Survival Clause: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 20), стр. 82
“She fell and knocked herself out,” Jacob said. “Hit her head against the side of the truck and fell. I couldn’t leave her there, so I picked her up and tossed her in the truck and took her with me. She woke up halfway to Nashville, and tried to get out. I was afraid she was gonna hurt herself, so I tied her hands. And before I got to the broken-down rig, I gagged her and put her in the back. Couldn’t have the trucker see her.”
No, he definitely couldn’t. The unknown trucker might have thought it was a little strange that Jacob had his daughter bound and gagged in the car.
“She was in there kicking her feet, trying to get attention. So when I had the rig moving again, I opened the truck and I tried to get her to stop. But she wouldn’t, not even when I hit her again. So I put my hands around her throat and squeezed…”
His voice trailed off, and it had an almost dreamy quality to it. I fought back a shiver. Nobody else said anything, for a moment. Curtis looked ready to drop. Rafe still had his gun up, pointed at Jacob’s head, his eyes black and hard. If the story had affected him, it didn’t show. I wasn’t sure he’d even been listening. The only thing he was focused on, was the right moment to pull the trigger.
“So you lifted her out of the car and left her there,” Grimaldi said, and Jacob came back to himself.
“I didn’t wanna take her back with me. You never know when someone might pull you over. And I knew we’d get her back eventually…”
He trailed off again. No one else said anything, either. Like me, I guess they didn’t know what to say.
I wasn’t aware of movement behind me until the very last second. I heard the sound of rushing footsteps, what sounded like a war cry, and the next moment Jacob smacked face first into the side of the SUV. I heard a crunch. The gun fell from his hand and bounced off my shoulder on its way to the ground. Jacob slid to the grass in a boneless jumble, and was handcuffed by Yung—Yung?—almost before he’d come to a stop.
It was over.
Epilogue
The elegant FBI agent from this morning was a thing of the past. Her perfect sheet of black hair was a straggling mess past her shoulders, decorated with leaves and twigs. The sleeve of the elegant suit was ripped half off, her makeup was smeared, and she had the beginnings of a black eye and a streak of blood at the corner of her mouth, and her bottom lip looked like she’d either bit it or been punched in the face. I figured it could be either.
But her eyes were flinty and she didn’t hesitate or wince when she flipped Jacob over on his back and shoved him up against the tire of the SUV. But where I would have expected her to go right into the Miranda warning, she glanced over at Grimaldi. “You want to do the honors?”
I expected Grimaldi to say yes, she did. She’d told me as much: that Leslie Yung was welcome to join the team, but Grimaldi wanted the prerogative of slapping the handcuffs on her mother’s killer herself. I guess maybe Yung’s experiences made Grimaldi feel differently. She shook her head. “We got him. That’s good enough.”
Yung nodded. “You’re under the arrest for the murders of Laura Lee Matlock and Ramona Mitchell,” she informed Jacob, “with more charges to follow. You have the right to remain silent…”
By that point, Rafe had holstered his weapon and was holding me in an embrace so tight it was hard to breathe. I didn’t mind, though. That had been a little too close for comfort. “I need to stop doing this,” I murmured into his chest.
He buried his face in my hair and breathed in. “That’d be good. Keep me from losing my mind so often.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Don’t mention it. Nothing I haven’t done to you before.”
True, that.
He let me go with a pat, and went to let Carrie out of the SUV. I took the opportunity to survey the scene.
On the other side of the car, Grimaldi was dealing with Curtis. The kid was obviously distraught—who wouldn’t be?—and he kept repeating, “I gotta see my gramma. I need to go see my gramma.”
“We’ll go see her together,” Grimaldi told him. “Just as soon as we’re done here. I’ll go with you, and we’ll explain it all to her.”
Curtis glanced at her. “He killed your mom?”
“A long time ago,” Grimaldi said. “Couple years after he killed your mom.”
Curtis shot a look across the car. He couldn’t see his grandfather, who was still sitting down and still mostly out of it, but his voice rang with defiance. “I’m glad you caught him. I’m glad he’s going to prison. I hope he dies there.”
I hoped he did, too. And at Jacob’s age, that was more likely than not. There was no need to spell that out, though.
Yung left Jacob where he was, head and shoulders against the metal of Grimaldi’s SUV, and went to talk to them. She was limping, so she’d either hurt a leg or lost a heel at some point today. I still wanted to know what he’d done to get her into the truck with him, but since all’s well that ends well, I figured it could wait.
“Here comes the cavalry,” Rafe said, as he dropped Carrie into my arms. His ears, sharper than mine, had picked up the sirens. It took another second before I heard them, and a minute or two after that before the ambulance roared into the clearing and came to a stop.
Behind it, like an afterthought, came a blue SUV. I blinked at it. “Is that Dix?”
It was Dix. My brother got out of the SUV, still