“Not so far,” Joanna said. “But once the pavement ends, we should be able to see his dust. I doubt there’s any other traffic out this way.”
When they reached the Y, Deputy Thomas stood on the brakes hard enough that the seat belt clamped tight across Joanna’s thighs and her and her oversize breasts. Far ahead of them and to the right, a cloud of dust roiled into the air behind a speeding vehicle.
“Okay,” Joanna said as the Yukon sped forward once more. “We don’t see the vehicle, but we do see the dust. What are the chances of calling in a helicopter on this?”
“I was just talking to DPS about that. They have one on the scene of a fatality wreck near Marana. Someone from the state patrol will see if they can break away from there and get back to me on it. Frank’s just now coming through Benson. So is Jaime Carbajal, but in the meantime, you and Deputy Thomas are pretty much on your own.”
“I already figured that out,” Joanna said. “Where’s Detective Howell?”
“She stopped off at the rest stop to interview the mother.”
“Great,” Joanna said. “I need the names of those kids.”
“Hold on.” There was another long pause.
Watching the cloud of dust rising skyward ahead of them, Joanna tried to judge whether or not they were closing the distance. The speedometer in the Yukon was hovering around fifty-five miles per hour. On this washboarded gravel surface, that was far too fast.
“Slow down,” she said. “If we push him too hard, he’s liable to go off the road.”
Shaking his head, Thomas slowed to a slightly more moderate but still dangerous fifty.
Larry Kendall came back on line. “Hannah and Abel,” he said. “Hannah is four. Abel just turned two.”
“Okay. Have Debbie find the mother a Kevlar vest and bring her in this direction. If this thing turns into a standoff, I want her on hand to talk to her kids.”
“Will do,” Larry replied.
By now Mescal Road was rising abruptly into the foothills. As it wound back and forth, the dust cloud was still visible but only intermittently. Carefully Joanna removed Thomas’s standard-issue Colt.223 semiautomatic rifle out of its holder. She was more comfortable with her Glock, but with the possibility that the suspect might grab one of the children and flee, she wanted the rifle available if needed.
“Is this thing clean?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Thomas replied. “How much longer?”
Looking at him, Joanna noted beads of sweat streaking down the side of his face and the back of his neck, soaking his collar.
The man was scared to death, she realized, and rightly so. She was scared, too, but she didn’t dare show it, not with Deputy Thomas looking to her for confidence and direction.
“Not long,” she assured him. “According to Dispatch, the road should end in another seven or eight miles. I doubt the suspect has any idea that’s going to happen, and it’ll be a rude awakening for him. When the road does end, one of two things will happen. He’ll either abandon the kids and take off on his own, or he’ll grab one or both of the kids and try using them as human shields. It’ll be one or the other,” she added grimly. “There won’t be any middle ground.”
“So what do we do?”
“We get as close as we can. If he takes off without the kids, I’ll use either your rifle or my Glock to bring him down.”
“And if he uses the kids?”
Joanna took a deep breath. “In that case,” she said, “we play it by ear.”
“Sheriff Brady,” Larry Kendrick cut in. “DPS reports that their helicopter is on its way, but it’s probably a good forty-five minutes out.”
Too little too late, Joanna thought, but she didn’t say so.
“Great,” she said into the mike. “I have a feeling we’re going to need them.”
The Yukon rounded a sharp turn and almost smashed into the Caravan, which was now stopped and sitting perpendicular to the roadway. On the far side of the vehicle, Joanna saw someone struggling to remove a flailing child from the backseat.
“Stop!” Joanna ordered. “Now. Hit the ground and stay low. I’ll try to take him out.”
Joanna was out of the Yukon and onto the shoulder before the vehicle had come to a complete stop. The impact took her breath away for a moment, but not her focus. She heaved herself over on her bulging belly. Abandoning the Glock, she aimed the semiautomatic beneath the parked minivan’s dusty undercarriage. From inside the van she could hear children wailing. As the struggle continued, Joanna realized one of the kids was desperately battling being forcibly removed from a car seat.
“No! No! No!” came the scream. “Let me go! Let me go! Go away!!! I want my mommy! I want my mommy!”
All Joanna could see was tennis-shoe-clad feet topped by a pair of jeans. Then a gym bag appeared beside the feet. It occurred to Joanna that the suspect had dropped the bag in order to use both hands in his attempt to grasp the struggling child. According to officially mandated procedures, Joanna should have issued a verbal warning to the suspect at that point-she should have shouted at him and warned him to freeze. But not with the child’s life hanging in the balance.
Knowing that the minivan’s sheet-metal body wouldn’t adequately protect the children from flying bullets, Joanna nonetheless carefully sighted in on one of the moving tennis shoes, aiming slightly above the shoe itself to account for the bullet’s trajectory. With a heartfelt prayer on her lips, she pulled the trigger.
There was a screech of pain as the bullet smashed into the man’s ankle. The unexpected blow forced the suspect backward and sent him sprawling onto the ground, where he lay for a moment, bellowing with a combination of rage and pain. Then, with a purposeful roar, he flopped over on his belly and scrambled toward the fallen gym bag. Instinctively, Joanna knew she couldn’t let him reach it.
“Stop right there,” she ordered. When he didn’t, she shot again. This time the bullet kicked up a cloud of dirt and gravel inches from his face. Even at that distance she knew who he was from Frank Montoya’s mug shot. She had been right. The car-jacker was none other than Antonio Zavala.
Howling in pain once more, he stopped and lay still.
“Freeze,” Joanna shouted, and then, over her shoulder to Deputy Thomas, “Take him.” Joanna sprang to her feet with an ungainly but adrenaline-fueled agility that surprised even her. Once upright, she darted forward and around the van with the rifle still at the ready. As she ran, she heard a distinctive click. Mistaking the sound for a handgun hitting on an empty chamber, she momentarily ducked for cover. But instead of a shot, the next sound Joanna heard was the low-throated rumble of the minivan’s rear passenger door. Somehow, one of the resourceful children inside the van had pushed a button and shut the door. The next click was actually the sound of the van being locked from the inside.
That’s one smart kid! Joanna thought gratefully.
“You shot me, you bitch!” Zavala groaned, writhing on the ground. “I’m hurt. I’m bleeding. I’m gonna lose my foot.”
“If you move again, you’re going to lose your life,” she told him. “Face on the ground; hands over your head.” Deputy Thomas materialized at her side. “Cuff him,” she added.
As Deputy Thomas complied, Joanna kept him covered, all the while edging closer to the fallen and half-open gym bag. When she saw the semiautomatic lying just inside the bag, a cold chill ran down her body. With a quick kick, she sent the bag a good fifteen feet away from Tony Zavala.
Furiously she turned on the now-cuffed prisoner. Seeing the gun had brought home the grave danger they’d all been in. It was then she knew for sure that shooting first and warning later had been the right decision-her only possible decision. It was also when she realized that for Zavala’s well-being as well as her own, she needed to stay away from him.