Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(84)

At first glance, it might have seemed that the jerry-rigging was intended to make the tool more convenient to use. But a second glance revealed something else entirely: the tool would make a deadly weapon, as would all the other tools dangling from the walls, like the one he recognized as a loop hoe. Impossible to determine how old they were or how long they’d been hanging there. The only clear thing was that they’d been fashioned for one purpose and one purpose only: killing, up close and personal, in the most violent style imaginable.

Like the work foreman whose mutilated body had been found within reach of the Miraculous Medal that had belonged to Dylan’s mother. The apparent victim of an attack by an animal bigger and stronger than a bear.

Or by a person, or persons, trying to give that impression.

Ela knew all about that, and more—Ela and her Lost Boys. Neither his dad nor Caitlin was answering their phone, and Dylan wasn’t about to wait around for them to get home to tell them what he’d finally recalled from last night.

You don’t pull a gun unless you intend to use it.

Something else his father had taught him. So, was that what he intended to do now, to head back to the reservation and gun down Ela’s cousins, the Lost Boys? Was that just punishment for how they’d humiliated him the night before?

He’d been spared only by Ela’s intervention—which made no sense, considering everything else. If she was setting him up, why save him? Why the second thoughts?

It made only slightly more sense than the Lost Boys leaving him tied to that tree with baling wire. They were out to make more than just a point. It was like they were leaving him there for something, sacrificing him, the way the ancient Greeks chained virgins to rocks for monsters to have their way with, so the monsters would leave them alone.

Was Ela supposed to finish him, the way she or someone else had gutted the work foreman with something like a cultivator or loop hoe, probably zonked out on peyote at the time?

What do you think you’re doing here, exactly?

Whenever Dylan got it into his mind to do something stupid, he’d hear Caitlin’s voice in his head. The more cocksure he felt, the more softly it reached him. He heard it now as a whisper, because who was she to talk, anyway? How many bad guys had she shot?

The safe snapped open.

From within, Dylan removed a stainless steel Smith & Wesson model M&P9 nine-millimeter with striker fire action, a seventeen-round magazine, and a reasonably compact 4.25-inch barrel. Wedging it into the back of his jeans, however, left his dad’s voice humming in his ear instead of Caitlin’s: I warned you about those skinny jeans, son, didn’t I?

Dylan would leave his shirt untucked, bring a jacket along for the ride. Ela had been playing him this whole time. Time to turn the tables. Get to the reservation and get Ela to help him smoke out the assholes who’d tied him to that tree. He couldn’t let it go, just couldn’t. Beyond that, he didn’t have much of a plan.

The doubt set in when he clambered down the stairs and headed for the garage, where the 1996 Chevrolet S-10 pickup that he’d bought with his own money sat mostly unused. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d started it up, and he couldn’t be sure his dad had been keeping up with things, either. So, with doubt making its presence felt and second thoughts creeping in, Dylan made a deal with himself: If the old truck started, he was heading to the rez. If it didn’t, he wasn’t.

He hit the garage door opener and welcomed the sunlight, looking forward to feeling it burn into him the whole time he was driving north toward Austin. Maybe.

Dylan climbed behind the wheel, got himself settled in the old seat, worked the key. The engine sputtered, coughed, almost stalled.

Then started.





82

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

“Why don’t you have a go at this guy?” Caitlin said to Jones, after Cort Wesley had escorted Cray Rawls into a third-floor office that Captain Tepper had emptied out, intended as a replacement for her desk downstairs.

“Am I hearing you right?” Jones asked her, disbelief crinkling the hard features of his face, which made it look like someone had soldered the skin into place.

“Man’s already called his lawyer. I don’t believe that matters much to Homeland Security.”

“No, Ranger, it doesn’t.”

“We got maybe twenty minutes before the lawyer gets here.”

“He could still make some trouble.”

Caitlin looked totally unbothered by the prospect. “Maybe Cort Wesley can do something about that.”

“What about you?”

“I got somebody waiting downstairs I need to speak with.”

“Now?”

“She might know Cray Rawls better than anyone.”

“Who’s that?”

“The woman he raped in Texas twenty-five years ago, not long after the house belonging to the couple who adopted him burned down, with them in it.”

Jones held Caitlin’s stare as he ran that through his mind, his mouth puckering. “You want to tell me what else it is you’re holding back?”

Caitlin managed a smile, feeling the vibration of the cell phone in her pocket. “If I told you, I wouldn’t be holding it back anymore.”

She answered the call in the hallway, recognizing the number in the caller ID as the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s office. “What have you got for me, Doc?”