Dylan blew the hair from his face and rolled his eyes. “Please.”
“Please what? You told me your dad talks to a ghost who steals root beer from him. You told me your Texas Ranger’s got some warrior protecting her, who’s part witch and has visions of the future. But you don’t think you knew I was going to kiss you and kissed me first?”
Dylan let himself smile. “What if I did?”
Ela smiled back. “That’s better.”
“What?”
“You, back to being you,” she said, pulling the shirt up over her head. “And me being me.”
59
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
“You got something you want to say, Ranger?” Cort Wesley asked Caitlin from behind the wheel of his truck, en route back to the Balcones.
“Just trying to sort things out, that’s all.”
“You mean the part about Sam Bob Jackson ordering the Boyd brothers to scare me, through Luke?”
“A muff like Jackson doesn’t tie his shoes on his own. That means Cray Rawls is the one we really need to nail for this.”
“I haven’t met either of them yet.”
“Let me save you the trouble, Cort Wesley. Rawls is like any of a thousand rich jerks I’ve met over the years who think their money and power makes their shit taste like chocolate. I’ve learned never to put anything past men like that.”
They were headed north to the Comanche reservation to check out the caves dug out of the hills overlooking White Eagle’s patch of land, where Dylan thought he had spotted somebody lurking about, a few nights back.
Cort Wesley glanced across the seat at her. “And where’s Daniel Cross fit on the scale?”
“Come again?”
He gave her a longer look. “You need to stop beating yourself up over this.”
“Over what?”
“Not changing the kid’s ways. It was ten years ago. You did what you could.”
“Well,” she admitted, to him and finally to herself, “I should’ve done more.”
“Did Cross actually build a bomb, back then?”
“He would have.”
“You don’t know that, Ranger.”
“But I do now, don’t I?”
“Caitlin—”
“No, Cort Wesley, let me finish. I knew he was trouble from the first time I laid eyes on the kid, but I got it in my head I could change him. First I had a little talk with the kids who’d been bullying him into submission.”
“Oh, boy, here we go…”
“I let those boys have it, and their parents too. Visited the wrath of the Texas Rangers upon them to make my point.”
“Did it work?”
Caitlin shrugged. “Well, Daniel Cross never did blow up the school. But maybe if I focused my energies on him he wouldn’t be planning to blow up the whole country now, so to speak.”
“Of all people,” Cort Wesley said, shaking his head.
“Of all people what?”
“Of all people, you should know some people are just born bad. You told me this kid’s mother was a prostitute and that the couple that adopted him wasn’t anything to write home about, either. You ask me, that’s because they would’ve much preferred to have returned him, when it became clear they were raising a monster.”
“Daniel Cross wasn’t born a monster, Cort Wesley.”
“Oh no?”
“He was born with a genius IQ. Forty points less and maybe he’s loading a gun instead of planning to build a bomb. Adults failed him at every stage of his life, from his mother all the way to me. And ever since I realized who he was, from that old picture, I’ve been racking my brain, trying to figure what else I could have done.”
“It ever occur to you there was nothing more you could’ve done?”
“Nope, not for a minute.” Caitlin’s phone rang. “Captain Tepper,” she told Cort Wesley before answering it. “I’m off the clock, D.W.”
“Not if you’re wearing your gun, Ranger, and since you’re not asleep, it’s a safe assumption you are. Whatever you’re doing, stop, and get over to the office five minutes ago to join the party.”
“What gives, Captain?”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. But I can’t tell you anyway, given this isn’t what your friend Jones calls a ‘secure line.’”
“He’s there too?”
“It’s his show, Caitlin, and you definitely want to be here when the curtain goes up.”
60
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
Caitlin and Cort Wesley entered the conference room of Company F headquarters late. Everyone else was already assembled, including Doc Whatley, an honorary Ranger named Young Roger, and four unidentified faces occupying equal quadrants of a wall-mounted wide-screen.
“I guess we can begin now,” said Jones from the head of the table, clearly indicating that Homeland Security was in charge here. “Doctor Whatley, chief medical examiner of Bexar County, has been assigned by Homeland to run point on this until CDC and other authorities are totally up to speed.”