face. She tossed a twenty at the gas station clerk and burst through the door just in time to see the police officer pulling Rebecca from the passenger seat by her elbow.
Cait ran up to him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The officer—a tall, stony-faced man with his cap pulled low over his eyes—held up a hand to stop her. “Ma’am, please take a step back.”
Cait took another step forward. “Not until you explain to me what you’re doing. This is my car, you know. I have a right.”
He raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Ma’am, you are currently interfering with an arrest, which itself is an arrestable offense, so unless you two want to be sharing a jail cell, I suggest you take a step back.” He smirked at her, and she had to hold her hands behind her back to keep from slapping him.
“At least tell me where you’re taking her.”
“Down the road, to the Yoakum County Jail. You’re welcome to follow.”
Cait’s eyes sought out Rebecca’s. “Are you okay?”
She expected Rebecca to be terrified, but instead she looked preternaturally calm. Almost like she’d been expecting this. “I’m fine,” she said quietly. “It’s okay.”
Cait nodded. “We’ll figure this out, I promise. I’ll be right behind.”
She watched as the officer lowered Rebecca into the back of the cruiser, one hand resting on the top of her head. Cait wanted to scream at him not to touch her, but she held herself in check. She had to play by his rules for the moment, whatever they were. If she made a scene, she’d only be making things harder for Rebecca.
Cait jumped behind the wheel of the Jeep, shoved the plastic bag full of snacks under Rebecca’s empty seat, and sparked up the engine. The cruiser put on his lights, and Cait followed them out of the parking lot.
Her mind raced as she followed the cruiser through town. The officer wouldn’t tell her why he was arresting Rebecca, but it had to be about what had happened out on that mountain. Had they found Adam’s body? The charred remains of his truck? How would they have linked Rebecca to his death so quickly? They’d been careful to wipe the prints off the gun before they left it next to his body. Cait had harbored the hope that whoever stumbled across the scene might think it was a suicide, though that felt naive now, absurd. They should have been more careful when cleaning up the site. They might have wiped the prints, but their blood would be all over.
Blood. Shit, their bloody clothes were still stuffed in the back. She glanced in the rearview mirror. She could explain the rest of it—the smashed-out windows, the bruises on their faces—by saying they’d been in an accident, but she couldn’t explain how someone else’s blood ended up on their clothes. She should have gotten rid of them back in New Mexico. It had been stupid of her to think it would be better to bring them back with her. How could she have been so careless? If they tested them, they would find traces of Adam’s blood. How would they talk their way out of that one?
It was self-defense. He had tried to kill them.
But how could they prove it?
Stop. Calm down. She was getting ahead of herself. Adam’s death had happened only a few hours earlier. Even if someone had found his body as soon as they’d left, how would the police have been able to pull together the evidence that fast? She couldn’t imagine why Rebecca’s prints would be in the system. How had they traced her?
Her own prints, though . . . Back in high school, during her shoplifting days, she’d been picked up outside of Walgreens for stealing a curling iron. The officer had taken her down to the station, printed her, even put her in a cell for a couple of hours until her mom could get off work and collect her. They’d said at the time that she wasn’t being charged—the officer had done it more to scare her than anything else—but how could she know for sure that they hadn’t kept her prints on file?
Even if they didn’t have her prints, if they had enough evidence to arrest Rebecca, surely they would have enough to arrest her, too. They’d been driving in the same car, and any witnesses would have seen the two of them together.