Cold Springs(96)

“So now you kill me?” Pérez asked.

“I advise you to walk that way, toward Fredericksburg. Be careful and polite once you get there. Avoid the local police. I put enough money in your pocket to get new shoes and a bus ticket back to Monterrey. That's where you're from, isn't it?”

Pérez's jaw tightened. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Pérez looked across the wet field, at the buzzards circling over the treetops a half mile east. “How do you know I won't come after you? Or the girl?”

“Because we're even now. And because if you give me your word you won't, you won't.”

Pérez thought about that. He dug in his pocket, pulled out the money Chadwick had gifted him. “You and the girl—you aren't safe anyway. You know that, right?”

“Go back to Monterrey,” Chadwick told him. “Start over.”

“Don't trust her, man.”

“You should hit town by nightfall. Be careful of the locals.”

Pérez looked like he wanted to say more. Then he refolded the twenties, put a new crease across Andrew Jackson's face, and stuck the cash back in his pocket. “Go with God, Chadwick. You'll need the help.”

And Chadwick left him there in the empty field, the turkey buzzards starting to circle above him hopefully.

27

Jones drove toward Fredericksburg like a tornado.

She swerved from a century oak a few seconds shy of crashing, cut across the edge of a field to reach the next farm road.

“This isn't L.A.,” Chadwick said over the wind.

“I can't believe you,” Jones yelled. “You just let him go.”

“Forget Pérez.”

Jones punched the accelerator. “He puts a bullet hole in the girl's sleeve, and now I should just forget him. What is that—some kind of bullshit machismo? You try to kill each other, and suddenly he's got honor?”

“What did you want—a hole in his head?”

“Better than your plan.”

She spun away from a farm truck, found a straight stretch of blacktop, and shot down it, the speedometer edging sixty-five.

“Four hours,” Chadwick said. “San Antonio and back.”

“And then Hunter fires us.”

Chadwick didn't respond. Jones knew his phone conversation with Hunter hadn't gone well. The idea of letting Mallory see her mother—even for a short time, even to coax Mallory into remembering more information on the possible identity of a murderer—had been about as appealing to Hunter as a cozy brunch with law enforcement.

“They're coming in the morning,” Hunter had told him. “Laramie, Kreech, even Damarodas is here now. They're bringing a couple of suits from the County Attorney's Office. I want you here. I want the Zedman girl back in the program and back in the woods. You take one step that does not lead her straight back to Cold Springs, we cease to act in loco parentis. Our legal ass is shredded, and you—”

About that time, Chadwick hung up.

Jones swerved onto Farm to Market Road 75. She slammed on the brakes when she found herself opposed by a freight train crossing the tracks.

She hit the steering wheel with her palms, let the horn blare for half a minute. “Damn!”

In the back seat, Mallory curled in the corner on Chadwick's side. She draped the stolen quilt jacket over her knees and arms like a shield.

“Your mother will be here at noon,” Chadwick said. “She'll be worried about you.”

“You mean she's lost her job and for once in her life she has nothing better to do. I want to go back to the program.”

“Listen to the girl,” Kindra said.

“You said Katherine met another friend at the Montroses' house,” he told Mallory. “Somebody who gave her that heroin. You told me this, and then you want to slip back into the program and not be bothered?”

“I thought you wanted to help me.”

“I do. I also want to know why you're afraid to tell me the truth.”

Mallory shifted under her coat, her hands punching the fabric up closer to her chin. Chadwick realized that one of the things she was scared of was him.

“I'm not afraid,” she said. “I just wish Pérez hadn't been wearing that bulletproof vest.”

“Shit,” Jones said. “That's the second thing she's said I agree with.”

Train cars rumbled past—stacks of new automobiles glinting through the steel mesh siding, brown freight containers spray-painted with gangster love notes from Houston or the Rio Grande Valley or God-knew-where: MI CORAZON 4 E.P. LUPE N JOE SIEMPRE.

“John is dead,” Chadwick said, feeling it in his heart for the first time. “Ann's career is destroyed. Someone punished them to get at me, someone who knows every detail about my daughter's suicide. I'm not going to sit back and trust the police to figure out who.”

“Fine,” Jones said. She threw the car into Park. “Have fun.”

“Kindra.”

“Do what you want, Chad. Get yourself arrested for kidnapping. I'll walk back to Cold Springs.”

She opened the car door and stormed out, heading toward the train as if she were going to take it on, mano á mano.