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.

“Here,” she said, handing Deputy Thomas his rifle. “I’ll go check on the kids.”

Behind her the terrified children in the van were still screaming their lungs out. Oblivious to the racket, Joanna hurried to the Grand Caravan and knocked on the front passenger window. Inside the screaming stopped abruptly. The little girl, now in the driver’s seat, knowledgeably switched the switch that unlocked the door, allowing Joanna to wrestle it open.

Behind her Zavala continued to screech, “My foot! My foot. You shot the hell out of my foot.”

“Shut up!” Joanna snapped. “Or I’ll shoot you again. Put a tourniquet on his leg, Thomas. Do what you can to stop the bleeding. If he keeps blabbing, put one on his mouth, too!”

Inside the van, the little boy, his face wet with tears, remained strapped in his car seat while his sister huddled next to the door on the driver’s side. “Are you all right?” Joanna asked.

The little girl, her eyes huge, nodded slowly.

“I’m Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said. “Are you Hannah?”

The girl nodded. “Who’s he?”

“Don’t worry,” Joanna said. “We’ve got him. He can’t hurt you now.”

“Did you really shoot him?”

“Yes,” Joanna agreed. “I did. He was trying to take you away. I didn’t have any choice.”

“Did he hurt our mommy? Where’s she?”

That last question was enough to galvanize Joanna to action. Somewhere back down Mescal Road, Hannah and Abel’s mother was living in a world of terrible uncertainty.

“Your mommy’s on her way here right now,” Joanna said. “But come on. Let’s go see if we can talk to her.”

The car-seat fasteners that had so baffled Antonio Zavala let go easily under Joanna’s practiced hand. Moments later, she was carrying Abel and leading Hannah back to Deputy Thomas’s Yukon.

“Dispatch?” Joanna said into the radio.

“Sheriff Brady! Are you all right?”

“Yes. The suspect is wounded but in custody.”

“Do you need an ambulance?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “You’d better send one.”

“Where do you want him taken to?”

“Maybe the Copper Queen on Bisbee, but we’ll let the EMTs make that call,” Joanna said. “I shot him in the foot, but it looks like he’s hurt pretty bad. As soon as the ambulance crew decides where to take him, let the jail commander know. Tom Hadlock will need to post a guard wherever Zavala goes. In the meantime, please patch me through to Debbie Howell’s vehicle. I have two very brave children here with me. Their names are Hannah and Abel. They want to talk to their mother.”

Chapter 18

For the next several minutes Joanna was completely engrossed in helping the children talk to their ecstatically relieved mother over the Yukon‘s police radio. Busy as she was with that, she scarcely noticed Frank Montoya’s arrival or the noisy DPS helicopter hovering overhead.

“Do you want me to wave off the helicopter?” Frank asked finally.

Joanna nodded. “Tell them they can go. We don’t need them. I’ve called for an ambulance to take Zavala to the Copper Queen.”

Frank walked away to do her bidding. He returned with Jaime Carbajal in tow. “I’m here, Sheriff Brady. Should I start interviewing the children?”

“Not yet,” she said. “We’ll wait until their mother gets here. It shouldn’t be too long.”

“They’re both okay?” Jaime asked. “The kids are fine.”

“What about you?” he asked.

“I’m fine, too,” she told him, but that wasn’t entirely the case. Joanna knew that, in the aftermath of her use of force, some other outside agency would have to be called in to investigate the incident. She would need to be interviewed, and so would Deputy Thomas. Dealing with that investigation would siphon time and energy from her already staff-deprived department. There were bound to be plenty of tough questions about her not having issued a verbal warning before pulling the trigger.

She pointed Jaime toward the place where the gym bag had come to rest. “That’s Zavala’s bag. There’s a semiautomatic weapon inside,” she said. “We’ll need photos.”

“Understood,” Jaime said.

Joanna turned to Frank Montoya. “Have you asked the Department of Public Safety to send their investigators?”

Frank nodded. “Two of them are on their way from Tucson right now.”

“Good call,” she said. “Thanks.”

“Are you putting yourself on administrative leave?” Frank asked.

“No, I’m not,” she declared. “Now where the hell is that scumbag?”

“He’s in the back of Deputy Thomas’s Yukon, waiting for the ambulance. Rick put a tourniquet on his leg and has his foot elevated.”

“How badly is he hurt?”

“The foot took a lot of damage. Your bullet nailed him right in the ankle. I don’t think he’s going to be walking on it anytime soon. Good shot, by the way.”

Joanna gave Frank a wan smile. “Thanks,” she said. “It was the best I could do under the circumstances.”

When they reached the Yukon, Deputy Thomas, with the sweat stains drying on his collar, stood to one side, keeping a wary eye on Antonio Zavala.

“Good job, Rick,” Joanna said, stopping long enough to shake his hand. “And great driving.”

Thomas nodded modestly, acknowledging her compliment.

“Did Frank tell you that we’ll both have to be interviewed by DPS? It’ll be a third-party deadly force investigation.”

“What choice did you have?” Thomas objected. “What were we supposed to do, let him grab the kid and run off with her?”

“Welcome to the world of post-incident second-guessing, Deputy Thomas,” she told him. “Just tell the investigators what happened. It’ll be fine.”

Having done her best to reassure her young deputy, Joanna went over to the Yukon and pulled open the back door. Antonio Zavala had been quiet for several minutes, but as soon as he saw her, he resumed his tirade.

“I want a lawyer!” he demanded. “You shot me with no warning, and it hurts like hell. That’s police brutality.”

“What kind of warning did you give the people you shot?” she asked.

Zavala quieted again. He answered her question with nothing but a hard-edged stare.

“How badly do you suppose they hurt before they died?”

Again Zavala didn’t answer her question. Instead, he asked one of his own. “Why am I just sitting here? Aren’t you supposed to be taking me to a hospital or something? Are you just going to leave me here to bleed to death?”

“Believe me,” Joanna said, “I wouldn’t be that lucky. I’ve called for an ambulance, and it’ll get here when it gets here. But what’s the matter, Tony? You can’t stand a little pain or the sight of blood? When it comes to beating up women and committing murder and terrorizing little kids, you’re a regular tough guy. But a little pain turns you into a crybaby? A cool macho dude like you should be ashamed of yourself. Now tell me, why’d you do it?”

“Why’d I do what?” he retorted belligerently. “I don’t have to tell you nothing. I know my rights. I already asked for a lawyer.”

“And you’ll have a lawyer, but in the meantime, let me tell you something,” Joanna said. “You beat up my officer Jeannine Phillips because you thought you could get away with it. And you murdered Lupe because she decided she could do better than hang around with a loser like you. Poor Lupe. Clarence and Billy O’Dwyer weren’t much, but they must have looked like giants compared to a punk like you. And so you murdered all three of them in cold blood-Lupe and Billy and Clarence, too.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“Oh, we’ll prove it all right,” Joanna returned. “I just have one problem with you, Mr. Zavala. I only shot you in the foot. I wish to hell I’d hit you someplace vital, because dirtbags like you aren’t worth the time or money it’s going to take to sew you back up or put you away for the rest of your useless life!”