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face like this?”
    “Jerk,” I muttered, and aimed a halfhearted kick at his behind. He dodged it, then veered toward me and slung his good arm around my shoulders. He kept it there while we trudged back to the road. I wondered if all men from Texas were like him, always touching, always teasing. Although it had unnerved me at first, I was getting used to it.
    We reached the highway just in time to see the wrecker pull away with Grady’s Porsche. I groaned again, and Cougar laughed.
    Ubi offered us a ride to the police station. The three of us wedged in the cab of his little Toyota pickup like sardines. I was going to have a bruise on the inside of my knee where he shifted gears and he had the heater on full blast. I felt a little queasy with the hot air battering my face, and Ubi’s jerky “speed up and brake” driving wasn’t helping things any.
    “Hey, can we stop by my apartment on the way?” Cougar asked, and I stifled a groan.
    While he ran inside, my mind kept flashing to what Barnes had said. My mother had told me he’d left when she was pregnant and never looked back. Why would he lie about that now? Did he think I’d feel sorry for him? Surely he hadn’t expected me to let him go.
    Cougar reappeared ten minutes later, stuffing something into his jacket pocket, and we lurched on our way.
    Pandemonium reigned outside the police station. Cougar shoved a path through the throng of reporters, and Ubi and I followed in his wake.
    Bill stood in the doorway of a glassed-in office like a kid watching his parents fight, not wanting to go in but unable to look away. He glanced at us as we crowded around him, then turned his attention back to the three men inside. The precinct captain faced down Barnes and a red-faced man in a gray suit who I assumed was Barnes’s lawyer. I saw enough lawyers on a daily basis that I could pretty well pick them out of a crowd.
    “What do you mean, you’re holding him for attempted murder?” the lawyer sputtered. “Attempted murder of whom? The agents who arrested him were in an unmarked car. My client didn’t know they were DEA. He was only trying to defend himself.”
    The captain shifted the toothpick in his mouth. “We’re arresting him for the attempted murder of AgentJohn Angelino, who was shot on Mr. Barnes’s premises this morning.”
    Barnes’s hands were still cuffed behind him, and I noticed him popping his fingers one by one with his thumb. The simple movement chilled me, because it was a habit I shared. I’d done it all my life, much to my mother’s—and later Grady’s—annoyance.
    Barnes leaned to whisper something to his lawyer, then rocked back on his heels. He rolled his neck and seemed to notice me for the first time. For an instant our eyes met, and my telltale heart threatened to beat out of my chest in the sudden terror that everyone else would see what I was only now seeing myself. We looked alike. We really did. I’d stared at his pictures a million times, but I’d never noticed it before.
    The fat lawyer braced his hands on the edge of the desk. “My client wasn’t even home this morning. You say the victim is in a coma. What evidence could you possibly have to connect Mr. Barnes to the shooting?”
    The captain nodded at Bill, who took a hesitant step inside and gestured at us. “Angelino was conscious when they found him. They heard him say—”
    “I’ve got better than that,” Cougar interrupted. He fished a tiny cassette from his pocket and handed it to Bill. “This is Angel’s statement. I took it on the way to the hospital, and it was witnessed by two ambulance attendants.”
    Fear sparked in Barnes’s eyes.
    Good , I thought.
    The captain punched a button on his phone. “Marty, find me something to play one of those little tapes on.”
    Bill fingered the tape, his brows furrowed. “How?” he asked. “We were on a raid. I know you didn’t have a recorder with you.”
    Cougar tugged his earlobe and gave a bitter smile. “I