Strong Cold Dead Read online

  “Not really, but it sounded mighty official, didn’t it? It’s the truth, too.”

  Rockefeller gave the writ a quick read. “None of this makes any sense.”

  “And we’ll look forward to you proving that in a Texas court of law.”

  Rockefeller tore the writ in two. “This will never stand up.”

  “You can fight it all the way to the Supreme Court, but you’ll have to go through Texas to do that—definitely something you may want to think twice about. You don’t have a lot of friends where I come from. I’ve heard told workmen you’ve fired and small businessmen you’ve ruined use your picture for target practice.” Steeldust Jack pushed himself to his feet, using the desk for support. “I’m here today to tell you that the moment your train comes to a stop in Austin, all the men you wronged, white and Indian, will be waiting. Sounds like a one-way trip to me.”

  “You and the goddamn Texas Rangers are nothing more than historical artifacts, no different than dinosaur bones. You just don’t know it yet.”

  “You’re the one who’ll soon be history, Mr. Rockefeller. I’m making it my mission to let the country know what kind of man you really are. A bully and a braggart who never waged a fight when he didn’t have his hired guns backing him up. You know what’s good for you, you’ll start keeping a lower profile, given I heard there’s a price on your head,” Steeldust Jack said, fitting his hat back on and hobbling for the door.

  “You come here to collect it, Ranger?”

  “No, sir. I’m the one who put up the cash.”

  * * *

  “John D. Rockefeller retired from Standard Oil the following year,” Caitlin finished, “and, according to legend, never set foot in the state of Texas again.”

  Caitlin trained her gaze on Cort Wesley, Luke, and Dylan again. She noticed Captain Tepper standing in the back, not far from Jones and Guillermo Paz. She’d been a guest caller last week at a bingo game in the retirement community where Paz volunteered, and it was hard to say whether she felt any more gratified by this honor than by that one.

  “But I guess I’m supposed to talk about the future,” Caitlin told the one hundred forty graduating seniors of the Village School and their families, along with hundreds more underclassmen and other invited guests. “The truth is, there was a time when I didn’t think about it a whole lot. Then some people came into my life who changed all that in me, and plenty more. All of you are going on to college—every single one, I’m told—and plenty of you are going to some of the very best ones, and from there to great careers. I hope you find yourself loving what you do as much as I do, but it won’t matter where you go if you don’t have the right people with you when you get there, ’cause that’s really what it’s all about.”

  The cheers and applause were much louder this time. Caitlin nodded toward Cort Wesley and the boys as it died down.

  “There’s mostly good in the world, but there’s bad, too. John D. Rockefeller didn’t set out to do bad, but he did plenty here in Texas, until Jack Strong stood up against him. Men like Steeldust Jack keep the bad down. They stand their ground against those fixed on doing harm to others. They do the right thing. I’m here talking to you today because people think I’m a hero, but I’m really not. The real heroes are that boy I mentioned earlier, who isn’t ashamed of who he is, and his older brother, who’s seen what true evil looks like, more times than I can count, and never let the sight change who he is. I hope you never see that sight, but I suspect you will. Don’t let it change you, because that’s how the bad wins and the good loses. You might not beat it, but don’t let it beat you, either.”

  She let her gaze drift over the crowd again, refreshed and recharged by the energy and hope radiating from these young people who, for this day anyway, were in complete ownership of their lives.

  “Because, the thing is, evil exists. It’s real and it’s out there,” she said, thinking of ISIS, both homegrown elements and otherwise.

  The remainder of the deadly strain of the corn fungus, the cuitlacoche, had been removed from the underground storage chamber, and a thorough search of the reservation land had turned up no additional hidden reserves. Jones had told Caitlin those reserves would be “dispatched appropriately”—his phrase, spoken with a smirk. As far as the water responsible for turning the corn fungus into a deadly toxin, seismic specialists were in the process of devising a strategy to seal the underground reserves as much as five miles down, render them inaccessible to the likes of both Daniel Cross and Cray Rawls. The opening to the cave with the still pond, found by Daniel Cross, had been sealed, and serious thought was being given to temporarily evacuating the entire population of the reservation.

  New evidence, meanwhile, had mysteriously surfaced in cases involving Cray Rawls and his consortium of energy companies, leading a number of investigations to be reopened. That would ensure that the bulk of his time over the ensuing years would be spent in court or fretting over the eventual loss of the empire he’d built with his inheritance from the couple who had been roasted to death as payment for adopting him.

  And he wasn’t alone.

  * * *

  Jones had let Caitlin see Daniel Cross alone before he was placed in total isolation, save for his lawyers. She sat on the other side of a thick glass partition inside ADX Florence, the ultra–maximum security prison in Fremont County, Colorado, where Cross was being held, while two armed guards fixed manacles onto his arms and legs.

  “I guess you remember me,” he said, voice weak and almost shy.

  “Yes, Daniel. I do.”

  “I don’t suppose I should thank you for coming.”

  “Actually, I wanted to apologize.”

  His gaze narrowed, as if trying to gauge her intentions. “It wasn’t your fault. You’re not to blame.”

  “Yes, I am,” Caitlin told him. “I’m to blame for not letting you do some time in juvie. Maybe if you’d spent the rest of your teen years there, we wouldn’t be looking at each other right now. So, yes, I’m to blame for thinking a second chance would steer you clear of trouble.”

  “I’ll bet you wish you could take it back,” he said, looking identical in that moment to the fourteen-year-old boy, handcuffed to an interrogation table in an Austin jail, whom she’d met ten years before. Only this time, Caitlin felt no sympathy.

  “I guess I do,” she told Daniel Cross. “I needed to come here just to see how I got things so wrong. And looking at you through this glass makes me think of somebody else, somebody a little younger than you, who believes he can save anybody too. Now I realize I should be listening to the same advice I gave him—that some people aren’t worth the bother; the key is the ability to tell which is which.”

  Cross’s expression grew cold and flat. “Know what? I wish I had built that bomb. I wish I had blown up that school and killed all the assholes. Tell me the world wouldn’t have been a better place with all of them in hell.”

  Caitlin rose, having had enough. “Only if you got there first, Daniel.”

  * * *

  “I can’t tell you exactly what evil is,” she continued, meeting Dylan’s gaze down in the front row, “only that I know it when I see it, just like you need to do. Because evil is at its best when it’s hiding among us, in places we least expect, in the hearts of people we expected better from. If I had one piece of advice to give you today, it would probably be to never disappoint anyone, least of all yourself. I think one of the things that sets evil people apart is that, while they hate a whole bunch of folks, mostly they hate themselves.

  “I’m looking out over you today and I want to believe none of you will become like that, except the truth is I really can’t say for sure—nobody can. What I can say for sure today is that fate is yours to control, and nobody else’s. So I want you to remember this moment, remember this day. Keep it frozen in your mind so you never lose track of the way you feel right now. Because the day you stop feeling that way is the day you may find yourself becoming somebody you don’t want
to be.”

  Caitlin had stopped checking her notes, was veering entirely from her intended remarks. Her mind waxed whimsically, applying the lessons she’d learned in her own life, with no way to gauge whether she was striking a chord with the graduating seniors of the Village School at all.

  As her speech neared its close, Caitlin thought she caught a fleeting glimpse of her father and grandfather standing along the back of the seated graduates, where shadows and light merged. But today Earl and Jim Strong had been joined by William Ray and Steeldust Jack, their shadowy silhouettes lost to the wind before Caitlin could wave their way. She knew she didn’t have to, because they’d been there with her yesterday and would be there again tomorrow. Texas Rangers for life and beyond.

  “I hope you all learn lots of times what it feels like to win. And I hope, just as much, you learn how to lose,” Caitlin said, letting her gaze wander over the crowd, where a soaring red-tailed hawk dipped and darted about, having reclaimed the sky. “’Cause nobody wins all the time, but the thing is, that doesn’t stop us from trying.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  So I’m reading the New York Times, back on December 29, 2014, when I come across the front-page headline reading, “Where Oil, Corruption and Bodies Surface.” Turns out the article was about the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Being a thriller writer, though, I asked myself what if it were an Indian reservation in Texas? And what if it turns out not to be oil at the root of the evil at all, but something else?

  At that point, I had no idea what that “something” was. I had a vague notion that one party would be after the secret for its potentially miraculous medicinal qualities, while somebody else would be after it for its potential as a weapon of mass destruction. And for the bad guys, how about ISIS coming to Texas to be taken on by Caitlin Strong and company?

  Maybe a third into the book, I still didn’t know what had actually been discovered on my fictional Texas Indian reservation. (The Comanche reservation depicted in this book exists only in my imagination.) Then my brilliant agent, Natalia Aponte, mentioned this substance called cuitlacoche, a corn fungus that’s been turned into a kind of delicacy by Native Americans as well as ancient Indian tribes going all the way back to the Aztecs. In that moment, boom! I knew I had my book, grounded in just enough reality to make it credible, especially after my research confirmed the existence of so-called aroma bombs.

  I took my share of technological liberties here, as I did with John D. Rockefeller. I believe I’ve portrayed him accurately and also credibly, except for the fact that his early years of oil exploration in building Standard Oil didn’t include Texas. But, as I’ve quoted before from the brilliant film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” And incorporating actual personalities into the historical subplots my Caitlin Strong books are known for is, well, a blast. Just a whole lot of fun.

  And that’s what these books are supposed to be—a whole lot of fun. Both for me to write and you to read. If this is your first visit to the world of Caitlin Strong, the good news is you’ve got some catching up to do. Either way, rest assured that Caitlin will be back, around the same time next year, in Strong to the Bone (tentative title). Just don’t ask me what it’s about yet, because I have no idea, other than to say we’re both going to have a whole lot of fun with it again. A sacred promise from writer to reader.

  So be well until then, and keep reading!

  Providence, Rhode Island; January 6, 2016

  OTHER BOOKS BY JON LAND

  The Alpha Deception

  *Betrayal (nonfiction)

  *Black Scorpion: The Tyrant Reborn

  *Blood Diamonds

  *The Blue Widows

  The Council of Ten

  *Day of the Delphi

  *Dead Simple

  *Dolphin Key

  The Doomsday Spiral

  The Eighth Trumpet

  *The Fires of Midnight

  The Gamma Option

  *Hope Mountain

  *Keepers of the Gate

  *Kingdom of the Seven

  Labyrinth

  *The Last Prophecy

  The Lucifer Directive

  The Ninth Dominion

  The Omega Command

  The Omicron Legion

  Pandora’s Temple

  *The Pillars of Solomon

  *The Seven Sins: The Tyrant Ascending

  *Strong at the Break

  *Strong Darkness

  *Strong Enough to Die

  *Strong Justice

  *Strong Light of Day

  *Strong Rain Falling

  *Strong Vengeance

  *Takedown (nonfiction)

  The Tenth Circle

  The Valhalla Testament

  The Vengeance of the Tau

  Vortex

  *A Walk in the Darkness

  *The Walls of Jericho

  *Published by Forge Books

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JON LAND is the USA Today bestselling author of thirty-nine novels, including Strong Enough to Die, Strong Justice, Strong at the Break, Strong Vengeance, Strong Rain Falling (winner of the 2014 International Book Award and 2013 USA Best Book Award for Mystery-Suspense), and Strong Darkness (finalist for the 2014 USA Books Best Book Award and winner of the 2015 International Book Award for Thrillers), and Strong Light of Day (winner of the 2015 BooksandAuthor.com Award for Best Mystery Thriller and the 2016 Beverly Hills Book Award for Best Mystery). He’s a 1979 graduate of Brown University, lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and can be found at www.jonlandbooks.com or on Twitter@JonDLand. Or sign up for email updates here.

  Thank you for buying this

  Tom Doherty Associates ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Two

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Part Three

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Part Four

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Part Five

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Part Six

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapt
er 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Part Seven

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Part Eight

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Part Nine

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Part Ten

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Other Books by Jon Land

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  STRONG COLD DEAD

  Copyright © 2016 by Jon Land

  All rights reserved.

  Cover photographs by Trevillion

  Cover design by Peter Lutjen

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.