Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(58)
Rawls grinned, his brilliantly white teeth glistening in the spill of overhead gym lights. “Did you rehearse that? I mean, it sounds like a speech you’ve given before.”
“I’m not one for giving speeches, sir, but I got roped into speaking at a high school graduation, come spring, at that Houston prep school I mentioned to you.”
“Lucky kids.”
“We’ll see. Anyway, one of them got kidnapped the other day, right out of a McDonald’s, if you can believe that.”
“Well, this is a pretty dangerous state, Ranger.”
Caitlin slapped her hat against her side and then fitted it back in place over her hair. “I was just about to say the same thing to you, sir.”
54
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
Bobby Roy’s Used Cars and Bail Bond Service was located just down South Frio Street from the Bexar County magistrate’s building, in a beat-up lot bleeding macadam amid a patchwork pattern of what looked like gravel instead of tar. Cort Wesley parked his truck next to a construction site in the shadow of a John Deere front loader, waiting to make sure the men identified by Miguel Asuna were inside.
The John Deere kept him hidden from sight while not shielding him much from the sun, and Cort Wesley was fine with that. Fine with it roasting him, to further fuel the fury he felt every time he considered a couple of two-bit thugs rousting his son to make their bullying points.
And two-bit thugs, according to Miguel Asuna, was exactly what they were.
*
“Body shop right here in the city did the work,” he had told Cort Wesley, forty minutes after their initial meeting. “The Escalade’s registered to Bobby Roy, guy who rips people off on his used cars as much as his bond work. My guess is your boy was worked over by a couple of ex-cons who sell jalopies off his lot, when they’re not chasing down bail jumpers for him.”
“You’re kidding.”
Asuna raised his hand theatrically. “God’s honest truth, amigo. They’re brothers, Terry and K-Bar Boyd.”
“K-Bar?”
“What can I say?” Asuna shrugged. “Man fancies himself good with a knife. Word is he gave himself the nickname after shanking a couple guys in prison. God’s honest truth, too.”
“Tough guy, eh?” Cort Wesley said, thinking of what Luke had told him about a guy with a knife, sticking the tip in Luke’s crotch, explaining how he’d had his way with boys before.
“If doing them in the back makes him tough, sure. And I’ll tell you something else that’s true: I do much better work than the clowns Bobby Roy took that Escalade to. Tell him that, if you see him.”
“Oh, I’ll see him.”
*
The black Escalade pulled into the lot and slid into a space directly in front of before the entrance, two hours into Cort Wesley’s superheated vigil. Luke hadn’t been very specific in his descriptions of the Boyd brothers, Terry and K-Bar, but he’d still provided enough for Cort Wesley to recognize them climbing down out of the Escalade. Both wore leather gloves with the fingers cut back, as if they’d bought their toughness on sale at Walmart. Living, breathing caricatures who were plenty good enough to track down desperate bail skips and scare high school kids, which wasn’t very good at all. But they were probably armed, and Cort Wesley wanted to find out fast, without making a mess, who’d sent them after Luke.
Unless making that mess better served his cause, Cort Wesley reasoned, his eyes falling on the John Deere front loader again.
*
The driver from the nearby work crew had been kind enough to leave the key in the starter of the Deere, which handled like a big, angry SUV.
“Hey!” Cort Wesley thought he heard someone yell, as he turned the Deere wheel all the way to the left and swung out into traffic. “Hey!”
He thumped across the eastbound traffic lane and moved into the westbound lane, accompanied by screeching brakes slammed by drivers doing a collective double take at the sight of the massive vehicle ranging across their path like some iron dinosaur.
Cort Wesley hopped the curb into Bobby Roy’s used car lot, managing to steer clear of the twin rows of vehicles, which were covered more by dust than by paint. He headed straight for what passed for a showroom.
55
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
Cort Wesley barely felt the impact as the big Deere’s raised shovel crashed through the showroom glass and plowed T-Bird and Caprice classic convertibles from its path like they were Matchbox cars. A guy he thought he recognized as Bobby Roy flew out of a desk chair, in front of which sat a couple with whom he’d been in the process of closing a deal.
Terry and K-Bar Boyd stumbled out of the back office, struggling to free nine-millimeter pistols from fancy holsters tucked under their sport jackets. But Cort Wesley was out of the cab by then, boots crunching over shattered glass, kicking aside a back bumper that had separated from one of the convertibles on impact. He reached the Boyds just as they finally found purchase on pistols, and he tore the weapons from their grasps in a motion so fluid that both brothers were left absurdly aiming their empty hands at him.
“What the fuck?” one of them managed, before Cort Wesley slammed him in the nose with a ridged palm.
He watched the potential buyers flee through a side door, closely followed by Bobby Roy himself, as Cort Wesley stuck a leg out to trip the second Boyd brother. Then he hoisted both of them up onto a big rectangular planter, which looked decorative compared to the rest of the showroom. He smelled spilled coffee somewhere as he smacked the Boyd brothers’ heads together to further make his point. The impact sounded like a golf club thwacking a ball off the tee.