“You didn’t let me answer the question.”
“Your face gave it away,” Caitlin told him, “along with the way you’re hitting the bag. Boxers hold back when they’re practicing. It’s a necessary evil, so they can unleash themselves in the ring. But you aren’t holding back anything, like that bag is as close as you’ll ever come to a real opponent.”
“Maybe you didn’t notice my nose.”
“I did, sir, along with the lack of even a blotch anywhere else. I’m guessing you did some simple sparring that turned bad. Looks to me like somebody sucker punched you.”
“I’m sure there’s a point to all this,” Rawls said, breathing faster and louder.
“Only that an actual opponent is a whole different thing, either in the ring or in a gunfight. I just thought you should know that. Call it a little friendly advice.”
Rawls leaned back against the heavy bag, crossing his arms against his chest. “Did I do or say something to offend you, Ranger?”
“When you first saw me coming over, you looked at me like you knew you’d been caught. Like you’d done something that made you figure me or somebody else was coming, and that maybe you were glad, at least resigned. I’ve seen that look before, plenty often, and it always makes me wonder what a person’s hiding. Because if they’re hiding one thing, it’s a pretty safe bet they’re hiding something more.”
Rawls grinned, his brilliantly white teeth glistening in the spill of overhead gym lights. “Did you rehearse that? I mean, it sounds like a speech you’ve given before.”
“I’m not one for giving speeches, sir, but I got roped into speaking at a high school graduation, come spring, at that Houston prep school I mentioned to you.”
“Lucky kids.”
“We’ll see. Anyway, one of them got kidnapped the other day, right out of a McDonald’s, if you can believe that.”
“Well, this is a pretty dangerous state, Ranger.”
Caitlin slapped her hat against her side and then fitted it back in place over her hair. “I was just about to say the same thing to you, sir.”
54
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
Bobby Roy’s Used Cars and Bail Bond Service was located just down South Frio Street from the Bexar County magistrate’s building, in a beat-up lot bleeding macadam amid a patchwork pattern of what looked like gravel instead of tar. Cort Wesley parked his truck next to a construction site in the shadow of a John Deere front loader, waiting to make sure the men identified by Miguel Asuna were inside.
The John Deere kept him hidden from sight while not shielding him much from the sun, and Cort Wesley was fine with that. Fine with it roasting him, to further fuel the fury he felt every time he considered a couple of two-bit thugs rousting his son to make their bullying points.
And two-bit thugs, according to Miguel Asuna, was exactly what they were.
*
“Body shop right here in the city did the work,” he had told Cort Wesley, forty minutes after their initial meeting. “The Escalade’s registered to Bobby Roy, guy who rips people off on his used cars as much as his bond work. My guess is your boy was worked over by a couple of ex-cons who sell jalopies off his lot, when they’re not chasing down bail jumpers for him.”
“You’re kidding.”
Asuna raised his hand theatrically. “God’s honest truth, amigo. They’re brothers, Terry and K-Bar Boyd.”
“K-Bar?”
“What can I say?” Asuna shrugged. “Man fancies himself good with a knife. Word is he gave himself the nickname after shanking a couple guys in prison. God’s honest truth, too.”
“Tough guy, eh?” Cort Wesley said, thinking of what Luke had told him about a guy with a knife, sticking the tip in Luke’s crotch, explaining how he’d had his way with boys before.
“If doing them in the back makes him tough, sure. And I’ll tell you something else that’s true: I do much better work than the clowns Bobby Roy took that Escalade to. Tell him that, if you see him.”
“Oh, I’ll see him.”
*
The black Escalade pulled into the lot and slid into a space directly in front of before the entrance, two hours into Cort Wesley’s superheated vigil. Luke hadn’t been very specific in his descriptions of the Boyd brothers, Terry and K-Bar, but he’d still provided enough for Cort Wesley to recognize them climbing down out of the Escalade. Both wore leather gloves with the fingers cut back, as if they’d bought their toughness on sale at Walmart. Living, breathing caricatures who were plenty good enough to track down desperate bail skips and scare high school kids, which wasn’t very good at all. But they were probably armed, and Cort Wesley wanted to find out fast, without making a mess, who’d sent them after Luke.
Unless making that mess better served his cause, Cort Wesley reasoned, his eyes falling on the John Deere front loader again.
*