“Doesn’t make for a connection with Daniel Cross, at least not yet.”
Cort Wesley’s eyes narrowed to the point where the whites seemed to vanish. “Why don’t you let me have a go at him?”
“You mean, the way you had a go at Bobby Roy? Fixing to drive another front loader through a building, Cort Wesley?”
“Actually, Ranger, this time I was thinking about a tank.”
Caitlin found no humor in his remark. “You know what happened is going to get back to Sam Bob Jackson.”
“That was the point.”
“So is the fact that there’s something plenty bigger going on here.”
“That your way of warning me off paying Jackson a visit?”
“Were you or weren’t you just in the same meeting as me, where we learned Daniel Cross is ready to give ISIS a weapon of mass destruction?”
“Yes, ma’am. But it was Sam Bob Jackson who involved my son in all this.”
“You are one stubborn son of a bitch, Cort Wesley.”
He lapsed into silence, the moments dragging. “I realized something, when I was waiting to see the principal of Luke’s school the other day.”
“What’s that?”
“Red-tailed hawks supposedly returned to Texas with a flourish, after being endangered for a long stretch of time. But I haven’t seen a single one in years, and I don’t know anybody who has.”
“What’s your point?”
Cort Wesley looked over at her, across the wide seat. “That I’ve learned to only believe what I see, and right now I see Sam Bob Jackson and Cray Rawls party to something that’s going to get a whole lot of people killed, unless we find out what’s really happening on that Indian reservation.”
He eased his truck off the road to where it would be concealed by brush while they checked out the caves overlooking the stretch of land White Eagle had claimed for himself. His lights flashed over a huge figure standing by a truck that looked almost as big as the front loader Cort Wesley had driven through Bobby Ray’s showroom.
“Is that…?”
“You bet, Cort Wesley.”
“Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
*
“I miss you mentioning that you called him?” Cort Wesley asked, as the two of them approached Guillermo Paz.
“Hello, Colonel,” Caitlin greeted him, instead of answering Cort Wesley’s question.
“There’s something wrong here, Ranger,” Paz told her, standing so still in the night air that he didn’t even seem to be breathing. “I can feel it rising off the land. Much blood has been spilled. More is about to be.”
“As long as it’s not ours,” said Cort Wesley.
63
BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS
Dylan slinked through the woods, looping around through the darkest reaches, where the bramble bushes grew so thick that the edges caught on his jeans and nearly ripped through his shirt.
He had waited until he was sure Ela was asleep before easing her off of him. She had drunk the peyote-laced tea again, after Dylan had dumped his out. She had kissed him once with some of it still in her mouth, Dylan letting that small amount dribble down his throat. Enough to throw his mind for a loop, but nothing like the last time.
Still, the sex they’d had earlier could best be described as an amusement park ride, a roller coaster traveling upside down. It seemed as if air was swirling about, catching them in a harsh wind as they rotated positions in a prism of lights flashing everywhere, turning the single kerosene lantern into a spotlight.
The effects of the peyote wore off when Ela was still squeezing him so tight he thought his ribs might crack. She seemed trapped in some kind of nightmare and kept muttering something in Comanche while clinging to him. Only when she quieted and her breathing returned to normal did Dylan slip out from beneath her and pull his jeans and boots back on.
Even the small bit of peyote he’d ingested had been enough to steal his intentions from him while they made love, but those intentions returned full bore as he eased himself up out of the root cellar into the still air of the humid night. Something was going on here that felt all wrong. Dylan had forced himself to look the other way, until the matter of his Miraculous Medal showing up as evidence in a murder case, covered in blood, made his perspective do a one-eighty. He wanted to believe Ela had nothing to do with setting him up. Even more, he wanted to believe that nothing had happened, during those dark hours of lost time, that really did connect him to the killing.