Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(79)

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.”

“If you got business with Mr. Jackson here, that’s no concern of mine. You want to get on with it, I’m glad to leave.”

Cort Wesley glanced at the two limp frames on either side of Guillermo Paz. “What about them?”

“I couldn’t even tell you their names.”

“The fact is, I’ve got business with both of you,” Cort Wesley told him. “And, just for the record, it was my son you kidnapped to roust me. Well, consider me rousted.”

Rawls glared at Jackson across the desk, then turned back to Cort Wesley. “You put a couple construction workers I was paying in the hospital during this unfortunate protest. In responding to that, Mr. Jackson here overstepped his bounds. If you’d let me make it up to you and your boy, I’d be glad to—”

“What about my oldest son?” Cort Wesley broke in, before Rawls could finish his thought.

“You didn’t kidnap him too, did you?” Rawls snapped toward Jackson.

Sam Bob was in the midst of a shrug when Cort Wesley resumed. “My oldest was attacked on the grounds of that Comanche reservation last night.”

“Why does that concern me?”

“Because it concerns whatever you’re fixing to draw out of the land.”

“Oil?”

“Don’t play me for a fool, Cray.”

“We on a first-name basis now? I still don’t even know who you are.”

“Yes, you do. I’m sure you had me checked out after your business partner ‘overstepped his bounds,’ as you call it—though I’d prefer to call it scaring the wits out of a teenage boy.”

“He’s not my partner.”

“Oh no?”

“Barely qualifies as an associate.”