God, he wanted to shoot him, he wanted to end this now. He owed it to Missy, he owed it to Jonah.

Jonah…

The sudden image of his son brought a burst of reality to what was happening.

No…

Still, he debated for a couple of breaths before finally exhaling hard. He reached for his handcuffs and slipped them from his belt. With a practiced move, he slipped one of the cuffs around the nearest of Otis’s upraised wrists, then moved his hand behind Otis’s back. After holstering his gun, he slipped on the other cuff, locked them both down until Otis winced, then pulled him up. “You have the right to remain silent…,” he began, and Clyde, who’d been frozen in place, suddenly exploded into activity, like an anthill that had been stepped on.

“This ain’t right. I’m calling my lawyer! You’ve got no right coming in here like this and pointing your gun that way!”

He continued to scream long after Miles had finished with the Miranda warning, loaded Otis into the back of his car, and started toward the highway.

In the car, neither Miles nor Otis spoke until they’d reached the highway. Miles’s eyes remained locked on the road. Despite the fact that he had Otis in custody, he didn’t want to so much as glance in the rearview mirror at Otis for fear of what he would do to him.

He’d wanted to shoot him.

With God as his witness, he’d wanted to do it.

And one wrong move, from anyone who’d been out there, and he would have.

But that would have been wrong.

And you were wrong in the way you handled it out there. How many regulations had he broken? Half a dozen? Letting Sims go, failing to obtain a warrant, ignoring Charlie, not requesting help, pulling his gun straight off, putting it to Otis’s head… He was going to catch hell for this, and not only from Charlie. Harvey Wellman, too. The yellow broken lines came at him, passing rhythmically from sight.

I don’t care. Otis is going to jail, no matter what happens to me. Otis will rot away in prison like he made me rot for two years.

“So what are you bringing me in for this time?” Otis asked flatly.

“Shut the hell up,” Miles responded.

“I have a right to know what the charge is.”

Miles turned around, stifling the anger that bubbled up in him at the sound of Otis’s voice. When Miles made no response, Otis continued, oddly calm. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. I knew you weren’t going to shoot. You just couldn’t do it.”

Miles bit his lip, his face turning red. Keep control, he told himself. Keep control…

Otis, however, went on.

“Tell me, are you still seeing that girl you were with at the Tavern? I was just wondering, because-” Miles slammed on the brakes, the wheels screeching, black scars left on the highway. Because he was unbuckled, Otis shot forward into the safety cage. Miles pressed the accelerator to the floor again, and like a yo-yo, Otis was flung back into his seat.

For the rest of the ride, Otis didn’t say another word.

Chapter 20

So what the hell is going on?” Charlie demanded.

A few minutes earlier, Miles had shown up with Otis and had walked him through the station down to one of the holding cells. After locking him in, Otis asked to see his lawyer, but Miles simply headed back up the stairs to Charlie’s office. Charlie closed the door behind them; other sheriffs stole quick glances through the window, trying their best to hide their curiosity. “I think that seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?” Miles answered. “This isn’t the time or place for jokes, Miles. I need some answers and I need them now, starting with Sims. I want to know where the paperwork is, why you let him go, and what the hell he meant by this matter of life and death. And then, I want answers as to why you went charging out of here and why Otis is locked up downstairs.”

Charlie crossed his arms and leaned against the desk.

Over the next fifteen minutes, Miles told him what had happened. Charlie’s jaw dropped open, and by the end, he was pacing around the office. “When did all this happen?”

“A couple of years ago. Sims didn’t remember exactly.”

“But you believed the rest of it?”

Miles nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I believed him. Either he was telling the truth, or he’s the best actor I’ve ever seen.” In the wake of the adrenaline rush that was slowly dissipating, Miles felt tired.

“So you let him go.” A statement, not a question.

“I had to.”

Charlie shook his head, closing his eyes for a moment. “That wasn’t your call to make. You should have come to me first.”

“You had to have been there, Charlie. He wouldn’t have said anything at all if I started running around here, trying to cut deals with you and Harvey. I made a judgment call. You might think I was wrong, but in the end I got the answer I needed.”

Charlie looked out the window, thinking. He didn’t like it. Not at all. And not just the fact that Miles had overstepped his bounds and there was a whole lot of explaining to do.

“You got an answer all right,” he said finally.

Miles looked up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It just doesn’t sound right, that’s all. He knows he’s going back to jail

unless he can cut a deal, and he suddenly has information about Missy?” He

turned to face Miles. “Where was he the last couple of years? There’s been a

reward, and you know how Sims earns his money. Why hasn’t he come forward before

now?”

He hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know. Maybe he was afraid.”

Charlie’s eyes darted toward the ground.Or maybe he’s lying now.

Miles seemed to read Charlie’s mind.

“Look, we’ll go talk to Earl Getlin. If he corroborates the story, we could cut a deal so he testifies.”

Charlie said nothing. Christ, this was a mess.

“He ran down my wife, Charlie.”

“Sims saysthatOtis said he ran down your wife. There’s a big difference between the two, Miles.”

“You know my history with Otis.”

Charlie turned, holding up his hands. “Of course I do. I know every part of it. And that’s why Otis’s alibi was among the first we checked out, or don’t you remember that? There were witnesses that put him at his house the night of the accident.”

“They were his brothers…”

Charlie shook his head in frustration. “Even though you weren’t in on the investigation, you know how hard we looked for an answer. We aren’t a bunch of buffoons running around here, and neither are the men at the highway patrol. We all know how to investigate a crime, and we did it right, because we wanted the answer as badly as you did. We talked to the right people, we sent the right information into the state labs. But nothing tied Otis to this thing-nothing.” “You don’t know that.”

“I’m a lot more sure of it than I am of what you’re telling me,” he answered. He drew a deep breath. “I know this thing has eaten you up since it happened, and you know what? It’s eaten me up, too. And if it had happened to me, I would have acted the same way you are. I would have gone crazy had someone run down Brenda and gotten away with it. I probably would have looked for answers on my own, too. But you know what?”

He stopped, making sure that Miles was listening to him. “I wouldn’t have believed the first story that came my way that promised an answer, especially if it was from a guy like Sims Addison. Think about who you’re talking about here.Sims Addison. That guy would turn on his own mother if he could get money for it. When his own freedom is at stake, how far do you think he’d be willing to go?”

“This isn’t about Sims-”

“Of course it is. He didn’t want to go back to prison, and he was willing to say anything to ensure that. Doesn’t that make more sense than what you’re telling me?”