Joanna reached up and gave him a quick, grateful hug. “I’ll be back as soon as I finish up with Walter McFadden,” she said.

From the hospital it was a straight shot down Cole Avenue to Walter McFadden’s place. It was after eleven and no lights were showing when she pulled up outside the gate side of his yard. As she fumbled for the parking brake in the unfamiliar vehicle, a car with its lights on bright pulled up directly behind her and stopped. Temporarily blinded by bright lights followed by total darkness, she blinked once. In that brief instant of time, someone was beside the car door wrenching it open.

“Get out,” a man ordered.

Joanna recognized Tony Vargas at once. She hadn’t ever seen him in person, but his picture from the Horseshoe Casino was still in her pocket.

“Hello, Mr. Vargas,” she said coolly, stepping out of the car to face him, refusing to look at the gun he was holding in his hand.

“You know who I am, then?”

Joanna was conscious of only one thought. She was standing next to Andy’s killer. He was armed, but so was she. Thanks to Clayton Rhodes and Bobo Jenkins she had a loaded.44 in her pocket. That was something Tony Vargas probably wouldn’t expect. Fighting off panic, she forced herself to hold his eyes with hers. She wanted his eyes on her face not her hands.

“When I get through with you, everyone else will too,” she responded, deliberately taunting him.

A chillingly insincere smile flickered across Tony Vargas’ broad features. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that if I were you. Where’s Angie? Where’s my book?”

“Someplace safe. Someplace where you won’t be able to find them.”

Vargas turned his head slightly but without taking his eyes off her. “Hey, Ken, turn on the dome light in there, would you?” he asked.

Joanna glanced at the other car for the first time and was dismayed when she recognized it to be a Cochise County Sheriff’s Department patrol car. The interior lights came on in the car and revealed Ken Galloway sitting in the driver’s seat. Then something moved in the back seat. In a heart-stopping second, Joanna realized that Jenny was there, locked behind the metal mesh, waving at her through the window. Jenny and her mother both.

She turned back to Vargas in sudden fury. “What are they doing here?” she demanded.

He smiled again. “Don’t get excited. You sell insurance, don’t you, Mrs. Brady? And that’s what they are. My insurance policy. You’re going to drive this car to wherever you’ve hidden Angie. When I have her and my book, you’re going to drive us to Ken’s airplane down at the airport. Once we’re safely out of here, then you get your mother and the little girl back, understand?”

Waller McFadden’s back porch light snapped on. The door opened and Tigger came out first, followed by the sheriff himself, barefoot and wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He was limping down his back steps. “Who’s out here?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”

The interior light of the patrol car snapped off and Ken Galloway stepped out of the car. “No biggie,” he said calmly, walking over to the gate. “We’re just doing a little damage control.”

“Damage control!” Joanna exclaimed, wondering if there was a chance the sheriff might have a weapon concealed somewhere on his body. “Walter, this is the man who killed Andy. They’ve got my mother and Jenny locked in the back of Ken’s patrol car.”

“Is that true, Ken?” McFadden asked. “About Jenny and Eleanor Lathrop?”

Ken shook his head. “It’s like Tony was telling Joanna here. We’re only using them for insurance. It’s gonna get real rough around here, Walter. We’ve got a plane to catch, and there’s enough room in it for three people-you, me, and Tony. We won’t hurt Joanna or her mother or Jenny, either. But by the time they get loose, we’ll be over the border and long gone.”

Tigger came up behind Walter, tail wagging, and dropped the Frisbee at his master’s feet. Seeing him, McFadden shook his head. “Go lie down,” the sheriff ordered. The dog, disappointed, retreated to the back porch while Walter McFadden turned back to Ken Galloway.

“It’s over then, isn’t it, Ken, for all of us. But I’m not leaving. I’ve wanted it to be over for a helluva long time. I just didn’t have guts enough to do anything about it.”

With no further warning, McFadden flung open the metal gate, catching Ken Galloway by surprise and full in the midsection. The top brine of the gate slammed into his ribs, sending him reeling backwards toward the patrol car. When Vargas turned to help Galloway, Joanna saw her chance.

Throughout the confrontation, she had been edging her hand nearer the pocket containing the gun. Now her fingers closed around the grip of the.44. Carefully she thumbed back the hammer. At that close range, there was no need to aim the weapon or even bring it fully out of her pocket.

When she pulled the trigger, the roar of gunfire was deafening. The force of the recoil sent her spinning back against the roof of the Camino. Tony Vargas groaned in surprise, doubled over, and crumpled to the ground.

Tony’s gun fell from his hand, but it was still within reach. As soon as Joanna regained her balance, she kicked it under the car, as far as she could away from his grasping fingers. the meantime, Ken Galloway had pulled his own gun from its holster and was holding it on Walter McFadden. Trying to watch both I McFadden and Joanna, his head swiveled back and forth between them.

“Go ahead and shoot,” Walter McFadden dared Galloway. “That way I’ll have the monkey off my back once and for all.” As he spoke, the sheriff was easing himself through the now-open gate, steadily closing the distance between himself and his renegade deputy.

“Stop right there, Walter,” Galloway warned. “Don’t come any closer.”

“Actually,” Walter drawled, “I do believe I much prefer shooting.”

All the while the sheriff was moving inevitably forward as Galloway backed away. That’s when Joanna realized what McFadden was doing. By pushing Galloway farther into the street, away from the patrol car, he was effectively easing Jenny and Eleanor out of the line of fire. Joanna moved with the two men, taking her part of the triangle along. Meantime lights were coming on all over the neighborhood.

“That way I won’t have to stand around any longer, turning a blind eye to your slimy blackmail deals and murder for hire schemes,” McFadden continued. “I’m looking forward to that, to not having scumbags like you in my life, Ken. Besides, if you do a good enough job, if your aim is good enough, there won’t be enough of me left over to ship off to prison. I never did much like Florence, you know. It’s too damned hot up there.”

With that, Walter McFadden lunged forward, throwing himself toward Ken Galloway’s gun. In the blazing hail of gunfire that followed, both men went down, first Ken Galloway and then Sheriff Walter McFadden.

Joanna heard sirens then. As close as they were, they must have been audible for some time before she noticed them. Still holding the gun, she hurried to where Ken Galloway lay moaning on the ground. She picked up his.357 and handed it over to the first neighbor who appeared on the scene.

“Watch him,” Joanna ordered. “Don’t let him move.”

She rushed to Walter McFadden and knelt beside him. He was pressing his hand to his chest, a hand’s breadth beneath his breastbone. Despite the pressure, blood still oozed up through his fingers.

“Good shooting, Joanna. But then your daddy always said you were a crack shot.”

“Quiet,” she said. “Listen to the siren. The ambulance is on its way.”

“Morphine was the hook-that’s what finally got me,” he whispered. “When the pain got too bad, when Carol was crying for it in middle of the night, I would’ve done anything to get it for her. One buy was all it took. As soon as I stepped out of line, the bastards had me.”