“Now what are we doing?” Robin whined as she reluctantly did as she was told. “Are you allowed to waste my time like this? Isn’t this against the law? Okay, so I was going a little fast, so what? Everyone speeds on this loop. Is this the reason the city raises taxes each year? So they can put more cops on the street to keep Houston safe from riffraff like me—”
“Lady, you are about to talk your way into a trip to central booking. Now why don’t you put a lid on it and walk around to the back of your car with me?”
Robin followed him, but somewhere between the driver’s door and the back bumper of her car, all good sense and reason escaped her, fell right out onto Loop 610 and was flattened beyond recognition by a passing eighteen-wheeler. “This is police harassment!” she said sternly. “You have no right to detain me. If you want to write me a ticket for the dangerous speed of eighty-three, go ahead and do it, but you can’t just march me around like this.”
“What is your name?”
“If I told you, you’d be sorry. My family is very prominent in Houston, and believe me, they won’t be happy that you were harassing me like this—”
“You are trying my patience, miss. Now tell me your name.”
“Ha! I won’t!” Robin said, knowing, somewhere within the confines of her deadened instinct that it was exactly the wrong answer.
To confirm that it was, the officer smiled, stuffed his ticket book in the back of his pants and reached for the cuffs dangling from his belt. “Got some bad news for you, Ms. Smart-ass. You’re going to jail—”
“What?” Robin cried, jumping away as he reached for her. “You can’t arrest me!”
“Oh really? Well try this on for size. I am arresting you for failure to identify and driving without a license or proof of insurance. Take my advice and don’t be a complete fool and add a charge of evading arrest to it,” he said and grabbed her wrist, slapping a cuff on it.
Robin gaped at the cuff, then at him, disbelieving, as he told her that she had the right to remain silent.
Chapter Four
Thursday morning, Jake was on the job site at 8 A.M. sharp, surprised that he was there before Zaney, the guy he used on most of these jobs. Thinking he was probably stuck in traffic, Jake waited outside for about ten minutes, wanting to make sure Zaney found the place okay. When he got bored with standing on the sidewalk, he decided to stretch his legs and wandered around to the back of the Lear house.
Raymond was already hard at work in the garden he had planted behind the guesthouse and waved Jake over to show him tomatoes as big as softballs. Suitably impressed, Jake had a look around at the rest of the produce, and when Raymond offered to sack some up, he said, very cool. Particularly since Jake didn’t really have any food in his house at the moment. After paying taxes and insurance this month, he’d come up a little short.
He put the sack Raymond filled in a saddlebag on his bike and checked the time. Nine o’clock and still no Zaney. Okay, now he was officially worried. His old pal had suffered a head injury a few years ago working on an oil rig, and since then, he could be pretty dumb at times. But he was as steady as the day was long, and when he was this late, well . . . Jake dug out his cell phone and started to make some calls.
So this was what the proverbial rock bottom looked like, and Robin had splattered herself all over it.
It was humiliating enough to have been brought in at all, much less wearing handcuffs. But then they took all of her belongings, including her belt, made her spread her legs so a female guard could pat her down, and when she was completely traumatized, they took her picture, fingerprinted her, and told her to quit whining; she was not going to see the sheriff, she was going to see a judge. Okay, she had said then, fully contrite for her folly, I give, let me out.
They said they would—if and when a judge said so.
And then they showed her the holding cell into which they had managed to defy physics and force at least a dozen women. Robin’s bathroom was bigger than that cell. It was a nightmare, a bona fide, unmistakable nightmare, complete with bodies under the benches and scary monster-type-looking humans, and she had no one to blame but herself. And damn it, Robin could not stop shivering—they had turned the air-conditioning on to a full-metal-jacket high, undoubtedly to keep the stench down. How long she sat there, she had no idea, and wouldn’t have been the least surprised if days had passed, maybe even weeks, until the door was at last pushed open and a guard came waddling in. “All right, ladies—time to go. You know the drill, everyone on their feet!”