Roxanne L. Conrad - Exile, Texas.pdf - Roxanne L. Conrad - widez2

EXILE, TEXAS

Roxanne Longstreet Conrad

Conrad - Exile, Texas

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Conrad - Exile, Texas

Chapter One

I first saw the silver Lexus in my rear view mirror as I was writing up my ninth ticket of the day.

Ticketing speeders on small state highways, like the ones I patrolled, was sort of a catch and release

system: tourist conservation. Unless it was breaking the land speed record, I was inclined to let the Lexus

go about its business. Too many tickets in a morning looked, well, overzealous.

Truth was, I sympathized with speeders. There isn’t much else to do out in the middle of

Nowhere, Texas; not many cars to bother you, not much to look at but orange-brown sand and spiky

mesquite bush, and a whole lot of clear, clean, bowl-shaped sky. The Lexus would flash its brakes as

soon as it saw me sitting in the shadow of the John Birch Society billboard. They all did.

I was still signing ticket number nine when the silver Lexus blasted past me like a mirage,

shimmering, the exact color of the early winter sun. She hadn’t hit the brakes, she’d hit the gas, and if it

wasn’t a land speed record it was certainly a contender. I handed over the ticket, waved the tan SUV on

its way, and got back in the car.

The Lexus was still hauling ass.

All right, I thought, and flipped on the lights. If you want it this way . . .

I chased her for about three miles before I caught up. She—I was fairly sure the driver was a

she—played hard to get, buzzing along for a good thirty seconds or so before she flared brake lights and

pulled off to the shoulder in a orange swirl of dust. I parked behind her, left the lights flashing, and

reached for the radio.

“Dispatch, this is Nine,” I said. It still felt odd. In Houston, where I’d come up as a patrolman and

until recently worked as a detective, radio cars had, well, bigger numbers. And nine was deceptive

anyway. There were only four cars in the whole department. There’d probably only been a total of nine

since the invention of the internal combustion engine. “Dispatch, come on back.”

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Conrad - Exile, Texas

“Go, Nine,” Farlene said, out of breath. Probably back from one of her fifteen visits to the

coffeepot a day. She was one of those addicts who claimed drinking coffee made them sleep like a baby.

To my mind, it was about the same as a drunk claiming he drove better that way.

“I got a routine speeder stop, silver Lexus, Texas license DLX-079, about a thousand yards past

the town limits sign.” I watched the Lexus. It wasn’t moving. The shadow of the driver inside wasn’t

moving, either. A lot of people started fumbling around for license and insurance, but not this one. Stone

cold quiet.

“Uh, roger that, Dan. Ya’ll want me to run the check?” Farlene loved running plates, and while I

didn’t expect to find anything on the Lexus, it would be good manners to let her. I watched the Lexus

idle, meek and sleek. No premonitions about it, just the vague ever-present hope that I wouldn’t get shot

when I walked up to it.

“Yeah, Farlene, better do that,” I said. “Thanks. Nine, out.”

I settled my still-new hat more comfortably and stepped out of the patrol car into the mild winter

day. I took my time strolling up to the driver. Nice top-of-the-line Lexus, blurred with a good coat of road

dust. Hard to say how far it had come, but the dealer’s decal on the back said Dallas. Unusual. We didn’t

get many from Dallas out this way; they kept to the interstate, where the drive was no less boring but the

McDonald’s and 7-Eleven stops were more frequent.

People from big cities complain about the demise of small towns and those charming mom-and-

pop operations, and avoid them every chance they get.

The window rolled down on the Lexus as I stepped up to the driver’s side window, and I got my

first look at the driver. She was in her thirties, with dark, smooth, straight hair that fell like silk around her

face and eyes the blue of a blowtorch flame. Her skin was as pale and perfect as milk, Snow White skin.

No rose red lips, though; hers were tinted a delicate shade of lilac that matched her eye shadow.

The strength of will in her eyes was a shot of liquid nitrogen down my spine. I had to take a deep

breath to get my heart going again. Those blue eyes could look innocent, at first glance; when I blinked,

they were flat, cynical, and suspicious.

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Conrad - Exile, Texas

“Going pretty fast, Miss,” I said. It was a come-on line number one, police-wise, and I winced

when I realized I’d said it. She tilted her head slightly, looking at me; I had a strange feeling she was

trying to place me, as if we’d met before. “Turn the engine off, please.”

She complied. The purr of the Lexus died away, leaving only the whisper of the wind and the dry,

steady click of the lights flashing on my cruiser. I smelled perfume, something expensive, applied lightly.

It hit me, like a late sucker punch, that she was maybe the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in

the flesh.

“License and insurance, please,” I asked. She handed them over so quickly she must have had

them ready. I was beginning to be glad I’d had Farlene check on this one. There was such a thing as being

too composed, and she was the poster child for it. I looked at the picture—a good one, for a wonder, and

most definitely her—and the name. “Megan Leary?”

“Sorry, I don’t give autographs.” She had a smoke-and-bourbon voice, like a forties movie star,

and the attitude to match. It was like she was daring me to write her up. While I was thinking about it, the

radio beeped for attention. I went back to it, leaned in, and answered.

“Nine, go.”

“Dan!” Something had gotten Farlene all excited, too excited to use codes that were mostly

posturing anyway in a town that just barely qualified as a wide spot in the road. “Dan, you stay right

there, and don’t you let that woman go. Deputy Peyser’s coming out to meet you. You keep her there.”

Now, that was gravely unusual. Deputy Peyser was the sort of guy who patrolled donut shops and

liquor stores, who every once in a while smacked the town drunk around to make himself feel like a cop.

If Peyser was interested in my ice maiden, I felt sorry for her already.

“Driver’s license says Megan Leary,” I said. “That check out?”

Farlene let a three- or four-second delay go by before she said, “That’s her. Peyser’ll take care of

this, Dan. You just let him, hear?”

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Roxanne L. Conrad - Exile, Texas.pdf

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