They got there sooner than any of the emergency vehicles. Sirens sounded, but in the distance. The scene in front of them was eerily quiet. Just a white-paneled van wrapped around a telephone pole, the only sound that of the flames consuming it.
A man lay on the other side of the road, partially propped up by a fence post, bleeding from his head. His left arm had an unnatural bend in it and he seemed to be holding it in his lap. He barely focused on them when they approached.
‘Gabe, are you all right? Are you burned? You don’t look burned. But your arm …’ Emma knelt next to him but he didn’t seem aware of her.
His eyes stared out across the field but focused on nothing.
‘There’s almost no gas around here.’ Tommy approached the car slowly, cautiously. It had gone up in flames but they seemed to be dying down. ‘I think they lost most of their gas before they crashed. Good thing. There wouldn’t have been much left of any of them if they’d had a full tank.’
‘Where’s Heath?’ Ellen had a good grasp on Morgan’s leash but he wasn’t giving any evidence of wanting to do anything but get back in the car.
The smell of smoke, gasoline and blood were doing strange things to his sensitive nose and he wasn’t happy. Ranger stood by Emma, seemingly oblivious to all the alien smells. Instead, he surveyed the surrounding countryside.
Millie trembled in Mary’s arms.
Mary was doing a little trembling of her own. ‘Is he all right? How badly is he hurt?’
‘Don’t know. His arm’s broken but I’m not sure what else.’ She also looked around. ‘Has anyone seen Heath? He’s not in the van, is he?’
Ellen was close enough now to see into the van’s window. ‘No. Thank goodness. I really wouldn’t want to try to get too near this thing. The door’s not closed all the way on this side. He must have been thrown out.’
‘Or jumped out.’ Mary thought Heath Grady’s feeling of self-preservation was strong. If he’d seen an accident about to happen, or had noticed something wrong with the van, she was sure his first instinct would be to save himself. But he wasn’t in sight. ‘Can you see if Heath’s rifle is still in there?’
‘Mary, I can’t tell and I really don’t want to get closer. But if it’s in there it will never fire another bullet. It looks as if everything in the cab is fried.’
Sirens were closer now. The first engine rounded the bend, saw them, slowed, waved and kept going. Then a second passed. The sirens screamed and so did Millie. Mary thought her head would explode from noise, anxiety and fear. Heath was around here somewhere, and if he was alive, and not too severely injured, probably dangerous. Why were all those engines passing them by? They needed help. They needed a firetruck and an ambulance.
They got both. A small tanker pulled over, turned off its siren but not the flashing lights and men began jumping off – men with foam canisters in their hands. They began spraying the van, the weeds it sat on and the telephone pole.
One of the EMTs knelt beside Gabe. ‘Compound fracture – bad one. Almost certain concussion. Don’t know what else, yet.’ He slit the sleeve of Gabe’s shirt on his good arm and put on a blood pressure cup. Gabe didn’t seem to notice. ‘We’re going to have to give him something before we can move him. That arm’s going to hurt like a—’ He glanced at Mary and broke off.
She stood back, trying to keep out of the way, but stared from Gabe to the now-smoldering car, wondering where Heath was. She was in no doubt he was the dangerous one. He had been in the passenger seat when they left. Had he been thrown from the van somewhere back down the road?
A Highway Patrol car pulled up. Two patrolmen got out, two Mary had never seen before. She wondered how they had even found them. It was usually the sheriffs that patrolled this remote area.
‘Only one person in the car?’ The question was general, addressed to them all.
Emma reached into her pocket, pulled out her wallet and flipped to show her badge. ‘The victim is a suspect in a series of robberies we’ve been investigating. His brother was in the van with him when they left. They’re responsible for that.’
She pointed back toward the way they’d come. The sky that had been alive with color was filled with smoke. Bursts of fireworks still exploded but they seemed lower and almost without color against the gray smoke. As they watched, the first plumes of white smoke appeared. The firemen had found the well. Mary wondered if the house had gone up as well as the barn. It could hardly have escaped at least some damage. If they could keep the fire from spreading into the neighbor’s barley field … She’d let the firemen worry about that. She was worried about something else. The sun was starting to set. If Heath was hiding in the underbrush lining the road, and there was plenty of it, he’d be able to cross one of the fields around here and possibly get away. If he had that rifle with him … She didn’t want to think about that.
‘Where’s the brother?’ One of the patrolmen looked at the van with a slightly sick expression on his face.
‘Not in there.’ Tommy was beside them. ‘I managed to get close enough to see the cab was empty. The passenger door was open, though. I don’t know where he is.’
The patrolmen looked at each other, evidently wondering what to do next, when a car came careening around the bend, came to an abrupt stop behind the firetruck and a familiar figure jumped out of the driver’s side. Agent Wilson climbed out of the other.
‘Hey, you can’t …’ The patrolman’s sentence died away as he recognized the man now embracing one of the women.
Morgan wagged his tail, waiting impatiently for his turn to be hugged. He didn’t have to wait long.
Then Dan got down to business. ‘That’s Gabe Grady. He’s a suspect in a murder case. Make sure they know that when you get him to the ER. How is he?’ This was addressed to the EMTs who now had Gabe on a gurney and were ready to lift him into the ambulance.
‘Hey, Chief,’ the older one said and grinned. ‘He’ll live. Not very comfortably for a while but he’ll make it. We’ll call ahead and have someone from our office meet us at the hospital.’
Dan nodded. ‘Where’s Heath?’
‘No one knows,’ Emma answered. ‘We need to get a search party out here.’
‘Now, listen here, Baxter. You can’t be ordering up search parties, especially when you don’t even know if these Grady boys are responsible for anything more serious than reckless driving.’
Eric Wilson stood a little away from Dan, who had one arm around Ellen and his other hand resting on Morgan’s head. He looked at them with distaste and at Emma with even more.
Her response evidently wasn’t what he’d expected. ‘It’s about time you got over your grudge against Mo Black, Eric. The Grady brothers are almost certainly the ones who robbed all those jewelry stores and killed both Ian Miller and Jerry Lowell. Miller was your partner. I’d think you’d want to capture the one who shot him.’
Wilson hissed in his breath but before he had a chance to respond the ambulance driver interrupted. ‘We’re ready to pull out. Can you people move to the side of the road?’
The van fire seemed to be out as well and the firemen were mopping up, putting their canisters back on their truck. With Wilson and Emma still glaring at each other, they moved over behind the ambulance. Slowly, it started to pull away. Mary thought she and Millie were the only ones watching it. Everyone else was busy arguing or watching the argument. Millie barked. Mary stiffened. A man was hiding in the grass on the other side of the board fence. She could clearly see him inching his way farther into the field. So could Millie. She growled. Mary gasped. Heath. Crawling on his belly, dragging a brown case and the long rifle.
‘There he is!’
The words escaped Mary before she had time to think. Heath stiffened at the sound of her voice, got to his feet and began to run. A large stand of oaks stood in the middle of the field. So did a herd of cows. Their heads went up to watch the running man.
‘Stop.’ Dan’s voice rang out and the ambulance jerked to a halt. The firemen looked around, startled, and caught sight of the fleeing man.
‘Hey,’ one of them called. ‘What’s that guy doing?’
‘Trying to get away,’ Dan shouted back. He turned to the two troopers who stood, staring at Heath’s rapidly disappearing back. ‘Go after him.’
One of them drew his gun.
‘Not like that. Run.’
‘He’s too far away.’ Emma reached down and unsnapped the leash from Ranger’s collar. The dog hadn’t taken his eyes off Heath since he’d started to run and every muscle in the dog’s frame was ready to move. ‘Take him.’
That was all Ranger needed. With one bound, he was over the fence and after Heath. The cows watched with seeming amazement as the dog closed in on their man, but not as much as Mary.
‘He’s just like Rin Tin Tin,’ she told Millie.
Heath looked over his shoulder and hesitated. The dog was rapidly closing ground. Emma had sprung over the fence and was outdistancing the patrolmen. Heath stopped and raised his rifle.
Mary held her breath. So did everyone else. She thought she heard a soft groan from Tommy but was too busy praying Heath wouldn’t shoot to be sure.
‘Do something,’ Ellen implored Dan. ‘Shoot him.’
‘He’s too far away.’
Heath’s eye was glued to the scope and the rifle was aimed directly at the dog roaring toward him. Without conscious thought or planning, Mary screamed, ‘Heath, look out behind you!’
Heath didn’t look behind him but that one second of hesitation made the difference. Ranger gave a huge leap, landed squarely on Heath’s chest and sent the gun flying. They both hit the ground with a huge wallop. Mary didn’t know if he was unconscious or just winded but, either way, he wasn’t getting up. Ranger stood on his chest, his snarling jaw just inches from Heath’s throat. Emma paused only long enough to kick the rifle farther from Heath then pulled Ranger off, rolled Heath over and knelt down, putting her own gun to his head. The state troopers arrived, out of breath but with handcuffs, and it was over. They started to pull Heath to his feet but the ambulance crew was already halfway across the field with a stretcher and their gear. They examined a subdued and staggering Heath and pronounced him fit to walk, then they all started back across the field, watched carefully by the wary cows.
They weren’t the only ones. Emma seemed almost as wary of them as she carried Heath’s rifle suspended from a small branch she’d picked up and inserted through the trigger grip. Mary wondered if that was safe, but since the gun was evidence she assumed Emma had to do the best she could not to compromise it.
‘That girl thinks on her feet,’ Dan said.
‘She’s some woman.’ Ellen sounded almost reverent.
‘She doesn’t follow orders.’ The scowl on Wilson’s face would have made the Grinch proud.
‘What orders?’ Dan’s voice was mild but, from the look in his eyes, Mary knew he was fuming.
‘I told her not to call in a search team.’
‘She didn’t. Instead she risked her life, and that of the dog, taking down a suspected murderer. I have every intention of arresting Heath Grady for the murders of Ian Miller and Jerry Lowell, as well as grand theft. Mo Black had nothing to do with it or the robberies and I’ll make that clear to Casey Baxter when I talk to him, which will be soon. And I think Emma Baxter should get a commendation. So should Ranger.’ He glared at Wilson then turned to Mary, who still clutched Mille. ‘Arrange something.’
The anger in his voice shook her. ‘Arrange what?’
‘A ceremony of some kind. Give them the keys to the city.’
Emma smiled – the first Mary had seen in a long time. ‘That won’t be necessary but I do hope you’ll say some nice things about me to my uncle.’
‘Done.’ Dan smiled as well but it didn’t last long. He turned to the two highway patrol officers. ‘Take him into town and deposit him at the station. They’ll be expecting him. I’ll be right behind you.’
‘We can’t do that,’ one protested. ‘We’re still on duty here and …’ His voice faded under Dan’s glare.
‘I’ll clear it with your superior. Get moving.’
They did. Heath, the expression on his face every bit as furious as Dan’s, was deposited in the back of their black and white car. They all watched as it drove off, the ambulance right behind it. The firemen quickly followed, but not before telling Dan a tow truck was on its way. They’d been in communication with the units dispatched to the Grady ranch and that fire was also almost out. The barn was a total loss, and the house wasn’t much better, but the barley field had been saved. They waved as they drove away.
‘Wilson and I are going back to the station. I want Emma to ride with us. Ellen, can you take Mary and the dogs all to our house? I have some questions for them but we don’t need to do it at the station. It’s almost dark, so follow me closely. I don’t need you lost out here.’
Silently, Emma and Wilson got in Dan’s car. Mary looked at the sky as she got into Ellen’s, still holding Millie. Dan was right. It was dark. The sky no longer glowed with fireworks but a thin layer of smoke hung over the trees. You could smell it more than see it. There was still a faint glow back where the Grady ranch had been. The firetrucks that had put out the fire hadn’t returned but the worst was over. She settled down in the passenger seat, Millie on her lap, and let her head rest on the back of the seat. Relief and exhaustion seemed to overwhelm her but something distracted her. Movement. She caught it out of the corner of her eye. The cows. What were they doing? She sat up straight and rolled down her window. They were standing in a circle, staring at something – she couldn’t make out what. Suddenly one grabbed whatever it was and tossed it in the air. The cows all watched as it fell back to earth. Another picked it up with a toss of her head and flung it back up. Heath’s cowboy hat. The cows were playing toss with his hat. She started to laugh as the car rolled down the road toward home.