The Territory (Josie Gray Mysteries #1)(77)
“This may work in Mexico, the veiled threats and intimidation, but it doesn’t work here. I have the United States government, the Border Patrol, the Department of Public Safety, ICE, ATF, and every law enforcement agency along the border ready to provide us protection. How many of your clan did you lose this past week to us? Two killed, how many in jail? A dozen now?” She paused and stared at him through the glass. “Turn your car around and head south. We don’t want you here.”
He tensed. The men flanking him seemed to recognize the insult and shuffled their feet, all taking a step forward. It was like watching a pack of dogs react to the alpha male.
Medrano leaned to one side and spit on the ground. “To see your animal go missing, your man friend disappear. To watch your house in flames. These would be tragedies for you to experience like you have already cursed my family. You killed my father in your hospital—allowed a man to shoot his body to unrecognizable pieces of meat as you personally watched and did nothing. You killed a friend. Shot him in cold blood in your hospital.”
She lowered her voice to little more than a whisper as she tried to calm the anger in her throat. “I want you out of here. Now.” Josie knew she could do little in response to his threats. Lou had told her Border Patrol was thirty minutes away, Otto another five to ten minutes. She was outnumbered.
“You are a beautiful woman. You are wasting yourself on this small drama. You have eyes made for bigger dreams than this.” His expression had tightened; his words didn’t match the vicious look on his face.
She closed the phone.
The Bishop turned from her and raised both arms in the air to the men standing behind him and walked toward the car. Josie turned, tripped over a stool by the door, and ducked as gunfire exploded onto the door. After several seconds, it stopped. The glass, unbelievably, was still intact.
From the kitchen, Josie could still see the men outside. Medrano said something in Spanish and laughed. The men behind him laughed as well and shouted something toward the house that she was glad she couldn’t interpret.
Medrano pointed a finger at her and yelled, “You will regret this day, Ms. Gray. Have no doubt about your mistake.”
SIXTEEN
After the latest threat from the Medrano clan, Otto convinced Josie to take an early supper break at the Hot Tamale to cool off and regroup. Border Patrol had met her and Otto at Red’s house, and they were writing up the report and processing the scene. Otto stopped to talk with a retired schoolteacher who wanted to gripe about a parking ticket while Josie ordered and found a table in the corner. If she had laid her head down on the table, she would have been asleep within minutes.
Vie Blessings sat down across from Josie, squinted her eyes, and winced. “You don’t look so good.”
Josie shrugged.
“Things calmed down any?”
Josie found that everywhere she went lately, people asked for an update, which usually translated to a request for assurance that the violence was over.
She shrugged again. “Not enough.”
Vie leaned into the table, and Josie could tell something else was on her mind. “I hate to ask this. I know how busy you all are right now, but someone has set up a camper back behind our place. Smokey told me to mind my own business, but I wondered if you couldn’t drive by sometime and check it out?”
“Is the camper on your land?”
“No. It’s on government property. You know where we live? Out behind the mudflats?”
Josie nodded.
“There’s maybe half a dozen houses back in there, but the land across from us is all federal grazing. I don’t want some squatter setting up camp for good. Now there’s a trailer set up there, too.”
“Doesn’t your land bump up against Red Goff’s place?”
Vie pursed her lips and squinted. “Sort of. There are a couple miles of federal land that separate our place from Red’s land. Smokey always said we were either the safest people in Texas, or the stupidest for living next to that guy.”
“Do you know if the person is a local?”
Vie squinted, her expression uncertain. “No clue. I’ve never actually seen the person staying back there. I don’t know if someone’s living there or just storing something.”
Otto finally walked over to the table, and Vie stood.
“You two be careful out there.”
Otto took her place at the table and reached into his shirt pocket. He pulled out a little plastic bottle of Visine and pushed it across the table. “Better take a shot,” he said.
Josie let the drops fill her eyes and sighed, wiping the tears from her face with a napkin. She filled Otto in on her conversation with Vie.
“Let’s run out there after supper and check it out,” Otto said.
She also told Otto about her visit with Kenny Winning.
“You think he might be the camper?” he asked.
“It would put him right behind his own trailer and Pegasus. He could make it through there with four-wheel drive easy. If he were walking, I’m guessing it’s a little over a mile from where Vie was talking about.”
“Why not stay at his own trailer, then?”
She shrugged. “He’s been here for a week and we didn’t know it. Sounds like a pretty good plan. There wasn’t a vehicle at the trailer today, other than Pegasus’s Eldorado. I wish I’d thought to ask him where he was staying, and where his car was, but it didn’t click with me until just now.”