Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2)(51)

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 the Cruiser forward. The engine stalls, and she has to start over. Everything about the vehicle is tough. There are no power brakes, so she feels like she’s working out her calf muscles pressing down on the pedal. And there’s no power steering, so she has to wrestle with the wheel.

Finally, she pulls the Land Cruiser around the house and stops at the edge of the street. Not fifty yards away, Chief Harris’s cruiser is headed her way, with Rory in the passenger seat.

“Oh, shit,” Ariana says, ducking down.

After the cruiser passes, she peeks up over the dash. It begins to slow down as it approaches her house. Ariana puts the Land Cruiser in gear and turns onto the street, heading the other way.

Her hands tremble as she shifts gears.

She’s a fugitive.

“Rory,” she says aloud, “I sure hope you know what the hell you’re doing.”





Chapter 66



CHIEF HARRIS ROLLS his police cruiser to a stop in front of Ariana’s house. Tom Aaron is on the sidewalk, engaged in an argument with the patrolman stationed out front.

When we exit the car, Tom approaches the chief, hammering him with questions.

“Chief, is it true that Detective Delgado is a suspect in the murder of Skip Barnes? Is she also a suspect in the death of Susan Snyder? Are you here to arrest her? What kind—”

“Tom!” Harris says, practically shouting. “What the hell are you doing here? How did you hear about Ariana?”

“So it is true,” Tom says, making a note.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Harris says.

“You haven’t answered mine.”

Harris huffs. “Answer mine and I’ll answer yours.”

“I’m a journalist,” Tom says. “I have my sources. You know I can’t reveal them.”

Harris glares at me, accusing me without saying a word.

“Don’t look at me,” I say, holding my hands up.

It feels weird—wrong—to lie to a member of law enforcement, but compared to what I’ve already done, this is a small transgression.

The chief turns back to Tom. “Yes, Ariana is a suspect in the murder of Skip Barnes. No, she is not a suspect in the death of Susan Snyder—which we still believe was accidental,” he adds.

“Are you here to arrest Ariana?” Tom asks.

The chief nods toward the point-and-shoot camera hanging around Tom’s neck.

“Get your camera ready,” Harris says. “Maybe you’ll find out.”

With that, Harris and I approach Ariana’s front door. He knocks forcefully. No noise comes from inside the house. It’s the kind of silence that feels like absence. You can tell no one’s home.

“Shit,” Harris snaps, drawing his gun.

“I’ll go around back,” I say, and before he can agree or disagree with my plan, I take off.

A minute later, I hear Harris kick in the front door with a loud bang. The back door is unlocked, and I let myself in. Harris and I meet halfway in the house, in the living room where Ariana and I sat last night. When we’ve cleared every room and found no sign of her, Harris holsters his gun and stares at me.

“Let me see your phone,” he sneers.

“Why?”

“I want to see if you warned her.”

I hand over my cell. Not the burner phone—that one is hidden under the seat in my truck. He scrolls through my calls and texts, seeing the only call I made today was early in the morning.

“Whose number is this?” he says.

“My dad.”

He thrusts the phone back to me and then gets in my face.

“Did you have something to do with this?” he says, his teeth clenched. “You’re in some serious shit if you did.”

Instead of answering, I say, “We better call the highway patrol. There aren’t but a handful of ways out of this part of the county. If we hurry, they can get roadblocks up.”