Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2)(65)

“You sound paranoid, Rory.”

“I don’t trust the folks around here,” I say, “but I’m trying to do the right thing. You convinced me that bringing her in is the best course of action.”

“How do I know I ain’t walking into a trap?” Kyle says.

“I don’t trust you, and you don’t trust me,” I say. “But I know you’re no criminal, and I hope you know the same about me. We’re Texas Rangers. We’re going to have to put our differences aside and trust each other on this one.”

“That’s gonna be hard after what you said to me,” he says, “about not being fit to wear this star on my chest.”

“You said pretty much the same thing to me,” I say. “Let’s prove to each other we’re fit to wear these badges.”





Chapter 82



WHEN DALE AND I return to the tanker truck, we find Ariana digging into the box of cold pizza.

“Sorry,” she says. “I was starving. I saved a couple of slices for y’all.”

I suddenly realize how ravenous I am, so I finish what’s left. The bag of food Jessica Aaron gave me is still sitting in the cab, but I figure we ought to save that for breakfast. We’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.

The three of us don’t want to risk building a campfire, but we sit around the pizza box as if it’s a fire ring. Out here without light pollution, the sky is filled with stars. The Milky Way is visible, the stars so dense and copious that it makes me feel tiny in the grandness of the universe.

Ariana’s clothes are now mostly dry, and under the glow of the moon and stars, she looks more relaxed than I’ve seen her in days. I think she can finally see a safe way out of this mess. I hope I can give that to her.

Dale looks like a man who’s been carrying the weight of the world and has finally let someone shoulder the burden with him. He did the wrong thing for a long time, but now he’s trying to do the right thing. God knows how many lives he might be saving, starting with Ariana’s.

As for me, I doubt I look as stress-free as my companions. My mind is reeling. Here I’ve been waiting for a break in the case, but this is like a dam exploding. Like looking on the ground for a penny and finding a pot of gold—a whole mine full of gold!

I never dreamed something this big was going on. But the murders of Susan Snyder and Skip Barnes make more sense now. Susan must have caught wind of what was going on. She’d convinced Skip to go public so she could expose McCormack’s big secret. Skip Barnes must have sold her out, and as a result, someone on Carson’s team poisoned her with peanuts to make it look like an accident. Then when it looked like Skip might talk to us, they killed him.

I don’t have all the details figured out, but that’s my working theory, and it seems plausible given what I know now about McCormack’s operation. I just have to survive long enough to bring in the cavalry—the Rangers, the DEA, the FBI—to help me fit in all the missing puzzle pieces.

“Hey, Rory,” Dale says, shaking me from my thoughts, “you didn’t bring your guitar, did you?”

When I tell him I did, he encourages me to pull it out. My first impulse is that playing the guitar right now, out here in the middle of nowhere, seems like a terrible idea. But it might do me some good to take my mind off what’s happening.

Dale and I take turns, passing the guitar back and forth, playing and singing. We play quietly and keep our voices low. We figure if anyone is out looking for us, we’ll hear their vehicles or see their headlights long before they would hear us strumming on an acoustic guitar. But still we don’t want to push our luck, so we play slow, mellow songs. Ballads, not barn burners.

Dale plays a couple of George Strait rodeo tunes—“Amarillo by Morning” and “I Can Still Make Cheyenne.” His vocals leave something to be desired, but his guitar skills are spot on. I try my hand at Kenny Chesney’s “Better Boat,” which I last practiced at the motel in Rio Lobo what seems like a million years ago. And I play the folk song “Clay Pigeons,” my version a little bit more like John Prine’s than Blaze Foley’s original. “Better Boat” and “Clay Pigeons” are songs about starting over, but the funny thing is that playing these types of songs doesn’t make me sad the way it did when I first arrived in Rio Lobo.

It might be the possibility of something happening with Ariana that makes starting over feel okay. But it also might be simply that I’m in serious danger here in Rio Lobo. The thought of starting over isn’t nearly as scary as the thought of dying at the hands of Gareth McCormack or one of his soldiers.

I hope I live long enough to start over.

Ariana is a good audience, smiling and telling us how talented we are. She refrains from applauding, but only because she doesn’t want to make much noise. I try to think of a rock ballad she might like, so I do my best playing Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” for her. I look up as I’m playing and see her smiling brightly, her face aglow in starlight.

When I put the guitar away, we settle in for the night. The air is cool, but none of us feels like sleeping inside the vehicles. Instead, we opt for the hard ground. Dale has one blanket, and we decide—against her objections—that Ariana should have it. Dale and I at least have long-sleeved shirts, and Ariana’s clothes are still a little damp.