“Is that a real person?”
“The minerals broker I went to see in Houston. If he was any more slimy you’d have to hose down his office with disinfectant.”
“Probably comes with the territory in that business.”
“This was different. Son of a bitch is hiding something, for sure. Something just doesn’t feel right.”
Cort Wesley chuckled. “You being an expert on human behavioral traits.”
“This coming from somebody who takes advice from a ghost.”
Cort Wesley tipped his bottle toward her. “How’s the root beer?”
“Damn fine.”
“Then it’s good advice.” Caitlin watched his face grow somber. “Think I’ll head back up to that Indian reservation in the morning. Something doesn’t feel right there, either.”
She held his stare until a pair of june bugs buzzed between them. “You give Luke the news?”
“Nope. I’d rather he didn’t know I had any part in it.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want him thinking the two of us are always going to be there to win all his battles for him.”
“You mean fight, not win.”
Cort Wesley drained the rest of his Hires. “I’ve got the same feeling you do.”
“That the next battle’s right around the next corner.” Caitlin felt her phone vibrate and found a voice mail from a call she hadn’t noticed. “It’s from Jones. I better see what he wants.”
“Knock yourself out,” Cort Wesley said, tipping his root beer toward her and watching her expression tighten as she listened to the message. “Bad?”
“That’s likely an understatement, Cort Wesley. Looks like tomorrow’s going to be another interesting day.”
25
BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS
“Drink your tea,” Ela said, sipping from her own steaming cup.
Dylan took one sip, and then another, wrinkling his nose at the effort.
“You ever hear of sugar?” He realized he couldn’t find his phone. He ruffled the blanket in search of it, coming up with Ela’s iPhone 6s instead. “I should’ve gotten you a different case, so we could tell them apart.”
She gave him the smile she’d first flashed upon taking the seat next to him in their Native American studies class at Brown. Dylan hadn’t even been sure it was aimed at him, to the point where he looked around to see if there was another guy in the area, and he still hadn’t known how to respond when he discovered there wasn’t.
What am I, like, in middle school?
That’s what it had felt like then, and it didn’t feel all that much different now. Sure, he believed in the cause Ela was fighting for on her native land and all. But dropping everything and coming home to Texas with her was all about Ela holding him by a string, making him dance on command.
“Sugaring the tea would spoil the effect.” She winked at him, the steam from her cup rising between them and seeming to stain the lantern light.
Dylan took a bigger sip this time, starting to detect a slightly acrid odor to go with a bitter undertaste that left his tongue feeling dry. They were seated in the long-abandoned root cellar beneath Ela’s family’s ancestral home, once used to store perishables for the long winter, and later appropriated by Ela as her personal hideaway. She’d spent lots of time shoring up and beautifying the fifteen-foot-square chamber as much as she could. Then college had brought new interests and demands on her time, her personal hideaway deteriorating back to its original damp and musty form. The furniture Ela brought down here from storage was rotting, and the planks she’d laid over the earthen walls had warped and puckered. The old-fashioned kerosene lantern they were using had once hung from the ceiling, but the hook that had held it there was gone.
“Peyote?” Dylan asked, the cup still touching his lips.
She flashed that smile again. “Uh-huh.”
Dylan wanted to stop drinking the tea, should have stopped, but didn’t let himself.
“You’re not scared, are you, boy?”
“Do I look scared … girl?”
He tried to chuckle, but his mouth was too dry. He managed a smile that seemed to freeze in place, to the point where he had to make his mind pry it free.
“If you only knew,” Dylan said, taking sip after sip now, feeling the liquid cool, or maybe not feeling it at all.
“Knew what?”
Dylan didn’t want to tell her, to risk spoiling the moment. “Let’s just say there’s lots of assholes in the world and I seem to have gone up against most of them.”
In the now quivering light, Ela’s eyes looked like molten lava. “You sound like a Comanche, like my Lost Boys.”
“Lost Boys?”
“What I call the young Comanche I practically grew up with. They’re all cousins of mine. Even more radical about our land and heritage than me; you can tell, because I don’t paint my face.”
“Or draw a red X on your chest.”