up in a nice warm motel along the way, but you never know.”
Allen snorted. “I can’t imagine resting easy out in the middle of nowhere with no backup and kilos of methamphetamine to worry about.”
“I just want them to get here so I can arrest them and everyone else involved.” She paced the small room. “There hasn’t been any unusual activity at the plant the past few days. When this weather breaks, I’ll go take another look.”
“We know the traffickers sent smaller shipments in the past to test the Ryansville area as a major supply route. We’ll get ’em sooner or later.”
“Right.” But next time, there might not be any advance warning, and given how fast someone could drive up, transfer the bricks to a waiting vehicle and disappear, it could be a long time before there’d be another chance this good.
A gust of wind blasted the side of her apartment, rattling the dishes in the cupboards and sending icy fingers of cold air through the old window frames. The ceiling light flickered again. “By the way, I just learned that Ian Flynn is Deputy Roswell’s godfather.”
Allan fell silent for a moment. “Does Roswell know why you’re in town?”
“He does now—not quite how I’d planned to tell him, though. He heard your phone message.”
The line fell silent for a moment, and Sara wondered if Allen was conferring with someone else in the office. “We did a complete background check on him a few months back. Far as we could tell, he was clean and had no connections to the plant’s owner or management.”
“Except for the kind of tie that isn’t going to be found in legal records.”
“If he says one wrong word, this entire operation is over.”
“I don’t believe he will,” she shot back.
“There’s almost four hundred miles on Minnesota’s western border, so our suspects could change their route and enter the state just about anywhere.”
“It isn’t over yet.”
“Don’t count on it, Hanrahan. The months you put into this have just gone down the tubes.”
“I don’t think so. Do me a favor—contact a judge in Hawthorne and get me a search warrant executable from midafternoon today through Sunday at five in the afternoon. E-mail a PDF as soon as possible so I can have it in my cell in case the phone lines go down. I’ll request assistance from the County Sheriff’s Department if the shipment arrives before the rest of you get here.”
“Don’t take any chances.”
“I won’t. Just get me that warrant and get up here as soon as you can. One more thing—when this is over, I need you to talk to your sister.”
“Deanna?”
“She’s a dermatologist, right?”
“She isn’t in private practice—she teaches at the medical school.”
“Perfect. I need some information for a friend up here.”
After she hung up, Sara roamed the apartment, restlessly picking up a book or magazine, then setting it down. She packed a few more things. What if the shipment had already arrived?
For almost three months she’d done her job. She’d done extensive late-night surveillance. Carefully questioned the locals. Written and sent countless reports.
