Quotes from John Sandford

MICHAELA BOWDEN was a tall woman, thin, ramrod-straight, brown hair with copper highlights, attractive in a front-office way. She was talking to a small group of fawning locals, called a couple of them by name. Lucas picked out a half-dozen security people, four men, two women, within twenty feet of her. Every one of them eye-clicked Lucas, maybe smelling a guy with a gun, though he wasn't wearing one. When they saw Clay pulling him along, they looked elsewhere.

he really liked running on the street, especially after a rain. He liked running through the odors of the night, through the air off the Mississippi

I'll tell you something, Skinner. Anybody who snipes innocent people is seriously unbalanced even if he believes he has a reason," Virgil said. "Most people won't even shoplift for fear of getting caught. Shooting people? You're dealing with a nut even if there's a payoff somewhere.

sued, but the

Lucas smiled back. Bowden projected an effortless charisma and he had to resist the urge to tug at his forelock: "Not close enough. A little closer and she wouldn't be in the Senate—she'd be in a different federal institution altogether.

Robertson was in the operating room and no word on his condition was coming out. A bloody-handed nurse, who'd taken him in, stood washing her hands, and when Lucas asked, she said, "I've seen worse who lived. But then, I've seen better who died." No help there.

Fuckin' trash, he thought. Where were the cops when you needed one?

Crow was getting a contact high from the dope; either that, or from the jambalaya.

If they find something. . . ." "If they find something," Lucas corrected himself, "then they might want a couple of hunters on the trail. Man-to-man. That's us. I'd like you to go along. Not so much as a cop, but more like a good-luck charm. You're a lucky guy. I personally rely more on intelligence and good looks.

there, looking for a man they wouldn't find. They'd go because they'd know for sure that Horn couldn't be in Goodhue County, where he'd be known and chased on sight. . . . Horn had suggested another step: killing a woman from the Alexandria area, still farther

there was an immensely satisfying crunch, at that perfect distance where your hand and knuckles don't feel it too much, and your shoulder takes up some of the recoil, and the nose guy's head rockets off your knuckles like a tennis ball flying off a racket.

Squeak. Tubbs was half-asleep on the couch, his face covered with an unfolded Star Tribune. The overhead light was still on, and when he'd collapsed on the couch, he'd been too tired to get up and turn it off. The squeak wasn't so much consciously felt, as understood: he had a visitor. But nobody knocked.

It's okay." Lucas took a chair. "You need somebody killed?" "Several people, but I'd hesitate to ask, at least here in the office, on the Lord's Day," the governor said. He gave the papers a last shuffle, set them aside, pressed a button on a box on his desk, and said, "Get in here," and asked Lucas, "You've been reading about Porter Smalls?" "Yeah. You guys must be dancing in the aisles," Lucas said.

You could get away with actual crimes for years, if you had enough money to protect yourself.

LUCAS WATCHED THE GATE roll back and caught the two clear lenses, and two black glassy spots, one of each on the stone gate pillars, on either side of the driveway. Camera lenses and infrared alarm sensors. The security would be excellent. And the hard drives on the security cameras could be gotten with a search warrant: something to know.

Now that was a road trip," Sherrill said, enthusiastically. "Fightin', fuckin', and detectin.' So what's next?

You know the problem with the Senate? It's like being nibbled to death by ducks. There's never a second during the whole darn day that somebody doesn't want to talk to you—and, most of the time, doesn't need to. People want to talk to you, so they can say, 'I was talking to Senator Grant yesterday,' and then they start lying.

Le Café was crowded, for two o'clock on a chilly afternoon, but Gurney and Pendleton, two short men in late middle age, were willing to make some space in the work routine to talk to Virgil. They agreed that they knew Knox, who had patronized Le Café because, as a gay man, he felt more comfortable there than anywhere else in town

any dairies or pig farms around there. We could

a political line that sounds like the party's. I thought of you and your boys, first thing. A few other people

THE GOVERNOR'S CAMPAIGN PARTY was in another interstate motel, less than a block away. The campaign bus was idling in the parking lot, belching out diesel exhaust, and a group of underlings was loading luggage and office equipment onto it. Lucas found Alice Green getting a cup of coffee in the front lobby.

Green shook her head: "She's a smart woman. I'd be surprised if she was involved. But . . . and I say but . . . she's obviously a sociopath. It wouldn't bother her that people died to get her into the Senate. It would bother her that she could go to prison for it. She's made that calculation, too. That's why she gets so angry when she sees you.

nodded at Cole. "Long time ago," Marlys said. "Did he come right straight to Iowa?" Likely opened his mouth to reply, as Cole pulled the gun and in a single movement, shot

There were three small thirty-inch televisions in his office, all fastened to the wall above the desk, so he could work on the iMac and watch C-SPAN, Fox, and CNN all at once. A sixty-inch LED screen hung on the living room wall opposite the couch where he'd been napping.