“And this is what that trapper stumbled his way into.”
Beauchamp moved to the window and opened the blinds all the way, as Captain Tepper was normally loath to do. He wrinkled his nose at the stale scent of cigarettes that hung in the air like a stubborn cloud, and opened the window all the way, in the hope of vanquishing it.
“Labelle’s trapping trails had likely brought him to the village before. He probably knew some of the residents.”
“But not what killed them.”
“No. The trapper lit out through the cold and snow for civilization and ended up at a ranger station with a telegraph, ranting that whatever killed all the villagers was following him.”
“What,” Caitlin repeated, “as opposed to who.”
“The cold had turned him delirious. He passed out after the wire was sent, and he thought the whole thing had been a bad dream, when he finally woke up.”
“What else did the Mounties find when they got to the village, Pierre? You wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t something.”
Something changed in the Mountie’s expression. His cheeks paled, and the flatness of his face suddenly seemed to lengthen it. “There was, Ranger, and this is the part only you are going to believe.”
78
HOUSTON, TEXAS
The echo of the broken glass and hiss of the bullet were still cutting through Cort Wesley’s skull when he yanked Cray Rawls off the chair and dragged him to the floor, where Guillermo Paz was already lying, safe from the angle at which the shooter was firing.
“There’s a taller building, three hundred yards to the west,” Paz noted. “That’s where the shot was fired from.”
“Three hundred yards,” Cort Wesley calculated, running the distance through his mind. “Shooter’s no rank amateur.”
But that same mind had already moved in another direction altogether, the puzzle pieces starting to link together. Somebody was covering their tracks, somebody who didn’t want anyone else to learn what Sam Bob Jackson and Cray Rawls knew: the truth about what was on that Indian reservation.
Not oil.
Something else.
Clear enough.
“I’ll move on the building,” Paz was saying, “as soon as we’re outside.”
“Got to get there, first.” With that, Cort Wesley pushed closer to Rawls, across the rug, positioning himself right next to the man’s ear to make sure Rawls heard what he said. “We’re going for the door, into the hall. Don’t raise even a hair on your neck. You hear me? Nod if you do.”
Rawls managed what passed for a nod, fingers stretching out to pull himself through the nap in the carpet.
Cort Wesley drew his gun; Paz had his in hand already. The sniper would know he’d missed at least one of his primary targets, along with the two men whose presence he couldn’t have anticipated. In point of fact, Rawls was only alive now because Cort Wesley had yanked him to the floor ahead of the inevitable second shot, which as a result had never come. That meant a backup team would be left to finish the job. They were either en route to this office now or were lying in wait downstairs.
Pfft, pfft, pfft.
More gunshots showered flecks of glass through freshly bored holes. Those had been fired in desperation. The shooter was hoping to panic his intended victims, make them launch into a desperate rise. Cray Rawls started to do just that, but Cort Wesley pushed him back down before he got anywhere.
Pfft, pfft, pfft.
Still pulling himself across the carpet, Cort Wesley couldn’t chase from his nostrils the scent of blood and gore from Sam Bob Jackson’s ruptured skull. Paz was in the hallway by then, reaching back inside to drag Rawls the rest of the way. He kept his gaze fixed toward the office entrance, in case the backup team elected to storm the premises.
The moment his upper body crossed through the door frame, Cort Wesley was thinking origins, and only one possibility came to mind: ISIS.
The two men Homeland had managed to identify from an Austin patrolman’s body cam … Cort Wesley couldn’t remember their names, but clearly their cell had gone active. They wanted whatever was on that land belonging to the Comanche, and they didn’t want anyone to know that they were after it.
Back on his feet, finally, out of view of any windows, Cort Wesley jerked Rawls upright and held him against the wall to the side of the door.
“What’s on that land, you son of a bitch? What are you hiding?”
Rawls’s features had calmed, his eyes suddenly as steely as they were evasive. “Get me out of here and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
Cort Wesley pulled him on again, drawing almost even with Paz, once they reached the reception area.
“No one’s coming,” the colonel reported, eyes and gun focused on the bank of elevators immediately beyond the office’s glass front wall.
“Downstairs, then.”
“Dressed as first responders, police or medical.”
“How do you know?”