“Call the jail,” Joanna ordered. “Tell him that you and I and Miss Kellogg here are heading for the Peloncillos. He should follow ASAP. I’ll take Angie with me in the patrol car. You can follow in your Blazer. That way, if we need to do any offroading, we’ll have the Blazer to do it in.”

“Wait a minute,” Voland objected. “If what she says is true and we’re dealing with some kind of hostage situation, you can’t possibly bring a civilian along. That’s crazy.”

“You heard what Angie said,” Joanna returned. “She can show us how to get there. She can’t tell us. If we have to go driving around looking for the right spot, no telling how much time we’ll lose. In a situation like this, minutes mean the difference between life and death.”

“But-”

“No buts!” Joanna snapped, cutting him off. “I’ve got an extra Kevlar vest for her-one I keep in the trunk. If Dennis Hacker is in the kind of trouble Angie says he’s in, that’s the best we can do. Let’s get going.”

Voland shook his head, but he said nothing more. Outside the building rain poured down in the kind of downpour Jim Bob Brady would have called “raining pitchforks and hammer handles.” It was only a matter of a few feet from Joanna’s private entrance across the open sidewalk to her covered parking place. Even so, by the time she reached the Crown Victoria, she was drenched. Angie Kellogg, wet to begin with, was even more so. Joanna went around to the trunk, dragged out the Kevlar vest, and gave it to Angie.

“Put it on,” Joanna ordered.

“Do I have to?” Angie asked.

“Yes, you do. It’s the only way you’re going along.” Without another word, Angie began strapping the vest into place while Joanna slipped the gearshift into reverse and switched on both lights and siren. “What happened?” she asked as the car shot through the parking lot.

“What do you mean?” Angie returned. “I already told you what happened.”

“Not all of it,” Joanna said. “The last I heard, you were so mad at Dennis Hacker that you were ready to walk home eighty miles in a storm every bit as bad as this one.”

“I guess I was wrong about him,” Angie admitted thoughtfully.

“Wrong?” Joanna echoed. “I thought you said he was making fun of you, laughing at you.”

The rain was falling hard enough that even with the wind-shield wipers working on high Joanna could barely see the road ahead. She found herself sitting forward and squinting, but that didn’t help.

“He did laugh,” Angie replied. “I think now he was really laughing at something else, not me.” She glanced at the speedometer. “You have the siren on. Can’t we go any faster?”

“Not with all the water on the roadway,” Joanna said. “We’ll end up hydroplaning.”

“What’s that?”

“It means you’re driving on the surface of the water instead of on the pavement. That’s how people lose control of their vehicles in rainstorms. No traction.”

“Oh,” Angie Kellogg said.

They were quiet for a minute or two until Joanna spoke again. “You’re sure whoever broke into the camper had a gun^?”

“I’m not sure,” Angie said. “It sounded like it. I heard somebody tell Dennis to put his hands up.”

“Were there any guns in the trailer to begin with?” Joanna asked. “Did Dennis Hacker have any weapons of his own?”

“If he did,” Angie answered. “I didn’t see them.”

Struck by the hopelessness of it all, Angie Kellogg’s toughness and strength seemed to give out all at once. Pressing herself into the far corner of the car, she began to cry.

Joanna Brady ached to comfort her friend, but all she could do right then was keep on driving.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

When the speeding Crown Victoria finally reached the eastern outskirts of Douglas on Highway 80, Angie looked around at the sodden desert landscape and shook her head. “This isn’t the way we went Sunday morning,” she said. “It’s how Marianne brought me back that afternoon, not the way Dennis took going.”

Joanna immediately heeled the Crown Victoria into a sharp U-turn and headed back to the nearest intersection where she could cross over to Geronimo Trail, the only other route that led from Douglas to the Peloncillos. As they drove past Dick Voland’s Blazer, Joanna caught a glimpse of the pained expression on her chief deputy’s face. He was shaking his head in disgust. It made her glad they weren’t in the same vehicle. She didn’t want to hear his “I told you so.”

Even though the storm seemed to be over and there was water standing along the road, the dips across Geronimo Trail were just beginning to run with trickles of water. Joanna knew full well that just because the rain had stopped didn’t mean the danger of flash floods was past. It would take time for the runoff to drain out of the desert’s higher elevations and into the lower washes. Once that happened, they could quickly become impassible.

Holding her breath each time, Joanna rushed through one dip after another with the wary expectation that at any time a solid wall of water could come crashing out of nowhere and sweep them away. Dick Voland’s four-wheel-drive Blazer would be far less susceptible than Joanna’s Crown Victoria. Still, the bottom line was clear. If the water did come up suddenly, no one else would be able to make it through until after the flooding receded. That meant that if Dick and Joanna found themselves in some kind of difficult situation, calling for reinforcements wouldn’t be an option. Sheriff Brady and her chief deputy would be on their own. Which also meant, Joanna realized, that there was a real possibility she was placing Angie Kellogg in grave danger.

“Sheriff Brady?” The radio squawked to life with the voice of the head dispatcher.

“What is it, Larry?” Joanna returned.

“Ernie Carpenter just called in from Willcox. He says to tell you he’s got some good news and some bad news.”

“Give me the good news first.”

“They found Alf Hastings’s Jeep Cherokee parked behind Aaron Meadows’s place just east of Willcox.”

“Great. What’s the bad news, then?”

“Nobody’s home. Aaron Meadows’s Suburban is among the missing, and so are both Meadows and Hastings.”

“Can you patch me through to Detective Carpenter?” Joanna asked.

“Sure thing. Hang on.”

Joanna came to the next dip, the place where Cottonwood Creek crossed Geronimo Trail. Here a foaming river of rushing water crossed the road. Realizing the depth might be dangerously deceptive, Joanna stopped at the crest of the dip and put her Ford in reverse, then pulled off onto the shoulder.

Ernie’s voice came through the radio. “What are you doing, Sheriff Brady?”

“Changing cars, it turns out,” Joanna told him. “The water’s too deep for the patrol car. From here on, we’ll have to ride with Dick Voland.”

“But where are you?”

“On our way to the Peloncillos. There’s some problem with Dennis Hacker.”

“The parrot guy?”

“One and the same,” Joanna answered. “What are you doing?”

“Same old same old,” Carpenter replied. “What we’ve done all afternoon-hurry up and wait. Adam York has a guy flying down from Tucson with a search warrant. In the meantime, there’s nothing much to do but hang around here and see what happens. If you need backup, we could probably spare…”

“Don’t even bother,” Joanna said. “The way the water’s running out here, we’ll be lucky to get through in the Blazer. Just be sure you keep me posted on whatever’s going on up there.”

“Will do,” Carpenter replied.

“So does this mean Hastings and Meadows are in it together?” she asked.

“Beats me,” the detective returned. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Great,” Joanna said.

By the time Joanna put the radio back away, Dick Voland was standing outside her window. With his feet planted wide apart and with his arms folded across his chest, he gazed into the turbulent water and shook his head. Joanna climbed out of the Crown Victoria.