by Billy Kring
Hunter thought she’d see if he had a sense of humor, so she stuck out her hand to shake and said, “Nice to meet you, Jimmy.”
Frank looked like he swallowed a golf ball.
Goldstein was quick, and shook her hand, “So, you’re the one,” He said.
Raymond said, “One, what?”
Oscar butted in, “How about we get to business here.” His eyes twinkled for a second when he glanced at Hunter, but then went all business.
Goldstein said, “Very well. Agents of the Border Patrol have been captured on security video and on game cameras situated on the Hart ranch properties. Mr. Hart is concerned about this, especially since he showed you, Agent Kincaid, and your partner, Mr. Flores such courtesies recently. For that reason, I have asked your Chief Patrol Agent to reprimand you both, and to ensure it doesn’t happen in the future.”
Raymond said, “That part of the ranch is within twenty-five miles of the border.”
Goldstein said, “I know, and the Supreme Court decision of Taylor vs. Fine allows you to go there without a warrant, but let me remind you, that is for the purpose of apprehending undocumented immigrants, not for snooping, and the videos clearly show you were not hunting for undocumented immigrants.”
Before Hunter could talk, Frank said, “You two are officially reprimanded, with three days off without pay starting tomorrow. You will stay off the Hart property unless given permission to enter. Is that clear? This is from the Chief.”
Raymond was mad, “Clear.”
Frank looked at Hunter, “Clear?”
“What if, oh, some cartel assassins come over and are on the Hart ranch and we know they’re there because of one of our airplanes, and they are hunting Mr. Hart to kill him and the secretary, and the cook. Do we still have to call for permission to go on the ranch? That wouldn’t be hunting undocumented immigrants, but more like snooping or something. We want to do the right thing here.”
A vein in Frank’s temple pulsed as his face reddened.
James Goldstein said, “In that case, Agent Kincaid, you have the Hart family’s permission to come in and save them.” He gave her a quick wink.
Hunter liked this guy.
Goldstein said, “If there is nothing else, I will be going.”
Hunter said, “See ya.”
Frank walked him out as Oscar said in a whisper, “You and Hunter get the heck out of here while I cool him down. He’s about to have a stroke.”
Raymond led the way and they made it down the hall and out the building before Frank returned.
Hunter said, “Let’s go to the hospital and check on Adan. We need to finish the paperwork on him anyway.”
Raymond drove, “How do you think he’s doing?”
“I talked to one of the nurses earlier, she said he’s bouncing back fast, and from serious hurt. She said ‘That boy is tough as rawhide.’”
“I’m glad he’s not dead. He was this close.” He held his thumb and forefinger a quarter-inch apart.
Hunter nodded in agreement. As she pulled into the hospital parking area, she noticed Ellis entering the hospital, accompanied by RL and Mike Hart. She said, “We need to get in there.”
Raymond hadn’t finished getting out of the car when Hunter raced to the hospital and pushed through to the inside halls. She turned left and trotted to Adan’s room. Raymond was close behind. Inside the room, Adan sat upright in bed, with Dario and Dario’s mother near him. Standing at the foot of the bed were Ellis, RL, and Mike Hart.
Adan felt fear, and anger. He didn’t take his eyes off Ellis. Hunter slipped around the bed to stand beside Dario, and across from Ellis and RL. She noticed that Ellis had something in his hand, but couldn’t make out what it was.
Adan glanced at her, and she touched his shoulder to reassure him. Raymond moved so quietly, he stood behind RL without RL noticing.
Ellis looked sullen. He said, “The hell you doing here?”
“Watching you.” Her eyes made Ellis nervous, and he wanted to avoid her gaze.
RL started to move, then Raymond touched him on the shoulder, startling him so he jerked in surprise.
Hunter’s eyes went to Mike Hart.
Mike had a film of sweat on his upper lip. Glancing at the female Agent, he wiped the perspiration away and said to the others, “Let’s get out of here.”
The other two followed him, but not before Ellis turned at the door and said to Hunter, “Better quit following me or you’ll be sorry.”
“What’s in your hand?”
Ellis put the object in his pocket, then nodded at her. “I’ll see you soon.”
“I can’t wait.”
Ellis left, and Raymond stood in the doorway watching them leave. Hunter smiled at Adan and Dario. “You two aren’t getting into more trouble already, are you?”
“No, we wouldn’t think of it.” Dario said.
“How’s your back?”
Dario moved his arm in circles to show the shoulder had no permanent damage. “Good, and I’m going to have a neat scar.”
Raymond smiled, “A neat scar, huh? The girls will swoon.”
“What’s swoon mean?”
“They’ll treat you like a movie star.”
“Cool.”
They talked to Adan and Dario the most, but also Dario’s mother, Erica, who said Adan could stay with her as long as he wanted. When they left the hospital, Raymond said, “Did you see what he had in his hand?”
“A small syringe with the cap on the needle, and blue fluid in the barrel. I’m thinking something like Windex.”
Raymond said, “Right in the hospital? He was gonna try to kill Adan in the hospital?”
“He has to do something, and soon. Adan will identify him if it goes to trial. I texted Carlo and he’s going to put guards on the room twenty-four-seven, he said.”
“The deputies here are way better than the guards that were on Jeffrey Epstein.”
Hunter blinked at that one, and showed Raymond a sly wink.
Ellis drove, pondering what to do next. RL said, “We have to do something soon.”
Mike Hart said, “Aren’t you guys innocent? You’ll beat them in the trial.”
Ellis said, “Sure, Mike. We’re innocent, but that doesn’t mean they won’t find us guilty of something.” He turned to RL, “I have an idea. When does that kid get released from the hospital?”
“I overheard one of the nurses say he’d get out tomorrow morning.”
“All right.” He walked to their vehicle, saying, “That’ll be perfect.”
Mike felt a faint thrum of fear in his chest, like a single flick of a bass guitar’s E string and said, “What are you gonna do?”
“Talk to him, one on one.”
RL said, “Make real sure he understands what lying’s gonna get him.”
Mike licked his lips, “That’s all, just talk?”
“What’d you think? Damn, Mike, we’re not the bad guys here, we just play a little hard sometimes, and he misunderstood.”
“Okay. I’m good with that. Long as nobody’s hurt.”
Ellis spun on his heel and put his face six inches from Mike’s. His eyes were gray stone, and carried an implicit threat. “Watch what you say, ol’ buddy. Almost sounds like you’re telling me what to do.”
Mike took a step back and held up his hands, “No, not that, I didn’t mean that.”
“Good. Now, how about you go ahead and wait for us in Terlingua. We’ll be along in a couple hours. We’ll bring some meat to cook on the fire this evening.”
Mike nodded and left, anxious to get away from Ellis, who was usually a fun guy to be around, but not today, no sir.
He drove away, still feeling uneasy as he turned on highway 118 for the long drive to Terlingua, feeling sorry for the boy.
As soon as Mike left, Ellis was on the phone. When he hung up, he told RL, “We’re set, just beyond Elephant Mountain, so it’s closer to where we need to be with ‘em.”
“Who’ve you got?”
“Ben and Anselmo.”
“Good. Did you see Dario’s mom, Erica? She’s kind of hot, got those great boobs.”
Ellis said, “Keep your mind off poon until we clean all this up, you got me? You don’t want to mess this up and cross me, RL.”
“Got ya, hundred percent.” Ellis nodded and walked toward the vehicle. RL muttered under his breath, “You’re gonna turn your back on me once too often.”
**
Hunter and Raymond stood outside the hospital and were at loose ends, now that they were out of work for three days. Hunter said, “You can take the service vehicle to Marfa, I’ll get Lynne to bring my pickup. She’s doing shopping over here today anyway.”
Raymond said, “I guess I’ll go home and do what I do.”
“Which is?”
“Go to the store and buy some meat to cook on the grill this evening. Come on over, if you want. I’m thinking chicken tonight.”
“Thanks, but I’ll pass.”
Raymond looked at her, “You’re going back down to Terlingua, check on the kid.” It wasn’t a question.
“Probably.” She added, “I’ll get with Sam Kinney, too. He wants to visit, which for us means drinking beer.”
“Tell Sam to drink one for me.”
“We both will.”
Raymond gave her a wink, “See you in four days.”
Hunter had a change of clothes in her trique bag; a violet tee shirt with a bright lightning bolt running from her left shoulder to her right hip, and a well-worn pair of Wrangler jeans, along with an old pair of Asics running shoes. There was also the concealed carry holster so she would still be armed. She changed in the restroom at the hospital, and walked to where her friend, Lynne had dropped off the pickup in the hospital parking lot and, as prearranged, left the keys under the left front fender and balanced on top of the tire.
Too bad Lynne was moving soon. She and her husband, Mike, were travelling to Boerne, in the Texas hill country, where they had a new business going. It was making enough money they decided it made more sense to be closer to it than three hundred miles away. Hunter would miss them both.
She used the keys and opened the driver’s door, tossed her bag in the passenger’s seat, and slid behind the wheel. She adjusted her concealed holster so the baggy tee shirt covered the Glock’s handle. With that, she started the pickup, put in a new audiobook story from Mark Pryor, and drove through town and on to the Terlingua road, State Highway 118. The narrator, Todd McLaren was perfect for Pryor’s story.
Hunter was soon lost in the story. As she approached Elephant Mountain, she spotted what looked like a wreck in the road. Her attention was jerked back from Paris to the here and now, in West Texas, and a woman with a bloody head staggering around her vehicle on the highway.
It was Erica, and the children were nowhere in sight.
Chapter 10
Hunter parked fast, skidding the tires the last ten feet, and hopped out to run to Erica. Dario’s mother had a long cut across her forehead at the hairline, but it wasn’t deep. “It’s okay, Erica, the cut’s not deep. Cuts on the head bleed a lot.”
Erica regained her breath and, crying, said, “The boys, they ran into the desert. One of the men chased them.”
There was no other vehicle around. Hunter said, “What happened here?”
She wiped her eyes and nose, “A big pickup was sideways across the road, and two men stood by it. They waved for help, so we stopped. As I got out, Adan recognized one of the men and shouted for me to get in and drive away, but it was too late. They had the passenger door open and had both boys by the arms.”
Hunter felt a sense of dread, “What did the men do?”
“I ran at them and hit them, telling those bastardos to release the boys, but the big one, he pushed Adan to his partner, who tried to hold both boys, and he hit me with something. When I came to, I was on the road, my head bleeding and the children gone.”
“Did you see where they went?”
Erica thought in silence, and Hunter waited a full minute until she spoke. “I remember the big truck driving away, and hearing the other man yell at the boys. Oh, and I remember the sound of fence being crossed, like the wires twanging.”
She looked at the woman’s head. The edges of the wound were curling up and back, resembling lips, and evidence of a hard blow. Hunter went to her pickup and got a quart bottle of water and returned to wash off Erica’s face and the wound. She walked the injured woman to her pickup and pulled out her emergency medicine kit, removing a tube of Neosporin antibiotic cream, sterile pads and a roll of adhesive tape. Hunter had good skills and in several minutes had Erica’s head bandaged and treated.
No vehicles came by, and Hunter told Erica to move her car off the road while she moved her pickup. They parked side by side on a caliche road that ended at a ranch gate. Hunter took Erica’s shoulders and said, “I have to go after them, you understand?”
“Yes. Do you have a gun?”
“I do.”
“Shoot those men it they hurt either of the boys.”
Hunter didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no, either. “I’ll be on their trail. Here’s my phone, call for the police, or any law enforcement agency, okay? Show them which way I will go.”
“I will.”
Hunter touched her shoulder again, took a large swig of water, then pulled on a faded, burnt orange Texas Longhorns ball cap given to her by a friend who said the actor Matthew McConaughey tossed it to her at one of the Longhorn’s home games in Austin.
Hunter walked the fence and found their tracks with little trouble. She pushed down the top strand of barbed wire to step across the fence into the scrub desert pasture beyond it. She spotted the tracks near the fence, but as the man and two boys moved away from the road and deeper into the desert, Hunter had to slow to keep from losing her quarry. More rocks and tufts of grass and creosote and various sorts of cactus made tracking more difficult, but because the man wasn’t trying to hide his trail, she continued to follow without a lot of difficulty.
Fifteen minutes later, Hunter caught a glimpse of them as they went over a slight swale near a small hillock. She broke into a fast trot and covered ground quickly, reaching the spot on the swale where she’d last seen them. There were flecks of red on the soil. Hunter realized it was blood, but didn’t know who, or how badly they were injured. She searched the ground for tracks and slowed her pace as she pursued the two boys and the man.
The tracks veered right, then left. Hunter studied them and saw where one of the boys broke free and dodged the man, then raced across the desert.
She had a decision to make, which trail to follow, and she decided the one with the man and boy, because that boy was in the most danger.
Desert terrain stretched before her, with austere, steep-sided mountains on both sides of a wide, flat bottomed canyon where the tracks were visible in the deeper stony soil. They followed the canyon, going arrow straight.
Hunter trotted after them as the day grew hotter and she felt it beat down on her shoulders and ball cap-covered head like a heated blanket.
There was the always-present pack of Eclipse gum in her pocket, and she popped two of them out of the foil and chewed. Flavor and wetness filled her mouth. It was a temporary fix, but good enough for now. She moved into a trot and continued on the clear trail, glancing left and right occasionally out of habit.
A flash of light caught her attention. She stopped and looked at the mountain, and saw the tiniest of movements at the edge of the mass of stone and boulders.
Five minutes of nothing, and she felt she couldn’t wait any longer. The trail beckoned, and she raced after the tracks weaving their way through the patches of creosote and sage, and around cactus and ocotillo. Ten minutes later, she glimpsed the man and recognized him as the one called RL. He and the boy increased their pace across the flat toward a long finger of a rise, thick with junipers that extended beyond her sight.
Doubling her pace to a gr
ound-churning run, Hunter closed on them. As they entered the dense green foliage of the junipers, RL glanced back and Hunter saw the surprise on his face, then he disappeared in the green shadows of the trees.
Hunter entered the trees, still at a run, and dodged and stumbled and pushed her way through the limbs as she stayed on the fresh tracks. Limbs cracked ahead of her, some she knew were small, but several were large ones, so that meant RL was pushing through some of the thickest of the trees.
Cutting at right angles to the trail put Hunter out of the junipers and onto the sloping edge of a rise forming the western edge of the ravine where the trees grew. Hunter could see better from her increased elevation and ran again to intercept RL and the boy. She didn’t know which boy it was, but she felt that it was Dario, not Adan.
The ravine widened ahead of her and the junipers formed a larger, almost forest-like area of green. RL’s head bobbed among them and that allowed Hunter to parallel the man and boy. She closed on them until there was less than one hundred yards between her and RL.
The juniper bushes narrowed a quarter mile ahead as the ravine played out, and two hundred yards beyond that was only open desert with scrub brush and soap yuccas among the patches of tobosa and occasional sacahuista.
That’s where she would catch him, she thought. Hunter focused on the spot where a caliche road passed the shallow end of the ravine.
Something caused her to look to the right, and she saw a pale column of dust as a vehicle drove on the caliche road, coming in their direction.
Hunter increased her speed to a sprint.
The vehicle, a tan Dodge Ram pickup with huge tires, suddenly slammed on its breaks and slid to a dust roiling stop. The pale cloud rolled forward and enveloped the pickup, making it disappear in a bone colored cloud.
RL yelled something, then started toward the pickup on the road, pulling and fighting Dario. The boy spotted Hunter and struggled to get away from his captor.
The sight made adrenaline flood through her veins and she flew across the irregular desert ground. Two hundred yards separated them, and she could almost close the distance in half a minute.
The cloud dissipated and the Dodge Ram materialized. The driver’s window came down and the barrel of a rifle appeared, immediately cracking off a series of shots.