I Got You, Babe (2 page)

“Oh, for God’s sake!” He took a huge, sucking drag off the cigarette, then ground it out in the ashtray. He tossed his half smoked pack of Camels and his blue Bic into the console beside him and slammed the lid. “There. Happy?”

Not particularly. When it got right down to it, what difference did it make whether she died a slow death from lung cancer or threw away half her life in prison?

Then her stomach growled, which reminded her that she’d eaten next to nothing since she’d left Tolosa, which made her think of the only restaurant they were likely to encounter out here in the boondocks. Dairy Queen. She brightened a bit, not because of the food, but because that might be a dandy place to ditch a bounty hunter. Exactly how, she didn’t know. She’d have to figure that out when the time came, assuming she could get him to stop.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

“No problem. I hear the food in the county jail is five-star cuisine.”

Renee winced. She could see it now: a row of wrinkled old ladies wearing hair nets, slopping swill onto plastic trays.

“Would it kill you to pull through a drive-through?” She glanced into the backseat, crinkling her nose. “God knows it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Sorry, sweet thing. Dousing the cigarette took me right to the limit of my hospitality.”

“What if I have to go to the bathroom?”

“What if you’re trying to get me to stop somewhere because you think it’s your only shot at getting away?”

Renee huffed disgustedly. “You’re a real jerk, you know that?”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling with delight. “I know.”

She glared at Leandro, then stared out the passenger window again, trying to hold on to her feelings of loathing and disgust because they were about the only things keeping her from melting into a sobbing, hysterical, emotionally distraught wreck. She wasn’t going to get out of this. Innocent or not, she was going to prison, where she’d spend the best years of her life pacing a six-by-eight cell, eating unidentifiable food, and trying to convince large, sexually ambiguous women that she did
not
want to be their girlfriend.

They topped a hill, and Renee saw a railroad crossing ahead. As they approached it, red lights began to flash and the gates started down. Leandro stomped on the gas to run the gates, but the car in front of him—a rusted-out Plymouth with a handicap insignia on its license plate—didn’t. Leandro screeched to a fishtailing halt, practically driving right up the Plymouth’s tailpipe. The gates fell into place, blocking the crossing. Renee looked left and right. No train was coming.

“Weave through the gates!” Leandro shouted, as if the other driver could hear him. He laid on his horn. The old guy looked into his rearview mirror, but his car stayed put. Leandro slammed his car into park and stepped out, leaving the door open and resting his arm against the top of the car to survey the situation. Renee glanced at the steering column, and her heart leaped with hope.

He’d left the key in the ignition. She might not be able to run faster than Leandro, but she was pretty sure she could drive faster. If he decided to go have a word with the guy in the Plymouth, then maybe—

“Move it!” Leandro shouted. “There’s no train!” He reached a hand into the car and laid on the horn again. The Plymouth didn’t budge.

“Shit. Probably got his hearing aid turned off.” Leandro moved away from the car and started to close the door. Renee held her breath, poised for attack. The moment the door clicked shut, she’d leap over the console, punch down the lock—

The door came back open. Leandro reached inside and jerked the keys from the ignition. He shook a finger at Renee. “Stay put. You hear me? I don’t want to have to chase you down.” He slammed the car door and stalked up to the Plymouth.

Renee slumped back in the passenger seat. What was she going to do now? She had only one way out of this car, and that was the driver’s door. But with Leandro looking back at her every few seconds, her window of opportunity was minuscule. If she ran, he’d drop her like a lion would a gazelle. Besides, this was the middle of nowhere, with no place to hide. She saw a little diner about a quarter mile up the road from the railroad tracks, but what good would that do her? Unless she could divert Leandro long enough to get a sizable head start, she didn’t stand a chance.

Then, just like that, it came to her. She sat up suddenly, her breath coming faster, her heart beating double time. Leandro’s bad habits just might be her salvation.

She dug through the console and extracted Leandro’s Bic lighter. She glanced out the windshield and saw him pointing wildly down the track, his mouth moving like crazy. But the old guy was a rock. He just sat there, probably quoting Amtrak disaster statistics, refusing to move an inch.

She reached into the backseat for one of the wadded-up fast-food sacks, the handcuffs straining against her wrists. Judging from the grease stains, Leandro’s favorite meal was a triple cheeseburger and a giant order of fries. Perfect.

She held the sack beneath the dashboard and flicked the lighter beneath it, shifting her gaze to Leandro every few seconds to make sure he was still reaming the old guy out. In moments the sack flamed. She tossed it onto the floor of the backseat, then reached for a couple of other sacks and tossed them on top of the burning one. The flames spread.

Renee put the Bic back in the console. At the same time she spied a key. Praying it unlocked the handcuffs, she plucked it out.

Just then Leandro gave up and started back toward the car. She stuffed the key into her pocket, shut the lid of the console, and stared at the dashboard, trying to look nonchalant. Behind her, another sack caught fire, then another, and another....

Leandro yanked open the door. “Old fart,” he muttered, climbing into the car. “He coulda made it. But no. He had to park his hemorrhoidal ass at the crossing the minute he saw a few red lights, and now the train’s coming. At the rate it’s moving, we’ll be sitting here for a week.”

Renee glanced down the track to see the train finally make an appearance. It chugged along like an overweight asthmatic at about fifteen miles per hour, its cars stretching down the track as far as she could see.

“They ought to jerk his driver’s license,” Leandro fumed. “If he even
touches
a set of car keys, he ought to be shot. And you can bet your ass I’d volunteer for the job.”

The burning sacks cracked and popped, but Leandro was so consumed with his loudmouthed trashing of anyone over age seventy that he didn’t notice. Renee waited, her heart beating madly. The flames grew. She waited another second, then another, and then...

“Fire!” She let out an ear-piercing squeal and pointed madly to the backseat. “Fire! The car’s on fire!”

Leandro snapped to attention and spun around, his eyes flying open wide. He put a knee in the driver’s seat, leaned over the back of the seat, and slapped at the burning sacks, only to pull away with a painful hiss, shaking his hand.

He leaped out and flung open the back door. While he was whacking away at the flames with a file folder, Renee scrambled over the console and out of the car—no small task with her wrists still handcuffed. The moment her feet hit pavement, she ran.

“Hey! Get back here!”

He took off after her. She was less than three strides ahead of him, and he made up the ground in a hurry. Alongside the old man’s car he reached for her arm and missed. Then he dove at her, his arms around her hips, and sent them both crashing to the road. Renee’s knees skidded across the pavement.

Ignoring the pain, she whipped around and smacked Leandro on the side of the head. He recoiled, cursing wildly, then fumbled around and managed to catch her wrists below the cuffs. He hauled her toward him until they were nose-to-nose, his eyes wild with anger and his teeth bared. A little foaming at the mouth and he’d look just like a rabid dog.

Renee smiled sweetly. “How do you like your barbecued Jeep? Well done?”

He spun back around. Smoke was pouring out the back car door. He could hang on to Renee, or he could put out the fire. He couldn’t do both.

With an anguished groan, he let go of Renee and jumped to his feet. He pointed down at her. “Stay there!”

Yeah. Right.

As he hurried back to the burning vehicle he hollered at the old man, who gawked out the window of his car with his jaw hanging down to his chest. “Make sure she doesn’t get away!”

Renee leaped to her feet again, infused with hope. If Leandro had resorted to deputizing senior citizens, he probably wasn’t in complete control of the situation.

The train was less than twenty yards from the crossing. She wove through the gates, and in a single bounding leap, she flew over the tracks and landed on the other side. Seconds later the train filled the railroad crossing. The last thing she saw before it blocked her view was Leandro peeling off his tank top to whack away at the flames. Watching him go nuts over that wreck of a car was a beautiful sight, but she couldn’t hang around to bask in the moment.

She pulled the key out of her pocket, fumbled it into the handcuff lock, and held her breath. She twisted it a little and heard a tiny click. The right cuff fell open. Her luck was holding after all. She unlocked the left one, too, then threw the cuffs as far as she could on one side of the road and the key on the other.

Once the train passed, Leandro would be after her again— in his car if he managed to put out the flames, or on foot if it had completely gone up in smoke. Either way, his nasty attitude had already taken a turn toward the homicidal. If he nabbed her again, by the time he dumped her on the steps of the police station they’d have to use her dental records to identify her body.

Her first thought was to hop the train and let it carry her down the tracks, but while it was moving slowly, as trains went, its speed was still too great for such an arm-wrenching experience. If Leandro thought that was what she’d done, though, it might buy her a little time.

She turned and jogged toward the diner, praying some other means of escape would present itself, and fast. No matter what she had to do, she wasn’t going back to Tolosa.

No matter what she had to do.

John DeMarco sat at the counter of the Red Oak Diner three miles outside Winslow, Texas, with the front page of the
Winslow Gazette
spread out in front of him and his hands wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee. He took a sip of the thirty-weight liquid and winced, wondering how much more of this stuff he could drink before he overdosed on caffeine.

He glanced out the window. Evening was edging into dusk, filling the countryside with the muted shades of twilight. Soft sizzling sounds came from the kitchen, like raindrops on a tin roof, mingling with the muffled conversation of a gangly teenage boy and his mousy girlfriend, who were sharing an order of fries in a booth by the window.

This place was like a hundred other backwoods multipurpose establishments—a diner that also carried convenience store items, a small collection of action-adventure videos for rent, and a rack of magazines that centered around four topics—hunting, fishing, hot cars, and sex—aimed directly at the rifle-toting, tobacco-chewing, kick-ass locals on the assumption that they could actually read. Marva Benton served up Texas home cooking guaranteed to clog your arteries, while her husband Harley ran the cash register and shot the bull with the locals. Just about anything you needed to sustain life you could find at the Red Oak, as long as you didn’t set your standards too high.

For the past week John had made a valiant attempt to forget about his job and concentrate only on sleeping late, dressing like a slob, and sitting by the lake with a fishing pole in one hand and a beer in the other.

Easier said than done.

This was the third night in a row he’d come here for dinner. He had to drive twelve miles, but it sure beat cooking, particularly since the cabin he was staying in didn’t have a microwave oven. Or an oven, period. Or a television. A hot plate, a Hide-A-Bed, and indoor plumbing—that was about it. The boredom factor had settled in about fifteen minutes after his arrival, so when he found this diner he considered himself lucky.

Take my cabin for a week or so, Lieutenant Daniels had told him. Do nothing for a while. Just sit. Think. Clear your head.

What Daniels had really meant was Get a grip on yourself, and don’t come back until you do.

Harley rang up a
Hot Rod
magazine and ten gallons of gas for a twenty-something cowboy type in skintight Levi’s and a plaid western shirt. The guy sauntered out of the store, giving John a territorial stare from beneath the brim of his hat that said
I can tell you ain’t from around here, so watch yourself.

Harley pushed the cash register shut, then gave John a gregarious grin, displaying brown teeth, gold teeth, and no teeth all in the same mouth. “So, John. How’s the vacation going?”

John was already on a first-name basis with the proprietors of the Red Oak, a familiarity that appeared to be commonplace in rural Texas. Back in Tolosa he didn’t even know his next-door neighbor’s name.

“Slow,” John said.

“Well, slow’s good if you’re lookin’ to relax, right? Take a break from the big city?”

Big city?
John had to smile at that one. Tolosa, Texas, was hardly a major metropolis. But from Harley’s point of view, John figured that Tolosa’s four movie theaters, two shopping malls, and population of ninety thousand made it look like Tokyo compared to Winslow.

“So what do you do for a living, John?”

He sighed inwardly. Sometimes people acted funny if they knew they were talking to a cop. “Just between you and me, Harley, I’d rather not talk about what I do for a living.”

“Which is it? Low pay? Long hours? No respect?”

Harley had just described a cop’s life perfectly. “All of the above.”

But as irritating as those things were, they weren’t at the heart of John’s frustration right now. Nobody in his right mind became a cop and expected to get rich, work short hours, and have people pat him on the back, so he’d been prepared for all of that. But what he hadn’t expected were the massive injustices of what was supposed to be the criminal justice system.