Paz looked down toward the first row and at a man with a John D. MacDonald paperback stuffed in the pocket of a button-down sweater that fit him like a smock.
“You mind taking my place, Francis?”
The man started to stand up, then stopped. “How’d you know my name?”
“We must have met.”
“My name’s Frank. Only my mother ever called me Francis.”
“You must’ve told me.”
“I did?”
“Must have,” Paz said, stepping down off the slight stage and handing the ball he’d yet to call to the rail-thin man, who looked like a broomstick with limbs.
Paz walked straight out of the dining room that doubled as the bingo hall, ignoring the man who’d just arrived, until he fell into pace alongside him.
“You’re a piece of work, Colonel, I’ll give you that,” the man said, smirking again as he shook his head.
“What is it this time, Jones?” Paz asked the man from Homeland Security, for whom he worked when the need arose. “It better be good, for you to interrupt my bingo game. Those old people depend on me.”
“ISIS in Texas,” the big man he towered over told him. “Is that good enough for you?”
8
BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS
The call she’d received sent Caitlin to the Comanche Indian reservation, located on the outskirts of the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge.
“I can’t believe you’re calling me,” Conseulo Alonzo said, when Caitlin reached her on her cell phone.
“I wanted to apologize for last night, Deputy Chief.”
“Save it for your hearing before the Department of Public Safety’s oversight committee.”
“I’m heading up to the Comanche Indian reservation near Austin.”
“Why am I not surprised, you and trouble being joined at the hip the way you are?”
“What kind of trouble, ma’am?”
“Oil drilling crew being blocked from entering the rez by some young protesters who want to turn the Balcones into Wounded Knee. From what I hear, they just might get their wish.”
“Thanks for your time, Deputy Chief.”
If Caitlin had her history straight, Spanish explorers had named the land northwest of what is now Austin “Balcones” because of its rolling, terraced hills. Those limestone hills and spring-fed canyons made up most of the sprawling, twenty-five-thousand-acre refuge, which had been formed in the early 1990s to protect some endangered bird species. But one hundred thirty years or so before that, a portion of the deeply bisected Edwards Plateau on its outskirts had been deeded to the Comanche as their rightful land, first under the auspices of Sam Houston and then confirmed by the U.S. government itself in the Medicine Lodge Treaty.
The refuge, located off Route 183 through Lago Vista, was a majestically beautiful enclave of oak, elm, and cedar trees shading a lush countryside similarly rich in ground flora. All thanks to the waters of the massive Edwards Aquifer, which leached upward to keep the vegetation nourished, in stark contrast to the more barren, erosion-prone areas of the hill country. That same aquifer provided drinking water to a large number of Texans through springs that fed rivers flowing into the marshes, estuaries, and bays for miles and miles.
The Comanche reservation had been carved out of the most fertile portion of the basin before the preserve itself was a thought in anyone’s mind. A large patch of prime land as lush and pretty as any that Texas had to offer, and upon which the Strong legend was born. Approaching the entrance to the reservation, Caitlin found herself searching her memory for the tale her grandfather had told her about his own grandfather, Steeldust Jack Strong, a Civil War hero who made his bones as a Texas Ranger on these very grounds.