Danny laughed, and started fishing for bills out of his wallet. “Well, looking is free, but these beers aren’t. There’s this girl back in Murfee anyway . . .”
West went from nudging his shoulder to punching it, three hard shots that sent a shiver down Danny’s arm. “Goddamn, we’ve been sitting here this whole time and you didn’t say anything? That’s why you’ve been eyeballing that phone of yours all night, checking for texts. You officially hooked now? She keeping you on a short leash?”
Danny laughed. “I don’t know what exactly to call it. It’s something. We’re close, I guess.”
“But is it serious, brother? That’s the question you need to ask yourself before Miss Courtney comes over here to collect her tip. Know what I mean?” West had a loopy grin on his face—too much beer, too little food.
“Whatever it is, it’s serious enough. Let’s leave it at that,” Danny said, and tossed all the money on the table. There was no use trying to count it out. He’d had too much to drink—more than he’d had in a long time—but was sobering up fast. Thinking about Amé—why he was sitting with West in the first place, and what he was facing when he went back to the Big Bend—was enough to do that.
West was laughing, too, watching the money pile up on the table. Knowing it was time. He stood up and stretched, and winked and waved at Courtney to let her know they were done, and then he turned back to Danny.
“Well, that’s a damn shame, she’s easy on the eyes. But I get it, if your girl is like mine, she might cut you just for looking.” West reached in his pocket for his keys. “Okay, soldier, let’s do this thing. I got what you asked for. Outside.”
Danny stood with him. “I’m not a soldier anymore.”
West laughed one final time and threw one of his huge arms around Danny, pulling him close. “That’s bullshit and you know it. Hell, that’s why you’re here. We’re always soldiers, Danny boy. Always.”
FIFTY
Chris and Amé were standing on his front porch, watching the stars turn on one by one, in almost the same spots he and Garrison had occupied the week before. Fox Uno was inside the house, and Chris could see him through the front window, sitting on the couch, watching TV. The volume was down and the images flashed silently—happy and incredibly good-looking people laughing in a bar of glass and chrome that looked nothing like Earlys—painting the old man’s face in weird colors and shapes.
A small breeze had blown down from the mountains, and it was moving Amé’s hair around, twisting the trailing smoke from her cigarette. She was careful with her embers, guarding them with a cupped hand, making sure they didn’t get free.
Chris hadn’t seen her smoke since that day in front of Mancha’s.
“Mel didn’t do anything crazy, like threaten you or anything like that?”
“No, nada.” She laughed, although it was forced, only for his benefit. “She talked about Jack.”
Chris nodded, unbelieving, but knew he wouldn’t get any more out of her. Mel hadn’t been willing to share her talk with Amé, either. It had been a long afternoon for all of them, and it was going to be a longer night. He could only hope they didn’t have too many more ahead.
“I wish Danny hadn’t come out here,” Chris said. “I hope he decides not to come back. I don’t want him part of this.”
“I don’t, either, but it doesn’t matter what you or I want, or what you tell him to do.”
“He never said where he was going?” Chris asked.
Amé brushed hair out of her eyes. “No. But he did mention Eddy Rabbit.”
“Eddy? Why Eddy?”
“He spoke with Eddy’s girlfriend, Charity. Since he’s been released, Eddy hasn’t tried to see her or call her.”
Chris stared into Amé’s smoke, tried to make sense of the shapes he saw there. “That’s good for them both. He’s not supposed to.”
“Verdad. But the fact he hasn’t tried even once is the problem. Danny just wanted to check on him.” She picked at some wood on the railing.
Chris shook his head. “If he’s going down there, it’s because he’s still afraid Eddy might have something to do with Fox Uno . . . with what we’re doing here. This is about you and me and Fox Uno, not Eddy and Charity.”
Amé breathed out smoke. “I talked to her that night after he beat her. She still loves him. She doesn’t know how to stop.”
“I’m sure,” Chris said. “We don’t always get to pick and choose. Life would be damn easier if we could, right? Probably wouldn’t be half as interesting, though.” He thought about Mel and all their tough times together, how they’d always found a way through.
But there was another side of that—was it possible you could ask too much of someone who loved you? He didn’t know the answer anymore, if he ever thought he did. Not now, not after forcing Mel and their son out of their home. Not with a man like Fox Uno sitting in his living room.
“Anyway, running out to the canyon shouldn’t have taken all afternoon, so maybe that’s a good sign.” He didn’t want to say out loud that maybe it wasn’t.
Amé didn’t say anything, either. She crushed out her cigarette on the railing, and then swept the ashes into her hand, where she held them tight.
Chris watched the sky deepen, darken. Everything out there was unseeable, unknowable, but it was moving toward them all the same.
The coming night . . . and whatever lay on the other side of it.
“What do you want when all this is over, Amé?”
She thought on that for a while, staring into the same falling darkness that had frustrated Chris. But if she could see through it better than him, she gave no sign.
“I want to be free. I thought I was, until he showed up.”
“Fair enough,” Chris said. “I want that, too. You will be. And I guess that has to be good enough for both of us.”
Chris turned toward the window again to look at Fox Uno. “Look at how calm he is. None of this seems to bother him, affect him. But I can’t help wondering if he’s changed us.”
If America was going to agree, she didn’t.
Then they were both silent for a long time, and let the night continue to fall around them.
FIFTY-ONE
They walked out together to West’s bright red Camaro, parked in a dark corner of the lot. Away from the quiet and stillness of the bar, they both could almost feel the big rigs passing by on the interstate. A vibration all the way down to their bones, one after another, even at this hour.
The night glowed with their headlights, like lightning from a distant storm.
“Letty once told me I should get a job driving trucks. It was good money, she said. Her cousin Armando did it. I don’t know, though. Being stuck in that cab all day? Seems like I might go stir-crazy.” West popped the trunk with his remote, revealing something wrapped loosely in a Dallas Cowboys blanket. “She hates this damn car, too. Says we need something more practical for the boys. I know they’ll get too big soon to haul around in it, but it’s fast, which is a damn nice thought, in case I ever need to make a getaway from those crazy brothers of hers.”
West pulled back the edge of the blanket. “Are you gonna need to make a getaway soon, Danny?”
Danny looked at what West had revealed. It was an M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System, the M110 SASS. It weighed about fifteen pounds, with a flash suppressor and a twenty-round detachable box magazine. It was gas-operated with a rotating bolt, and had a muzzle velocity of at least twenty-five hundred feet per second.
It fired 7.62x51mm NATO rounds.
Not much different from those in his dream.
It had an effective range of over eight hundred yards.
West tapped the retracted stock of the M110. “I also brought those special rounds you requested. I dunno what you’re hunting out there in the Big Bend, but this here will take care of it. It’ll put it down, hard.�
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Danny didn’t say anything. During all those months working undercover in those various skinhead gangs, his “in” had always been a lie about getting his hands on surplus military weapons. It was the only reason he’d ever gotten close to Jesse Early or his daddy, John Wesley.
In the end, it hadn’t been that much of a lie at all.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why you really need this, are you?” West asked.
Danny laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not robbing a bank.” He reached into his pocket and took out a folded envelope. He’d pulled a thousand dollars out of his bank account that afternoon, after leaving the Far Six. “Here’s the money we talked about it. Take it. It’s all there. I’ll get this rifle back to you in a week.”
“If all goes well?”
“Yeah,” Danny conceded, “if all goes well.”
West looked at the envelope for a long time. He grabbed it, thumbed out a couple of hundred-dollar bills, and pushed the rest back into Danny’s hands. “I’ll use this to buy something nice for Letty. A good dinner, maybe even get the boys something, too. You owe ’em more than you owe me, for dragging my ass out here tonight on such short notice. But seeing you . . . and talking, really talking . . . well, that’s payment enough for me.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it.”
“Nah, it’s nothing. Don’t thank me. Just don’t let me read about you in the paper. Not like Duran, right?”
“No, not like Duran.”
West looked at him closely one last time, saluted, and then pulled him in for a final, crushing hug. It was like being held by a dozen men, a whole platoon. “But I do feel sorry for the poor bastard on the other end of that scope. Happy hunting, brother.”
Danny hugged him back, then lifted the blanket-wrapped M110 out of the trunk. He walked away, leaving West still standing by the open trunk, watching him go.
Eight hundred yards. About the length of eight football fields, which was kind of funny, given that Sheriff Cherry had been a big-time quarterback. But even the sheriff couldn’t outthrow the M110.
Eight hundred yards.
With the rifle’s Leupold Mk4 3.5-10x40mm illuminated TMR reticle scope and a clear field of vision from the house at the Far Six, Danny would be able to see damn near forever.
All the way to Mexico.
FIFTY-TWO
It was well past midnight, a couple of hours before dawn, when one of Fox Uno’s phones rang.
It was the Mexican Telcel, the phone America had spoken to Gualterio on, out in the desert.
America had been holding on to both of Fox Uno’s phones to make sure no calls or messages came through they weren’t aware of, and when it started beeping, she wasn’t asleep anyway. She was still wide-awake, thinking instead about the talk she’d had earlier with Melissa.
What it had felt like to hold the baby, the furious beat of his tiny heart against her chest.
She’d also been thinking about the voicemail she got yesterday from Ron Delaney, the DPS evidence tech. He’d wanted her to know that although they still didn’t have any IDs on the bodies they’d recovered from Delcia Canyon, they did have some approximate ages.
The youngest, the boy, had been no more than thirteen years old.
* * *
—
SHE LET THE PHONE RING ON AND ON for several seconds, staring at it in her hand. None of them had expected to hear from Gualterio or his people so soon.
Danny wasn’t back yet, and despite what she’d said to the sheriff, she had no idea where he was or what he was really doing.
She’d imagined they’d have more time . . . that she would have more time.
Before she could answer it, though, the phone went silent.
She turned it over and over in her hand, then checked the other phone, but there were no calls or messages on that one.
Thirty seconds later, the Telcel started ringing again. She knew it wasn’t going to stop. It would never stop now.
America holstered the gun she’d been cradling in her lap, and then slowly got up off the floor of Jack’s nursery, where she’d been sitting for most of the night.
She let the phone ring, as she went to find Fox Uno and the sheriff.
FIFTY-THREE
Javy’s place was rough, but nice.
The main house was old and rambling—some siding, some wood—within sight of the Christmas Mountains. A good part of his acreage used to be part of the G4 Ranch from way back in the 1880s, before being bought up in 1942 by the State of Texas to create the Big Bend National Park.
Somehow, the Cruz family had come into control of several hundred acres of their own, and they’d been able to hold on to it as the park expanded around them, an oasis in the middle of the desert. It was all oak, mesquite, and chaparral; loose scree on low hills; and plenty of cactus. Javy had long ago abandoned running cattle on the land, instead guiding hunting trips: mule deer, elk, aoudad sheep, javelina, and even mountain lion. Scattered across his land were a couple of bunkhouses without electricity or running water for all the hunters from Dallas, Austin, and Houston looking for an authentic rustic experience.
Javy was a walking encyclopedia of the region. He knew about the Indians who’d settled in the Trans-Pecos more than ten thousand years ago and could point out their middens and their hieroglyphs at the river and creek sites they’d still occupied into the nineteenth century.
He knew the routes the old missionaries and traders had cut along Alamito Creek, places where a dozen ranches and mines had briefly flourished and then failed, most of their names long forgotten or no more than faded ink on old maps.
The hard men who’d named them long gone as well.
It was also rumored that Javy used to work as a smuggler—cigarettes, alcohol, sugar, drugs—and had once been friends with many of the old-time narcos who’d ruled the region.
Javy Cruz—seventy years old—knew a hell of a lot about a lot of things, old and new, including how to make a great cup of coffee. He’d woken Mel up with a big mug of it, although she hadn’t slept much anyway, and the chicory and maple smell filled the house, thick as cigarette smoke. Though she’d stopped smoking when she realized she was pregnant with Jack, that didn’t mean she didn’t crave one now and then, mainly when she was stressed or tired. Like now.
Now she wanted to work her way through a whole pack before breakfast. She wished she had taken more than a couple from Deputy Reynosa.
It didn’t help that when Javy brought her his wonderful coffee, he’d had a rifle slung over his shoulder.
* * *
—
HE WAS IN HIS SMALL KITCHEN, making deer sausage and eggs, cooking the thick, handmade tortillas he got from Presidio on a big frying pan. He’d poured some whiskey into his own mug of coffee, and the rifle was laid out on the counter, within reach.
The walls were covered with old pictures and antler racks and trophy heads, not unlike Earlys. The dark eyes of the dead animals stared down at them, glassy and reflective and deep enough to fall into, and she tried not to stare back.
He had a radio on, playing music from a station over the border.
Before settling in the kitchen with him, Mel had checked on both Jack and Zita, who were still sleeping. The night before, Javy had had several long talks with Zita in Spanish, conversations that had left him serious. Deadly serious.
It was sometime after those talks, and before the sun was ready to come up, that he’d gotten out his hunting rifle.
There was also a shotgun standing upright in the corner, near the front door, and a handgun in a holster on his belt, along with a hunting knife. He also had another knife down in his boot, one he always carried there. The same one he’d flashed at the bar when Jesse Earl had come there, threatening her. Now she regretted not taking one of the guns Chris had laid out on their bed. It felt like everyone was armed
but her—all the goddamn guns. The last time she’d held one, she’d stolen it from Sheriff Ross’s collection. She’d been out in her car, with Chris’s blood still drying on the seats all around her, when she’d aimed Ross’s own gun at his heart through the windshield.
They’d stared at each other a long time before he’d gone his way, and she’d gone hers. Ross had died a few hours later anyway, but sometimes she couldn’t help wondering how things would have been different if Chris had killed him that night, or she had.
She sipped her coffee and watched Javy cook. He had thick hands and wrists, but the practiced ease of a man who’d cooked for himself for a long time. There had been a Señora Cruz once, but Mel didn’t know what had happened to her. Javy had a grown son who lived in Albuquerque who came to visit now and then, but no other family she knew of.
He lived out here alone, except for the hunters he guided. He’d started coming into Earlys to drink beer and read the paper after Chris got elected; sometimes he read the Hap and Leonard novels by Joe K. Lansdale, and other books by Michael McGarrity and Craig Johnson. When he was done with them he used to give them to her, and she kept them behind the bar to read in the slow times. They were still there, stacked up in neat rows like the whiskey tumblers, waiting for her.
She wondered if Javy would drink at the bar anymore if Chris lost the election.
She wondered if she would ever work at Earlys again.
* * *
—
JAVY BROUGHT OVER A PLATE for her and refilled her coffee, and then sat down to join her. He didn’t have a plate of his own.
“You’re not eating?” she asked, embarrassed by all the food in front of her. It was enough for a football team.
“No, I ate earlier.”
She looked down at her plate . . . earlier would have been hours ago, not long after midnight. It was still dark outside now.
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