Page 87 of Deputy Brand Gets Her Man
“She dead?” Tank asked. He was the biggest, hence the name.
Stu elbowed him in the solar plexus. “Shut up!”
“You shut up.”
Tuck said, “Tank didn’t want to do it.”
“Shut the hell up!” Stu said.
“I didn’t want to do it either,” Tuck went on, “but I didn’t argue as much. It was a lot of money.”
“We don’t get it if she didn’t die, though,” Tank said.
“Somebody paid you run that woman down?”
Tank opened his mouth and Stu punched him in the face. Willow snapped a cuff around Stu’s wrist just as he drew back for a second blow. She put her foot right behind him as she pulled him out of the house, so he tripped, and as he landed on his knees, she got the other wrist cuffed.
His brothers had come out but hadn’t decided what to do fast enough. She pulled Stu to his feet by one arm, and kept her other hand near her gun. “You two stand right there. You move, I’ll shoot you.” She wouldn’t.
She put Stu into the back of her car and closed the back door, then she opened the driver’s door and reached in for her radio mic. “I’m bringing in the Barkers on that hit and run.”
“All three?” Came the reply and it wasn’t the dispatcher—it was Uncle Garrett. “Wait for backup, Will.”
She put the mic back, fished her extra cuffs out of the glove box, and turned around just as the rusty yellow pickup roared to life with Tank and Tuck inside.
She swore and dove behind the wheel, pulling right out behind them as they took off spitting dust and gravel at her windshield.
She backed off a little, having learned that lesson the hard way on her poor horse, and got on the horn. “In pursuit of a rusty yellow 1985 Chevy Pickup. Hit and run suspects. Heading north on Abbott. Requesting backup.”
In the back, Stu was laughing. “You really thought one little lady deputy was gonna be enough to get all three of us.”
She glanced at him in the mirror. “It was enough to get you.”
He stopped laughing.
She rounded a sharp curve in the road, and that’s when she saw the rusty yellow truck was lying on its side in the brush. It wasn’t a bad wreck, it looked like they just ran off onto a soft shoulder and lost it. Hadn’t hit anything or rolled all the way over.
But there was smoke coming from somewhere.
She grabbed the radio mic while skidding to a stop and throwing on her lights. “Suspect vehicle is off the road at Piker’s Bend. I see smoke. Get me fire and EMTs.”
“Uncuff me, goddamn it!” Stu was shouting. “Lemme out of this car!”
“I got this.” Willow got out and ran to the wreckage.
The engine was smoking. The truck had tipped driver’s side up, and Tank was behind the wheel, held there only by his seatbelt. If it gave, he’d fall atop his much smaller brother in the passenger seat.
She pulled out a pocket knife and climbed up top, reached down a hand. Tank gripped it. “You’re a big guy, Tank. Brace your feet on somethin’, so you don’t fall on your brother when I cut you loose.”
A little tongue of flame appeared in her peripheral.
“Do it now,” she said. She kept her tone calm and hoped Tank hadn’t noticed the dancing lick of fire.
He pressed one foot against the headrest of the passenger seat, carefully avoiding his brother’s head. Tuck wasn’t moving at all.
“Okay,” he said. His eyes were wide as he gazed up at her. Gray blue, not vivid like Jeremiah’s. Terrified, too. Okay so he’d noticed the flame.
Willow sawed through the seatbelt, gripping Tank one-handed. She hoped he had most of his weight, because she couldn’t handle more than half. The belt gave and Tank dropped but caught himself. Willow caught him too, by his other arm, and pulled for all she was worth as he found toe holds anywhere he could and painstakingly made his way up through the window. Halfway out, he fell forward and took her with him all the way to the ground. Every bit of air gusted from her lungs under his weight, and the places her horse had crushed got battered all over again.
