Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2) - James Patterson Page 0,108
“Good,” she says. “This is even better. Now I can make it look like Willow killed you and your lover.”
Chapter 112
ARIANA ROARS INTO Tom and Jessica’s driveway and slides to a halt in the gravel next to the garage. She looks around and sees no one. Jessica isn’t in the garden, nor is she looking out any of the windows of the house. No one is peering down from Rory’s apartment, either.
She tells herself that it’s possible Jessica isn’t home. Or maybe Rory and Willow went to get breakfast before he planned to come into the office. There are perfectly rational explanations for why no one noticed her racing into the driveway on a loud motorcycle. But she tells herself to follow her gut.
And her gut tells her something is wrong.
She dismounts her bike, draws her gun, and starts toward the stairs on the side of the garage. She sees the rows of berries and spots one plant with dark berries and yellow flowers. Rory must have brushed it with his hand.
Ariana takes the steps two at a time, but before she gets to the top, she hears Rory cry out, “Jessica has a gun! She killed Susan—”
“Shut up!” Jessica snaps.
Ariana freezes a few steps from the top, unsure how to proceed.
“He’s right,” Jessica calls out. “I have a gun. I want you to come on through the door, keeping your hands where I can see them. Any sudden moves and the country singer dies.”
Ariana holsters her gun and moves slowly up the stairs. She eases the door open and walks in with her hands raised over her shoulders.
Jessica is kneeling behind Willow, who is unconscious on a wooden chair. Jessica is holding a gun—it looks like Rory’s pistol—against her head and using the woman’s body as a shield.
Rory is slumped against a wall, and, for a moment, Ariana thinks he’s been shot. His entire body is limp—the kind of dead weight that comes with death. But his eyes are open and he’s looking at her. He’s not dead.
Yet.
“You killed Susan?” Ariana says to Jessica, hoping to get the woman to talk so she can have time to think.
Jessica laughs. “That’s not all.”
Ariana takes a moment to understand what she’s suggesting, but then it occurs to her. Besides Susan’s murder, what is the one other piece of the puzzle they haven’t solved yet?
“You stole my grandfather’s gun?” Ariana says. “You took it out to Gareth McCormack? After he shot Skip, you took it back and put it under my bed?”
“You’re good, Ariana,” she says.
Ariana realizes something else. The morning Harris came to the paper and broke Tom’s nose and hauled Ariana out to McCormack’s ranch, the chief hadn’t shown up because he saw the truck out front.
“You called Harris and told him I was looking for Tom,” Ariana says.
“Yes,” Jessica says, “and I wish he would have shot you on the spot instead of pistol-whipping my husband. If Carson was still alive, John Grady would answer for that.”
Ariana looks over at Rory and sees his eyelids struggling to stay open. Whatever Ariana is going to do, she needs to do it fast.
“You can’t get away with this,” Ariana says.
“Rory said the same thing, but you’re both wrong,” Jessica says, shifting the gun away from Willow so it’s pointed directly at Ariana. “It’s simple. Willow found out you and Rory were screwing around and then she killed you both before turning the gun on herself.”
Ariana can’t believe what’s happening. She’s known Jessica since she was a teenager going to the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions for her parents.
“Why are you doing this?” she asks.
“Because you two couldn’t just let things go. You came in and screwed up everything in Rio Lobo. You know the town isn’t going to survive without Carson’s money. The newspaper will fold. The pharmacy will fold. A year from now, Rio Lobo is going to be a ghost town.”
“The people of Rio Lobo make this town what it is,” Ariana says. “Not Carson McCormack’s money.”
Jessica begins arguing with her, but as she is talking, Ariana remembers watching the video of Rory in the bank. He dropped to his knees, drew his gun, and fired on the men before they could shoot him. She needs to do the same thing now.
Only she doesn’t have a clear shot at Jessica. Jessica’s head is sticking up over Willow. If Ariana misses, she might put a bullet through the top of the singer’s skull. Then she thinks of the shot Rory