gone to his plane, he would have found the planted gun. If he hadn’t gone to see Mona in the first place …
He remembered what she said on the phone.
“If you’re not going to come here, I’ll fucking knock down your front door. We have to talk, Rogan. This is serious!”
He hadn’t wanted her to come to San Antonio. Not because he planned on keeping the information from Lucy, but because he didn’t want her anywhere near his family. Not Lucy, not Jesse. So he went there.
What if he’d told her to come to him? Would it have changed anything? If the people who killed her wanted him to be framed for her murder, where she was killed was irrelevant—it was simply that she was killed immediately after he talked to her.
His head pounded and he wished he could have slept last night, because he needed to think. To plan. To figure out what he was going to do if he couldn’t get out on bail.
The only thing he knew was that he couldn’t spend the rest of his life in prison. He would rather be dead.
He closed his eyes.
You can’t think that way. What about Lucy? What about Jesse?
He couldn’t kill himself. But he could escape. It might take a while, but he could escape.
And then he’d be on the run for the rest of his life. Without his family, without his wife and son. Without anyone to help him.
All this speculation was only going to make him sick. He had to take it day by day. Get through the weekend. He’d have more information on Monday.
The problem was he couldn’t see the end. He didn’t have important information now. He didn’t know what anyone was doing, or how they would prove he hadn’t killed Mona Hill.
He regretted very little in his life, but he regretted with all his heart and soul not telling Lucy about his meeting with Mona. Lucy thought that he was trying to protect her, and in some ways he was. He knew how Elise had gotten under her skin two years ago, and how upset she was when Elise was released from juvie. He also knew she despised Mona. That Mona had done the right thing in sharing information when she had it—when he pressed her—was lost on Lucy, because in the end she saw them on opposite sides.
He’d wanted to make sure he had facts, not Mona’s paranoia, before he went to his wife. In hindsight, he was wrong.
And his mistake could end up hurting him more than anyone.
The bus jerked violently and he opened his eyes. They were still in the middle of nowhere on the road to Beaumont, but they passed a sign that said WINNIE 3 MILES. He had no idea where they were. They’d been driving maybe an hour.
The driver swore, and the guard next to him—Sheffield—said, “Did we blow a tire?”
The driver was doing everything he could to control the bus, but said, “I gotta get off here. Call it in.”
Smoke surrounded the bus, heavier in the rear. Out the window Sean saw a sign that said EXIT 822. There was nothing here, it merged onto the frontage road. As they pulled off, Sean noticed a clearing ahead to the right—an old slab foundation and weathered piles of wood and concrete off to the far side.
Sheffield picked up the radio, but as he did the bus swayed wildly. The driver wasn’t slowing down as he exited.
“Fuck!” he said.
Sheffield clicked the radio. “It’s out, Dave.”
“Shit! Shit! Hold on!”
They were going too fast, and the bus veered toward the slab as the driver downshifted and braked and tried to slow the out-of-control bus.
They bumped violently over the foundation and into thick vegetation, then hit a low wall. The back of the bus came up and Sean hit his head on the seat in front of him. The bus teetered and Sean thought they were going to completely flip. He held his breath, trying to relax his tense body in case they rolled, but then the bus righted itself. The engine smoked, then the sound of sparks and Sean saw flames. The fire would only get worse and spread to the dry grass around them.
He glanced at the other prisoner; he had hit his head like Sean. He was bleeding but alert.
Almost immediately, Sean heard something odd … then realized they were shouts. At first he thought civilians had come to help them, but then he heard a gunshot. Two, three,