A few seconds later, he opened the door. If he was shocked to see her, he didn’t show it. His silhouette looked large and indomitable against the weak light from the ice dispenser on the refrigerator door. So far as she could tell, it was the only light on inside the house.
He brought his cell phone up to his ear. “I’ll call you back.” He clicked off and lowered his hand to his side. Otherwise he didn’t move. His eyes were too hooded for her to gauge his reaction to seeing her on his doorstep.
She said, “You’re probably surprised to see me here.”
“You could say. How’d you get here?”
“I ran.”
“Ran?”
“Jogged. It’s only a few miles.”
He assimilated that, then asked, “Are your guards bringing up the rear?”
“They think I’m still inside my house. I slipped out the back door, squeezed through the hedge, past the main house, to the street behind.”
He stifled a sound that could have been amusement, but his voice was gravelly with anger when he said, “Neal’s guy could be somewhere out there with his candid camera trained on this house.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“I don’t think he got us last night, so why press your luck? Why take a chance on making the front page tomorrow?”
“Sergeant Lester told me you’re no longer on the case.”
“He tell you why?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Chuck Otterman is lying.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, then, “You sneaked out and ran all the way over here just to give me your vote of confidence? You could have called that in.”
“I don’t trust phones, to say nothing of phone records,” she said, quoting him. “There’s a lot we need to talk about, and I wanted to do it in person.”
“I’m listening.”
“I think I know why no clues have turned up regarding the shooter’s identity, why the detectives, you, everybody has met with nothing but dead ends.”
“Still listening.”
“The shooting wasn’t about me. I wasn’t the target. You were.”
He still didn’t move for several seconds. Then he reached for her hand and pulled her across the threshold. “Come in.”
“Crawford’s been ousted.”
“Be more specific.”
Pat Connor glanced around cautiously, but no one could have overheard him except for the ever-present bodyguards, and they never registered interest or any other emotion. Nevertheless, he kept his volume low. “On a pretext, I dropped by the department to see if there was any new scuttlebutt. Man, was there. Neal’s taken Crawford off the case. And get this. He’s now a person of interest.”
“For the shooting?”
“You got it.”
The deep chest rumbled with suppressed laughter. “That boy’s having a really bad day.”
“I heard he went apeshit when he got to the park.” Officially it was Pat’s day off from work, but he’d been busier today than any in recent history. “That video wasn’t easy to get, you know. I got chigger bites to prove it.”
“You still have the phone you used?”
“No. I pitched it right after sending Crawford the text. It’s at the bottom of the Sabine.”
Actually that was a little white lie. The burner phone was hidden beneath the front seat of his car. He had held on to it, just in case. You might say it was his insurance policy. Some people just weren’t to be trusted. In particular, the man sitting across from him.
“Is he in lockup?”
“Crawford? No. According to the rumor mill, Neal played it by the book and suggested that he call his lawyer. Crawford told him to go fuck himself. Which a lot of people would like to tell Neal.”
“He’s a prick.”
“No argument there. But he’s smart enough to know that in a popularity contest between Crawford and him, Crawford would win hands down. Neal would be bad-mouthed for locking Crawford up while he’s building a case against him, which most agree is horseshit anyway. Neal let him go, and, politically speaking, that was a sound choice.” A bit uneasily he added, “Probably not what you wanted to hear, though.”
“Actually it’s precisely what I wanted to hear.”
“Really? Why’s that?”
“I’ll acquaint you with my reason when I’m ready to. Thanks for the update.”
Pat recognized the dismissal for what it was. He got up and walked away. He felt a powerful thirst coming on, because, the hell of it was, Ranger Crawford Hunt had always treated him decently enough. He felt bad for spying on him and setting him up to take a fall. Using that video of his little girl? That had been low, something Pat would never have believed himself capable of doing, no matter who’d ordered him to.
But he had a debt to pay, and if he didn’t…
It didn’t bear thinking about.
Crawford could see well enough in the dim kitchen to take a glass from the cabinet, fill it with tap water, and hand it to Holly. “I’d offer you something else, but I don’t want to turn on the lights and give the shutterbug an advantage.”
She had run from her house to his wearing a pair of old jeans with holes in the knees. A white t-shirt clung to her damp skin and outlined her bra. Her nipples made twin impressions that had captured and held his attention.