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Furiously she turned on the now-cuffed prisoner. Seeing the gun had brought home the grave danger they’d all been in. It was then she knew for sure that shooting first and warning later had been the right decision-her only possible decision. It was also when she realized that for Zavala’s well-being as well as her own, she needed to stay away from him.
“Here,” she said, handing Deputy Thomas his rifle. “I’ll go check on the kids.”
Behind her the terrified children in the van were still screaming their lungs out. Oblivious to the racket, Joa
Behind her Zavala continued to screech, “My foot! My foot. You shot the hell out of my foot.”
“Shut up!” Joa
Inside the van, the little boy, his face wet with tears, remained strapped in his car seat while his sister huddled next to the door on the driver’s side. “Are you all right?” Joa
The little girl, her eyes huge, nodded slowly.
“I’m Sheriff Brady,” Joa
The girl nodded. “Who’s he?”
“Don’t worry,” Joa
“Did you really shoot him?”
“Yes,” Joa
“Did he hurt our mommy? Where’s she?”
That last question was enough to galvanize Joa
“Your mommy’s on her way here right now,” Joa
The car-seat fasteners that had so baffled Antonio Zavala let go easily under Joa
“Dispatch?” Joa
“Sheriff Brady! Are you all right?”
“Yes. The suspect is wounded but in custody.”
“Do you need an ambulance?”
“Yes,” Joa
“Where do you want him taken to?”
“Maybe the Copper Queen on Bisbee, but we’ll let the EMTs make that call,” Joa
Chapter 18
For the next several minutes Joa
“Do you want me to wave off the helicopter?” Frank asked finally.
Joa
Frank walked away to do her bidding. He returned with Jaime Carbajal in tow. “I’m here, Sheriff Brady. Should I start interviewing the children?”
“Not yet,” she said. “We’ll wait until their mother gets here. It shouldn’t be too long.”
“They’re both okay?” Jaime asked. “The kids are fine.”
“What about you?” he asked.
“I’m fine, too,” she told him, but that wasn’t entirely the case. Joa
She pointed Jaime toward the place where the gym bag had come to rest. “That’s Zavala’s bag. There’s a semiautomatic weapon inside,” she said. “We’ll need photos.”
“Understood,” Jaime said.
Joa
Frank nodded. “Two of them are on their way from Tucson right now.”
“Good call,” she said. “Thanks.”
“Are you putting yourself on administrative leave?” Frank asked.
“No, I’m not,” she declared. “Now where the hell is that scumbag?”
“He’s in the back of Deputy Thomas’s Yukon, waiting for the ambulance. Rick put a tourniquet on his leg and has his foot elevated.”
“How badly is he hurt?”
“The foot took a lot of damage. Your bullet nailed him right in the ankle. I don’t think he’s going to be walking on it anytime soon. Good shot, by the way.”
Joa
When they reached the Yukon, Deputy Thomas, with the sweat stains drying on his collar, stood to one side, keeping a wary eye on Antonio Zavala.
“Good job, Rick,” Joa
Thomas nodded modestly, acknowledging her compliment.
“Did Frank tell you that we’ll both have to be interviewed by DPS? It’ll be a third-party deadly force investigation.”
“What choice did you have?” Thomas objected. “What were we supposed to do, let him grab the kid and run off with her?”
“Welcome to the world of post-incident second-guessing, Deputy Thomas,” she told him. “Just tell the investigators what happened. It’ll be fine.”
Having done her best to reassure her young deputy, Joa
“I want a lawyer!” he demanded. “You shot me with no warning, and it hurts like hell. That’s police brutality.”
“What kind of warning did you give the people you shot?” she asked.
Zavala quieted again. He answered her question with nothing but a hard-edged stare.
“How badly do you suppose they hurt before they died?”
Again Zavala didn’t answer her question. Instead, he asked one of his own. “Why am I just sitting here? Aren’t you supposed to be taking me to a hospital or something? Are you just going to leave me here to bleed to death?”
“Believe me,” Joa
“Why’d I do what?” he retorted belligerently. “I don’t have to tell you nothing. I know my rights. I already asked for a lawyer.”
“And you’ll have a lawyer, but in the meantime, let me tell you something,” Joa
“You can’t prove that.”
“Oh, we’ll prove it all right,” Joa