felt best when she was helping people.
“My week looks a lot less complicated than yours,” she said. “With any luck, by the time you get back, the weather will have broken and we’ll be ready to plant the garden.”
“Speaking of that,” B. said, “I hope you’re not overworking poor Leland.”
“Of course not,” Ali said. “He’s limited to supervisory work only.”
“Good. How old is he, anyway?” B. asked. “Since he served in Korea, must be getting up there. Isn’t it about time for you to let him retire?”
“When I mention that to him, he says he retires every night,” Ali replied. “Besides, Leland and I have an understanding: He can work for me as long as he wants to.”
“I see,” B. said, helping himself to another slice of pizza. “Kind of like our understanding—that I’m welcome to hang around as long as I want to?”
Ali realized the conversation had gone from lighthearted to serious in the blink of an eye. “You’re too young to have grandkids,” she pointed out, “and I’m too old to have kids.”
“I never said I wanted to have kids,” B. replied evenly. “As far as I can see, skipping kids and going straight to grandkids seems pretty efficient.”
“You might change your mind.”
“I might,” he conceded, “but I doubt it. I work too much to have kids. In the meantime, you and I apparently have an understanding. I can live with that.”
Dropping the subject, he poured them more wine. When it was gone, they loaded the dishwasher and cleaned up the kitchen. Then they made their way upstairs to the combination study/bed/media room that B. referred to as his man-cave.
The furniture may not have been to Ali’s liking, but what went on in the bed was more than fine with her. Under the soft duvet, their differences in style and age were beside the point.
Yes, in that massive four-poster bed, Ali Reynolds and B. Simpson were most definitely on the same page.
7
12:30 A.M., Saturday, April 10
Patagonia, Arizona
At a bit past midnight, summoned from a restless sleep, Teresa Reyes heard the doorbell and staggered out of bed with the sense of dread that all cops’ wives live with day in and day out. She knew that whoever was out there ringing the bell in the middle of the night was bringing bad news. She flung on her robe and raced to the front door in hopes of keeping the noisy bell from ringing again and waking the girls.
When she turned on the porch light and opened the door, there stood Sheriff Renteria, his face distraught, shaking his head. Seeing him, she immediately assumed the worst—Jose was dead. She grabbed the door frame and used it to hold herself upright.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” the sheriff said, mumbling the words as he fought for control. “There’s been an unfortunate incident.”
“Oh, no,” Teresa groaned. She stumbled backward into the room, reeling under the weight of the terrible news. She might have fallen all the way to the floor if Renteria hadn’t reached out and steadied her. “Please,” she begged. “Don’t tell me Jose is dead. He can’t be.”
“Shhh,” Renteria said, pulling her to him. “He’s not dead, but he’s been shot and wounded. It’s serious, Teresa. I won’t lie to you and say he’s going to be fine, because the EMTs told me it’s bad. He’s being transported to the trauma center at Physicians Medical Center in Tucson.”
When those last few hopeful words penetrated Teresa Reyes’s consciousness, she fought her way out of the numbing fog of despair and clung to them with grim desperation. “You mean he’s really not dead?” she asked.
“He’s still alive,” Renteria allowed. “At least he was when they airlifted him out.”
Teresa knew that airlifting was expensive, that it was used in only the most desperate cases, but the welcome news filled her heart with a thin thread of hope. “Why not University Medical Center?” she asked. UMC was the premier trauma center in Tucson.
“The EMTs told me that for this kind of injury, Physicians is the best bet,” the sheriff said. Then he pointed toward a patrol car easing its way down the driveway toward the mobile home.
“Do you know Deputy Carson?” Renteria asked. “Jimmy.”
Teresa nodded. “I’ve seen him around town, but I don’t really know him.”
“I asked him to come stay with you until you can get things organized. Then he’ll drive you to the hospital. Under the circumstances, I don’t want you driving yourself.”
“You’re right,” Teresa agreed. “And thank you.”
Once the sheriff left her alone, Teresa stood in the entryway, frozen into a block of indecision. What should she do? Wake the girls? Bring them along to the hospital? Or should she leave them here, sound asleep, while she alone dealt with the crisis? She considered calling her mother, but Maria Delgado lived in Nogales. After her recent cataract surgery, she was no longer comfortable driving anywhere other than her immediate neighborhood, and she didn’t venture out at night at all. In addition to vision problems, Maria Delgado was frail. Not only did she have a debilitating heart condition, she also suffered from osteoporosis. Yes, she loved the girls dearly and could look after Lucy and Carinda as long as they were sound asleep, but she didn’t have the upper-body strength to wrestle Carinda in and out of her crib, and she didn’t have the energy to chase after the two lively preschoolers once they were awake.
There was only one option. In preparation for having the baby, Teresa had already packed a bag to take to the hospital. She grabbed a diaper bag and stuffed it with enough items to get Lucy and Carinda through the morning. Motioning Deputy Carson into the house, she handed him the bags and asked him to get Carinda’s car seat and Lucy’s booster out of the back of her minivan and put them in the back of his patrol car. With any luck, the girls would never remember that they’d been hauled out of their beds in the middle of the night. While Carson loaded the car, Teresa lugged the two sleeping girls out to the waiting vehicle and buckled them in. The deputy had started the engine. His car was warm. The girls stirred a little and were quiet.
The gate at the end of the driveway was closed. Jimmy started to get out to open it. “I will,” Teresa said. She held it open while Jimmy drove through. Had Teresa looked to the right just then, she might have seen a car parked at the far end of the cul-de-sac with its lights doused and its engine running. Teresa’s mind was elsewhere, however. Hurriedly, she closed the gate, fastened it, and climbed back into the patrol car. Then she sat quietly while Carson maneuvered the winding road that led back to the highway.
“What happened?” she asked when they turned onto the blacktop, where the deputy switched on his emergency lights and hit the gas.
“Didn’t Sheriff Renteria tell you?”
“Some,” she said. “But I was so upset, I wasn’t really listening.”
“Jose was out on patrol by himself,” Carson said. “Down by the Kino Ridge golf course. He called Dispatch, saying he was doing a routine traffic stop. After that, his radio went silent. Dispatch sent someone looking for him at his last reported location. They found him shot and bleeding at the bottom of a ravine.”
“Do they have any idea who did it?” Teresa asked.
Carson shrugged. “We sent out a Blue Alert, but we have no leads. It’s early, though.”
Blue Alerts were for injured cops what Amber Alerts were for kids. They went out to other police jurisdictions when an officer had been assaulted and the perpetrator was at large.
“What about his dashboard camera?”
“Smashed and then taken. Along with the rest of the system,” Carson said.
“So there’s no film of what happened?”
“The memory stick was in the camera, and that’s gone,” Carson said.
“What about Jose?”
“The EMTs transported him by ambulance back to the parking lot at Kino Ridge. There, an air ambulance
