Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2)(90)

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 made to kill Carson McCormack—how he took the shot even though Ariana was in the line of fire.

In everything that happened in the last few days—in the open space and out at McCormack’s ranch—Ariana didn’t shoot anyone.

She’s never shot anyone.

But Rory told her she had what it takes to be a Texas Ranger.

Now it’s her time to prove it.





Chapter 113



I WATCH FROM the floor as Jessica is about to shoot. I can see it in her body language, the way she steadies my pistol, tightens her finger over the trigger. I want to shout to Ariana to warn her, but I can’t. My mouth is as paralyzed as the rest of my body.

All I can do is watch.

What happens next takes only a couple of seconds.

Three at the most.

Ariana drops down right as flames shoot from the pistol in Jessica’s hand. Wood splinters explode from the doorjamb behind Ariana. Ariana folds into a crouch and yanks her gun from its holster just as Jessica lowers the pistol, trying to get a second shot.

Jessica is using Willow as a shield, and I want to scream for Ariana not to shoot.

But she does.

Jessica’s head jerks back as blood mists the wall behind her. She leans back, her gun arm still extended, and crashes onto the carpet. She keeps her arm stiff for a moment, pointing the gun at the ceiling, then loses her muscle function, and her arm falls to her side, limp.

Willow’s body slumps out of the chair onto the floor. She’s still unconscious, but the bullet never touched her. It passed inches over her head.

Ariana runs to my side. She pulls out her phone, calls 911, and shouts, “Texas Ranger down! I’ve got a Texas Ranger down!”

She yells into the phone what our location is, then turns her attention to me. Her eyes are filling with tears.

“You’re going to be okay,” she says, cupping my face.

I stare at her, wanting to tell her how much she means to me, how proud I am of her. I want to tell her that she’ll make the best goddamn Texas Ranger this state has ever seen.

But I can only croak out two words.

“Save…Willow.”

She stares into my eyes for a moment—just a moment—then leans down to kiss my forehead. She runs over to Willow and lifts her flaccid body in a fireman’s carry. I watch as she squeezes through the door, and I listen as her footsteps bound down the staircase.