Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2) - James Patterson Page 0,60
innocent—and it will turn out she’s innocent—then you’re signing your own fate. When the smoke clears on this thing, no one in Rio Lobo will ever trust you again.”
He’s simmering mad, but I don’t stop. All amiability between us is gone.
“That’s the best you can hope for,” I say. “If you turn out to be a participant—and therefore corrupt—I’ll make sure you live in prison until you’re a very old man.”
He glares at me.
“A month from now,” I say, “you’re going to be either out of a job or in jail.”
“You Texas Rangers,” he snarls. “You don’t know what it’s like to maintain the peace in a town like this, to earn the respect of the people. You bounce from place to place, acting like you’re better than everyone. But this is my town, not yours. I was here long before you showed up, and I’ll be chief of police here long after you’re gone.”
“We’ll see,” I say.
“Yes, we will.”
We sit in silence, the hostility between us heating the room like a furnace.
“Okay,” I say finally, rising out of my seat, “let’s go arrest our girl. We’ll do it together.”
This was an argument I was never going to win. But I knew that going in. It wasn’t my real intention to persuade Harris. What I was really doing was stalling.
Giving Tom and Ariana some time.
Hopefully it was enough.
Chapter 65
ARIANA PEEKS BETWEEN the blinds at the police car sitting in front of her house. The officer behind the wheel is Hank Humphreys, a young kid and nice enough guy. He and Ariana have always been friendly to each other, but he’ll arrest her in a heartbeat if that’s what John Grady Harris wants.
If she snuck out the back door, she might be able to make it, but she doubts it. Hank has his window rolled down, and even if he couldn’t see her, he might hear her. Her back door always squeaks, and the fence gate at the rear of the lot is even worse.
Rory told her to wait for the distraction.
Whatever that is going to be.
She spots Tom Aaron walking up the street with a reporter’s notebook in hand. He heads toward the police car, and Hank Humphreys steps out. Tom holds his notebook in front of him, ready to write. Ariana can’t tell what’s being said, but she can get the gist from their actions. Tom is asking Hank questions, which the officer is refusing to answer.
This is it, she thinks. This is the distraction.
She heads toward the back of the house and eases out the door. It squeaks, but she doesn’t think Hank notices—she can hear him in a heated discussion with Tom. At the back of her property is a short wooden fence, separating her yard from the arroyo. She’s afraid to open the gate—it’s even more noisy—so she puts one hand on a post and vaults over it, landing deftly in the dirt path on the other side.
She walks quickly down the trail. The water in the ditch next to her is brown and slow-moving. When she gets to a point where she can see around her house, she spots Tom and Hank talking furiously.
“So you are not denying that Detective Delgado is a suspect in the murder of Skip Barnes?” Tom says, sounding more aggressive in the interview than she’s ever heard him.
“I ain’t denying nothing,” Hank says, flustered. “I ain’t confirming nothing neither. I’m saying you need to talk to Chief Harris.”
Ariana loses sight of them when she steps behind her neighbor’s house. She takes off running. She moves at the same pace she would if she was out for a morning run. If anyone sees her, they might not suspect anything is amiss. She doesn’t usually run in jeans and boots—and not at noontime on a summer day when the temperature is so high—but hopefully no one will notice anything unusual.
A few blocks away, she arrives at the back of Tom and Jessica’s house. Her body is slick with sweat, her jeans and T-shirt sticking to her skin.
She lets herself in the gate and approaches the outbuilding that houses Tom’s garage and Rory’s apartment. She creeps around the side next to the berry bushes and arrives at the garage bays. The Land Cruiser and Mustang sit inside. She checks the Land Cruiser, and sure enough the keys are in the ignition just like Rory said they would be.
She fires up the engine, applies the clutch, shifts it into gear, and tries to ease