The Territory (Josie Gray Mysteries #1)(62)
Otto cleared his throat to cut her off, and gave her a single shake of his head. He obviously thought she was pushing too hard. She looked away and said no more, angry that she hadn’t set up parameters with Escobedo when she called him. The loss of control was always the risk in calling in other agencies. Bottom line, the feds held the trump card.
*
Josie and Otto left the jail, basically dismissed from the investigation. They walked outside into the warm evening air, and Josie let out a long sigh. Otto said he would follow her home.
“What for?”
“So you can pack a bag. One night, Josie. Stay at our house until those prisoners are out of our jail.”
Josie stood at her car and closed her eyes, so tired, she could have laid her head against the door and slept. “I’m going home. I’m tired. I’m angry, and I hate the world right now. I’m in no shape to see Delores.”
“Delores doesn’t care about your mental shape.”
“No, Otto. Thank you, but no.”
“Damn it! You’re acting irrationally. Stop playing the martyr! Does this really prove you’re tougher than them? That you can’t be bullied?”
“It doesn’t prove anything! They have invaded my home, shot up my bedroom, and could have killed the man I love. If I don’t fight back now, I lose all self-respect.” She lowered her voice, the fight gone out of her. “And at this point, that’s about all I have left.”
At sunset, Josie left her house to walk Chester back to Dell’s place. Following the dog’s meandering path, she watched him sniff and ignore a hundred different scents. She searched the sky, hoping to catch a glimpse of a pair of aplomado falcons Dell claimed were nesting on the property. She’d been searching unsuccessfully for several months. She tried to turn her focus outward, to get out of her own head, but the tension and anger that pulled at her muscles did not ease on the walk.
Dell immediately recognized the look on her face when she approached him outside his barn. “Trouble?” he asked.
“I need you to keep Chester tonight.”
“You staying at your cop friend’s house tonight?”
“Most likely.”
“Liars go the same place as thieves.”
She smiled. “For a person who has no family around here, I sure have a lot of people giving me advice on what I need to do.” Dell said nothing, just stared at her patiently and waited for her to come clean. “I’m going to the watchtower. I’ll be able to see our houses as well as the crossing the Medranos have been using across the river. If they so much as approach my house…” She let the thought hang in the air.
A strong gust of wind blew dirt around their feet, and a layer of dust she had heard called sand-flour coated her skin and the inside of her nose. Dell covered his nose with the crook of his arm and closed his eyes for a few seconds until it passed. The blistering heat of the day had mixed with a dry border wind from the south. The southern winds stirred up occasional dust storms in West Texas that would reduce visibility to nothing. The monsoon season, which usually ran from June 15 through September 30, still had not materialized, and the threat of dust storms was a weekly occurrence. The July wind was capable of stirring up fine sand particles that hung in the air and formed whirlwinds that tore across the desert, infiltrating every crack and crevice.
Josie looked at the strip of orange and red that spread across the horizon. “I want my town back,” she said. “I want my life back to normal. I want to clock off at four and take a hike in the evening with Chester. I want to quit worrying all the time about men who slink around our land at night with AK-47s slung over their shoulders.”
Dell snapped his fingers. “Give me ten minutes. I got a brisket in the fridge from last night. I’ll pack us a sandwich and grab my guns and my bedroll.”
After a halfhearted argument, Josie finally agreed to put the dog in Dell’s house and set up observation at the tower with Dell. Technically, she wasn’t on duty, and she could use the company. And she knew what grab my guns meant; he had a small arsenal he kept packed and at the ready in an old duffel bag that remained by his nightstand. He also smoked the best brisket in all of West Texas.
Josie changed into a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt and her uniform boots. Her badge was in her back pocket, and her ankle holster was strapped into place. Like Dell, she had packed her own arsenal in an Eddie Bauer duffel bag that Dillon had bought her for her birthday last year. They’d used it for camping gear during a weeklong hike through Big Bend National Park, a trip that was a buried memory for now, one she refused to dig up.
At about six o’clock, Josie and Dell loaded up her jeep and drove the three-mile stretch of gravel road to the watchtower. Josie evened out her backpack, bedroll, and duffel bag on her shoulders and back and started the climb. She kept an eye over her shoulder at Dell, who kept up with no problem, in better shape than most men she knew. Once on the observation deck, they both dropped their loads and leaned over the railing outside, enjoying the view as the burn in their legs subsided.
Josie opened two folding chairs on the deck while Dell carved up the brisket onto tin camping plates from his duffel bag. She contributed a pull-top can of fruit cocktail and convinced Dell to give it a heavy dollop of Tabasco sauce. Leaned back in their chairs, feet propped on the deck rail, they ate the brisket with chewy pieces of French bread they used to wipe up the leftover sauce on their plates. Glad for Dell’s quiet company, she checked for messages and put her cell phone on vibrate in her pocket. Otto had called earlier to ask her one more time to spend the evening with them and had seemed genuinely happy that she was outside the house with Dell for the night.