Chapter 20

“It’s mostly good news, sis,” says Danny as he walks in. He takes off his jacket and hangs it up.

“‘Mostly, ‘“ I repeat.

I guess my tone or my expression gives me away, because he walks over to squeeze my shoulder.

“Don’t be so glum, it’s really pretty good.”

He leaves his hand there, and I reach up to touch it. “OK, sit down and tell me,” I say.

“I started at the station where you were gassing up. Went to the attendant, told him I’d heard something about a carjacking a couple of days ago, and what happened?”

“And?”

“I got lucky, two ways. First, the same guy was there, he said he saw the whole thing. Second, he’s a chatty Cathy, really eager to talk about it. Said he called the cops, made himself out a real hero for that, and they showed up before your ‘jacker ever got back on his feet.” He turns to Hugo. “Man, you hit that guy hard, “ he says.’

“I wish hit hard,” Hugo tells him. “He try hurt Linda.”

Danny nods and looks back at me. “I think you got a peach, kid. Anyhow, Cathy tells me they carted the guy off based on his say-so. And they don’t even know about the gun, Cathy never saw one, so that’s OK too.”

“Good!” I say.

“Oh, it gets better. Cathy didn’t get much of a look at your car. He wasn’t paying attention, best he can say is it was small and white. He told me, like in kind of confidence, that he thought you got scared and that’s why you ran. And it could have been that way, too, nothing ­really suspicious there. So that far you’re clear.”

“Any more?” I ask.

“Yeah, here,” he says, handling me a folded-up newspaper. It’s a small-town biweekly, but we hit the right day, it’s on the front page, Would-Be Carjacker Arrested.

I scan the article quickly. The “suspect” seems to have a history of car theft, it says, and was also being held for possession of “an illegal substance”—crack, at a guess. He’d been treated for his “injuries”—that hand, I suppose, and probably a busted nose—at the local hospital and was being held while...

My finger goes involuntarily to the last sentence of the article, and I guess Danny sees. “Yeah, I’m afraid that’s the kicker, girl,” he says to me.

“ ... while police are asking the woman and her unknown companion to come forward,” I read aloud.

We sit there silently while I digest all this.

“It’s not that horrible,” Danny breaks the silence. “They’ve got no description at all on you or Hugo—Mr. Chatterbox told me he wasn’t even sure how old you were, thought you might be ‘an older lady’—and not much on the car, either. And the cops aren’t looking. So you’re good to go. You’re OK even driving your own car around, although I wouldn’t take it anywhere near that station.”

“Damn straight,” I say. “But it’s nowhere near as bad as it could be.”

“No,” he agrees. “They probably won’t look real hard even when you don’t ‘come forward, ‘ they’ve got better ways to spend their time and they’ve got the guy for the ‘illegal substance’ anyway. I think you’re exactly what the ‘paper is, yesterday’s news.”