JEREMY STOCK HAD GONE TOTALLY SILENT, SO JOANNA SAT QUIETLY, too, trying to evaluate her situation. She had a weapon, yes, but there was no way for her to reach it—not with her hands cuffed behind her back.
When she was little, she’d loved playing agility games with her dad. One of them had consisted of holding a broomstick at knee level and then trying to step over it forwards and backwards. Her father had been in his forties by the time Joanna was born. After years of working in the mines, his knees weren’t as good as they had once been, and soon Joanna was far better at what they called the “broom game” than D.H. Lathrop. Back then she had been limber enough to step through the handcuffs, but not now—not with that bulging lump of baby stuck in her midsection.
The only way her Glock could come into play was if Jeremy removed the cuffs. At the moment, as they bounced along the rough dirt track between Warren and the base of Geronimo, it seemed to Joanna the idea of his actually removing the cuffs was little more than a pipe dream, not unlike ponying up two bucks on a winning lottery ticket. The odds of either one happening were equally unlikely.
What else did she have in her favor? After a moment, she remembered. Months earlier, she had prevailed upon the board of supervisors to give her budgetary permission to invest in a fleet management program that came complete with an automated vehicle-location system and computer-assisted dispatch. The system’s cutting-edge GPS capability made life easier for her Bisbee-based dispatchers. When faced with unfolding incidents throughout Joanna’s 6,400-square-mile jurisdiction, the system made it possible for Dispatch to locate and deploy the nearest possible deputy. Only a few months into operation, the system had already cut departmental response times in half. From an administrative standpoint, it had the added advantage of allowing Joanna to know if one of her less reliable deputies was spending his working hours tucked away on some deserted side road, napping his shift away.
Right now Joanna understood that the new system had the capability of saving her life, but only if someone noticed she was missing, figured out that Jeremy Stock was the most likely culprit, and had brains enough to activate the high-tech system that could locate his vehicle.
Joanna had told Butch that she was coming straight home. However much time had elapsed, he must be worried by now, but how much longer would it take for him to sound the alarm? Once that happened, the AFIDs, from the Taser, could indeed lead directly to Jeremy’s weapon, but how soon would that happen? When Joanna’s CSIs had sent AFIDs in for examination previously, it had taken weeks for them to get results. This was a matter of life and death, but did anyone else understand that? And even if they did, would it make any difference?
And then there was the matter of the person in charge—Chief Deputy Hadlock. He was a good guy, and he was growing into his responsibilities as chief deputy, but this would be the first time he would be solely responsible for directing her department’s response to a major incident. What would he do? How would he deploy his assets?
Tom wasn’t a nuanced kind of guy. Joanna realized, with a sinking sense of dread that when it came time for a final confrontation with Jeremy Stock, Tom’s most likely reaction would be an overreaction. She worried that he would come out in full attack mode—with lights flashing and guns blazing.
Joanna didn’t doubt that a posse of well-armed officers could take Jeremy Stock down in a hail of gunfire, but she had no wish to be caught in the resulting cross fire. And if bullets were about to fly, where was her Kevlar vest at the moment? That would be back in her office, exactly where she’d left it!
I can’t risk waiting around for someone to come riding to my rescue, she thought, giving herself a silent pep talk. If it is to be, it is up to me. The Little Red Hen is going to have to do this on her own.
Just then, as if to underscore her newfound resolve, Baby Sage stirred in her belly and delivered a surprisingly solid kick to Joanna’s lower rib cage. It was exactly what she needed. The baby—Joanna’s baby—was in this fight to the death, too. Awash with relief at knowing Sage was still alive and kicking, Joanna smiled to herself in the dark.
Okay, then, she vowed silently. I hear you loud and clear, little one. Make that the two of us, then. If it is to be, it is up to us.
As the Tahoe continued to bounce along, Joanna turned her attention back to the problem at hand—the ongoing hostage negotiation.
“I didn’t know you grew up in Bisbee,” she said.
“I didn’t,” Jeremy answered. “What makes you say that?”
“You know about Geronimo. Locals know about Geronimo. Outsiders usually don’t.”
“I grew up in Sierra Vista, but my mother was from Bisbee,” Jeremy answered. “Her folks, Gerald and Juanita Meynard, lived on Hazzard. Jerry was an underground miner; Juanita was a housewife. After my mother graduated from high school, she went to work at Fort Huachuca and ended up marrying a soldier she met on post. After my dad got out of the service, they stayed on in Sierra Vista.
“I used to come stay with Grandpa and Grandma for a few weeks during the summers when school was out. Grandpa and I hiked in the hills together; shot BB guns and his .22; did some prospecting. Then, the summer I turned eleven, he told me he wasn’t up to hiking anymore. The truth is, he wasn’t up to much of anything. A few months later, he was dead. It was years before I found out he got dusted. That’s what killed him. His lungs gave out.”
Joanna knew about the ugly reality behind the supposedly inoffensive sounding term “dusted.” It was common usage in Arizona’s copper-mining communities for career miners who developed lung problems. Most of the rest of the country referred to the ailment as the grimmer-sounding black lung disease. No matter how you said it, however, the outcome was usually the same—the miners sickened and died.
“Gramps always warned me to stay away from working in the mines, although they were mostly closed or closing by then,” Jeremy continued. “That’s one of the reasons I became a cop in the first place. Compared to being a miner, working in law enforcement was a big step up.”
The fact that Jeremy had just volunteered some information cheered Joanna. Maybe she was making progress after all.
“But why did you bring Susan Nelson all the way out here to kill her?”
On the far side of the mesh screen she saw him raise and lower his shoulders as he shrugged. “Seemed like as good a place as any,” he said.
“I know why you killed Desirée Wilburton—you said it was because she showed up unexpectedly and tried to come to Susan’s aid, but you never told me why you killed Susan.”
“She wouldn’t get rid of the baby,” Jeremy said. “She absolutely refused.”
“That’s what this is about—her baby?” Joanna echoed. “As I tried to explain to all of you earlier this afternoon, what happened with Susan Nelson was a crime against Travis. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had gone ahead and had the child, kept it, given it up for adoption, or had an abortion. In the long run, no one would have held it against your son. In fact, if Susan hadn’t died—if we hadn’t become embroiled in a double homicide investigation—there’s a good chance no one would have been the wiser.”
“Shut up!” Jeremy ordered, pounding the steering wheel in sudden fury. “Just shut the hell up. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
And so Joanna did exactly what he asked—she shut the hell up.