Tyranny

by William W. Johnstone

  “You would have us turn tail and run like cowards?” Roberto’s voice was tight with anger as he asked the question.

  “A man’s first duty is to his family,” G.W. said stubbornly. “You have to keep them safe.”

  “You are like family to all of us, señor, and you know it.”

  “I appreciate that, but I’m not gonna budge from this.”

  Roberto folded his arms across his chest and glared back at G. W. as he said, “Neither are we. It appears that we have . . .”

  Don’t say it, thought Kyle.

  “A Mexican standoff,” Roberto finished.

  The tense tableau on the porch lasted about five more seconds before both G.W. and his foreman exploded in laughter. G. W. slapped Roberto on the back.

  “All right,” he said. “I know when I’m beat. But how about this? You’ll send your wives and kids to stay with relatives for a while?”

  Roberto nodded and said, “That we can do, señor. Our wives are stubborn and will argue, too, but in the end they will do what we say.” He added under his breath, “I hope.”

  Ernie Rodriguez showed up at the ranch house late that afternoon, driving one of the Sierra Lobo Police Department’s SUVs.

  G.W. and Kyle went out onto the porch to greet the stocky police chief. Ernie had a look of concern on his face as he shook hands with G. W. and then turned to Kyle.

  “I hear you had some trouble out here this morning,” he said.

  “Word of that really got around, didn’t it? With all due respect, chief, if you’ve come to arrest me, you don’t have any jurisdiction out here. That ends at the city limits, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, out here in the county it’s the sheriff ’s job to handle criminal offenses. But I hear things, you know. Sheriff Jacobs and I have a good relationship, and he knows that I’m an old friend of your family. He called to ask me about you, Kyle.”

  “What did he want to know?” Kyle asked tensely.

  “If you were really the type of guy who would attack a government agent without provocation.”

  “Damn it!” Kyle burst out. “Is that what Grayson is claiming? Because it’s not true. He started the whole thing.”

  “That would be more believable if you didn’t have a record as long as my arm.”

  “Now hold on,” G.W. said. “Kyle’s never been in any really bad trouble with the law.”

  “His record says he’s quick to throw a punch, though. Shoot, we saw that the other day when he mixed it up with Vern Hummel. I had you in my jail, Kyle, and now it looks like you’ll be seeing the inside of the county lockup.”

  “Grayson really filed a complaint against me?” Kyle asked. “He’s pressing charges?”

  Ernie shrugged and said, “That’s what it sounds like to me.”

  Kyle was surprised. He had thought that Slade Grayson’s pride wouldn’t let him do such a thing. He’d believed that Grayson would want to settle the score personally.

  Maybe, though, this was just one more way for him to harass the Brannock family and pressure them into giving up the fight against the BLM.

  “What’d you tell Bill Jacobs?” G. W. asked Ernie.

  “The truth. That I think Kyle is a good kid who’s gotten into a lot of scrapes through no fault—or very little fault—of his own. But if this man Grayson insists on pressing charges . . .” Ernie shrugged. “There won’t be much the sheriff can do except arrest you and let the system take over, Kyle.”

  “Fine,” Kyle said bitterly. “I’ve got a lawyer. We’ll fight this in court if we have to.”

  “All right. I’m going to head back to town. I don’t want Sheriff Jacobs thinking I went behind his back . . . even though that’s exactly what I just did.”

  The chief shook hands with them again and then left. Kyle sighed and said, “I guess I’d better call Miranda and tell her to get ready to arrange bail for me.”

  Despite everything, his heart jumped a little at the prospect of talking to her—and seeing her—again.

  Chapter 32

  It was another half hour before three cars from the sheriff’s department arrived at the ranch house. As Kyle and G. W. stood on the porch and watched them pull up, Kyle commented dryly, “It looks like they thought I might put up a fight when they try to arrest me.”

  “I didn’t vote for Bill Jacobs,” G. W. said, “but he’s been a decent sheriff so far. He’s just bein’ careful.”

  The men who got out of the cars wore bulletproof vests over their short-sleeved gray uniform shirts. They all had their hands on the butts of their service weapons except for one man who approached the porch and said, “Kyle Brannock?”

  “That’s me, sheriff,” Kyle said. He stood still, hands half-raised and in plain sight. He had tried to convince G. W. to go back in the house, out of the line of fire, before the sheriff and his men arrived, but as usual G. W. had been stubborn.

  “Hello, Bill,” G. W. drawled. “You boys look like you’re armed for bear.”

  Jacobs, a horse-faced man with several strands of black hair combed over a mostly bald scalp, grunted and said, “Can’t take chances with anybody who’d attack a federal agent.”

  “See, the thing is, I didn’t do that,” Kyle said. “Grayson’s the one who jumped me.”

  “Not my job to figure that out,” Jacobs snapped. “Grayson’s filed assault charges against you, so you’re under arrest.”

  Kyle smiled faintly and said, “I surrender.” He’d already talked more than Miranda told him to, so he guessed he’d better shut up.

  “Come down here and turn around,” Jacobs ordered.

  Kyle went down the steps slowly and carefully, not giving the sheriff or any of the deputies any excuse to overreact and possibly get trigger-happy. He didn’t think Slade Grayson had set him up to be killed, using the officers to carry out the execution. It was unlikely that Jacobs would go along with such a thing. But there was no point in being reckless.

  That thought made a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. Over the past few years, he’d made a habit of being reckless. Maybe getting caught up in his grandfather’s problems was changing him. Maybe he was growing up a little.

  He wasn’t going to hold his breath waiting for that to happen, though.

  At Jacobs’s command, he turned around so his back was to the sheriff. Jacobs moved in behind him and fastened plastic restraints around his wrists. Then he took hold of Kyle’s upper arm and hauled him around.

  “I’ll follow you into town,” G.W. called from the porch.

  Jacobs shoved Kyle toward the closest car. One of the deputies opened a back door. None too gently, they deposited him in the backseat. Once the door was closed behind him, it was only a matter of moments before all the deputies were back in their cars and the convoy was headed toward the county seat, fifteen miles east of Sierra Lobo.

  They went into the building that housed the sheriff ’s department and jail from the rear parking lot, which was surrounded by a high chain-link fence. Kyle had been booked into plenty of jails, so he knew the drill. He cooperated in silence as he was searched, photographed, and fingerprinted. Knowing he was going to be arrested, he didn’t have anything in his pockets, so all they had to take away from him were his belt and his boots.

  Nobody offered him a phone call, and he didn’t ask for one. Who was he going to call? G.W.? Miranda? They already knew he was here. In fact, they were probably here by now, too, somewhere out front working to get him released on bail.

  The sheriff had disappeared, leaving it to his deputies to get Kyle behind bars. Two of them took the restraints off his wrists and led him down a corridor painted that universal shade of ugly institutional green. He figured they would put him in a holding cell, but instead as they went around a corner, they steered him toward a large area surrounded by iron bars.

  They were putting him in the tank, where several other men were already sitting on one of the benches against the wall.

  “Wait a minute,” Kyle started to s
ay as one of the deputies unlocked the barred door. “I don’t think you’re supposed to—”

  “Shut up, Brannock,” the deputy said. “You’ll go where we put you.”

  The other deputy gave Kyle a shove that sent him stumbling through the open door. It clanged shut behind him as he caught his balance.

  Kyle tried again, saying, “My lawyer’s already here—”

  “Well, good for her. Is she just your lawyer, or is she your girlfriend, too?”

  Kyle didn’t answer that. For one thing, he didn’t know the answer. He hadn’t known Miranda long enough to consider her anything except an acquaintance, but he had started to hope she might be more than that, even though, as G. W. had pointed out, they weren’t really suited for each other.

  The deputies turned and walked away, leaving Kyle in the big cell. He turned to look at the other three men in there with him. When the deputies had put him in here, they had been sitting slumped forward with their heads down, but now their heads were raised and Kyle got a good look at their grinning faces.

  He recognized one of them. It still had some fading bruises on it . . . bruises Kyle had put there.

  He was locked in here with the brutish Vern Hummel, along with two other men who worked with Hummel on the county roads, if their uniform shirts could be believed. One man was Hispanic, with a drooping mustache, and he was even bigger and burlier than Hummel. The third man was short and stocky, seemingly almost as wide as he was tall, but he wasn’t fat. His bulk appeared to be mostly muscle. Dark, wiry hair was so thick on his exposed forearms that he looked like an ape.

  All of them continued to grin as they stood up and started slowly toward Kyle.

  “This is gonna be fun,” Hummel said.

  Chapter 33

  Instinctively, Kyle started to back away from the three men, but he stopped himself as he realized that he didn’t want them to trap him against the bars. If they jumped him, he would need some room to move around.

  “Take it easy, Vern,” he said. “I’m not looking for trouble with you guys. I’ve got enough already, what with being thrown in here for something I didn’t do.”

  Hummel sneered and said, “I don’t know why you’re in here and I don’t care. I just know I’ve got a score to settle with you, and I’m gonna enjoy it.”

  The Hispanic guy laughed and said in a voice that sounded like ten miles of gravel road, “This is the hombre who beat you up, Vern? This scrawny little gringo?”

  “Well . . . he’s wirier than he looks,” Hummel said defensively.

  That made both of the other men laugh. Hummel’s face darkened with anger.

  Yeah, keep it up, fellas, thought Kyle. Make him madder than he already is.

  “Three against one isn’t exactly fair,” Kyle pointed out. “Especially when the one is a scrawny little guy.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t give a damn about fair,” Hummel said. “All I want to do is bring the pain.”

  They had spread out as they approached, Hummel in the middle, the Hispanic guy to his left, the gorilla to his right. Suddenly, Hummel lunged toward Kyle and looped a punch at his head.

  Kyle darted aside, grabbed Hummel’s arm, and used the man’s own momentum against him to heave him into the bars. Hummel’s face crunched against the iron.

  Avoiding Hummel’s rush brought Kyle within reach of the Hispanic guy, though, and the man’s massive fist smashed into the side of his head. Kyle was moving away as much as he could, which made the blow glance off to a certain extent; otherwise, it might have knocked him out. As it was, the punch made him reel against the bars.

  Since he was there already, he figured he might as well put them to use. He grabbed the bars, leaped up, and snapped out both legs in a double kick that landed on the Hispanic guy’s chest. The man flew backwards toward the benches.

  The gorilla swarmed over Kyle as his feet dropped to the floor. He got his long arms around Kyle and rammed him against the bars. Kyle exclaimed in pain and tried to pry the man’s arms loose. It was like trying to budge a couple of tree trunks.

  The man was several inches shorter than Kyle, so headbutting him wasn’t easy. Kyle tried anyway, hunching his shoulders forward and driving his forehead against the top of the man’s skull.

  He knew right away that was a mistake. He might as well have butted a brick wall.

  The man tightened his arms. Kyle’s ribs groaned under the pressure. Desperately, he lifted a knee into his opponent’s belly, ramming it home as hard as he could.

  Still no effect.

  Kyle lifted his right leg and reached behind him with it. He got his foot against the bars and shoved with all his strength. That made the gorilla reel backwards across the cell. He lost his balance and fell with Kyle landing on top of him.

  Even that wouldn’t have done any good if the man’s head hadn’t clipped one of the benches on the way down. His piggish eyes glazed over and his grip loosened. Kyle writhed an arm loose, planted his outspread hand over the guy’s face, and slammed the back of his head against the concrete floor. The man’s arms fell away from Kyle, allowing him to breathe freely again.

  The respite lasted only a split second. Then, roaring in rage, Hummel grabbed the back of Kyle’s shirt and jerked him upright. The Hispanic guy was waiting. He looped a punch into Kyle’s belly, burying his fist almost to the wrist.

  Kyle would have doubled over from the pain if Hummel hadn’t been holding him up. Hummel shoved him forward, into the other man’s arms. The man grabbed him, spun him around, and got hold of both arms, jerking them back so they were pinned behind Kyle.

  “All right, Vern,” the man panted in Kyle’s ear. “I’ll hang on to him for you.”

  Hummel waded in.

  His big fists battered Kyle again and again, slamming into him from the waist to his shoulders. Even awash in pain, Kyle was thinking straight enough to understand what Hummel was doing. The man wasn’t hitting him in the head because he didn’t want to kill him or even knock him out. No, Hummel wanted his victim to remain conscious so he could inflict as much punishment as possible on him.

  Hummel must have gotten tired after a while. He stepped back with his chest heaving, and the gorillalike man took his place, smashing several punches into Kyle’s torso. Then he asked, “You want a turn, Gutierrez?”

  “Nah, I’m good,” the Hispanic guy said. He let go of Kyle and gave him a shove that sent him sprawling to the floor.

  Kyle could tell that he was on the verge of passing out. A part of him still wanted to fight, though. That primitive, animal-like area of his brain forced him to struggle in an attempt to get to his feet.

  “Look at him,” Gutierrez said with a note of admiration in his voice. “Stubborn bastard won’t just give up and lay there.”

  “Stubborn bastard is right,” Hummel said. He stepped in and swung his leg in a kick that crashed into Kyle’s side. “Stay down, you stupid son of a bitch.”

  Kyle’s fingers scrabbled at the concrete. He tried to push himself to his hands and knees.

  That was when his muscles betrayed him. They all went limp at the same time, and he couldn’t fight off the darkness closing in around him.

  The last thing he was aware of before oblivion claimed him, though, was a sweet sound.

  The sound of Miranda Stephens’s voice.

  Chapter 34

  G. W. was already waiting in the sheriff’s office when Miranda got there. The office door was open and they could see her coming. Both men stood up as she walked in.

  “Don’t bother,” she snapped. “I don’t give a damn about chivalry right now.”

  “You may not care,” G.W. said gently, “but fellas like us can’t just forget the way we were raised.”

  “Sorry,” Miranda muttered. “I didn’t mean to sound rude.” She fixed Jacobs with a cold stare. “But I’m a little surprised at you, sheriff, doing the Feds’ dirty work for them.”

  “I didn’t have a choice,” Jacobs said. “Somebody files a complaint w
ith my department, I have to act on it. That fella Grayson is just like any other citizen, as far as the law is concerned.”

  “Sure,” Miranda said, but the scorn in her voice made it clear that she didn’t really agree.

  The sheriff’s face reddened in response. Miranda warned herself to rein it in a little. Bottom line, getting Bill Jacobs mad wouldn’t really help Kyle’s cause.

  “I’d like to see about arranging bail for my client,” she said in a more reasonable tone.

  “It’s kind of late in the day for that. The hearing might have to wait until tomorrow morning—”

  “I stopped by Judge Calhoun’s office on the way in here. He’s willing to set bail, and he’s waiting in the Justice of the Peace courtroom right now.”

  The sheriff stared at her for a second, then chuckled.

  “You’re right on top of things, aren’t you, counselor?”

  “I try to be, especially where my clients are concerned,” Miranda said.

  Jacobs pushed himself to his feet and nodded.

  “All right. Let’s go get him.”

  He led Miranda and G. W. through the corridors toward the rear of the building where the drunk tank and the holding cells were located.

  Miranda had been back here before to see clients. It was no worse than any other jail, she supposed, but she still didn’t like it. The smell of disinfectant and unwashed human flesh hung in the air, and nothing could ever get rid of it completely.

  G.W. had called her as soon as Kyle was arrested and told her he would meet her at the sheriff’s office in the courthouse. The news of the arrest had come as no surprise, of course. After Kyle’s fight with Slade Grayson that morning, Miranda had known the government man would do something to retaliate.

  Grayson could have filed federal charges against Kyle, but instead he had decided to make the first move at the local level. He was probably holding the other option in reserve, in case Miranda succeeded in getting these charges dropped.

  That was what she hoped to do. It was Grayson’s word against Kyle’s, after all, and Kyle also had his grandfather to testify that Grayson had instigated the trouble. Miranda thought she stood a good chance of persuading the district attorney not to pursue the case. Even if he did, Miranda considered it unlikely that the grand jury would indict Kyle.