"You don't have to be afraid, Haley," Vince said softly. "You're here with us, and you're safe, and we won't let anything bad happen to you."

"Bad Daddy hurt my mommy," she said, and she started to cry softly, going into Anne's arms for comfort.

Anne held her close and rocked her. She had always been protective of the children in her care when she was a teacher. Mendez had called her a tigress with cubs. But that paled in comparison to what she was feeling now for Haley.

Maybe it was because she had so much in common with the little girl-having been a victim, having lost her mother. Or maybe it was just the time of her life or the fact that she had been thinking so much about becoming a mother. But as she held Haley Fordham and promised to keep her safe, Anne felt a bond forming inside her like nothing she had ever felt before.

She wasn't going to let anyone harm a hair on this child's head. If the bad daddy or anyone else wanted to get to Haley, he was going to have to come through Anne first.

And no tigress would have anything on her.

52.

"You're a lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Campbell commented.

With the exceptions of Vince and Hicks, the guys had gone back to their desks after the brainstorming session to try to put a dent in their paperwork and check messages that had come in during the day regarding other cases they were working.

"How so?" Mendez asked.

"You don't have to hear it from a wife how you're never home, you work too much, or you pretend to work too much but you've probably got a girlfriend on the side."

"I don't know how anybody has time for a girlfriend on the side," Mendez said. "I don't have time for a girlfriend right in front of me."

"Tony wouldn't have a girlfriend on the side," Trammell said. "That arrow is way too straight."

"Right," Campbell said. "Tell the truth. Did you really pop Steve Morgan because he screws around on his wife?"

"I hit him because he hit me," he said, staring down at his pink message slips.

His mother was cooking dinner on Sunday. His victim in a domestic a.s.sault case wanted to talk to him. ADA Worth wanted to prep him for trial for a case he had worked six months prior.

Sara Morgan had called.

A little rush of something went through him. Excitement? Nerves? What was he-fourteen years old?

The call had come in at 7:20 P.M. No message.

He wasn't supposed to go near Sara Morgan or any other Morgan. The boss hadn't said anything about phone calls. But he didn't want to make the call from his desk with the peanut gallery sitting all around.

Stupid. It wasn't like he was involved with her. He wouldn't have any trouble being completely professional. Yet he still had the feeling he would hang up the phone and the chorus "Tony's got a girlfriend" would fill the air.

He wouldn't get the chance to suffer, as it turned out. Dixon walked into the room and pointed right at him.

"Tony, come with me," he said. "Someone just tried to run Milo Bordain off the road."

The rain was coming down in sheets. On the country road to Bordain's ranch, there was little in the way of light. Sizzling road flares put out by the deputy who had answered the call, and the red and blue lights atop his cruiser, gave warning to slow down.

The headlights flashed on Milo Bordain's ma.s.sive white Mercedes sedan. The car sat almost perpendicular to the road, the back end dropped down in the ditch, the headlights pointing slightly upward into the night.

"She picked a h.e.l.l of night to have this happen," Dixon said as he pulled the hood of his storm jacket up over the top of his cap.

Mendez followed suit, wishing he had left the office with Vince and Hicks. Maybe if he had a wife and kid waiting at home for him, he wouldn't have been hanging around his desk to get b.u.t.tonholed for this call on this s.h.i.tty night.

It was a cold, nasty rain, pelting down like tiny daggers from the sky. Gusts of wind redirected it inside the hood of the jacket and down the neck. The legs of his pants and his socks were wet in a matter of minutes.

"She said she was on her way home!" The deputy had to shout to be heard. He pointed in the direction they had been coming from. "She became aware of a car coming up behind her, too close on her tail. She touched her brakes to back him off. He came alongside her about there and swerved toward her. She panicked, hit the brakes, the car went into a skid, and that's where it stopped."

"Where is she now?" Dixon yelled.

"Emergency room."

"What?"

"Emergency room!"

"How bad?" Mendez asked.

The deputy shook his head. "Didn't look too bad. She banged her head," he said, pantomiming banging his head against his hand. "And a b.l.o.o.d.y nose."

Mendez jogged over to the Mercedes and shined his Maglite in on the driver's side. The airbag had deployed and there was blood on it. The cause of the nosebleed, he guessed. There didn't appear to be any other damage done inside the car. He shined the light at an oblique angle down the side of the car. There seemed not to have been any contact between the two vehicles.

"Gotta hope she got a tag number!" he shouted at Dixon. "Are there skid marks?"

"Who can see in this?" Dixon turned to the deputy again. "Did she give you a description of the other car?"

The deputy shook his head.

"Could just have been an a.s.shole," Mendez said as they got back in the Taurus. He started the car and turned the heat on full blast. "She p.i.s.sed him off when she hit her brakes."

"That would just be too easy," Dixon said. He pulled his hood back and pulled the wet cap off his head. "She's convinced herself she's a target."

"It doesn't make sense," Mendez said. "Like her son said, if somebody had it in for her, why not just kill her? Why kill Marissa Fordham with forty-some stab wounds and the mutilation and leaving the knife protruding from the v.a.g.i.n.a? All this perp did to Bordain is send her a gruesome surprise in the mail."

"Until tonight."

For Mendez, it didn't sit right. The amount of rage in the killing of Marissa Fordham ... she had to have been the primary target. Little Haley was collateral damage. This business with Milo Bordain was like a game. That was a different kind of killer altogether. One he'd hoped they wouldn't see again in Oak Knoll.

He drove them to Mercy General Hospital and parked under the ambulance canopy at the ER entrance. The triage nurse led them back to the exam rooms.

"How is she?" Dixon asked.

The nurse, a short woman with smoker's skin and dyed-black hair, waved a hand in dismissal. "She's insisting on a CT scan, but she'll be fine. She's shaken up. More scared than hurt. She'll have a good goose egg on her forehead tomorrow, but there's no sign of a concussion."

She motioned to a door and left them. Dixon knocked twice and opened it.

Milo Bordain sat on the exam table, an unimpressed nurse tending to a small cut and abrasion on the left side of Bordain's forehead.

"Cal! Thank G.o.d you're here! Someone tried to kill me!"

She did look worse for wear, Mendez thought. Her blond hair was escaping the usually perfect tight bun she wore, and her makeup was mostly gone, showing her age in the harsh fluorescent lighting. In a hospital gown and wearing a paper blanket for a stole, she seemed much less formidable than in her usual layers of designer wear.

"We'll do our best to get to the bottom of it, Mrs. Bordain," Dixon said.

"Ouch!" she cried out and snapped at the nurse who was dabbing something at the cut on her forehead. "That stings!"

"Yeah," the nurse said, unapologetic. "Good thing you don't need st.i.tches."

"If I need st.i.tches, I'm calling my plastic surgeon. I'm not letting anyone here touch my face."

"Can you tell us what happened, Mrs. Bordain?" Mendez asked, pen in hand.

"I came in to town this afternoon to see how things were going with the tip line. Then I came to the hospital to try to see Haley, and she'd been released.

"n.o.body told me she was being released today," she complained, irritated. "I wanted to have a chance to see her and tell her I'm thinking about her. And I brought her a little present-"

"About the accident ... ," Mendez prompted.

Bordain turned to Dixon and spoke as if Mendez weren't there. "He is so rude. I don't understand why you would bring him here with you, Cal. You know he upsets me."

"I can step outside if you'd like to talk about me," Mendez said.

"I need him to take notes," Dixon said smoothly. "So you were on your way home?"

"Yes. And I was already upset about Haley, and still thinking about what happened yesterday, and about Marissa. I want to have a memorial service for her, but I don't know when her body will be released. Then someone told me only a relative could claim the body, but Marissa has no relatives here other than Haley-"

"And the car ... ," Mendez said pointedly.

She huffed another sigh.

"Suddenly I see these bright headlights coming up behind me," she said. "I knew the car was going too fast for that road in the rain. People drive like maniacs out there-especially the Mexicans."

Mendez exchanged a glance with the nurse, who was also Hispanic "The car came right up behind me," Bordain went on. "I thought it was going to hit me! You hear all the time about those insurance scams where some uninsured illegal gets you to rear-end them and then bilks the insurance company and sues the law-abiding citizen-"

"But there was only one car," Dixon said.

"Yes. I was angry that he was right on my tail, so I tapped my brakes to tell him to back off. Then he pulled up alongside me and swerved toward me. My heart was in my throat!"

"Do you know what kind of car it was?" Mendez asked.

"No. I'm sorry but I don't know anything about cars."

"What about the driver?"

She closed her eyes, pained and in pain. "I don't know."

She would know if it was a Mexican, Mendez thought.

"Was it a car or a truck?" Dixon asked.

"A car."

"Dark- or light-colored?"

"Dark. Everything was dark. And it was raining so hard I could barely see the road."

"Did you get a look at the driver at all?"

"Just a glance. I was terrified. I was trying to stay on the road."

"But it was a man," Dixon said.

"Yes, I think so. He might have been wearing a watch cap pulled down low, or maybe his hair was black. I didn't get a good look," she said. "He swerved at me. I swerved to miss him. The next thing I knew my car was out of control. I thought I was going to be killed!"

"We saw your airbag deployed," Dixon said.

"I thought it broke my nose! Those things are dangerous!"

"Try putting your face through a windshield," the nurse muttered-more as a suggestion than a comment, Mendez thought. He cleared his throat and rubbed a hand down over his mustache to hide his smile.

"The car didn't stop," Dixon said.

"No. I didn't see it stop."

"You didn't see the license plate?" Mendez asked.

"No. For G.o.d's sake, I was trying to stay alive!"

"Were there any other cars on the road at the time?" Mendez asked. "Anyone who might have seen what happened?"

"You don't believe me?" Bordain said, incredulous. Tears filled her eyes. "Oh my G.o.d. You think I'm making this up?"

"It's not that, Mrs. Bordain," Dixon said. "Another driver might have a better description of the other vehicle or of the driver, or may have even gotten a plate number."

"No," she said, calming down marginally. "One of my neighbors came along a few minutes later. He's the one who called nine-one-one."

"Have you been drinking at all this evening, Mrs. Bordain?" Mendez asked.

"What? Of course not! I had a gla.s.s of wine with dinner. That was hours ago!"