Then he leaned back in his chair and said, "Miss Ruiz, do you understand what you're handing me?"
Conspiracy. Attempted murder. Annie's hands were folded in her lap, perfectly still. "I understand."
You'll need protection.
I know.
Danner glanced at Miriam. "And you vouch for her?"
I do, Miriam said. "With everything I have."
The recorded call took twenty minutes to set up. A deputy Miriam didn't know rigged a recorder to the office line, and Danner wrote out three questions on a legal pad and slid it across the desk: get him talking about the next hit, get a time, get a place. Annie stared at the pad for a long time. Then she picked up the phone and dialed the number she knew by heart, and Miriam watched her become, in the space of one breath, the frightened girlfriend again — the performance so perfect it broke Miriam's heart, because it wasn't a performance at all. It was five years of practice.
Deke? It's me. A pause. "No, I'm — I'm at Miriam's. The old woman's. I had to — you were gone and I got scared, after the highway, I just —" Another pause, longer. Miriam could hear the tinny buzz of a man's voice through the receiver, sharp and angry, the words indistinguishable but the shape of them unmistakable: where, why, who told you. Annie flinched, real and involuntary, and her free hand twisted in the hem of her sleeve.
I'm sorry, she said, very small. "Please don't be mad. I didn't know where else to go. Just tell me what's happening. Tell me where — where do we go now? What's next? Are we — are we leaving?"
The deputy adjusted a dial. Danner leaned forward, his pen motionless over the pad.
Annie listened, and Miriam watched her the way she'd watched patients receiving news — the stillness, the way the breathing changes. "But the highway didn't work," Annie whispered. "They were ready. Somebody warned them." A longer pause, and now the voice through the receiver was lower, urgent. Annie's eyes flicked to Danner, just once. "The weigh station," she repeated carefully. "The abandoned one on 50. Tomorrow night." A pause. "When the club thinks it's over." Another pause, and her voice dropped even smaller. "Okay. Okay, I'll be there. I'll — I'll bring the — yes. I understand. I won't tell anyone. I promise."
The deputy adjusted a dial. Danner leaned forward.
Annie listened. And as she listened, her face changed — the fear draining out of it, replaced by something cold and clear. "The weigh station," she repeated. "The abandoned one on 50. Tomorrow night." A pause. "When the club thinks it's over." Another pause. "Okay. Okay, I'll be there. I'll — I'll bring the — yes. I understand."
She hung up. The room was silent except for the recorder's soft click as the deputy stopped it.
He said the weigh station, Annie said, and her voice was her own again — the brave one, the real one. "Tomorrow night. He's going to finish it there. He thinks the club will be licking its wounds and not watching."
Danner was already on his other line, calling in deputies, calling the state police, his voice low and fast. "I need every available unit tomorrow night... no, listen, this is the one... the weigh station on 50, the abandoned one..." He covered the mouthpiece. "Annie — did he say a time?"
After dark. He said after dark, when the club's done licking its wounds. She looked down at her hands. "He said to come alone. He said if I bring anyone, he'll know."
You won't be going, Danner said flatly. "Nobody's asking that of you."
Then he looked at the door, and Miriam knew what he was going to say before he said it.
Somebody needs to tell Eli Thornton, Danner said, "that for the first time in eleven years, the law is going to ride with his club instead of behind it."
I'll tell him, Miriam said. "He'll listen to me. And Sheriff —" She held his gaze. "She did this. Remember that when you write your report. Annie Ruiz did this."
Danner nodded slowly. "I'll remember."
While Danner kept talking into the phone, Annie turned to Miriam, and the brave face cracked just slightly. "Will he know?" she whispered. "When they take him — will he know it was me?"
Miriam didn't lie to her. "Probably. Men like Deke always figure out who stopped them." She took Annie's hand. "But he'll be in cuffs when he figures it out. And you'll be somewhere he can't reach. That's the difference between this time and every other time, Annie. This time, you're not alone in the room with him."
Miriam drove Annie back out to the desert house — not to Deke's, never to Deke's again; Danner had a deputy taking her to a motel in Ely under a different name. They stood on Miriam's porch in the dark, the desert huge and silent around them, and Annie turned to her with tears standing in her eyes.
You were the first person in five years who looked at me like I was a person, Annie said. "Not a problem. Not his woman. A person. At the diner, all those years, I'd pour your coffee and you'd say thank you like you meant it, and I'd think — she's the only one. She's the only one who sees me." Her voice broke, just slightly, and she steadied it. "When I left that note under your door, my hands were shaking so bad I could barely get it through. I sat in my car for twenty minutes after, sure he'd drive by and see."
Miriam took her hands — the shaking was gone now, completely gone — and held them the way she'd held so many hands in the field hospital, like they were the most important thing in the world.
Then let's go be persons together, Miriam said. "Starting tomorrow. And Annie —" She waited until Annie met her eyes. "What you did tonight? That took more guts than anything I've seen in weeks. Don't you forget it."