Does everyone in this town have secrets?
Chapter 25
I’M DREAMING. I know I am.
But I can’t wake myself up.
I’m back in the bank, with the robber standing on the counter with the AR-15 and the other holding a handgun to my head. Just like before, I drop to my knees as my hat is blasted off my head. I raise my SIG Sauer, aim it at the robber on the counter, and squeeze the trigger. But this time nothing happens.
I miss.
The robber squeezes the trigger of the AR-15 and begins cutting down the customers in the bank. There is no sound. Not from the bullets jumping from the gun barrel. Not from the men and women collapsing in mists of blood, their mouths open in silent screams.
I know I should shoot again.
I have to stop him.
But I’m panicking.
I turn my head slowly—everything seems to be in slow motion—and look at the other robber. His gun is aimed at my face. I stare into the black hole of the barrel.
I should move. I should shoot. I should do something.
But I don’t.
He squeezes the trigger, and I sit up in bed, my chest heaving, my body slick with sweat. I throw a hand to my face, half expecting to find a bullet hole in my forehead.
When I’ve convinced myself that I’m okay, I rise out of bed and walk to the bathroom. I leave the light off, but my curtain is cracked and there’s enough light coming in from the parking lot to see. I splash water on my face. I cup my hands and take a drink.
I walk back to my bed and check the time on my phone. It’s two 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. I can make out the shape of a truck, but I can’t see it clearly. The truck heads toward Main Street, and I run back through the parking lot of the motel. If it turns right on Main Street, I might be able to cut it off.
But when I get to the sidewalk, the truck is heading the other way. It’s too far away to get a good look at it. I can’t see the license plate. I can’t tell the make and model. It could be one of McCormack’s trucks, but I can’t be sure. It’s not like there’s a shortage of pickup trucks in Texas.
I watch until its taillights disappear from sight. Then it occurs to me I’m standing on the sidewalk on Main Street holding a pistol and wearing nothing but my underwear. Luckily, there are no cars on the street at this time of night.
As I walk back toward my room, I hear the hiss of air wheezing out of my punctured tire. There’s enough ambient light to read what’s been written on the side of my truck:
Go home law dog
Chapter 27
I WALK BACK inside my motel room and flip on the light. I pick up my phone and call Ariana’s cell.
“It’s three in the morning,” she says. “What the hell’s going on?”
“Can you come to my motel?” I say.
She hesitates, and I realize maybe she thinks I’m propositioning her.
“Three thugs just assaulted me,” I say.
“I’ll be right over.”
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and see red paint freckling my face and frosting my hair.
“Also,” I say, before she hangs up, “do you have any mineral spirits?”
I manage to pull on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt before she shows up five minutes later, riding in on her motorcycle and wearing jeans and an AC/DC T-shirt. She pulls off her helmet, and her hair falls down around her shoulders. Although the jeans and T-shirt she normally wears aren’t exactly formal dress, the concert T-shirt and free-flowing hair is a look that I haven’t seen before.