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“Parker!” I shout.
Through the transparent uppermost layer of water, I spot his face, eyes wide in panic, mouth open in what looks like a silent scream. I dive under, grab him around the arms, and pull him to the surface.
He coughs water and gasps and coughs more.
“Hang on,” I manage to say, getting one arm around his chest and fighting the current with my other limbs.
There’s a rocky beach up ahead that I recognize from Parker’s model. The road comes down and it looks like this could be used as the put-in or pullout for rafts and boats.
I head that way, keeping Parker’s head above water. He doesn’t say anything, just continues to cough.
When I finally make it to shore—my muscles trembling with fatigue—I drag Parker to the point where the water is only waist high. He staggers the rest of the way and collapses onto the rocks, lying on his side, with his arms still fastened behind his back. His chest heaves as he fills his lungs with deep breaths.
I stand over him, beaten up, bloody, and soaking wet.
“Enough of this shit,” I yell. “It’sover!”
But even as the words come out of my mouth, I hear the whine of a motorcycle. A bike rolls down the road, hits the gravel shore, and approaches us slowly. The driver is dressed in black and wearing a helmet, with a submachine gun slung over one shoulder.
The bike stops about fifteen feet from the water. The rider stands upright over it, legs making an inverted V, and aims the gun at me.
Ellis must have lost Carlos and circled back around this way to pick up Parker.
I reach for my gun, but the holster is empty. I lost my SIG Sauer when Parker kicked me off the train.
“Don’t,” I hear Parker say to his fellow bandit. He hauls himself onto his knees, looking at the rider. “Don’t kill him.”
The rider lets the gun hang from its shoulder strap, then reaches up and grabs the helmet, pushing it upward. As the helmet comes up, loose strands of silver hair fall down across the rider’s shoulder, and my breath catches in my throat when I see who it is.
CHAPTER 56
“JOSIE?” I SAY, barely able to speak.
Parker’s wife, her lean body hidden by the black motorcycle clothes so that I assumed the rider was a man, looks at her husband and says, “What choice do we have? He’ll never stop looking for us. We have to kill him.”
“I don’t understand,” I mutter, but suddenly I do.
The robberies were always committed by three motorcycle riders. But when we checked the whereabouts of Parker, Ellis, and Harvey, one of them almost always had an alibi. That’s because there were never only three robbers. There were four XYZ Bandits. But only three ever worked a robbery at the same time.
When Ellis was at a family reunion in Vermont, Josie took his place. The same for when Harvey was at the bachelor party in Vegas. And when Parker was on the Cub Scout camping trip with his son, securing an airtight alibi, it was Josie who was with Harvey and Ellis robbing the San Antonio River Walk shops.
Josie raises her gun on me again. The strong woman I always admired has a look of cold steel.
“Don’t,” Parker says again, rising to his knees and stumbling over to Josie. “He saved Leo. He savedme.”
“I can’t believe you two,” I say, watching them from ankle-deep water. “I looked up to you. I thought you had it all. I wanted a life just like yours.”
“The world is broken,” Parker says defensively. “I’ve done more good breaking the law than I ever did enforcing it.”
I stare at him, my disbelief turning to anger.
“Like killing Jackson Clarke?” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “The Cereal Killer is not murdering innocent people anymore. Not because I followed the law, but because I broke it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I say. “When we reopened the investigation, Lieutenant Abrams made a discovery. The Cereal Killer is a guy named Chase Germaine. He did time and confessed the whole thing to his cellmate. Including details never released to the public. He’s still at large—probably still killing people.”
Parker stares at me in disbelief. Water dribbles down his face.
