Low Pressure

Ray, pleased that he’d been given a choice, hooked his foot around the leg of a chair and dragged it from beneath the table, then flopped down into it. “Shoot.” He slurped from the bottle of beer.

“Before Gall switched out the hangar lights, did he see you?”

“He could’ve. But except for the work light under the airplane, it was dark in there. That’s how come I didn’t notice it wasn’t a real person.”

Reasonable doubt, Rupe thought. Even if Gall Halloway swore on the Bible that his attacker had been Ray Strickland, it could be argued that it was too dark inside the hangar for him to make a positive identification.

“You didn’t leave anything behind? Or take anything?”

He shook his head, but Rupe sensed he was lying. He let it go. It would actually be better if Ray did have something that could place him in the hangar that night. But Rupe didn’t want him arrested just yet.

“You’ve changed the tags on your truck?”

“Five times,” Ray said. “But the old man couldn’t have seen it anyway, ’cause I parked a long way off.”

For several moments, Rupe pretended to struggle with a decision and finally gave a deep sigh. “You should have checked with me before taking these actions. But you didn’t, so now Dent Carter, and possibly Gall Halloway, are on the lookout for you.”

“I’m not scared of them.”

“What if they’ve notified the police? Aren’t you scared of them? Do you want to go to prison and wind up like Allen?”

That subdued him.

“You’ve committed felonies, Ray. I can’t protect you. In fact, I should turn you in myself.”

“After everything I’ve done for you? Fuck that.”

He had an excellent point. But Rupe didn’t give him time to realize it. “Relax. We’re friends, and I wouldn’t betray a friend. Besides, I understand why you’d want to get revenge on Bellamy Price for writing that book and dragging your brother’s name through the mud all over again.” After a strategic pause, he said, “But she shouldn’t be your primary target. She’s not the one who destroyed Allen’s life. And yours.”

He left the counter and came to stand beside Ray, settling a hand on his shoulder. “Earlier you asked who’d messed up my face. I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count. It was the same person who sent your brother to prison, to his death.”

Ray snarled, “Moody.”

Rupe squeezed the beefy flesh beneath his hand. “Moody.”

The drive to Houston took Bellamy almost four hours.

Within seconds of receiving Olivia’s phone call, she was out of her house and on

her way. She hadn’t even taken time to change out of the clothes that had been slept in while she was in Marshall.

Slept in with Dent while she was in Marshall.

Disallowing herself to think of him and the shocking discovery brought about by their last argument, she forced herself to concentrate on driving. She stopped twice for coffee, although her mind was far too troubled for there to have been any danger of her falling asleep at the wheel. The real hazard lay in the tears that continued to fill her eyes and blur her vision.

Her father was dead. She had failed to grant his dying request. And it seemed possible, even probable, that she had killed his firstborn daughter. He’d died possibly believing that she had.

When she arrived at the hospital she went directly to the room where he’d died. The lights had been dimmed, but they were sufficient to reveal her stepmother’s grief. Deep lines of misery were etched into Olivia’s face, making her appear to have aged drastically.

For several minutes, the two women clung to each other and wept, their shared heartache making words superfluous.

Eventually Olivia eased away and blotted her eyes. “The funeral director arrived ahead of you, but I wouldn’t let them take him away. I knew you’d want time with him. Take all you want.” She touched Bellamy’s arm gently, then left the room.

She walked over to the bed and looked at her father’s body for the first time since entering the room. People said kind things about the deceased. How peaceful one looked, how one appeared only to be sleeping.

Those were lies. Told out of compassion, perhaps, but lies nonetheless. Her father didn’t look asleep; he looked dead.

In the few hours since he’d breathed his final breath, all vestiges of life had deserted his body completely. Already his skin had a waxy appearance. He seemed not to be made of flesh and blood or of anything organic, but of something artificial.