The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(66)

She whirled to face me.

The nearest boat jockeys had stood now, their poker game forgotten. One of them called, "Ms. McBride?"

"I'm all right!"

I picked up her Adidas, brought it to her.

"No one has my number, Tres," she told me. "No one."

"Pena wouldn't do something randomly. He'd pry into your past, look for weaknesses, pick something he knew would rattle you. Why deer blood, Ruby?"

"I didn't—" She choked, forced a shaky inhale. "No one destroys my property. That wasn't ..."

"Part of the deal?"

She snatched the shoe, hobbled over to the nearest car, slid down against the bumper, and started fumbling with her laces. "I can make things right, Tres.

At least I'm going to try."

It was the same thing Garrett had told me five days ago.

There was blood between two of Ruby's toes—her own blood now—but she didn't seem to notice.

One of the boat jockeys called, "Ms. McBride? You sure—"

"Leave me alone!" She tugged on a shoe, started picking at the laces of the other.

"You can't confront Pena," I told her. "Not by yourself. Don't be stupid."

"I'm not confronting Pena."

Her purse lay in the gravel. The black butt of a gun—probably the one I'd seen on her boat the day before—peeked out the top.

"I can fix this," she told me again. "But I have to do it. Carefully. You can't help me, Tres. Neither can Clyde. I'm not asking you to understand—"

She stopped, looked out toward the water. "Maybe I am asking you to understand.

Jimmy is dead. Garrett doesn't have a clue what's really going on. I can fix this. But that can't happen if I don't go out tonight—by myself."

Ruby got her other shoe on, stood up. The setting sun turned her shadow into stilt person.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"You could follow me, Tres. You could seriously screw this up. But I'm asking you—if it were the other way around, would you want me to stop you? Would you like it if I barged in, assumed I had the right to tell you what was safe, what you needed to do?"

The boat jockeys had gone back to their game and their cigarettes. Clyde hadn't moved from the top of the deck.

"I want to make amends," Ruby said. "I was serious about that, Tres. You were right.

It's my fault—I opened the door."

"The back door."

She closed her hand into a fist. "All right. Yes. Now let me stop it."

She shouldered her purse.

She seemed to be part of the sunset—her entire form glowing red. I felt like I could touch her, and I would disappear into the glare.

"Be careful," I told her.

She let out a long, relieved exhale, came up and kissed me roughly on the cheek, exactly where she had slapped me. "I'll make it all right."

She turned and walked toward the docks—toward the Ruby, Too.

I watched her until she got to the pier, then I headed back up the drive, toward the tower where Clyde was still playing gargoyle.

I wouldn't say he was exactly waiting for me at the top of the stairs, but he was there—leaning against the redwood railing, looking over the tops of the live oaks toward Mansfield Dam.

Ruby's hot tub cover had been peeled off. I hadn't remembered it being like that a few minutes before. Water bubbled and rumbled and small objects bobbed in it—pecans, though where these would've come from in early June I had no idea.

"Where's she running off to?" I asked.

Clyde shook his head. "She wanted me to know, she'd tell me."

"So much for protection."

Clyde was silent. In the sunset, his eyes were so blue they were translucent, like bottle glass. "You shook her up yesterday. There was no talking to her. I tried ... I'd do anything for her."

"Same as you'd do for my brother."

He stared at the churning water in the hot tub, the dark little orbs of pecans bobbing in the foam. "Garrett might kill a guy who took his woman. He wouldn't do that—" He waved toward the open door of the kitchen.

"I ain't going to let nobody mess with my friends anymore," Clyde decided. "Not the cops, not Pena. I'm going to call a few of my buddies, have them come around tonight, just in case."

"In case what?"

No sound but the hum of the hot tub. The daylight was almost gone.

"I'm not going to trust the police, man," Clyde said. "That's all I'm saying."

"You going to form a human chain of bikers around Garrett?"

"You're not a biker—not a onepercenter. You don't know."

I felt like I was talking to my brother, which suddenly made me realize why Garrett got along with bikers so well. For both, conversation is like spinning wheels in gravel. It doesn't matter if you get anywhere, as long as you make noise and shoot out a bunch of rocks.

"Best of luck, Clyde," I said. "Have a good evening."

I started to leave.

He put a massive paw on my shoulder, pushed me back a step.

"I know you don't like your brother much. But you should respect him. The man says he'll be there for you, he will. The guys in my club know that."