Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(83)

80

HOUSTON, TEXAS

Cort Wesley and Paz reached the lobby with Cray Rawls in tow, just as the evacuation of the building was peaking. The fire alarm continued to blare while building security made a concerted but calm effort to evacuate according to plan. There was no panic in evidence anywhere as the two men escorted Cray Rawls, between them, across the floor.

Cort Wesley’s gaze was primed for anyone probing or scanning the crowd. They’d likely come in the guise of first responders, so their actions wouldn’t particularly stand out. They would look like part of a larger operation connected to the sniper firing from a neighboring building. It was the way such things were done, the way he’d do it.

But there was nothing that set Cort Wesley’s defenses screaming—no glimpse of any figures out of place or moving against the grain, no one studying the building occupants as they emerged into the sunlight. That suggested that the sniper had been the operation rather than just a part of it. Even the best shooter couldn’t be expected to bring down four men from such a distance. That told him that the presence of Cort Wesley and Paz likely had nothing to do with Sam Bob Jackson’s brains getting plastered against the walls, with Cray Rawls’s sure to have followed, had Cort Wesley not intervened.

Cort Wesley watched Paz moving as if he expected—even hoped for—something to happen. But, with Rawls tucked between them, they exited into the harsh light and thick, still air without encountering any resistance at all. The fact that the building from which the sniper had fired looked down on the back of this building but not the front allowed them to skirt through the milling crowd unhindered and without slowing. Paz’s truck was parked closer than Cort Wesley’s, so they headed toward its position, a half block down, the sun just beginning to encroach on the shade in which Paz had parked it.

“Deal’s a deal,” Cort Wesley said to Rawls, when they were in the backseat of Paz’s massive truck. “We got you out of there. Now talk, starting with the truth about what you’re after on that Indian reservation.”

Rawls had his phone pressed against his ear before Cort Wesley even realized he was holding it. “Think I’ll just call my lawyer first.”

Cort Wesley snapped out a hand, clamping it on the man’s wrist. “You might want to rethink that, partner.”

Rawls winced from the pain in his wrist, but clung to his cell phone. “I’m not your partner, cowboy. My partner just got his brains splattered back up in that office.”

“I thought he was just your associate.”

Rawls tried to smirk through the bolts of pain shooting up toward his elbow. “If you’re really working with Homeland Security, I’m sure we can work something out, once I get my lawyer on the horn here. Now, take your hand off me.”

Instead, Cort Wesley squeezed his hand harder, picturing his fist reducing the man’s nose to mincemeat and wiping the smirk from his face.

“You were raised here in Texas, have I got that right, Mr. Rawls?” he asked, his breath heating up as he posed the question.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I’m just curious why you left. Heard you may have had a beef with the law.”

Rawls stiffened, the smirk wiped from his expression. “You heard wrong.”

“Something about hurting a woman.”

“People make up stories, Mr. Masters. I’ve got lots of enemies.”

“Then you don’t need another, do you?”

“Could we get to the point?”

“I believe I already did,” Cort Wesley said. “Reason your partner’s brains are painting his office walls is what you found on that Indian reservation. Problem is, somebody else found it too, and we haven’t got time for phone calls.”

“How do I know you’re not intending to steal it? How do I know that sniper wasn’t working with you and this isn’t all some kind of setup?”

Cort Wesley let go of Rawls’s hand and watched it flop into his lap, still holding the smartphone. “Make the call, partner. Tell your lawyer to meet us at the Texas Ranger barracks in San Antonio.”





81

SHAVANO PARK, TEXAS

Dylan knew the combination to the safe that held his father’s guns, because his father had given it to him. It was a kind of ritualistic rite of passage, especially in Texas. Passing down the responsibility of guarding the house when his dad wasn’t around. He’d been fourteen at the time, not long after Cort Wesley Masters had moved into the spare bedroom, following the murder of Cort Wesley’s girlfriend, and Dylan’s mother, Maura Torres.

“So next time you’ll be ready,” his father had said, after teaching him to shoot on a nearby range.

Cort Wesley Masters wanted his oldest son never to feel helpless again, but Dylan felt helpless now. His memory of what he’d seen in the shed on White Eagle’s property had been foggy, a result of being forced to ingest more peyote, but it had been sharpening again in the past few minutes.

Hanging from hooks all over the walls of the shed were things like iron lawn tools, which looked lifted from some cheap horror movie. At first he had mistaken them for work gloves, but then he recognized one tool, fashioned in black steel, as a cultivator—a hoe-like assemblage with two curved prongs set over a third. He touched a fingertip to one of the prongs, then jerked it away when the slight motion was enough to prick his skin. Somebody had sharpened it to a razor’s edge. It was nine inches long, with a wooden handle half that size sewn inside a work glove.