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“Jackson Clarke wasn’t the Cereal Killer,” I say. “We know that now.”
“That’s not true,” he says.
“Here’s the truth,” I say. “Youmurdered an innocent man.”
Parker’s knees wobble, and Josie reaches out a hand to steady him. The foundation of self-righteous justification that he’s built his life on seems to be crumbling beneath him. He might have been able to rationalize killing Harvey because of what he did. And he can excuse his way out of the murder of Luisa Ramirez because he didn’t pull the trigger. But faced with the reality that he killed an innocent person, Parker can’t take it. His mouth is open in shock, his skin ashen.
“Parker,” Josie says with concern, “get on the bike. We have to go.”
“If you actually want to do the right thing,” I say, “turn yourselves in.”
“Shut up, Rory!” Josie yells.
Her brows furrowed in anger, her teeth practically clenched into a snarl, Josie is nearly unrecognizable.
“Are you really going to shoot me, Josie?” I say, trying to appeal to her humanity—if she has any left. “Are you going to join Parker in becoming a murderer?”
She offers me an unfriendly smile that sends cold chills down my back.
“I already did,” she says. “I know you saved my son and you saved my husband, just now, but if you don’t shut your mouth, I won’t hesitate to shoot you just like I did her.”
Parker’s shocked stare turns from me to his wife.
“You shot that officer in San Antonio?” he says. “It wasn’t Harvey?”
“Sorry,” she says to him, shrugging. “Harvey offered to take the blame so you wouldn’t be mad at me. I didn’t know you would kill him for it.”
CHAPTER 57
PARKER LOOKS LIKE a smaller, crumpled version of himself. The confident, muscular man has become a hunched-over and hurt little boy. If his hands weren’t cuffed behind his back, he might cover his face and begin weeping.
I almost feel sympathy for him—a guy who thought he was helping people only to find out in the span of a few seconds that both he and his wife had murdered innocent people—but then I think about how he brought all of this on himself.
“Why?” Parker says to his wife.
“Why?” Josie repeats, looking at him as if he’s stupid. “The same reason you’re going to get on the back of this motorcycle: when our children wake up tomorrow morning, they need their mommy and daddy.”
Parker looks as if the last thing he wants to do is get on the back of the bike with her.
“Parker, honey,” she says, changing to a more supplicating tone. “We can sort all this out later. Okay? But we need to go. Now.”
As she says this, I hear another vehicle approaching. We all turn our heads at the same time to see Carlos’s F-150 roaring down the road toward us.
“Get on!” Josie screams at Parker, and this time he listens.
I run forward to stop them, but Josie revs the throttle and spins the bike around in a half circle, spraying me with gravel. The bike races toward the ramp just as Carlos comes down it. Josie, riding with one arm and somehow holding her gun with the other, sprays a burst of bullets at the truck. Carlos dives down behind the steering wheel as glass explodes overhead and roundsthunkinto the metal bed.
“Josie, no!” Parker roars as he tries to cling to the back of the seat with his cuffed hands. “No more killing!”
Josie stops firing and accelerates the bike past the truck.
I sprint over to the truck, terrified that I’ll find Carlos filled with holes. But his head pops up behind the shattered driver’s-side window.
“You okay?” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “Get in!”
I jump into the truck bed and crawl through the hole where the back windshield was. Carlos spins the truck in a three-sixty, throwing a wave of gravel out into the water, and we tear up the ramp after Josie and Parker.
