Lucky was waiting for me on the upstairs landing. He and Sarge were side by side on the top step. I nodded and kept walking into the locker room. I saw Lucky motion Danny up the steps. Lucky and Sarge stood with their arms at their sides. I couldn’t hear what was said, but I saw Danny put up his hand and motion Ricky to stop. So far, my plan was working.
I leaned against the wall of the locker room so that when Danny walked in I would be between him and the only exit.
“Hi, Danny,” I said when he strolled through the door.
He didn’t look surprised to see me. He wore his square-toed cowboy boots and jeans, topped with an untucked Lone Star Beer T-shirt and a camo cap sporting one of those dark-colored American flags.
“Hey, Nick,” he said. He bounced from boot to boot with nervous energy. His eyes were glassy like he’d popped a few cold ones on his drive in from the ranch. I was starting to wonder if he was ever sober. “I guess there’s no fight today. You put Lucky up to this?”
“We need to talk. We got cut off last night. Don’t blame Lucky for anything. I told him what’s going on.”
“I’m sorry about what happened last night,” he said. He shifted his weight again and took off his cap.
I took two quick steps toward him. Pinned him in the corner. “Marissa Luna was murdered. You know who did it.”
He squeezed his hands into fists and tensed his shoulders as if he was going to take a swing at me.
“Relax your hands,” I said. “I know you didn’t kill her. It was your grandpa, Patrick. He’s the one who had everything to lose. Who’d he hire?”
“No. You got it wrong. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.” Danny’s face showed pain and fear as if he felt his fingers slipping from a ledge ten stories above a parking lot.
“Why don’t you fill me in?” I said.
“He’ll get to you. It doesn’t matter what you do. He won’t stop,” Danny said.
“I don’t care about your grandpa’s money or connections. He’s going down for Marissa’s murder.”
Danny hesitated.
I slapped him. Not hard, but enough to pop his head back. “Talk, goddamnit,” I said, not wanting to give him time to make up another story.
“It’s Marcus Lopez.”
“Don’t start this again.” I was getting tired of his BS.
“That’s the truth,” he insisted.
“Tell me what you know. We’ll go to the police.”
“Marcus has the police in his pocket,” he said. His goofy grin fluttered across his face.
I couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth. Every time I questioned him, he had a different look and a different story.
“Ricky and Joe work for Marcus. There’re two more outside. All the guards at the ranch work for him, except Juan. He’s been there since I was born. The others Marcus hired to keep an eye on the family. That’s why I couldn’t say anything.”
“What about Patrick? What about your grandfather?”
“He’s dying,” Danny said. “Stage-four cancer. He doesn’t have long.” Danny looked at his boots. He chewed on his bottom lip.
I didn’t know how much of his story I could swallow. There had to be something more to it. There had to be one big piece of the puzzle that Danny wasn’t telling me.
“How did Marcus get control of Allison Oil?” I asked.
Before he could answer, my cell phone rang. It was Skeeter. He whispered so fast and low I could barely hear him.
“Skeeter, I can’t hear you. Slow down. Speak up,” I said.
“Marcus is on the move. Sylvia’s with him.”
I put the cell phone on speaker and tossed it on the bench. “Talk to me, Skeeter. What’s happening?” I pulled my street clothes from my bag and stripped out of my gym shorts.
“Marcus and Sylvia got into her Toyota,” he whispered.
“Why are you whispering? They can’t hear you.” I slipped on my jeans and boots. Danny stood watching me and listening to Skeeter.
“They’re headed for the freeway,” he said in a normal voice.
“Monitor the GPS. Don’t get too close.”
“What’s going on?” Danny asked.
I checked my watch. It was twelve ten. “Marcus is with Sylvia.” I slammed Danny back against the metal lockers. “What’s he gonna do?”
Danny’s eyes went wide. I pushed my arm into his windpipe. Danny clutched at his throat. I let him choke for a moment, then backed off and let him breathe.
“I don’t know,” he gasped.
“Go back to the ranch. I’ll take care of the guys outside,” I said.
Danny nodded while he massaged his sore neck.
“What’s going on?” Skeeter said. I’d forgotten he was still on speaker.
“Follow Marcus. Keep me up to date.” I disconnected the call and stuffed the phone in my back pocket.
Danny sat down on the bench and put his head in his hands. “What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going after him.”
Danny chewed his bottom lip. Stayed silent.
I left him on the bench and walked to the steps, where two extra guards had joined Ricky and the rifleman. Lucky and Sarge hadn’t moved an inch. The four guards were spread out four steps below them. Ricky had a pistol in a shoulder holster. They would all be armed. It was me and two old-timers against four armed guards.
I stopped on the top step between Lucky and Sarge.
“Danny tells me you’re looking for me,” I said to Ricky.
“The boss wants to talk to you,” he said through a grin. His pistol gave him confidence.
“You mean Marcus Lopez? Is that your boss?”
Ricky didn’t say anything. He didn’t move.
I turned to Lucky. “Are these guys about the dumbest bunch of thugs you ever saw, or what?”
Lucky smiled, showing off his missing teeth.
“What do you think, Sarge?”
Sarge didn’t say a word. Every fiber of his five-foot-ten, sixty-nine-year-old frame was focused into a razor-sharp weapon of destruction. He had total concentration on the four guards. I was starting to feel better about the odds.
“They work for Marcus Lopez,” I continued. “The lawyer running for governor.”
Lucky hated lawyers as much as he did politicians. He hated Marcus Lopez in particular because he said Marcus was going to raise taxes for small business owners. Lucky was against higher taxes.
“You can walk out of here and tell your boss you couldn’t find me,” I said to Ricky.
He shook his head. “No can do, partner.” All four guards balanced on the balls of their feet. They waited for Ricky to make the first move. “Nothing personal. Just business.” He pointed at Lucky and Sarge. “If you come with us, we don’t hurt the old dudes.”
Lucky and Sarge stood up a little straighter when he said old dudes.
“I’m glad you said that,” I said.
My phone rang. I used the old-fashioned ringer. Ricky and his thugs flinched. I slowly reached for my phone. The call was from Skeeter. I hit accept.
Skeeter said: “So far so good. He’s on the interstate heading west. We’re past Boerne.”
“Okay,” I said, not wanting to tip Ricky off that Skeeter was following his boss. “I’ll catch up to you.” I disconnected and put the phone back in my pocket.
“It’s been real, Ricky, but I gotta go.” I took a step down the stairs.
Ricky reached for my left arm. I drove my elbow into his throat. He fell back against the railing.
The rifleman and his partner were on my right just below Sarge. The rifleman made his move toward me. He never knew what hit him. Sarge brought his right foot up and kicked him in the left ear. The rifleman tumbled down the steps. His partner dove for Sarge and caught a knee to the face and a right-hand chop to the back of the neck. He dropped like a sack of shrimp. If he woke up, he’d have a mean headache. The only one left standing
reached for his pistol. Lucky hit him with a stiff right that broke his jaw. It was the same punch that won him the championship belt. The whole fight lasted less than fifteen seconds. Lucky and Sarge grinned, like it was the most fun they’d had in a decade.
“Thanks for your help,” I said. “I’ve gotta run.”
“What should we do with Danny?” Lucky asked.
“Let him go,” I said. “I know where to find him when I need him.”
I took the stairs two at a time. A half dozen guys were lined up at the bottom of the steps to watch the show. They nodded their approval when I jogged past them and out the front door. I started my pickup and tried to think of the fastest way out of town. My phone rang.
“He’s getting off at Welfare,” Skeeter said.
“What the hell?” I waited for him to confirm. The call went dead.
I checked my watch. Twelve thirty. I tried Grandpa’s phone on the unlikely chance he was having lunch inside. I hung up on the fifth ring. No such luck.
I hit redial for Skeeter. Heard: The number you have dialed is not available.
Either his phone was dead, or Marcus’s thugs had gotten to him.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The rain that hit San Antonio had missed the Hill Country, leaving very little for livestock to eat. Some ranchers were already feeding hay shipped in from greener pastures toward the coast or from irrigated fields to the north. I made the turn at Welfare and followed a rancher pulling a flatbed trailer full of green Bermuda hay. The stretch of road was a wide two-lane but about as straight as a dog’s hind leg, and there was just enough traffic to keep me from passing. I turned off the radio and the noisy air conditioning and opened the windows. The blast of warm, dry air helped calm my nerves. I would have honked, but it wouldn’t have done any good. There was no place for the rancher to pull over.
I was doing forty miles per hour and thinking about the worst-case scenario. Skeeter was MIA. Had Marcus’s thugs reached his name on the list? I had given him a shotgun, but it wasn’t much good unless he knew how to use it. I tried Grandpa’s useless phone again and left another message at the petting zoo. He wouldn’t be expecting trouble. There was no one for him to worry about these days except for pushy realtors and stray llamas. He had no reason to be suspicious of Marcus showing up at his gate if Sylvia was with him.
I was moving over into the left lane to look for a place to pass when my cell phone rang. The caller ID said Sylvia. I grabbed the phone.
“Where are you?” I said, cautiously. I didn’t know if she was free to talk.
“Hi, sweetheart. I just got your message. You’re on speaker. You’ll never guess where I am.” Sylvia never called me sweetheart. I could hear the tension in her voice.
“You took off early and went shopping?” I tried to sound casual. I assumed Marcus was listening.
“No, silly. I came to see your grandpa. It’s such a pretty day. I was thinking about him. I wanted to bring him lunch.” She liked Grandpa but would never drive out there by herself in the middle of the day.
“That’s wonderful, honey-bunny.”
She hated when I called her that. If she was free to talk, she would instantly chew me out. The line was blank for several seconds. Another sign that Sylvia was not herself.
Finally, she said: “Why don’t you come out and join us. I picked up barbecue at Two Brothers.” She knew I loved Two Brothers’ brisket.
“That sounds great!” I tried to sound enthusiastic. “How’s Grandpa?”
She hesitated again. I heard a muffled sound in the background. She was talking to someone. Her hand was over the cell phone speaker.
“Oh, he’s good. He’s anxious to see you. It will do you good to take a break,” she said.
“Okay, I’ll finish up in town and head out there. Give me two hours.” I looked at my watch. It was two o’clock. “I’ll be there at four,” I lied. I would be there as fast as I could drive.
“Hurry. We’ll be waiting.” She emphasized the word hurry.
“Bye, sweetie-pie.” I let her disconnect first. If “sweetie-pie” didn’t get a response from her, I didn’t need any other clues to her state of mind. Marcus was going after Grandpa and Sylvia at the same time.
I hit my horn twice to warn the rancher I was coming around him and floored the accelerator. There was always a chance of traffic or an animal on a rural road, but I didn’t have time to wait. The rancher’s hand emerged from his open window and waved me on.
Ten minutes later, I slowed to make the turn onto Grandpa’s road. There was no exit. Because the terrain was steeper to the south, the road simply stopped. Anyone driving on it lived there or was lost.
I moved the seat back as far as it would go so that most of my face would be behind the doorjamb and slowed to just under thirty miles an hour, the normal speed for the local ranchers. As a kid, I remember asking Grandpa why he drove so slowly. He would always respond in his half-irritated and half-joking way: If I wanted to get there sooner, I’d have left yesterday.
I studied the familiar stone fence and the clearing beyond. There was no sign of a vehicle or a person near Grandpa’s cedar-post gate. I slowed even more to look up the gravel road that led to the house. Nothing. It didn’t mean there was no one there. The live oaks and cedar brush beside the road provided enough cover for a platoon of men.
I made a U-turn and cruised back by the gate. Still nothing. I passed the friendly llama sign for the neighbor’s petting zoo, then drove to the gas station on State Highway 290 a few miles out of Fredericksburg. I needed to collect my thoughts and get a cup of coffee to sharpen my senses. The recon had told me nothing. I knew something waited for me at Grandpa’s ranch, and I had a feeling it wasn’t a friendly barbecue lunch. The investigation was spinning out of control. Ochoa had promised help, but I was out of time.
As soon as I cut the engine, I heard a tap on my window. I turned and came face-to-face with a white button over a very large man’s sternum.
I unrolled the window. Skeeter leaned his bulk on the door. The F-150 tilted with him. He was breathing hard and looked anxious.
“Where the hell have you been?” I said, relieved and angry at the same time.
He took a deep breath and raised both hands as if to absolve himself of any wrongdoing. “I backed off a couple of miles like you said. They turned at your grandpa’s road. I didn’t want to follow them into a dead end, so I kept going.”
“What happened to your phone?”
He looked down at his hands. A sheepish grin came over his face. “It died.”
“How does that happen?” I asked.
“I overloaded the data card on my—”
I cut him off. “You forgot to plug it in.”
He nodded. “Yep.”
I realized it wasn’t his fault. I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. “Shit’s hitting the fan,” I said. “Sylvia called. She sounded weird, like she was forced to talk. She said she took Grandpa lunch. Wanted me to meet her there.”
“What’s wrong with that?” he asked.
“She’s never done that before, and she didn’t mention she was with Marcus.” I told Skeeter what Danny said about Marcus.
He looked skeptical. “You believe Danny’s telling the truth?”
“I believe he’s scared shitless of Marcus Lopez.”
“He could be the next governor.” Skeeter’s voice sounded hard and angry.
I grabbed my weapons, and we hopped into his pickup. It was better to keep moving. Skeeter showed me the GPS location on his laptop. Sylvia’s Toyota was parked behind Grandpa’s house. If this were a military operation, I could send in a drone to get eyes on the property or link with a satellite image. This was one of the few times I missed being in the Corps with access to every high-tech gizmo known to man at my fingertips.
“Now would be a good time to tell me the plan,” Skeeter said. He was driving past the turn to Luckenbach, which would have take
n us to the bar and dance hall. Any other day, that’s where I’d have taken him.
I could feel Skeeter waiting for an answer. I studied his size triple-X features. His good hand was shaking, and his shirt was soaked through with sweat. He didn’t have the training or the skills for what we were about to do, but he was willing and the only help I had. So, I filled him in on my plan.
“You want out, I’ll understand,” I said when I finished.
His eyes stayed fixed on the road. “No. Your grandpa and Sylvia are in danger. Let’s do this.”
“Did you figure out how to load this thing?” I grabbed the shotgun off the back seat.
“It has a seven-shot capacity.” He was reciting from the manual. “The receiver is milled from a solid billet of steel for maximum strength and reliability. The silky-smooth twin action bars prevent binding and make it a very efficient weapon. This workhorse features—”
“Okay.” I smiled. “You did your homework. Just remember to pull the trigger.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Icleared the neighbor’s fence, passed the friendly petting zoo sign, and jogged into the pasture that was adjacent to Grandpa’s driveway. The neighbor had cleared much of the land and left huge piles of brush every twenty or thirty yards. When I lived there, the thicket was home to a flock of wild turkey. The new residents were llamas, donkeys, and a half dozen miniature horses, who all seemed to be waiting for a handout. When I didn’t offer anything, one of the llamas tried to take a bite out of my Wranglers. I hoped there was a friendlier group of animals for the kids.
I covered the hundred yards in under two minutes, the last fifty of it escaping the hungry llama. There was a line of cedar and live oak trees along the fence that blocked my view of Grandpa’s ranch house. I checked my watch. Three o’clock. Sylvia’s call had come at two. I was still an hour ahead of schedule. If Marcus believed me about being in town, I had the element of surprise. I found the barbed-wire fence that marked Grandpa’s property line.
The fence was older than I was, but the wire was still as tight as a guitar’s strings. Too tight to crawl through. I gingerly climbed the wires and jumped down on the other side. A stick snapped when I landed. I stopped dead still to listen. The house was still fifty yards away, but I wasn’t taking any chances on being seen or heard. When I detected no sound or movement, I inched forward. Thirty yards closer, the brush thinned out. I had to finish the approach on my hands and knees. Leave it to Grandpa to keep the area around the house clear. He was worried about fires these days and not Comanches, but the effect was the same. Neither one could get near the house without being seen.
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