larger man frowned and brandished the huge gun. “You kidnapped your sick girlfriend? You’re a real piece of work.”
“Okay, listen, man.” Sweat was running down Billy Joe’s face and soaking the neck of his T-shirt. “Here’s the deal. The drugs are hidden in the Toyota. But that bitch Hannah took it to town. She’s got strict orders not to touch my damn car, but she took it anyway. Bet you can’t guess where I put ’em. The drugs.” Despite the gun pointed at him, Billy Joe’s voice took on the bragging tone he used when he was sure he’d done something brilliant. “They’re hidden in the trunk lining.”
The man rolled his eyes and raised his gun.
“No, wait,” Billy Joe begged. “I was trying something new. A better way to hide them for transport. I swear man, that’s all. As soon as I made sure it worked, I was going to ask to show it to Mr. Ficone.” Billy Joe took a nervous breath. “Or you. Maybe you’d want to see it first. You could take the credit for thinking it up if you want.”
The man with the tattoo flexed his fingers around the handle of the handgun.
“Okay, listen. Hannah will be back any minute. She’d better be.” He turned his hands palms out and continued babbling. “Wait till you see the car. It’s brilliant, the way I hid the drugs. It’s all fixed up, ready to go.”
Fear and desperation twisted Hannah’s heart. Billy Joe was off on his favorite subject. Cars. The moment when he might have revealed where her mother was had passed.
“It’s a blue Toyota. Oh, I said that already. Anyhow, I painted it and boosted the engine. Th-the passenger-side mirror is broken and there’s a crack in the windshield. It looks like any old family car on the outside, but under the hood is a screaming turbo-charged V-8. It’s perfect for transport.” Billy Joe had turned his body slightly to the right and was gesturing with his left hand to emphasize what he was saying, but Hannah saw him slowly reaching behind him to the waistband of his jeans.
“What about the money? I don’t buy that your new guy or the girl—Hannah?—stole it.”
“No, no. Listen. I swear. I’m giving you the real deal.” Billy Joe’s words tumbled over each other. “It’s Hannah. That bitch is the key.” He giggled. “The key. You’d better believe me. She’s the one you want.” He got his fingers wrapped around the handle of the gun that was stuck in his waistband and covered with his untucked shirt.
The man with the red tattoo stiffened and gripped his weapon tightly. “Don’t move, slimeball!” the big man shouted.
“Look, I swear on my mama’s life. Okay, so I kept those few drugs that are hid in the Toyota. But Hannah’s the one who took the money. Not me. Make her talk. She’s holding the key to everything,” Billy Joe stammered.
Then, as Hannah watched in horror, he pulled out the gun. No! Don’t! She covered her mouth with her hand to keep from screaming.
Billy Joe fired. The gun bucked in his hand and the bullet struck the garage wall at least three feet above the other man’s head.
Without changing his position or his expression, the big man’s finger squeezed the trigger. Billy Joe bucked once, then the back of his shirt blossomed with red, like ink in water. He made a strangled sound, then collapsed to the floor, right where he stood. The small gun he was holding dropped to the concrete with a metallic clatter.
Hannah tried to scream, but her voice was trapped behind her closed throat. The last thing she saw before she turned and ran toward Billy Joe’s car was the big man’s dark eyes on her and the gaping barrel of the gun pointed directly at her.
* * *
A LONG TIME later, Hannah wrapped her hands around the thick white mug, savoring its warmth. It was almost midnight—four hours since she’d watched a man shoot Billy Joe in the heart. In one sense it seemed as though it had happened to someone else. But then she would close her eyes and she was there, watching the blood spread across the back of his shirt like a rose blooming in fast-forward on a nature show.
He was dead. Billy Joe was dead, and the secret of where he’d taken her mother had died with him. A spasm of panic shot through her and her hand jerked, spilling the coffee. She grabbed a napkin from a chrome dispenser and laid it on top of the spilled liquid.
Ever since her mother had disappeared, Hannah had been imagining things. She knew her mother was not literally dead yet—not from her disease. But nightmarish images of where she was being held swirled continuously in Hannah’s mind.
She could be lying in a bed or on a pallet on a cold floor, her breathing labored, her paper-thin skin turning more and more sallow as the time since her last dialysis treatment grew longer. Without the life-giving procedure, the toxins that her diseased liver couldn’t metabolize would kill her within days, if Billy Joe hadn’t killed her already.
Her once-beautiful mother, still young at forty-two, was an alcoholic. She’d been as good a mother as she could be, given her addiction, while the liquor had systematically destroyed her liver. By the time Hannah was sixteen, she had become her mom’s caregiver.
Right now, sitting in the bright diner with the mug of hot coffee in her hands, she couldn’t even remember how she’d gotten into Billy Joe’s car, peeled out of the driveway or gotten on the interstate. Her only thought had been to run as if the hounds of hell were behind her. All she remembered was that desperate need to stay alive so she could find her mother.
A few minutes ago, four hours and almost two hundred miles later, she’d been forced to stop because she was about out of gas. She took a swallow of hot, strong coffee. What was she going to do? Go back to Dowdie, Texas, where Sheriff Harlan King was already suspicious of her and her mother? He’d been called twice in the past few months, once by neighbors and once by Hannah herself, complaining about her mom’s and Billy Joe’s screaming fights. Two years ago, he’d nearly busted her mom for possession of marijuana.
She thought about what he and his deputies would find this time. Her brain too easily conjured up a picture of Billy Joe, lying in a puddle of his own blood on the floor of the garage, her mother, missing with no explanation, Hannah herself gone, with brand-new tire skid marks on the concrete driveway, and who knew what kind of evidence of illegal drugs in the garage, on Billy Joe’s body, even in her mom’s house.
She couldn’t go back.
The sheriff would never believe her. He’d arrest her and send her to prison and one day they’d find her mother’s body in a ditch or a remote cabin or an abandoned car, and people in Dowdie would talk about Hannah Martin, who’d killed her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, and how quiet and friendly she’d always seemed.
It was a catch-22. If she went back, all the sheriff’s emphasis would be on her, and they probably wouldn’t find her mother until it was too late. But if she didn’t go back, then it might be days before anyone knew her mother was missing. Either way, she was terrified that her mom’s fate was sealed.
She put her palms over her eyes, blocking out the restaurant’s harsh fluorescent lights. She’d spent the past twenty-four hours begging Billy Joe to bring her mother back home. She’d sworn on her mother’s life and her own that she wouldn’t tell a soul, that she would do anything, anything he wanted her to, if he would only bring her mother back home so Hannah could take care of her.
But Billy Joe had been cold and cruel. He’d pushed her up against the wall of her bedroom and told her in explicit
