by Jon Land
Caitlin started to slide away from the table, trembling inside her jacket and conscious of the stares upon her from all over the restaurant.
“I’ll go call your secretary for that appointment. Have a nice lunch now.”
69
HOUSTON, THE PRESENT
Caitlin waited for her flight to be called at Houston’s Hobby Airport, unable to get the accusation lodged against her father and grandfather by Harmon Delladonne out of her head. As sinister and deceitful as he might have been, Delladonne did not strike her as someone who would make something like that up. Concoct the circumstances and scenario, perhaps, but his tone indicated to Caitlin that the source for his outlandish claim had its origins somewhere else.
Not that both Jim and Earl Ray Strong were without fault either. They, and hundreds more like them, had grown out of a Texas Ranger tradition born of Indian fighting and border clashes where the level of brutality had often made it hard to distinguish one moral code from another. In retrospect those Rangers, reared on a frontier ethos and sensibility, faced criticism for taking their mandates too far.
Official recognition was long in coming to the Texas Rangers and even that came at the expense of the militia mentality that had made them what they were. Many clung to the old ways until, as in the case of Jim Strong, it ate them up alive, or, like Caitlin, brushed them aside. She’d left something terribly unfinished that day in El Paso when she’d thrown her career away to challenge Cort Wesley Masters to draw.
She’d grown up with all the Ranger legends about hard men living off the land. In those days the Rangers weren’t even an officially recognized body, more like minutemen, as they were called upon their inception in 1835 to repel Indian attacks on the frontier. With not only Indians to contend with in the north, but also Mexican incursions to deal with in the south, the mandate of the original Rangers quickly expanded.
The founding of the legendary Jack Hayes’s company took place in San Antonio. Not coincidentally, the Strong family had resided there ever since, generation after generation attaching themselves to that city’s company of Rangers all the way to her. Her granddad’s Colt Peacemaker, dating back to 1873, was one of the first weapons Caitlin ever fired as a little girl. Recalling that day and so many others, it was impossible for her to picture her father and grandfather as anything but the last of the true heroes. Their taking money from drug runners to look the other way from shipments of black tar heroin being smuggled into the country made no sense any way she ran it through her mind.
Up against powerful forces she could not fathom or identify, Caitlin wished they were here alongside her right now to accompany her to Bahrain. Sitting in the departure area, she let her thoughts turn back to Cort Wesley’s sons, the feeling of warmth that filled her when the younger Luke rested his head against her shoulder. She wished she had someone to share the pangs of emotion even the memories stoked in her, for some reason wanted to believe that the boy’s stoic defensiveness, a shield more than anything, described his father as well. She wanted to believe that because it would help her explain Cort Wesley Masters in her own mind as well as help her justify not only the alliance they had formed but also the feelings she was beginning to harbor.
She enjoyed his company, looked forward to it even. Her granddad had told her tales of sometime allegiances forged between Rangers and outlaws in old Texas to beat back the common enemies of Indians and Mexicans. So was their relationship different or would the end of the battle they were waging now leave them foes again?
Caitlin admitted to herself that she much preferred the former. Rising from the floor after Luke had trounced her at the Texas Ranger video game, she had spotted Dylan standing atop his skateboard, the extra inches leaving him almost eye-to-eye with his father. Cort Wesley had reached out and laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Caitlin considered how many men had perished from that hand and contrasted that against the warmth of the gesture. She couldn’t see Cort Wesley’s face but she knew it had been hard for him to do, just as entering his sons’ lives had been. It made her see him in an entirely different light, held in an esteem she reserved, frankly, for very few. Watching the man overcome himself and his own nature. It left her to wonder if this was even the same man she’d dared to draw on five years ago in El Paso.
Maybe Cort Wesley Masters was the Samuel Colt circa 1873 pistol that had eluded her long before this. The very thing she needed to change the odds of her future, however strange that seemed. And complicating it even more was the return of Peter into her life. Sort of anyway, since it wasn’t the Peter she knew or remembered and likely never would be again.
So where did that leave her?
With the men who had done this to him, violated his humanity in unspeakable ways. Men who deserved to pay. Men she’d make pay. She’d interrupted Harmon Delladonne’s lunch as much to stoke his fires and prod a reaction from him, as to satisfy her own desires. Confront the enemy head-on, show him she had no intention of backing down.
Just like her granddad.
Just like Jim Strong.
Caitlin’s cell phone rang.
70
SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT
“Guess you haven’t left yet,” Cort Wesley said when she answered.
“Flight’s been delayed a bit.”
“You got my sympathies.” He cleared his throat, started speaking, then cleared it again. “Look, I never really thanked you getting my boys taken care the way you did, that house and all.”
“You’ve got Captain Tepper to thank for that.”
“Wasn’t him told my younger one the truth.”
“I think he already knew mostly.”
“Yeah, the older one too. I’ll tell ya, Caitlin Strong, I live a hundred years I’ll never do nothing tougher than that.”
“I was thinking about that, made me want to ask you a question.”
“Shoot.”
“ ’Fore you went inside The Walls, you never got it in your mind to do what you did soon as you got out? Watching them from your car, I mean. Maybe someday knocking on the door and reintroducing yourself to Maura Torres.”
“I came out a different man than I went in. Too much time to think, you know what I mean.”
“Anything in particular?”
“Visitors. Watching these hard-pipe gang members and guys who’d shank you for a stick a gum or do a contract kill for a cigarette going all misty-eyed with their kid sitting in their lap on Sundays. I’m in five years, the only man who came to see me was Pablo Asuna and not too regular neither. If I didn’t have anyone outside, I guess it wouldn’t have bothered me. But the fact is I did and that made me resolve to do something about it if I ever got out.”
“Think you ever would’ve gotten out of that car, if things had stayed status quo?”
“Can’t really answer that now. Thing is I know who and what I am. What scares me a little is I think my boys like me more for that.”
“ ’Cause you make them feel safe, Masters. They know you can beat down the monsters that came into their lives.”
“I don’t want the fear from this to last.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time with victims,” Caitlin told him, “and I can tell you the process takes its own time. Never the same twice.”
Cort Wesley felt his breath quicken. “The men we’re after were the ones put me away, killed Maura and would’ve done God knows what to my boys if you hadn’t been there.”
“All true enough.”
“Same men who killed a bunch of people who’d been through plenty already to get to your husband.”
She didn’t respond this time.
“God’ll forgive anything we gotta do to make this right, Caitlin Strong.”
“You really care whether He does or not?”
“Just nice to have Him on my side for a change.”
Cort Wesley could hear her flight being called in the background and was glad to say his good-byes. Glad because he was starting to feel uncomfortable having told Ca
itlin Strong things he had no one else to tell. He had come from a line of loners who chose to be around people only when it suited them or their needs. He could not recall, for example, a single time his father had hugged him, nor did he feel slighted by the lack of such a memory. The question of when his father had even last touched him crossed his mind in the moment he laid his hand on Dylan’s shoulder and left it there instead of pulling it quickly away.
Cort Wesley found himself wanting to take both his boys shooting and hunting, the things he felt capable of making them better at. But none of that could happen with powerful enemies determined to waylay his plans and intentions. So he didn’t seek to modify or refine his nature, because that very nature was the only thing that stood between his sons and the terrible fate others would bring upon them. Him alone. Well, not quite, he thought.
Because there was also Caitlin Strong. First person he’d ever known, man or woman, that good with a gun and not hesitant to use it. Truth be told, the people she’d killed in her time weren’t that dissimilar from the ones he had. He guessed that was why she didn’t waste time judging him anymore. They were the same, and both of them knew it.
The very same enemy had brought them together for the expressed purpose of vanquishing that enemy from their lives. And there was no way to accomplish this if they weren’t willing to hit back as hard as they’d been hit. Cort Wesley knew he had the stomach for it and was pretty certain Caitlin Strong did as well.
What worried him was how that would leave her in the end, if it left her standing at all. Cort Wesley wasn’t used to worrying about anybody and in the space of a mere week, he’d found himself with three lives wedged permanently into the core of his consciousness. When this was over, Caitlin Strong might find a deep dark place in herself she loathed and blame him for showing her the way to it. When this was over, without need of the protection he offered, his boys might tire quickly of his tense spectral presence in their lives. And, current feelings aside, he was scared of what the shape of his life would look like after this was done.
Being tough wasn’t about not feeling fear, it was about knowing how to make that fear work to your advantage. Cort Wesley could do that when threatened by adversaries or when walking into odds regular men would have run away from. But this was a different kind of fear because there were no particular weapons or skills he could bring to beat it back.
Life in The Walls had taught him a lot about life, both good and bad. The things he needed to do to make it better without trying to effect the kind of change that would never happen. Because people never changed, not really, at least not at the core of their natures. Behavior, though, was something else again. It was a matter of changing focus and priorities, to make choices based on those changes.
His boys, for starters. And Caitlin Strong.
Caitlin Strong.
He liked saying her name in his head. Inside The Walls, lots of cons got by staring at pictures of their women taped to the concrete slab walls. Some of the pictures were dog-eared and faded, shots of wives and girlfriends long gone, only their memories and now crinkled faces left to cling to. Cort Wesley remembered any number of conversations with sad men who wanted nothing more than to discuss the people they’d loved and left on the outside. The sadness kept them going, clinging to the hope that some day it would be over.
Cort Wesley had never understood what they’d been getting at until now.
71
SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT
Guillermo Paz sucked in his breath before once again climbing the stone steps into San Fernando Cathedral on West Main Plaza in San Antonio. The double doors rattled closed behind him and he heard his footsteps echoing on the tile floor as he angled toward the confessional.
The interior of the church looked entirely different than it had just a few days earlier. And it smelled cleaner, less musty, as if the world were changing before him, things happening beyond his control.
Paz squeezed into the same confessional he’d used the last time and felt the wood creak as he sat down on the bench, door left open a crack to give his legs room to breathe.
“I’m back, Father.”
“Oh, Lord,” a familiar voice muttered. Through the screen, Paz could see the priest cross himself, seeming to cringe.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Not a lot lately, though. I’ve been conflicted, trying to figure a lot of things out. Do you believe in fate, Father?”
“Some would say it’s another word for God’s will, my son.”
“You agree?”
The priest seemed reluctant to commit himself. “I believe a man’s fate is his to do with what he pleases.”
“See, that’s exactly what I was hoping you’d say.”
“My son, have you heeded my advice from our last visit?”
“I haven’t killed a single person since.”
“I’m pleased for you then, making inroads to escape the handicaps of your nature and rearing. Those are difficult challenges to overcome, my son.”
“I feel like I’m changing, Padre, like that change is being forced upon me.”
“How so?” the priest asked, clearly more relaxed.
“The people who called me here want me to go home. Before my job is finished.”
“And this bothers you?”
“Like I told you last time, I feel I’ve failed.”
“Them or yourself, my son?”
“Boy, Padre, you’re really hitting the nail on the head today.”
“Have you searched for the reason behind that failure?”
“I don’t think you want to hear about that.”
“I’m talking about searching your soul, my son. Failure, like anything else, happens for a reason. And, like everything else, it’s God’s will. The challenge for us who serve Him, you and I, is to discern what that reason is.”
“Give me an example.”
“You told me about a woman.”
“The Texas Ranger.”
“There must be a reason why she came into your life now.”
“Lesson to be learned or something like that, right?”
“Or something deeper and more permanent. You said she made you feel strange because she was different. I’m wondering if the reason you noticed is because you’re the one who’s different.”
“That’s deep,” Paz said, shifting his bulk in a futile search for comfort in the cramped confines of the confessional. “I think it comes down to sides. I always knew which one I was on before. Now I’m not so sure. That makes me feel even stranger.”
“You came to me seeking to change, my son. But the fact is you’ve already changed and what you’ve really come to me for is to help you understand what you’re going through.”
“But I’m not proud of anything, Padre. Difference is I find myself wanting to be. Kierkegaard also said that meaning comes from desiring that which is beyond reason. I never understood that line, and now I see it’s because I never experienced it. I should just get on a plane with my men and find another country to call home. Bank my money and forget this ever happened. But I can’t, not until I finish what I’ve got to finish with this woman. See what I’m getting at here?”
“You’ve found meaning in the belief that your fates may be intertwined.”
“Does that happen?”
“All the time. We’re seldom fortunate to realize it, though.”
“They’ll just bring in someone else to finish the job I couldn’t. Probably have the whole thing in the works already. So me leaving changes nothing in the great big scheme of things.”
“You must consider yourself and your own needs first,” the priest said.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing, Padre. The problem is what that means for the woman as well as me, our souls being entwined and all like you said, if I’m gonna find that meaning Kierkegaard talks about I’ve been missing up to this point. Can you tell me what I should do?”
“That is for you to decide, my son.”
&nbs
p; “How ’bout a hint?”
The priest thought for a moment. “When you leave this country, do you wish it to be as the same man you were when you arrived?”
“No,” Paz told him definitively.
“Then you have your answer.”
“I do?”
“Your work is not yet done here.”
Paz started to shimmy himself from the booth. “You know something, Father? I think you’re right.”
72
CHIHUAHUA, THE PRESENT
Emiliato Valdez Garza sat behind the desk overlooking his spacious grounds, being patrolled at the time by men armed with assault rifles and holding leashed pit bull terriers. He had spread a number of pictures before him, all of the same man, his subordinates standing at the foot of his desk, knowing enough to leave him in silence.
“What was his name again?” Garza asked, smoothing his hair back.
“Cort Wesley Masters,” one of his subordinates answered.
“And these things you’ve told me about him, you’re certain they’re true?”
“Most of them, if not all. He has killed a lot of our men.”
“Scum for the most part who probably deserved it. This man, he is not scum at all.”
The subordinates remained quiet.
“He looks Mexican to me. You think he might have Mexican blood?”
The men standing before Garza’s desk looked at one another, shrugging.
“There was a time when men like this dominated Mexico. True warriors. If this man were standing before me now, we wouldn’t be facing the issues we’re facing. This is a man much can be expected from, little of it good from our point of view. Are we certain he was the one watching from the hills?”