D. W. Tepper closed the door to the conference room after White Eagle and the other two men had left.
“Could you refresh my memory as to what century this is? Because you sure talk like the nineteenth never ended at all. Aw hell, forget it. There’s someone else here you need to speak to, someone who might actually be able to serve our cause.”
“Who’s that?”
“A Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer who’s got information he says he’ll share only with you.”
75
HOUSTON, TEXAS
Cray Rawls hadn’t slept much the night before. It reminded him of the nights he had spent huddled outside his mother’s room while the floorboards shook in rhythm with the bed inside. How he’d tucked his arms around his knees, trying to make himself as small as possible, even invisible, to whatever man eventually emerged from inside, smelling salty and something like the odor that hung in the air in his elementary school gymnasium.
Accompanied by his pair of hulking bodyguards, Rawls arrived at the west Houston offices of Jackson Whole Mineral to review plans for the operation about to commence on the Comanche Indian reservation outside of Austin. An auspicious day, indeed, given the stakes and potential profits involved, but all Rawls felt was trepidation and anxiety. A little boy again, huddled against the wall in the cold, fearful of what was to come.
It shouldn’t have been that way. Should have been smooth sailing from here, after getting the deal closed with the damn Indians. It was going to cost him additional millions, but who cared? Spending millions to make billions was the price of doing business.
One bodyguard preceded him through the entrance of the office building where Jackson Whole Mineral was headquartered, the other trailed slightly behind. He noticed the security desk was unmanned. This wasn’t a surprise, considering the likely cost-cutting efforts, but it further jangled his already jittery nerves. He felt like an old dog sensing a thunderstorm in the offing, looking for a bed to roost under until it passed.
Upstairs, the glass entrance to Jackson Whole Mineral was open and unguarded—contrary to the strict orders he’d given that fat-ass Sam Bob. Rawls stormed down the hall ahead of his bodyguards, canting his shoulders sideways as he entered Jackson’s office overlooking the main artery of the west Houston Energy Corridor.
The fat man sat there, sunk into his overstuffed desk chair, his blank expression fixed straight ahead. He seemed reluctant to stop looking at whatever he was staring at.
“What gives, Sam Bob?” Rawls demanded. “I have to wipe your ass for you now?”
He felt a presence behind him, just before a whoosh of air signaled the door blasting closed. Cray Rawls swung around to find a rawboned man glaring at him with an expression forged in steel.
“I’m Cort Wesley Masters, Mr. Rawls. I believe it’s time the three of us had a little talk.” He stopped when he heard the door easing back open.
“Excuse me,” Cort Wesley corrected, as Guillermo Paz entered, dragging the limp frames of Rawls’s bodyguards behind him as if they were rag dolls. “I meant the four of us.”
76
HOUSTON, TEXAS
Cort Wesley had driven straight through the last of the night, once he was sure Dylan was going to be fine. He couldn’t bear waiting out the hours while the boy got the drugs and the awful encounter he’d experienced out of his system. He’d be left pacing the floors and punching holes in the walls out of feeling helpless to do anything to those who had tied his son to a tree with baling wire.
He’d arrived in west Houston before the building even opened. No stops. The sky was beginning to brighten without him even noticing. He’d found Paz waiting outside his massive extended-cab pickup, in an area around the side, out of sight of any visible security cameras, his thoughts mirroring Cort Wesley’s.
“Hello, outlaw.”
“Did Caitlin send you?”
Paz’s huge eyes looked like curved saucers wedged into his skull. “I was running a bingo game last night and called the number seventy, under the O. O for outlaw—that’s what I said, and when I knew.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“I believe I did,” Paz told him. “Now, are you ready to get to work?”
*
“Take a seat, Mr. Rawls.”
Cort Wesley had thoroughly enjoyed Rawls’s and Sam Bob Jackson’s reactions to the sight of Guillermo Paz dropping two men with chiseled frames in heaps on the carpet. Hovering over both, on the chance either of them stirred, in the course of the meeting about to commence. The absence of the additional three guards Rawls had ordered posted no longer needed to be explained.
“Right there,” Cort Wesley continued, gesturing toward the chair set before Jackson’s desk. “Make yourself comfortable.”
Cray Rawls did as he was told. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I think you know.”