Strong at the Break

by Jon Land

  “Here,” Cort Wesley said suddenly, crouching on the floor just short of the bed. “What’s this look like to you?”

  Caitlin knelt alongside him, studying a scratchy figure in the wood. From a standing position, it appeared to be a simple scuff or sign of wear. Closer up, though, it had the look of something haphazardly cut into the surface. Caitlin could fit her thumbnail in with plenty of room to spare, meaning whatever had made it was substantially thicker and sharper.

  “Could be a ‘D,’” she noted.

  “Never mind could be. It’s a ‘D’ all right. Carved with a belt buckle.”

  The two of them picturing Dylan working the floor with his buckle, smart enough to get rid of the wood shards and shavings in the process and leave the letter small enough so it wouldn’t stand out to anyone not looking for something like it.

  “Kid’s always thinking,” Cort Wesley said, as much to himself as Caitlin. “That’s what always seems to get him in trouble.”

  Caitlin continued tracing the letter’s outline. “Not this time. How long you figure it took him to do this?”

  “Not much more than a couple minutes.”

  She shook her head, finally rising. “Still doesn’t make any sense I can see.”

  “Unless they figured out who he was.”

  “So what, even if they did? He’s the son of a Texas outlaw, not a Texas Ranger. What the hell would that matter to them?”

  Caitlin had no answer, the whole scenario baffling to her. What you couldn’t see scared you more; what you could see never scared you at all. Or so went Ranger teachings since the days they patrolled the badlands prowling for renegade Indians or Mexican invaders.

  “You think your friend Sandoval might know something else that can help us?”

  “If he did, we’d already know it.”

  Cort Wesley’s eyes narrowed, the color flushing from his face. “You trust him?”

  “Dylan was long gone by the time we met this morning,” Caitlin replied, getting his meaning.

  Cort Wesley began pacing the room, the way both he and Dylan always did when their nerves got the better of them. “I’m at wits’ end here, Caitlin.”

  “My dad once ran lead on a kidnapping of a young boy out of Kilgore. All the evidence pointed to an ex-con who did a ten-year stretch in Huntsville for having his way with one about the same age. Locals leaked his name to the press and a lynch mob mentality set in. As a matter of fact, neighbors were dragging the guy out of his house when Jim Strong showed up and faced them all down without even drawing his gun.”

  “I imagine there’s somewhere you’re going with this.”

  “Turns out the boy was hiding in the basement of his own house. Pulled off the whole thing just because he wanted to meet a real live Texas Ranger. My dad found him thanks to a trail of potato chip crumbs from a leaky bag the kid grabbed from a kitchen cupboard. Came close to putting the boy over his knee, then just gave him an autograph, took his leave, and that was the end of it.”

  Cort Wesley looked like he was waiting for more, then just shook his head.

  “Something else we might want to focus on here, that’s my point,” Caitlin elaborated for him.

  “Like what?”

  “Why they closed up shop so fast. Gotta figure it’s ’cause they figured out who Dylan was and who’d be coming after him. That’s why the mules called LaChance and he hightailed it down here.”

  Cort Wesley could picture his oldest son sticking in the damn Mexicans’ faces. Telling him who his dad was and what he’d do to them. Maybe throw in something about being best friends with a Texas Ranger as close to a modern-day gunfighter as there was.

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” he asked Caitlin.

  “It should. Could be they blew town ’cause they’re scared. Could be they’re trying to figure a way out of this.”

  “Could be they’re gonna ask for the whole Texas treasury to let the boy go.”

  “Either way, it means he’s alive and is gonna stay that way, Cort Wesley.”

  He shrugged, weighed her thinking, and conceded the logic of it. “I can’t leave Mexico without him, Ranger.”

  Caitlin nodded grudgingly. “I know.”

  “I don’t want you hanging around. I want you back in Texas checking on how a Hells Angel like LaChance figures into this.”

  Caitlin looked Cort Wesley in the eye, saw uncertainty and hope fighting for control. “Maybe give me a chance to wipe out the whole family line.”

  “A service to humanity, Ranger. Kind of like what I did in Juárez.”

  Caitlin let his comment hang in the air between them. “You can’t work this alone, Cort Wesley.”

  “You got an alternative to suggest?”

  “I just might,” she told him.

  32

  MEXICO; THE PRESENT

  Dylan felt the van rattle over the rut-strewn road, tires hammered by its worn-out shocks. His jaw ached from the jarring thumps and bumps, and the sack smelling of old vegetables the big bald guy with the tattoo on his skull had tucked over his head scratched at his skin, leaving it hot and itchy.

  The big bald guy had studied his learner’s permit, looking at him as if trying to match his face to a nonexistent picture.

  “Your daddy’s Cort Wesley Masters.”

  “And if you let me go now, he might not kill you.”

  “He and this Texas Ranger he’s been fucking.”

  Dylan bristled at how he said that, the way his eyes gleamed. “She’d kill you for just putting it like that.”

  Strange how it wasn’t hard for Dylan to summon the bravado needed to talk that way. It came easy, natural, even with the heavy hammering of his heart against his chest through the bone dryness that had consumed his mouth. He’d kept his cool for the duration, save for the moments when the fake cops came for him in his father’s truck and he fought back feebly like a girl. He hated the feeling of being overpowered, of having hands that smelled like ass all over him, smudging his skin as they yanked him out into the night. Dylan thought he was going through the window, but then they got the door open and, next thing he knew, he was on the pavement with a boot pressed down against the back of his neck.

  He thought of his own boots in that moment, the ones Caitlin had given him splayed sideways in the backseat, being left behind in the truck. Knew he’d never see them again, which made him feel too young, too sad, and very scared.

  The fake cops had stood him up and one kicked him in the balls for good measure, laughing when Dylan doubled over and dropped back to the ground clutching himself. His balls still ached even now, seemed swollen the way they were pressing up against the crotch of his jeans. He hated the way he smelled and his hair felt like a dust mop atop his head.

  I’m sorry I lost the boots, Caitlin.…

  He’d say that after she came and rescued him, her and his dad. He’d been stupid to run away and even more stupid to let himself get taken this way. So Dylan resolved to act smarter. Think himself a way out of this instead of letting his brain seize up and surrender to panic. Use the anger, his dad would tell him, focus it.

  But that wouldn’t help him now. His hands were bound behind him with those plastic cop cuffs that squeezed his wrists so tight they hurt. His legs were free, only with no hands to use or eyes to guide him, they weren’t about to do him much good.

  Dylan had the sense they were headed north, all the thumping and bumping telling him they were avoiding the main thoroughfares and using back roads instead. He kept his focus peeled forward on the front of the van, listening to the voices for any clue they might yield. He was certain there were only two people up there. He could identify one of them, a fat shapeless mess of a man, by his voice, and had the other pinned down to one of three others. He hoped it was the man with the limp since, if he did manage to get free, fleeing a lard ass and a gimp made for good prospects indeed.

  The problem was the bald guy with the tattoo of an arrow on his scalp. His eyes were like
black marbles stuck in his head, full of purpose and loathing. They never seemed to blink when he was staring at Dylan, sapping more and more energy from the boy with each second his stare lingered. He glared at Dylan from the doorway of the stinking room his kidnappers had stuck him in, Dylan somehow retaining the presence of mind to cover the “D” he’d carved in the floor once the door rattled open.

  It was still hours later before the other men came to fetch him. One of them gave him back his sneakers while another stood in the doorway looking at him differently than they had before.

  “We go now,” the fat, shapeless mass of man said, while the one with a limp made sure Dylan could see a knife the size of a tire iron sheathed to his belt.

  Dylan laced his sneakers. As soon as he was finished, Fatty fastened the plastic cuffs on him and, with the gimp, led him through the putrid building down a set of creaky stairs that smelled of wood rot. Dylan couldn’t say how long ago that was exactly, a bunch of hours anyway. He couldn’t say how he knew but he was pretty certain the bald guy wasn’t far away either. Maybe following in his own car.

  Or maybe it was just his imagination, spurred by the ache in his balls and stomach soured by the stench of the sack roasting his face and sticking to his skin from the sweat.

  Dylan focused on what he’d do when they finally stopped, seeing it in his head so when it came for real the motions would feel practiced, rehearsed. He imagined he had his dad’s Glock or Caitlin’s SIG, blasting away at the assholes and punching red holes in them.

  In the end, though, the fantasy retreated and he was just a kid in a foreign country without a gun, a knife, or a video game bonus round tied up in the back of a van. Suddenly the fat guy and the one with the limp seemed as big and bad as they really were, and Dylan Torres, son of the most feared man in Texas, was a scared kid who just wanted to be home.

  He felt himself sobbing and tried to stop. But the tears came anyway, seeming to tighten the sack’s hold on his skin as the van bottomed out and bounced back up again.

  33

  SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, MEXICO; THE PRESENT

  Cort Wesley watched Guillermo Paz step out onto the rooftop terrace of El Rincón de San Francisco restaurant, the eyes of the few diners willing to brave the heat for the beautiful view listing toward his massive frame. Paz’s boots clacked atop the smooth tile floor, his bulk big enough to block out the nearby San Francisco church’s cupola and bell towers from this angle until he reached the table.

  “I’m glad to see you again, outlaw,” Paz greeted, extending his hand.

  “You mind not calling me that, Colonel?” Cort Wesley said, taking it and feeling his own hand swallowed up in the grasp.

  “Perhaps you’d prefer your former military rank.”

  Cort Wesley continued to match Paz’s firm grasp, not about to break it until he did. “Don’t recall us ever discussing that subject.”

  A smile flirted with Paz’s lips, as he eased his hand back. “We didn’t have to.”

  “The unit I was a part of wasn’t big on rank.”

  “Mine in Venezuela either. But someone has to be in charge.”

  “Lieutenant’s close enough, then.”

  The two men remained standing, facing each other from across the table set off to the rear of the terrace against a waist-high retaining wall the same mauve stucco as the building’s exterior. The architecture matched that of the nearby church from which the restaurant took its name.

  “You’ve heard what I’m doing down here,” said Paz.

  Cort Wesley nodded. “Something about an army.”

  “And from what the Ranger told me, Lieutenant, you might well need one.”

  * * *

  Paz had called Caitlin back immediately on a number routed through a satellite-processed dummy exchange.

  “I knew you were down here, Ranger.”

  “How’s that exactly, Colonel?”

  “Wish I could tell you. Sometimes I just get a sense of things, especially when it pertains to you, usually in my dreams.”

  “This doesn’t pertain to me exactly.”

  “Who then?”

  “Cort Wesley Masters. His son’s been kidnapped,” Caitlin said and proceeded to explain the rest.

  Silence filled the line for several moments after she’d finished, not even Paz’s breathing loud enough to break it.

  “This is just the beginning, you know.”

  “Of what?”

  “Another battle that will see us fighting side by side.”

  “Is it true what I heard, Colonel?”

  “What did you hear?”

  “That you’re raising an army down here.”

  “I’ve been raising armies my whole life, Ranger.”

  “I heard about this one from a federalé commander who seemed more than a little terrified about the prospects. Then I asked a very powerful man named Sandoval to confirm it for me.”

  “And what did he tell you?”

  “Nothing, but that was enough.”

  “Enough to what?”

  “Back to Cort Wesley Masters’s son, Colonel.”

  “You wouldn’t be calling me if it were just a kidnapping. You’d have the boy back safe now and already headed home.”

  “He was taken by a sex slave ring somehow connected to a Hells Angels chapter operating out of Quebec. The place Sandoval sent me to retrieve him had been cleared out and fast, Dylan included.”

  “Dylan being the outlaw’s son, the one whose mother I killed in my former incarnation.”

  “All true, Colonel.”

  “You don’t believe this kidnapping was random, do you?”

  “I believe it stopped being random when the kidnappers realized who they’d grabbed. That changed their plans.”

  “So you need to find out how. And why.”

  “Right now all we need is the boy back. That’s where you come in, Colonel.”

  * * *

  “I changed my mind,” Cort Wesley was saying, after he and Guillermo Paz had finally sat down. “I like outlaw better.”

  “I can’t help you find your son…”

  Cort Wesley started to rise.

  “But I can help you get him back.”

  Cort Wesley sat back down. Paz was wearing civilian clothes that fit him snugly, as everything else did. Sweat shined through the torso and glowed off his face like the oil that matted his long black hair into braided ringlets swimming all the way to his shoulders.

  “By finding the men who took him instead,” Paz finished.

  “What do you need from me, Colonel?”

  “Forgiveness.”

  Cort Wesley stared at him instead of responding.

  “For taking the life of this boy’s mother,” Paz continued.

  “Forgiveness isn’t mine to give.”

  Paz leaned forward across the table, his chair creaking from the strain. “I’ve already made my peace with God for what I did, but not with you. I never said I was sorry. But I don’t expect you to accept my apology.”

  “Then why bother giving it?”

  Paz’s eyes held Cort Wesley’s and wouldn’t let go. “The Ranger told me about the drug dealer you killed in Juárez.”

  “There a place for that in this conversation, Colonel?”

  “Only because you’re sorry about that now, just as I’m sorry for what I did then. Regret is not healthy, outlaw, but it’s human.”

  “Wish I had it to do all over again, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Wouldn’t matter,” Paz told him. “You’d do the same thing, just as I would. We can’t change who we are, our very natures, from moment to moment. We can only learn from our actions, our mistakes, and move on.”

  “Well, I might be moving on right to a Mexican jail.”

  Paz shook his head. “Something else in our natures, outlaw: we survive.”

  “For now anyway,” Cort Wesley told him.

  34

  SAN ANTONIO; THE PRESENT

  Captain Tepper was wai
ting in his office when Caitlin arrived just after dark. He sat drumming his fingers on the desk blotter. Caitlin noticed the tips were stained brown and an ashtray layered with ash and cigarette butts sat just off the blotter.

  “Maybe it’s time to quit again, D.W.,” she said, drawing Tepper’s gaze to her.

  “More likely time to move on to bourbon, Ranger, the hell you’re causing me.”

  “This about Cort Wesley?”

  “I got the whole state of Texas crawling up my ass about why we haven’t brought him in yet.”

  Caitlin had left Cort Wesley her SUV and taken a flight back to San Antonio that routed her from Ponciano Arriaga International Airport in San Luis Potosí through Mexico City on AeroMéxico Connect. She slept fitfully for the brief duration of both flights and landed early evening in Texas, still trying to figure out how a drug ring operating on the U.S.-Canadian border was connected to a child slavery ring operating in Mexico.

  “What’d you tell them?” Caitlin asked Tepper.

  “That we were working on it.”

  “True enough.” Caitlin took the chair angled in front of Tepper’s desk, hating the stale smell of Marlboros that hung in the air. “Why do the Mexican authorities care so much about a single dead drug dealer all of a sudden?”

  “Remember I told you the extradition request was signed by the governor of the province?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Turns out the dead man was his brother-in-law.” Tepper paused to let his statement settle. “They take family serious down there, Caitlin.”

  “So does Cort Wesley, sir. This dealer killed Maria Lopez and her entire family in a car accident while fleeing the police.”

  Tepper seemed unmoved. He leaned forward, dragging more of the smell of stale cigarettes with him. “I cut you a break on this one, Ranger. You cut my legs out from under me in return, we’re all gonna pay the price.”

  “You want me to arrest Masters while his son is still missing?”

  Tepper weighed Caitlin’s words, the furrows that lined his cheeks seeming to deepen in contemplation. “Maybe I should take this away from you before Austin takes it away from me.”

  Caitlin ran her tongue over her upper lip. “I’m betting there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for your four kids, D.W.”