Читать книгу A Wanted Man - Alana Matthews - Страница 7

Harlan had no idea what to expect when he walked into the Williamson County Sheriff’s Department.

He was feeling humiliated and out of sorts after last night’s debacle, the side of his head still throbbing where Billy Boy Lyman had left a Glock-size bruise.

When he came to, he’d found himself lying in the restroom doorway, the room swaying, his weapon long gone. But what hurt most was the blow to his pride. In the span of less than a minute, he had lost a prisoner, a gun and a sizable chunk of his reputation. All because he’d been stupid enough to lower his guard, and was just biased enough to assume that the girl behind the counter wasn’t a threat to him.

Something he’d have to work on.

Whatever the case, he didn’t doubt that these mistakes would haunt him for many months to come. And as he pulled into the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office parking structure, he had no idea what he was walking into.

The locals would undoubtedly blame him for the death of one of their own, but the question was whether they’d take the professional route and hide their animosity, or—as was so often the case—treat him like a hostile intruder.

The moment he stepped into the conference room, however, such concerns immediately vacated his mind. This could have been a war zone, with bullets flying, and Harlan wouldn’t have noticed.

Of the six people sitting at the long table, only one of them—the lone woman in the room—commanded his attention, despite the fact that she refused to look him directly in the eye.

It was none other than Callie Glass.

Harlan’s internal alarm bells suddenly went off, and he knew he’d better sit down before he fell down. While he would’ve loved to have blamed his sudden disorientation on his head injury, that was only part of it. The sight of his old college flame sitting not ten feet away from him had thrown him completely off balance.

Was he imagining things? Had the bump on his noggin brought on some cruel hallucination?

No. She was real, all right. As real as a heartbeat. A little older but even more beautiful than he remembered—which, until this moment, he would’ve deemed an impossibility. He knew she was from Williamson, but he’d never imagined he’d find her here like this.

Not now. Not today.

“Deputy Cole, I’m Sheriff Mercer.”

Harlan blinked, then swiveled his head to his left to find a sunbaked cowboy in a gray suit with a string tie rising from his chair, his hand extended.

Harlan reached out and shook it, happy for the distraction. “Good to meet you, Sheriff. I wish it were under better circumstances.”

“You sure you’re up to this? Looks like your boy did quite a job on you.”

Harlan had hoped that the bruise wouldn’t be that noticeable—a symbol of his failure—but it didn’t much matter. He’d just have to learn to live with it for the next several days.

“I’ll be fine, thanks. But if you don’t mind, I think I’ll sit down.”

Mercer gestured to a chair. “By all means.”

Harlan glanced at Callie, then pulled the chair out, as Mercer introduced the people around the table. The names and faces came at him too quickly to process, but when the sheriff got to the only one Harlan really cared about, she finally looked up at him, offering him a curt, professional smile.

Her eyes weren’t smiling, however. Not even close. And her voice had a clipped, unfriendly tone. “Hello, Harlan.”

He nodded. “Callie.”

Mercer’s eyebrows went up. “You two know each other?”

“Long time ago,” she said. “Back in graduate school. We took a couple of criminology classes together.”

She’d said this with about as much warmth and enthusiasm as an accountant reciting the tax code. There was a lot more to it than that, but she wasn’t offering any details. Which was fine by Harlan. He didn’t want to think about those details—although he was finding it difficult not to.

Mercer said, “Denver, right? University of Colorado?”

“Right,” they said in unison.

They exchanged an awkward glance as Mercer studied them curiously, then sat back down.

“Small world,” he said, “but I reckon you two can catch up some other time. Right now we’ve got business to attend to.” He looked at Harlan. “Your supervising deputy says you’ve got some information to share.”

Harlan tore his gaze away from Callie and nodded. He had spent the better part of his morning at the Torrington marshal’s substation gathering up as much intel on Billy Boy Lyman as he could find. He hadn’t had much sleep since the incident, and his supervisor back in Colorado Springs had urged him to take it easy and let someone else handle the heavy lifting.

But Harlan had refused.

He preferred to clean up his own messes.

When he’d heard that his Glock had been found under a burned-out pickup truck near Williamson—a vehicle carrying the body of a local rancher—he’d made a vow right then and there that he wouldn’t rest until Billy Boy was back in custody.

Or begging St. Peter to open up the pearly gates.

“First,” he said, “I want to apologize to all of you for making any of this necessary. If I hadn’t been derelict in my duties, none of us would be sitting here right now.”

He glanced at Callie again but got nothing back. She was carefully examining her fingernails.

“Let’s not worry about blame,” Mercer said. “The way I look at it, the only reason we’re here is because of this boy Lyman.”

“Thanks, Sheriff, I appreciate that.” Harlan reached into his coat pocket and brought out a small stack of photographs. “I assume you all saw the mug shot I faxed over?”

There were nods and murmurs around the room.

“Lyman’s a Nebraska native who moved with his mother to Wyoming when he was sixteen years old. He’s been in and out of custody ever since, his latest bust for an aborted robbery attempt at the Colorado Springs Bank and Trust three weeks ago. He was out on parole at the time, and since the courts are backed up, someone on high figured it wouldn’t hurt to ship his butt up to Torrington to finish out his state sentence while he’s waiting for trial. That’s where I came in.”

He laid the stack of photos on the table. “We took these from the convenience store’s surveillance footage. The main unit was destroyed, but the owner keeps a backup in his office closet.”

“How’s the clerk doing?”

The question came from a young guy sitting next to Callie. Rusty-something.

“Touch and go, last I heard.”

Harlan had found the clerk tied up and shoved into a storeroom, his head caved in by a blow much harder than the one he himself had received. Once he saw the poor guy, he knew that he could easily have wound up in the very same condition. So maybe getting beaned by Billy Boy instead of the girlfriend or the potato chip lover was a blessing he should be thankful for.

Tapping the photos, he said, “These are the two perpetrators who helped Lyman escape. We think they may have been his partners in the bank job, but they were wearing ski masks at the time and managed to get away.”

Mercer said, “You run those photos through facial recognition?”

Harlan nodded. “No hits so far, which isn’t much of a surprise considering how bad the resolution is.” He looked at the others. “We found their Chevy Malibu dumped in a field about sixty miles north of the convenience store. Broken water pump. That’s probably where they hitched a ride with the victim. And since people tend to go where they feel most comfortable, I’m hoping they might be local. Maybe one of you crossed paths with them at one time or another.”

He slid the photos to Mercer, who picked up the stack and started shuffling through it. Within seconds, something shifted in the sheriff’s eyes. “Well I’ll be damned. This is getting cozier and cozier.”

“You recognize them?”

Mercer didn’t answer. Instead he took a photo off the top of the stack and spun it across the table toward Callie. “That face look familiar to you?”

Callie caught it, then dropped her gaze, studying the image carefully.

After a moment, she said, “Looks like Megan Pritchard, but this is a little fuzzy and it’s been a while. She hasn’t been around much since her last stint in juvie, and that was like—what?—three, four years ago?”

Mercer shrugged. “Give or take.”

“So who is she?” Harlan asked.

“Megan Pritchard-Breen,” Callie said. “Only nobody uses the Breen part since her mother got a divorce years ago. She’s one of our local troublemakers. Sheriff here likes to call her a wild child, but I think he’s being polite in deference to the family. Sociopath is more accurate.”

“She’s also a bit of a fire bug,” Mercer told him. “So draw your own conclusions.”

“And she’s got family up here?”

Mercer glanced at Callie, and Harlan followed his lead, but she once again averted her gaze. He sensed, however, that this time it had nothing to do with their past. There was a different kind of history at play here. An underlying discomfort she wasn’t anxious to address. And Harlan had the feeling he was the only one in the room who didn’t know about it.

“She’s the granddaughter of Jonah Pritchard,” Mercer said. “And if you spent any significant amount of time in Williamson, you’d recognize the name.”

“Local celebrity?”

“That’s one way of putting it, if you like ‘em old and mean and wealthier than the crown prince of Tangiers.”

“I take it you’re not a fan.”

“Let’s just say the pathology seems to run in the family, only Jonah is a little better at hiding it.” He looked at Callie. “And if that is Megan Pritchard, I think you know what it means.”

She frowned. “You want Rusty and me to go out there.”

“I know you’ve got issues with the old coot, but you are the lead deputy on this case.”

“Out where?” Harlan asked.

“Pritchard Ranch,” Mercer said. “If Meg’s in trouble, she’d go to her grandpa for help. Always has, always will.”

“Which means Billy Boy might be there, as well.”

“That’s the logical assumption. So I’d suggest you three saddle up, pronto. We don’t have a warrant, but maybe the Pritchards will cooperate.”

Harlan nodded, then got to his feet.

“Wait a minute,” Callie said, her frown deepening. “You want him to go with us?”

Mercer’s brows went up again. “Is that a problem? I thought you two were old friends.”

Harlan and Callie exchanged another glance, neither of them willing to tackle that one in public, and Harlan could feel the eyes of everyone in the room shifting in his direction. The office gossip line would be buzzing this afternoon.

Mercer tapped his watch. “Tick tock, Deputy Glass. We’ve got a trio of killers to catch.”

Looking like a woman who had just been condemned to a decade of indentured servitude, Callie reluctantly rolled her chair back and stood up.

Harlan knew exactly how she felt.