“Wish I was, Ranger.”
“If it’s not the whole truth, it’s something close. All that’s missing is the part about what killed those gunmen in the hotel. We found a hidden chamber in that cave just off White Eagle’s land that looked like something out of the Inquisition. I think they chained Comanche warriors inside there after pumping them full of peyote and unleashing them to kill. I think they used a version of this neurotoxin ISIS is after to incapacitate their victims first, so they couldn’t fight back. Create the illusion it was monsters, not men, who did it. Nature taking care of its own,” Caitlin said, repeating the words of both White Eagle and Isa-tai. “Just like that work foreman found torn apart a couple nights ago, and Rockefeller’s hired guns in 1874. History repeating itself, the Comanche making the same point now they made back then.”
Caitlin stopped short of mentioning Dylan’s Miraculous Medal being found in the vicinity of the construction foreman’s body, the boy being set up as the killer by the same girl who’d rescued him from the woods last night—a contradiction she still couldn’t make sense of.
Caitlin watched Tepper fan a Marlboro from his pack and then press it back downward when he caught her disapproving stare. “Does this story belong in the fact or fiction section of the library, Ranger?”
“You tell me, D.W., because I believe there’s one chapter still missing.”
This time, Tepper finished the process of knocking his Marlboro from the pack. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and raised his lighter, Caitlin’s glare stopping him.
“We’re about to take on ISIS, Ranger. I believe I’m entitled to a smoke. Now, if you want to know how things finished up for Steeldust Jack Strong and John D. Rockefeller, I need to hear what Cray Rawls told you, first.”
“He believes he’s found the cure for cancer on that reservation, Captain.”
“And what’s that got to do with whatever ISIS is after?” Tepper asked her, finally lighting his cigarette.
“I think they’re one and the same. What survived the fire back in Steeldust Jack’s time? What was it the Comanche needed to preserve?”
“Their corn.”
“Not just the corn,” Caitlin told him. “Something that was growing on it. Something that lengthened the life span of the Comanche, just like it lengthened the lives of the giant bats that attacked us the other night.”
“You can explain how that pertains to ISIS on the way,” Jones said, stepping back into the office and leaving the door open behind him. “I’ve got choppers prepping now. We need to get a move on.”
“Choppers, plural?”
“Looks like we’re going to war up in Dallas,” Jones said, turning all his focus on Caitlin. “Speaking of which, where’s your boyfriend?”
Tepper dropped the cigarette to the floor and crushed it with his boot. “I must’ve forgot to mention that apparently he’s left the building with Elvis. Your friend King Kong says he got a text message and tore off.”
“A text message from who?”
“I’ll give you two guesses, Ranger.”
92
BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS
Dylan was still alive.
That was something, anyway, Cort Wesley figured. He clutched his cell phone in his grasp as he drove, to make sure he’d feel the buzz of his son’s next text message coming through. He hadn’t recognized the phone number, then saw DYLAN in the first text and knew his son must be using a burner phone and, against everything that made any sense at all, had returned to the Comanche reservation where he could easily have died the night before.
HURRY! the next message had pleaded, after explaining where he was, and that’s what Cort Wesley had been doing ever since, driving into the sun until it burned his eyes. For some reason, he didn’t put on his sunglasses or lower the visor, maybe to make it so he couldn’t see things clearly, since, when it came to Dylan, he might as well be seeing nothing.
“Well, bubba,” Leroy Epps started, from the passenger seat.
“I don’t want to hear it, champ.”
“You ain’t even got a notion of what I was gonna say.”
“Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Never had kids of my own,” the ghost said, settling back in the seat. “Never going to now, circumstances being what they is.” Epps regarded Cort Wesley closer. “That makes yours as close as I’m gonna come, but I’m in no particular rush to see one of them on my side instead of yours.”
“That makes two of us.”