“Who?”
“I didn’t exactly ask his name.” Watkins let out a long, deep breath. “He called my cell phone. A day after it happened. Kelli picked it up. He told her it was concerning Trey, so I got on. We all thought it was just a crazy accident to that point. That boy was always going to end up like that one day anyway … He just said, ‘Told you it was time to rethink that suit, old man.’”
He looked at Hauck. “They’d warned me before. Tried to buy me off. Saying my land might have oil value. I didn’t want their money. They talked about my son’s scholarship. To CSU. They said they could take it away. Like that. That they gave a lot of money there and had friends … They had friends everywhere. I kept on going. Then they said, ‘We’re telling you one last time.’”
Watkins spat on the ground. “I’d have strangled that sonovabitch with my own hands if he were in front of me. But what was I to do? Nick’s got it all in front of him. He’s got football practice starting next month. Kelli, too. She’s just getting married.
“I’m not a weak man, Mr. Hauck. I lived my life and can take what comes. But how can I put them in danger like that? Think whatever you want, but you’d have done the same. Any father would. I can’t beat them. You can’t beat them. You can stand there and think you can. But you can’t. You can stand up to them, maybe. If you want.” His eyes had lost their fire. “But you can’t beat them.”
Hauck nodded and put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “We can.”
“You come in here, stirring up all this hope … You say you know who it was? This Robertson. The one who killed Trey.”
“I don’t have proof. They have him out of sight. He was in the same unit in Iraq as a lot of the Alpha people. Part of a PsyOps unit. And he was there.”
“PsyOps, huh …?” Watkins nodded. “You know he’d settled down. All that wildness. You met Allie. She’s a good girl. They had Petey and … For the first time, he had a real life ahead of him …”
He stepped back toward the tractor. “I’ll talk to the others. I’ll see how they feel about things now. Not sure if they’ll be willing to recommit. Couldn’t blame them. But people here, they can be funny about things, you know … when you put their way of life on the line.”
“Mr. Watkins …” Hauck took a step after him and put out his hand.
He heard a muted phfft go past him. Watkins groaned and jerked to the side.
A burst of crimson exploded on his shoulder.
Without even looking behind, Hauck leapt and threw his body over the farmer, dragging him to the ground. The workers all shouted and scurried away as another shot clanged off the tractor.
Hauck screamed, “Get down! Get down!”
He huddled there, the farmer breathing heavily underneath him, and tried to calculate where the shots had come from—someone was obviously using a sound suppressor—hoping he was out of sight there and the next one wouldn’t tear into his back. He tried to roll Watkins toward the cover of the tractor. A third shot whooshed in and kicked up dust at their feet. And then a fourth. Hauck inched Watkins closer to the tractor. “You okay?”
“I think so,” the farmer said, glassy-eyed. “But I can’t feel my arm.”
Hauck rolled him over and saw that Watkins’s shoulder was covered in blood. He looked behind him, calculating where the shots had come from, peering over the hood of the tractor, and saw a car out on the road about a hundred yards away, the shooter leaning on the hood with a rifle.
He ducked back down as another shot pinged off the hood of the tractor.
The workers were flat in a ditch, jabbering in Spanish. Watkins sat up against the wheel, his hand on his bloody shoulder. “Damn.”
“Chuck! Chuck!” Marie Watkins bolted from the house, shouting. “Oh my God, what’s happening?”
“Marie, get down. Get down now!” the farmer hollered, grimacing.
“He’s been shot, but he’s okay,” Hauck yelled back. “Call 911!”
“Oh my God!”
“Do it, Marie! I’m all right,” Watkins yelled again. “Do it now!”
She ran back inside the house.
“I’m losing a lot of blood,” Watkins said, staring at Hauck with a dazed expression. “We have to stop it. Otherwise I’ll bleed out.”
Hauck ripped off his shirt from over his tee. He balled it up and stuffed it into the wound. “What’s the most pleasing thing you can think of?” he asked Watkins.
“Easy.” The farmer chortled. “Rain.”
“Then I would think of Noah,” Hauck said, “’cause this’ll hurt.” He pressed on the wound, hard. The farmer grimaced and turned away.
“You see combat?” Hauck asked.
“Huh?”
“You seem to know your gunshot wounds.”
Watkins shrugged. “Mekong Delta. Hue.”
“Then I guess you know what to do. Here …” Hauck put the man’s hands on the balled-up shirt that was growing moist with blood. “Press. I have to make sure this guy doesn’t come after us.”
“How you gonna stop him if he does?”
Hauck looked up in the tractor cab and saw the keys in the ignition. “Come after him.”
Suddenly the sound of a wailing siren pierced their ears, from the direction of the farmhouse. It went on and on. You could probably hear it all over the county.
“Tornado warning.” Watkins grinned. “Smart gal, huh?”
“Real smart.” Hauck nodded. He heard a car engine start. He got up and peered out over the tractor hood and watched the car he had seen the shooter on drive off, heading down the long road back to the main road and Templeton.
“I can’t believe after what those sonavabitches did they would try to kill me, too,” Watkins said, sucking back the pain.
“They didn’t,” Hauck said, taking over the shirt and pressing to stop the blood flow, “try to kill you.”
“Well they sure did a damn good impression of it then.” Watkins winced.