Roper caught a snapshot glimpse of his suspect. She jerked down her red baseball cap and grabbed a bag of corn chips as she disappeared behind a pyramid of cereal boxes. He moved cautiously, keeping twenty-five feet back.

She looked smaller today, thinner, not gaunt, but with the kind of muscle tone he associated with honed athletes. A sliver of something stirred in his groin. He threw a quick roadblock around his mind. What the hell business did he have feeling attracted to her? Or even curious? Getting the job done depended on keeping his perspective.

A few stragglers wandered down dreary aisles, the worn wood floor a product of busier times. But the world offered too many choices these days, and a dingy little grocery store in Benton, Nevada could not compete.

Roper waited two beats before circling past the Rice Krispies. He stopped short. She stood at the other end of the aisle, staring at dog food bags as if the choice was the decision of a lifetime. As she bent down, her Navaho jacket rode up, revealing the backs of strong thighs.

Dog food. Aside from her German shepherd, she lived alone. There was the neighbor, Charlie Lemon, who ran a small ranch a mile and a half up the road from her. A full-blooded Paiute, the man clearly was on the down side of sixty. Charlie was her only visitor in the past three months of surveillance. The Bureau had dismissed a sexual relationship between them.

Craning her head, she took Roper in with a quick glance but continued studying dog chow. From a distance, she looked tough, like any woman resilient enough to survive alone in high-country desert. Bundled up against early September cold weather, she seemed indifferent to her own appearance.