her body. Joanna and the people who worked for and with her had everything to lose. On the other hand, Stella Adams, far beyond the possibility of hope, had nothing whatsoever left to lose.
Sheriff Brady turned to Ernie. “We’re going to wait,” she said.
“Wait?” he demanded. “For how long?”
“For as long as it takes.”
The next two hours, waiting for a gunshot that never came, were the longest ones Joanna could remember, including the three hours she had spent in the delivery room when Jenny was born. She crouched next to the wall with Ernie Carpenter beside her.
Sharp rocks poked into her knees. Occasionally some night-walking creature scrambled across her skin. Meanwhile, the unconcerned desert, oblivious to the human drama playing out
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nearby, resumed its natural nighttime rhythms. Meandering coyotes sent their mournful songs skyward. An hour into the process, Joanna was startled by a single long-eared jackrabbit who loped past within a few feet of where she was lying.
But throughout that long, long time, there was no response from Stella Adams-no further word. Joanna called out to the woman again and again without receiving any reply.
Eventually Deputy Gregovich and Spike returned.
“You took Nathan home?” Joanna asked.
Terry nodded. “His dad was pissed. Denny thought the kid was locked in his room.
He had no idea Nathan had let himself out through a window. What’s happening here?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you want me to send Spike in?”
Joanna shook her head. She wasn’t willing to risk Spike’s life either. “Not yet,”
she said. “We’ll wait a while longer.”
Finally, just after midnight, she gave the word, and the K-9 unit moved forward.
As Terry Gregovich and Spike disappeared from view, time slowed to an even more glacial crawl. Barely daring to breathe, Joanna listened to every sound. Finally Terry shouted out the words she had been waiting to hear.
“It’s all clear,” Deputy Gregovich called. “She’s cut her wrists. She’s dead.”
Joanna gave the order to stand down, then she and Ernie Carpenter helped each other to their feet. They limped stiffly around the protecting wall, guided by the glow of Terry’s flashlight. Stella Adams sat slumped against the wall just inside the empty doorway of a crumbling concrete building. She still wore a single tennis shoe on one foot. The other foot had been scraped raw in her desperate flight across the nighttime desert.
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Stella’s hands lay her in her bloodied lap, cradling the Colt .45 and a bloodstained Swiss Army knife. Joanna looked from Stella Adams to Ernie.
“Maybe you’ll be able to keep your promise to Denny Adams after all,” Joanna said softly. “At least Stella had the good sense to spare her son the shame of a trial.”
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Joanna was home by two o’clock in the morning. At three she was still sitting on the couch in the family room with Lady cuddled in her lap, considering the mind-numbing series of tragedies that had befallen the entire Mossman clan. The seeds for that human disaster had been planted by Ed Mossman himself, and Joanna Brady had no sympathy for him. A fatal gunshot wound to the chest was actually far better than he deserved.
But her heart ached for the others-for the unwilling victims of Ed Mossman’s abuse, his own children-from Carol right on down to Nathan and Cecilia. Jaime Carbajal had described the film of Cecilia Mossman’s supposed wedding. Joanna had yet to see it, but she could well imagine the frightened and reluctant child bride forced by her father into a situation she could neither handle nor stop.
“Well, I’ll stop it,” she told Lady aloud. “Tomorrow morning I’m calling Sheriff Drake and telling him to go get her. With any kind of luck, Harold Lassiter will go to jail for child rape. If she’s
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only twelve, that should work. Otherwise, they can nail him for involuntary servitude, if nothing else. Slavery’s illegal in this country, even out on the Arizona Strip.”
Butch, barefoot and clad only in a pair of shorts, came into the family room. “Who are you talking to?” he asked.
“The dog,” Joanna said. “I’m telling Lady all about it.”
“It’s late,” Butch said. “Shouldn’t you come to bed?”
“I can’t sleep.”
He settled down on the couch beside her. Lady opened one eye and looked at him, but made no effort to move away. He put one arm around Joanna’s shoulders and the other on Lady’s hip. “Then maybe you’d better tell me about it, too,” he said.
And so she did.
“Will it come out in public?” Butch asked when she finished. “The part about who Nathan’s father really was?”
