Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2)(73)
My hat lying in the dirt with a hole through it.
The look on Kyle’s face right before the bullet knocked him down.
Neither of us have eaten anything since having a few slices of cold pizza last night. We’re hungry and thirsty. We were both soaked with sweat from the gunfight, and now we feel dehydrated. I smell of gunpowder, and I’m filthy from head to toe. Having discarded my long-sleeved shirt, the remaining T-shirt is sweat stained and grubby. I’ve got a dull headache spreading from the back of my skull to my temples, and my face feels hot. I probably have a thermal burn from being too close to Kyle’s truck when it went up in flames.
Ariana leans her body into mine, and I put my arm around her shoulders. She rests her head against my chest. A few minutes later, I can feel her body loosen, and I can tell she’s fallen asleep.
I’m sure there’s no way I will sleep, but I’m wrong. I try to think of what our next steps should be. But exhaustion worms its way through my body, and before I know it, I’m diving into the black cavern of sleep, too.
Chapter 91
THE SUN HANGS low on the horizon as Carson McCormack drives his pickup along the dirt road leading through his property. He arrives at the main tank yard, full of metal buildings and valve stations, and turns onto a field that abuts the mini village of structures. Ordinarily, the field is empty except for maybe a few horses allowed to graze there. Today, the field is erupting with activity.
A plow is running up and down the field, churning dirt beneath its blades. Meanwhile, a backhoe is digging a school-bus-sized hole in the soil at the edge of the field. Two tow trucks stand idling, their raised beds holding the burnt, bullet-riddled remains of the Texas Rangers’ pickup trucks. Tendrils of smoke still radiate from the melted tires.
Dale Peters’s tanker truck is nearby, with a crew of men unloading it. Despite being at the center of a firefight, the tanker looks okay. Some of the paint on one side blistered a little from the heat, but Gareth and the boys were careful not to put any bullet holes in it.
Carson parks and steps out. His son, who is overseeing all of the work, waves for his father to come over to the tow trucks. As Carson approaches, Gareth climbs up onto one of the flatbeds and extends a hand down to help his father up. The trucks reek of burnt metal.
Once Carson is on the flatbed with his son, he can see inside the bed of the truck. There’s a pile of bodies. They’ve been tossed in, not laid neatly, and it’s hard at first to count them. Carson notices there are two Stetsons in the pile, but only one of the Rangers they belonged to.
“I’m not happy,” Carson says, stating the obvious to his son.
Gareth was supposed to take the men out this morning, using the tracker hidden on the tanker truck, and ambush Yates. If they could have hauled the bodies of Yates and Ariana Delgado back to the police station, they would have been heroes—catching the fugitive and her Texas Ranger accomplice.
Instead, Yates and Delgado are still alive, and Gareth ended up killing the new Texas Ranger instead, which could bring all kinds of attention to Rio Lobo.
“It’s all under control, Dad,” Gareth says, speaking loudly to be heard over the backhoe and plow. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
“Like hell,” Carson says. “I just got off the phone with Harris. You’re lucky he was able to stop the fire department from investigating the smoke. They were halfway out there before he was able to call them back.”
Gareth says that as soon as they drop the trucks into the hole, they’ll cover them over and plow the whole field as a way to camouflage the new excavations.
“We’ve got corn,” Gareth says. “We’ll go ahead and plant a new crop. Everything will look normal.”
“It’s awful late in the season for planting,” Carson says.
Gareth shrugs. “Late, but not too late. It’s a good disguise. Who gives a shit if the crop is worth a damn.”
“Someone’s going to come looking for that missing Texas Ranger, Son. It doesn’t matter how well we hide the trucks. There’s other stuff on this property we don’t want anyone to find.”
Carson has always been a careful businessman, a planner who thinks ahead. That’s why he’s been so successful. He takes risks—transporting drugs throughout the Southwest is a risk—but they’ve always been controlled risks. He’s never reckless.
They’ve buried bodies on the property before but never whole trucks.
“What if they bring in a plane and use infrared to find the buried trucks?” Carson asks. “They can do that, you know.”
Gareth says that once the field is plowed, they’ll park some equipment over the spots where the trucks are buried. To the naked eye, it will just look like a couple of pieces of heavy machinery are parked at the edge of a newly planted cornfield. To an infrared camera, the equipment will distort any images of whatever is under the ground.
“There’s still a problem,” Carson says. “Yates and Delgado are out there.”
Gareth explains that once they’re dead, then Harris can make up any story he wants. Pin the missing Texas Ranger on them.
“People already think she’s a murderer,” Gareth says. “And they think Yates is helping her.”
Gareth explains that every dirt road from the open space is blocked with their men. At first light tomorrow, they’ll redouble their efforts to search the open space. Half the team has been preoccupied today with cleaning up the mess. Tomorrow they’ll be able to do a proper search.