Strong Darkness

by Jon Land

  Click.

  The Glock’s slide locked the very moment the gunfire ended below, fading echoes of it all that remained. A glance showed him the final gunman sprawled on the sidewalk with blood running out from beneath him.

  Cort Wesley dropped down to the sidewalk himself to the sounds of brakes squealing and car horns blaring ahead of the mind-numbing grinds of metal squashing against metal. He thought he heard sirens too, picking up his pace as he looped around the block back to the hotel lobby to find Dylan.

  He felt a warm sense of relief, when he reached the lobby to find chaos, but no bodies spilled on the fresh carpeting. Then Cort Wesley’s insides knotted up again when a fresh reality dawned on him:

  Dylan was gone.

  80

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “You saved my life, Ranger.”

  “Glad to hear that, Jones,” Caitlin told him. “Now make it worth my while. Let’s start with who did this to you.”

  Jones was lying on an exam table in de la Cruz’s back bedroom, propped up on a bunch of pillows matted with blood. An open window pushed the soft breeze against the drawn blinds that robbed the room of light save for an overly bright fixture burning overhead. He flashed the annoying smirk Caitlin had come to know so well, a gesture that seemed ill suited to his current condition.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “You intend to let them get away with it?”

  “My intentions are meaningless. The shooters are already off the map. I took them down myself. Guess nobody told them I didn’t always ride a desk.”

  “Where did this happen exactly, Jones? No report was called in.”

  The smirk flashed again. “I’m sure it was. Then it got buried.”

  “By whose shovel?”

  Jones shook his head. “Forget it, Ranger.”

  “You of all people should know that’s not in my nature.”

  “Then make it your nature. Trust me, you’ll never get the people behind the shooters. They’re untouchable.”

  “Then let’s move on to what they’re trying to do, how you ended up on their enemies list.”

  “Simply stated, we’ve lost control of the government. Elected officials can no longer be trusted to do the right and obvious thing, because they don’t belong there in the first place.”

  “It’s called democracy, Jones.”

  “Not when you’ve got a zillion gerrymandered districts and radical fringe elements on both sides that seem determined to bring the government down. They’re growing in power, not declining.” He tried to sit up farther, grimaced, then lay back down slowly. “Blame hatred if you want, blame the Internet, blame natural political cycles—I don’t care. What I care about is the fact that if we can’t trust these bozos to do things right in office, then we need to find a way to keep them from ever getting there.”

  “What’s this have to do with elections, with Li Zhen and Yuyuan?”

  “Only everything, Ranger, thanks to that fifth generation network. Guess they didn’t cover the future in your last professional development visit to Quantico,” Jones added, managing a smirk.

  “I see you’re feeling better.”

  “You always bring out the best in me.”

  “Get back to what they didn’t cover at Quantico.”

  “Simply the fact that within a very few years time election results will be transmitted wirelessly over the Internet, in plenty of cases by the voting machines themselves once they turn digital, which Homeland has already allocated the funds for.”

  “Uh-oh…”

  “I think you see the point, Ranger.”

  “Homeland made sure the contract was awarded to Yuyuan,” Caitlin concluded, “because Li Zhen’s going to help you rig elections.”

  “Rig is a strong word.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Electronic influence to make sure elected office is held as much as possible by those who have an IQ higher than eighty and actually care about doing the country’s business.”

  “Very patriotic of you.”

  “I wasn’t alone,” Jones told her. “This operation had support all the way to the top.”

  “How high is that exactly?”

  “You know,” Jones told her, “I really don’t know myself.”

  Caitlin moved closer to him, cataloging his wounds based on the gauze wrappings that were leaking blood in places. Looked like he’d been shot three times, although sometimes the way bullets jumped about inside a person made it difficult to be sure. She was still struggling to get used to the harsh scents of rubbing alcohol and clinical disinfectant that permeated de la Cruz’s illegal operating room.

  “What made you sour on the plan?” she asked Jones.

  “You, Ranger, after you made your usual mess of things. Only this time you exposed Li Zhen as someone we definitely needed to get out of business with in my mind. I can live with his secrets, even his lies, but he’s hiding something bigger. The whole time we thought we were playing him, I think he was playing us.”

  “Of course he was playing you. Giving Yuyuan control of the five G network means opening the door to pretty much any secret or new technology the Chinese want to steal.”

  Jones looked unmoved. He shifted slightly, still enough to make him wince in pain and steady himself with a few long breaths.

  “We’d already figured that into the equation, considered it a zero-sum game.”

  “A sacrifice you were willing to make, in other words.”

  “That’s right.”

  “No, Jones, it’s very far from right, the polar opposite. You people are willing to go so far to accomplish what you want that you just can’t turn back anymore. The road’s collapsed behind you because you blew it up.”

  But Jones had something else on his mind. “I ordered Zhen to back off and he still tried to have you and Masters killed. Then I asked General Chang to intervene on our behalf by sending Zhen back home and he ended up dead.”

  “You think Li Zhen killed him?” Caitlin asked, not giving away any of her or Doc Whatley’s own conclusions.

  “It doesn’t seem possible but, yes, I do.”

  “Oh, it’s possible all right.”

  Jones sat up straighter on the table, ignoring the pain that was even more obvious in the increased spill of light that reached him as he winced and then grimaced. “I know that look, Ranger.”

  “Then turn away.”

  “Hey, show a little gratitude here. I tried to do right by you; Masters and his sons too.”

  “What about his sons?” Caitlin asked, feeling the familiar bite of cold hold on her spine. “Are you saying they’re both in danger?”

  “You think I’m bad, you should see the guys I report to.”

  “You mean the ones who tried to kill you.”

  “The very same, Ranger, but I took care of it before the shooting started.”

  “Took care of what?”

  “I made sure the outlaw’s other son is protected.”

  “Luke?” Caitlin asked, as a flutter moved through her and left her feeling light-headed. “You tell me what the hell’s happening or I’ll do some damage de la Cruz won’t be able to fix.”

  “Nothing’s happened to him yet, and nothing will,” Jones assured her. “I sent Paz.”

  81

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  Luke responded to the knock on his dorm room door at the Village School to find two men standing there he didn’t recognize and the Texas Ranger assigned to guard him nowhere to be seen.

  “You need to come with us, son.”

  “Are you guys Rangers?” the boy asked.

  “They sent us.”

  “Then where’s Bill?” Luke backpedaled into his room. “His last name’s Toddman. You must know him.”

  The two men followed Luke inside and closed the door behind them.

  “Pack whatever you need,” the same speaker told him. “Make it fast.”

  In the mirror atop the dorm room’s bur
eau, Luke could see the other man’s face twitch. He’d shut off the room’s lights to save energy, working only by the light of his computer and that cast by the saltwater fish tank reflecting the sun streaming in through his window overlooking the courtyard. He’d chosen the Village School himself after Dylan had been accepted to Brown University. Luke wasn’t half the athlete his older brother was, but he was twice the student, and he knew he’d need all of that to follow Dylan to an Ivy League university, maybe Brown too. The Village School filled a sprawling campus wrapped around a new high school building, the second phase of which had just opened for business when he arrived on campus. His dad had bought him a fish tank twice the size he’d asked for, taking up a hefty portion of his desk, but providing his dragon fish plenty of room to swim in and out of the various lairs he’d laid inside meticulously, like an interior designer for aquarium environments.

  “Did my dad send you?” Luke asked, as he grabbed his backpack and dumped out its contents of textbooks, pads, empty snack wrappers, and energy drink bottles.

  “Just pack your stuff.”

  “Was it Caitlin?”

  Neither man said a word. The one who’d said nothing at all so far moved to the window.

  “Maybe we should wait for Bill,” Luke said, trying to sound dumb and innocent, something about this feeling all wrong to him.

  “Don’t make us tell you again,” from the man by the window, speaking for the first time.

  “Matter of fact,” said the other, “let’s just leave. Forget about packing. We’ll pick up whatever you need. Safety first, right?”

  Luke greeted his question with a slight nod, fear scratching at his spine and chilling him at the core. Then he felt the men come up on either side of him, each taking an arm.

  “For your own good,” one of them said.

  Then he was being led toward the door, the other man jerking it open.

  Guillermo Paz stood there, high as the top of the doorframe, grinning.

  “Mala idea,” he said. “Bad idea.”

  Then he was in motion, faster than anyone Luke had ever seen, faster than anything he’d ever seen.

  Paz was standing there. And then he wasn’t.

  The two men were holding Luke. And then they weren’t.

  Luke heard something clatter to the floor. Looked down to see a pistol stripped from one of the men’s grasp and realized Paz was holding them both at the fish tank. His huge hands closed on the back of their heads and shoved their faces under the water, holding them there effortlessly as they writhed and kicked. Not even breathing hard while he drowned them.

  “So,” Paz asked Luke, the men starting to still, “you like your new school?”

  PART EIGHT

  They traveled swiftly and lightly, unencumbered to anything that could not be carried on horseback. They subsisted on wild game (or horse meat in lean times) and slept in the open under a blanket with the saddle for a pillow. Like all ranging companies, they bore no flag and sported no uniform. The Ranger’s “usual habiliments,” noted one, “were buckskin moccasins and overalls, a roundabout and red shirt, a cap manufactured by his own hands from the skin of the coon or wildcat, two or three revolvers and a bowie knife in his belt, and a short rifle on his arm.”

  —Robert M. Utley, Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers

  82

  CHINATOWN, NEW YORK CITY

  “How’d you know where to find me? You been on my tail or something?”

  Kai shook her head. “Not exactly.”

  “What then?”

  “They planted a GPS tracker in me,” she said, holding up her arm to reveal a thick wrapping of gauze. “I got it out and stuck it on something I knew you’d always have with you, being from Texas and all.” She looked down at the boots he was wearing. “And it looks like I was right. Anyway, I used the signal to follow you.”

  Dylan scraped the souls of his boots on the park grass, as if trying to scratch the tracker off. “I’m gonna take a guess here,” he said to Kai, seated close enough next to her on the bench in Columbus Park to smell the sweet scent of jasmine rising off her flawless skin. “You wanted something from me all along. That’s how all this started.”

  “Yes and no,” Kai conceded emotionlessly.

  “Can’t be both, girl.”

  “Stop talking Texas.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Calling me ‘girl.’ Dropping your subjects.”

  “You’re not my teacher. I don’t even know what you are,” the boy said, not bothering to hide his frustration. “And why can’t I call my dad? Give me back the phone he got for me.”

  “Not yet, because they could be tracking your father’s phone.”

  “There you go again. Who’s ‘they’ … girl.”

  “Are you trying to upset me?”

  “I’m just trying to get some answers.”

  She flashed a brief smile. “You did pretty well getting something else out of me back in Providence.”

  “Yeah, but was it real?”

  Her stare scolded him. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I asked.”

  Upon reaching Chinatown via the subway, they’d made straight for Columbus Park just beyond the Lower East Side, a history-rich section of Manhattan that was a part of the infamous Five Points a century and a half before. Columbus Park was actually built in that violent era, although now it was home to tai chi classes and residents lounging with their pet songbirds nearby.

  “I need to know my dad is okay.”

  “He is.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “Yes, I can,” Kai said, taking a shallow breath. “Because he’s Cort Wesley Masters.”

  “That’s what I meant before about whether it was real or not between us—because it was my dad and Caitlin Strong you really needed.”

  “I didn’t notice that picture until after.”

  “After what?”

  “Do I really need to tell you?”

  Kai left things hanging there, allowing Dylan to invent whatever she was feeling in his own mind. His head began to throb and a sudden pang left him feeling dizzy and nauseous.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Just what happens when somebody jumps you and rattles your brain.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You ran away.”

  “And they chased me instead of killing you.”

  “So I’m supposed to thank you now?”

  Kai lapsed into silence, Dylan studying her closer. He wanted to be angry, but she was just too beautiful. The way her hair tumbled to her shoulders, the roundness of her mouth. Her eyes that seemed wide, barely Asian while highlighting her almond-toned skin and complexion so smooth it looked lifted from a painting. The dark, resin-coated jeans that rode her hips and hugged her like a second layer of skin. She looked like an actress, or a model, the way she held herself, the way she moved.

  Then again, Dylan thought, recalling her actual profession, she had to be both pretty much.…

  “You plan on answering my question?” he asked, the words much harsher than his tone.

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t remember. There’s a lot of things I don’t remember since that night, like why I let you get inside my head.”

  Kai flirted with a smile that didn’t quite break. “As I remember, it was because you were trying to get inside me.”

  “Why’d you text me the night of the beating?”

  “Because I thought your father and that Texas Ranger could help me, help me get him.”

  “Get who, Kai, get who?”

  She checked the sky, as if reading the time by it. “Time to go,” she said, rising from the bench.

  Dylan remained seated, afraid if he stood up the world would start spinning and he’d pass out. He felt chilled, a damp cold sweat breaking out on his face. “Where?”

  “Texas.”

  83

  NEW YORK CIT
Y

  Kai remembered the night they came for her. She’d been playing with her dolls, laying them out neatly on her bed. Her favorite ones were the oldest of all, handed down through the family for generations after being hand-sewn by a long-dead relative with a penchant for breathing life into his work. There were seventeen in that particular collection, each beautifully fashioned and realized.

  And yet Kai recalled them being uniformly sad in expression, their stitched faces that of straw-stuffed beings who’d known much strife and pain in their lives. Their finely sewn expressions carrying the weight of the world, along with a quiet wisdom. When she imagined her dolls talking to her as an even younger girl, it was always these that spoke in the clearest voices.

  After she was taken away, she missed those dolls the most. She would beg her “keepers” to retrieve them for her, after she’d been snatched from her life with only the clothes on her back. In later years Kai would learn this had been done so her life might be started over again, effectively from scratch. There could be no anchors to the past whatsoever, nothing to stoke memories better left behind as well.

  Kai didn’t have the dolls, no, but she kept close hold of those memories. And when the sadness set in with the reality of her plight, it was the memories to which she turned. Closing her eyes and imagining the dolls talking to her, striving to ease her pain and console her. But they had few truly happy words to offer, as if somehow the sum total of their own experiences had been sad as well. Kindred spirits, then, which may have explained why those old dolls were the ones she kept closest in heart and mind.

  There were few memories left from that actual night, nothing really except for her father looking out the window, casting her a final gaze as the car in which she’d been placed pulled away. Not a wave, not a smile, not a tear. Just an empty stare out the window no different from the way he looked when he was waiting for a delivery to arrive. He was there, then he was gone and so was she.