Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2) - James Patterson Page 0,24

o’clock in the morning. I wish I could talk to Willow, but there’s no way she’ll be awake. And maybe that’s not the best idea anyway. She’s already worried about me. She didn’t like the idea of me going back to work so soon after the shooting.

Now I’m starting to agree with her—maybe I’m not ready.

This case has been a little more trying on my nerves than I anticipated. A few days have passed since I jammed with Dale and Walt, with Ariana and me working long hours and making almost no progress. We’ve interviewed all the town council members as well as all the people who saw Susan Snyder in her final days. We’ve done a million phone interviews, talking to her family members and her clients in faraway cities. Sometimes motive is irrelevant—the evidence is what matters. But in this case, we have no evidence.

I’m sitting in my bed, in my dark room, thinking about all this, when I hear something outside my door. Voices talking low, trying to be quiet. The fact that I can hear them at all tells me they’re very close. I hear a sound like someone spraying an aerosol can.

Maybe spray paint.

I creep over to the window and peek through the crack in the curtains. Two men stand next to my truck. One is kneeling by a tire. The other is standing next to the driver’s side, spraying the door with paint. As far as I can tell, both are wearing masks, just like the guys in my nightmare.

I grab my pistol and unlatch the safety chain on the door as quietly as possible. I’m wearing boxer shorts and nothing else, but I don’t have time to get dressed.

I throw open the door and point my gun.

“Freeze!” I say, my voice raised but not yelling.

My body is inside the room, but my gun hand is sticking out. This is a careless mistake because I haven’t anticipated that there might be a third guy with them, hiding next to my door.

A tire iron swings down from behind the door jamb. I pull my hand back but not fast enough. The iron connects with the barrel of my SIG Sauer, and I feel the vibrations up to my shoulder.

The gun tumbles out of my grasp.

Chapter 26

BEFORE I CAN reach for my gun, the assailant kicks the pistol, and it goes sliding off the porch and onto the gravel. But this leaves him exposed, standing right in front of me with his legs spread at an unbalanced angle.

I burst out of the motel room like a defensive tackle going after the quarterback, and I slam the guy down onto the wooden porch. He’s bigger than me, stronger, but I’m on top of him, and that gives me an advantage. He flails with the tire iron, but I grab his wrist, twist his arm, and pin it down against the wooden planks of the deck. He swings his free fist into my ribs, but he’s fighting from a bad position and can’t put much behind the punch.

I drive my fist into the center of his mask, just below the eyes. The cartilage of his nose crunches audibly, and the back of his head crashes against the porch. His muscles go weak. He’s not unconscious, but he’s stunned.

The guy with the spray paint charges toward us. I catch a glimpse of the other guy pulling a knife out of my truck tire.

The one with the paint can presses the dispenser and a cloud of red fills the air. I close my eyes and throw my arms up to shield my face. I can feel the cool mist around me. I roll away in the direction of my pistol, then scramble onto my hands and knees. I risk opening my eyes and spot my gun lying in the gravel. I grab it and spin around, the gun raised, my knees sliding on the rocks.

The three men are running away.

They’re not stupid—three on one might be good odds, but not when I have a gun.

I sprint after them. The gravel digs into my bare feet. The men hop a waist-high, chain-link fence at the back of the property. I launch over the fence like an Olympic hurdler. I cross a street and look around. We’re in a residential area now. There isn’t much moonlight, and no streetlights, so it’s hard to see. I spin around, looking, listening.

An engine fires up a block away. Headlights ignite the darkness, and tires squeal.