Chapter 14 #2
“Yeah. I figured there was something in the road, a squirrel or something.”
“So you got a look at the vehicle?”
She nodded. “Rusty yellow pickup truck. Three guys in it, two in the front and one in the back.”
“Son of a—”
“What?” Elena looked alarmed.
“Nothing. No, all good.”
“Good.”
“But about the will—”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, explain it to me.”
Willow nodded slowly. “Ethan was the sole heir to de Lorean’s fortune—or what the government left of it, which is significant.
Ethan refused it so it all went to Jeremiah.
However, it’s been held up because an unnamed person contested the will, a person we found out yesterday was another of de Lorean’s offspring, one Elena Montrose.
You were awarded several million dollars yesterday. ”
She blinked as if Willow were speaking gibberish. “I promise you, I wasn’t. And none of this makes any sense.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Willow said. “But it will. I have a call in to the lawyer representing you. Several calls actually. In the meantime, I’m gonna talk to the fellas who ran you down.”
“You mean you know who it is?”
“I have a pretty good idea. I’m fixin to have El Paso PD put an officer on your door, just as a precaution. Don’t let it scare you.”
“Too late,” she said. Her face had changed. Her eyes were wider, her full lips parted. “Do you think somebody ran me down on purpose?”
“I just think it’s a heckuva a coincidence that you were awarded a huge sum and hit by a truck in the same day, is all. I mean, it could be a coincidence, but it can’t hurt to take precautions, can it?”
Her eyes shifted lower, to Willow’s badge, and then she frowned. “The other cop didn’t mention any of that.”
She shrugged. “Let me get on this. I’ll keep you posted, okay? Here’s my number. If you need anything call me. I mean it.” She fished a card from her pocket, scribbled her personal cell number on the back, and set it on the tray table.
“Thanks, Willow.” She looked at the door. “Am I…safe? There’s no officer out there yet.”
“Yeah, there is. He’s at the nurses’ desk pleading for coffee. You’re safe. Besides, it’s just precaution. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“We’re gonna be friends, I think,” Willow said. Now that she was looking, she could see Ethan’s eyes in Elena Montrose, and Jeremiah’s dimples when she smiled.
Jeremiah called the El Paso lawyer he’d hired to handle the inheritance. The conversation was short. There was cussing, followed by, “I’ve been trying to reach you for two days. I learned the name of the person contesting the will. Not that it matters now, the judge has ruled in her favor.”
He kept the Jeep rolling through flatlands speckled with scrub brush and tumbleweed. The desert was creeping in around the edges a little more every year.
“I’ve been busy. Mainly finding out I had a sister.”
“If you’d returned my calls—”
“Next time text me. Now, here’s the thing, I’d have given her half of the old man’s loot if she’d asked.”
“What’d she say when you told her that?”
“I didn’t. She was lying’ in a hospital bed at the time, doped on morphine.”
“What happened to her?” the lawyer asked.
“Hit and run,” he said.
“When?”
“Last night,” he replied. “I met her for the first time in the hospital. She said she knew nothing about contesting the will, claims she didn’t even know who her father was until yesterday.”
“That’s not possible. I’ve spoken with her about the case multiple times, her and her husband both.”
He lowered his head. “Yeah, I figured.” He pulled into the driveway, then took the left fork out to Willow’s cottage, but her truck wasn’t in the driveway.
He sighed, turned around throwing up a cloud of dust, and headed back toward town.
He didn’t think she was anywhere near ready to return to work, but knowing Willow…
He’d best check the sheriff’s office.
What Ethan had said to him at the hospital was still echoing off the rafters of his brain. You love her, you idiot. And she loves you.
Was it true, was that what this thing was?
How the hell did you know?
He had every right to be angry, but being angry at Willow felt bad right to his bones. Her eyes, brown and swimming with tears, kept re-appearing in his mind. He’d hurt her. It felt wrong.
And wondering if it was over between them—that felt like wondering if his life was over.
Hell, maybe he did love her.
He drove a little faster.
Willow was pounding on the door of Matty Barker’s place by nine a.m. The old woman came to the door, a cigarette in her lips.
She wore an unsnapped denim shirt, pajama shorts, and a pair of men’s moccasin-style bedroom slippers.
She was braless, so the unsnapped shirt was dangerous.
Willow kept her eyes up, on Matty’s red ones and her short gray curls. “Need to talk to your boys, Matty.”
“Ain’t here.” She puffed without removing the cig from her lips.
“No? Then who’s playin’ video games back there?”
“I said they ain’t here. You callin’ me a liar?”
“Pretty much. Hey boys,” she called. “I know you ran down Elena Montrose this morning. I got witnesses. I got a piece of your truck that fell off at the scene, and I can the see the blood on your bumper from here.”
She didn’t have a piece of the truck, nor could she see blood on their bumper. She was a bluffing. But she wasn’t dealing with geniuses here.
The firstborn and designated team leader, Stu, came to the door. Matty cuffed him right upside the head. “What fresh trouble you brought home to me now?” She gave him a withering look, and scuffed back into her home somewhere. Willow heard footsteps on stairs.
The other two appeared as soon as their ma had cleared out.
“She dead?” Tank asked. He was the biggest, hence the name.
Stu elbowed him in the solar plexus. “Shut up!”
“You shut up.”
Tuck said, “Tank didn’t want to do it.”
“Shut the hell up!” Stu said.
“I didn’t want to do it either,” Tuck went on, “but I didn’t argue as much. It was a lot of money.”
“We don’t get it if she didn’t die, though,” Tank said.
“Somebody paid you run that woman down?”
Tank opened his mouth and Stu punched him in the face. Willow snapped a cuff around Stu’s wrist just as he drew back for a second blow. She put her foot right behind him as she pulled him out of the house, so he tripped, and as he landed on his knees, she got the other wrist cuffed.
His brothers had come out but hadn’t decided what to do fast enough. She pulled Stu to his feet by one arm, and kept her other hand near her gun. “You two stand right there. You move, I’ll shoot you.” She wouldn’t.
She put Stu into the back of her car and closed the back door, then she opened the driver’s door and reached in for her radio mic. “I’m bringing in the Barkers on that hit and run.”
“All three?” Came the reply and it wasn’t the dispatcher—it was Uncle Garrett. “Wait for backup, Will.”
She put the mic back, fished her extra cuffs out of the glove box, and turned around just as the rusty yellow pickup roared to life with Tank and Tuck inside.
She swore and dove behind the wheel, pulling right out behind them as they took off spitting dust and gravel at her windshield.
She backed off a little, having learned that lesson the hard way on her poor horse, and got on the horn. “In pursuit of a rusty yellow 1985 Chevy Pickup. Hit and run suspects. Heading north on Abbott. Requesting backup.”
In the back, Stu was laughing. “You really thought one little lady deputy was gonna be enough to get all three of us.”
She glanced at him in the mirror. “It was enough to get you.”
He stopped laughing.
She rounded a sharp curve in the road, and that’s when she saw the rusty yellow truck was lying on its side in the brush. It wasn’t a bad wreck, it looked like they just ran off onto a soft shoulder and lost it. Hadn’t hit anything or rolled all the way over.
But there was smoke coming from somewhere.
She grabbed the radio mic while skidding to a stop and throwing on her lights. “Suspect vehicle is off the road at Piker’s Bend. I see smoke. Get me fire and EMTs.”
“Uncuff me, goddamn it!” Stu was shouting. “Lemme out of this car!”
“I got this.” Willow got out and ran to the wreckage.
The engine was smoking. The truck had tipped driver’s side up, and Tank was behind the wheel, held there only by his seatbelt. If it gave, he’d fall atop his much smaller brother in the passenger seat.
She pulled out a pocket knife and climbed up top, reached down a hand. Tank gripped it. “You’re a big guy, Tank. Brace your feet on somethin’, so you don’t fall on your brother when I cut you loose.”
A little tongue of flame appeared in her peripheral.
“Do it now,” she said. She kept her tone calm and hoped Tank hadn’t noticed the dancing lick of fire.
He pressed one foot against the headrest of the passenger seat, carefully avoiding his brother’s head. Tuck wasn’t moving at all.
“Okay,” he said. His eyes were wide as he gazed up at her. Gray blue, not vivid like Jeremiah’s. Terrified, too. Okay so he’d noticed the flame.
Willow sawed through the seatbelt, gripping Tank one-handed.
She hoped he had most of his weight, because she couldn’t handle more than half.
The belt gave and Tank dropped but caught himself.
Willow caught him too, by his other arm, and pulled for all she was worth as he found toe holds anywhere he could and painstakingly made his way up through the window.
Halfway out, he fell forward and took her with him all the way to the ground.
Every bit of air gusted from her lungs under his weight, and the places her horse had crushed got battered all over again.
“Get off!” She shoved at him when she could get her breath again.
He moved, rolling onto his back.
Willow sprang upright and climbed back up onto the vehicle, hurting all over.
The flame from the engine was bigger now.
She heard sirens, but she didn’t think they were close enough to make it.
There was no time to make a decision, no time to think it over.
She slid headfirst through the open window, hooking one leg over truck roof to keep from falling.
Tuck was unconscious. He had a cut on his head that was bleeding.
His seatbelt was not fastened. There was a loud pop, and she looked left, to see the flames in the engine burning frighteningly high.
She grabbed Tuck’s shirt, and pulled him toward her enough get a grip on him, then pulled him further until she could hook both her arms under his, and then she pulled some more.
She barely moved him at all. The flames burned higher, and she could feel their heat now.
“Hang onto him! I’ve got you!”
That was Jeremiah’s voice!
Then his arms were closing around her legs and pulling her out. She linked her fingers behind Tuck’s back, under his arms, and he came with her. Jeremiah got hold of her waist and pulled even faster, as she in turn, pulled Tuck.
The three of them tumbled to the ground together and she looked up to see Uncle Garrett putting handcuffs on Tank farther away, and EMTs running toward them with a stretcher.
She scrambled to her feet and said, “Come on, get him, get him, hurry.”
Jeremiah already had Tuck over his shoulder. He put an arm around her, and they ran back across the meadow toward the road. When the truck exploded, the blast knocked them both face-first to the ground.