Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2)(30)

“A regular Robin Hood,” I say.

“Or a necessary evil,” she says, taking another drag. Then she nods toward the road and says, “Speak of the devil.”

McCormack’s Escalade rolls down Main Street, preceded by one of his trucks and followed by another—McCormack coming back from his business trip. The cluster of vehicles drives the same tight pattern, at speeds way over the limit, as they did on their way out of town.

On my way to Tom and Jessica Aaron’s place, I call Ariana on Bluetooth.

“Guess who just got back into town?” I say.

“I saw the convoy from the parking lot here at the station,” she says.

“We’re on for tomorrow,” I say. “Let’s go ask a few questions of Rio Lobo’s most famous father and son.”

When I pull up in front of Tom and Jessica’s, I find Jessica in the garden, where she proudly shows me her flowers and vegetables, and even an orchard with pear, peach, and fig trees, as well as an enormous pecan tree.

“No wonder your pecan pie is so good,” I say.

“I heard your girlfriend’s song again today,” Jessica says. “Any chance we’ll get to meet her while you’re staying with us?”

“I wish,” I say. “She’s pretty busy right now.”

She leads me around the side of the garage. The walkway to the stairs is overgrown with bushes laden with ripe berries.

“I need to get out here and pick these berries and prune the bushes back,” she says as we squeeze past the overgrowth. “When Tom called, I changed the sheets, but otherwise we haven’t been up here in months.”

The apartment itself isn’t much—just a bed, a couch, a kitchenette area, and a bathroom. The vintage, rustic decorations, with the same touch as the house, make it feel homier than the motel room felt. A window air-conditioning unit exhales cool air into the room.

“There’s no TV,” she says.

“I’ve got a book,” I say.

Jessica points to a cabinet that contains a small metal safe and tells me the combination.

“If you want to keep your gun in there, you can,” she says, and I get the impression she wants me to.

I don’t expect full bed-and-board service, but an hour later Tom knocks on my door with a dinner invitation. The chili con carne is delicious and so, of course, is the pecan pie we have for dessert. My earlier suspicion of Jessica tampering with the EpiPen hasn’t completely left my mind, but as we talk, my feelings of unease ebb. I tell myself to welcome their hospitality but keep my eyes open.

After dinner, Tom shows me his garage.

“The garden is Jessica’s pet project,” Tom says. “The garage is mine.”

In one bay is the 1965 Mustang I saw days earlier. In the other, he pulls off the tarp to reveal a 1960 Land Cruiser J40.

“Does the Cruiser run?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “There’s no power steering, no power brakes. It will give you a workout just shifting gears.”

I tell Tom he has a very nice home, and I appreciate him letting me stay.

“It’s the least I can do,” he says. “I love this little town. If Susan Snyder was murdered, I want you to make it safe again.”

“I will,” I say, but the truth is, some cases are never solved, and right now, this one looks like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.





Chapter 39



COYOTES OUT IN the hills sing me to sleep, and I get my first decent night’s rest since I caught the guys vandalizing my truck. Shortly after eight o’clock the next morning, Ariana and I are heading out of town to McCormack’s place in the hills. We pull off the pavement and take a gravel road parallel to a riparian corridor full of mesquite trees, yucca plants, and cholla cacti. Jackrabbits and roadrunners take turns zipping across the road in front of us.

After a few miles, the land levels out and we start passing fields of pump jacks, networks of pipelines, and the valve stations—what the roughnecks call Christmas trees—that regulate the oil flow.

My parents own a big cattle ranch, but its size pales in comparison to this spread.

“You haven’t seen half of it yet,” Ariana says.

The road drops into a valley, and we spot an eighty-foot-tall oil derrick standing next to a ribbon of lush vegetation. The metal structure is purely decorative, stamped with the McCormack Oil logo, with creeping vines entwining its metal framework.

The road winds to the ranch entrance, surrounded by hurricane fencing topped with razor wire, the kind of fence you’d see along the perimeter of a prison, not a Texas ranch. The main house is huge, probably ten thousand square feet, and surrounded by big oak trees and smaller Texas mountain laurels. Nearby is a man-made pond, a tennis court, and a guest house bigger than the home my parents live in. Horses and longhorn cattle graze in separate pastures and shelter in separate barns.

We approach a wooden archway stenciled SADDLEBACK MESA. It’s a security gate manned by two guards armed with TEC-9s. We roll to a stop, and they approach the driver-side door.

One of the men has a metal splint secured to his nose with white medical tape. The skin around his eyes is the yellow of bruising that’s begun to heal—the consequence of a broken nose.

“Can I help you?” the other guy says.