And Then She Was Gone(73)

Glimpsing movement, the man turned toward Jack.

Jack lunged. His shoulder caught the man just below his sternum, and the man’s breath exploded out of his lungs. Jack’s arms wrapped around the man’s thighs and yanked his legs out from under him. Momentum carried them across the path.

The man groaned as he landed hard on his back with Jack on top of him.

Jack grabbed the guy’s shoulder, rolled him onto his belly, and wrenched one arm up behind his back. His other hand pressed the man’s face into the dirt.

“It’ll be all right, ma’am,” Jack yelled. “POLICE!”

The woman turned and ran.

“Police!” Jack yelled again.

Almost instantly, nearly a dozen police officers appeared from every direction. They raced across the grass and out of the woods.

Jack was surprised by the sheer number of cops showing up so fast. “He was attacking her,” he said to the cop who reached him first. He tilted his chin toward the fleeing woman. “He grabbed her wrist.”

The cop yanked Jack to his feet. Jack smiled proudly when a second cop took out his handcuffs. A third officer pointed at Jack and said, “Put your hands behind your head.”

“Me? This woman was being attacked.”

A couple of officers helped the guy Jack had planted into the ground get up. They didn’t cuff him. Instead, they wiped the dirt off his shirt.

“What’s going on?” Jack looked around, puzzled. “Why aren’t you arresting him?”

The guy he had tackled turned toward Jack. “I’m Officer Barton of the Fairfield PD.” He pulled out his badge. “And you’re under arrest for assaulting an officer.”

The policeman with the cuffs snapped one around Jack’s wrist. Jack felt the cold metal against the scar that circled above his hand. Panic shot through him like electricity through a condemned man. His whole body stiffened.

The cop grabbed Jack’s other arm, but Jack held it rigid. “Don’t make this harder on yourself, kid.” The burly cop tried to bend Jack’s arm, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Give him your other arm,” another cop commanded.

Jack knew what he should do. And he wanted to cooperate—but his body refused to obey. Terror seized him, stripping away rational thought, until only raw emotion remained. He remembered the searing heat in his wrist, the fiery pain, and the odor of burnt flesh.

The other cops circled closer. “Give me your arm,” the policeman ordered again.

A beefy officer stepped in and placed his hand on Jack’s shoulder, while another placed his hand on his nightstick.

Jack clamped his eyes closed and forced his arm to bend.

The policeman yanked Jack’s arm behind him and up. Jack tipped forward as the handcuff clicked closed.





21





Facts





Once again, Jack found himself seated in the police department interrogation room. The uniformed police officer guarding the door was different, but everything else was as Jack remembered it. The cop looked as if he wanted to be anywhere but here.

So did Jack.

The door swung wide. When Jack saw Vargas’s red face, he was surprised the door hadn’t slammed into the wall.

Detective Vargas strode over to the other side of the table from Jack. The metal chair scraped across the floor as he dragged it backward. He put one shiny shoe up on the chair and tossed some folders down. “Do you have any idea what I want to do to you right now?”

Several flippant answers came to Jack’s mind, but instead he answered, “No, sir.”

“Let’s start with you explaining why you were in the park,” Vargas said.

“I was cutting through. I saw that guy grab a lady.”

“A lady? Ha! That’s rich. Try a lady of the night. I’m sure that the great Detective Stratton has figured out by now how badly he screwed up our prostitution sting, right? That guy was an undercover cop, and that ‘lady’ was a prostitute.”

Jack ground his teeth.

Vargas laughed. “I did a background check on you.” He crossed his arms. “You’d think that with your background you’d know how to pick out a hooker. Your mother was one, right?”

Jack kicked the table back with his leg. He started to stand, but the cop at the door stepped over and placed a large hand on his shoulder. “Settle down.”

Vargas just smiled, which made Jack want to lunge across the table at him even more. He knew Vargas was just trying to get to him—and he also knew it was working.

Jack sat back down and tried to control his anger. Inside, he’d already jumped over the table and was going to town on Vargas—slapping that mocking grin off his face.

The cop stayed next to Jack while Vargas kept pushing. “So you were trying to help that woman? Do you know Brittani Roldan?”