Strong at the Break Read online

  Beth Ann stiffened. “The church has been good to me, Jim.”

  “I’m sure it has. What this comes down to is a choice, Beth Ann: that church or your boy. I wish it weren’t that simple but it is, since whoever comes out of Abilene in two years will bear no resemblance whatsoever to Danny if he walks out at all.”

  Beth Ann broke down, the tears streaming down her face beyond a napkin’s ability to even slow them.

  “I apologize for the harshness of my words, but you need to hear this straight,” Jim told her, while she was still weak, “so you can make your choice with a clear head.” Then he reached over and took her hand in his, something he’d neither planned nor expected. “You tell us what we need to know about Reverend Arno and his Church of the Redeemer, and I will pick up your son’s unconditional pardon, signed by the governor, in Austin myself.”

  Beth Ann looked at him, hope sifting through the mist coating her eyes.

  “Here’s the way I look at things,” Jim told her, really meaning what he was about to say. “You can get yourself another church, Beth Ann, but you can’t get yourself another boy.”

  18

  MEXICAN BORDER; THE PRESENT

  “Truth is, I don’t know much of the rest of the story,” Caitlin finished.

  “As I recall, this Killane woman was the only victim of the Ranger raid on the compound,” Cort Wesley told her.

  “She was at that.”

  Cort Wesley nodded, leaving things there. “What about Beth Ann Killane’s boy, Danny?”

  “Never served a single day in Abilene. And, true to his word, Jim Strong picked up the papers himself in Austin.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Cort Wesley was looking at Caitlin differently than he had been. “You got any idea how much the boys miss you when you go off on one of your spaz outs?”

  “Spaz outs?”

  “That’s what Luke calls them,” he told her, referring to his twelve-year-old son.

  Caitlin realized she hadn’t thought of Luke at all since hearing the news about Dylan. “Where is he? Who’s watching him?”

  “Some neighbor friends of ours. Their boy’s the only one who can stand up to Luke in those damn video games.” He stopped, stiffening a bit before he resumed. “So what happens, you deliver me to the folks in Austin on this extradition beef?”

  “You wanna give me a reason why I shouldn’t?”

  “You haven’t heard the whole story yet.”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Would it matter?”

  “To me, yes.”

  “But not the folks in Austin.”

  “Extradition request came from the governor of the province in Mexico personally.”

  “I must’ve cut into his profit margin.”

  Cort Wesley looked back toward the world beyond the windshield. The dry desert roads had left a layer of dust across the windows, speckling his face where the sun hit it and giving it the look of dark blips amid the light.

  “Dylan blamed me for not giving him Maria Lopez’s letters or sending his,” he continued. “Started mailing them from the post office on his own. I gave the mailman a bottle of Jack Daniel’s so he wouldn’t leave them in the mailbox when they got returned.”

  “So now he’s heading to Mexico to find a girl who’s dead and a man wanted for murder down there is chasing him.” Caitlin started to shake her head, then stopped. The balled-up piece of paper was lying by Cort Wesley’s boot atop the carpeted floor mat on the passenger side. Something played at the edges of her consciousness, something she couldn’t quite see yet. “Who was this Juárez drug dealer, Cort Wesley?”

  “Doesn’t matter now.”

  “The hell it doesn’t.”

  “Telling you’s not gonna make this extradition order go away.”

  “Maybe I’d just like to hear the rest of the story.”

  Cort Wesley cast his gaze back out the windshield, not really seeing anything. “I killed him because I couldn’t take Dylan down there to visit Maria Lopez.”

  “I don’t think I follow.”

  Cort Wesley swung back toward her. “Yeah, you do, Ranger.”

  And then Caitlin realized, something cold wrapping around her insides and tightening. “Tell me I got this wrong, Cort Wesley.”

  All emotion slid off his expression and he held her gaze for what seemed like a very long time before responding. “That drug dealer never would’ve served a day in jail for killing Maria and her parents in that car crash, Ranger. I didn’t figure I had much choice.”

  19

  MEXICO; THE PRESENT

  Dylan watched the last of the sun sink behind the mountains, feeling suddenly tense and scared. He’d been driving for twelve hours straight, no stops other than a pair of bathroom breaks and one to get a burrito and soda. He’d turned off the main road south toward Matehuala when construction slowed traffic to a crawl, his dad’s truck climbing into the Sierra Madre Oriental, where a misty shroud from the colder temperatures at this elevation swallowed the road and made every twist of the wheel a dangerous proposition.

  Up until that point, for a good stretch of the way, it seemed he’d been driving into the sun, feeling its rays soaking him through the windshield. The heat dissipated as it sank behind the mountains only to reappear when he ascended a narrow two-lane up the Sierra Madre. From there he watched the last of its rays bleed amber downward, only to disappear before reaching the ground. Then the truck entered the soupy mist of the mountains that swallowed all light. The temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees, the last of the day sucked into the ether of some transitional realm between life and death.

  For a good part of the drive, Dylan imagined Maria in the passenger seat next to him and spoke to her out loud, alternating between English and Spanish.

  “My dad’s gonna knock me silly for running off like this,” he said, picturing himself taking her hand in his and squeezing tight, “but I know it’s worth it. I haven’t been able to think of anything else for months now and I don’t really want to. I can’t wait to fall asleep so I can dream about you, then I hate waking up ’cause you’re not there anymore.”

  Dylan swallowed hard, a thick lump having wedged itself in his throat.

  “When I used to babysit my brother, he and this friend of his used to grab my arms and pull me in opposite directions. That’s what I feel like now. I love my dad, girl. Can’t say it out loud to him, of course, but I love him all the same and I hate running off like this. But I know he’ll understand, ’long as I don’t mash up his truck or something.”

  Dylan smiled at that, looking toward Maria and sighing deeply when she wasn’t there, as silence reclaimed the cab.

  The world finally cleared when the road dropped into Altiplano with only a straight route remaining through the state capital of San Luis Potosí before he reached Matehuala. Maria had written him all about the city in her letters, so much so that Dylan felt he knew the place already. Her parents had moved there shortly after her return because work was more plentiful. Her mother had ended up getting a job as the cashier at a car wash, while her father was hired as assistant chef at a restaurant adjacent to Matehuala’s tree-covered central plaza. He guessed the city of 78,000 was fairly typical by Mexican standards for its beautifully restored buildings and period architecture. Maria had written that she liked Matehuala a lot more than San Antonio and the bigger Mexican cities she’d seen, wrote that she liked the fact that it was quiet and nobody knew who she was or what she’d gone through up north. She never told him anything about the other kids, boys or girls, and Dylan read each of her letters dozens of times.

  He knew she was doing well in school because the last few letters had been penned, at least partially, in English. Dylan figured she spoke it a lot better now, leading him to redouble his efforts at learning Spanish in school. His dad was all over his case about bunking class and hanging out with his friends, but Cort Wesley Masters didn’t get the fact that he was consumed by his thoughts about Maria.
Sitting in classrooms was a portrait in misery, impossible for him to stop his mind from wandering to her and feeling the inevitable stirring in his jeans.

  His friends made it tolerable, understood what he was going through. Still, he hadn’t told a single one of them what he was doing because he’d made the decision on an impulse that confused him even now. Confused him because he’d just run out of the school, the boots Caitlin Strong had given him clip-clopping across the pavement and his backpack shifting back and forth from its slung position over his shoulder. His gym clothes were stuffed inside along with a pair of sneakers that became a godsend during the long drive, for which God had not made boots.

  “I know Caitlin can track me by my cell phone,” he said out loud again, words aimed toward the empty passenger seat. “So I left mine back at school and bought a throwaway kind. Don’t know why I bothered since you don’t even have a phone. I thought about calling Caitlin a few times to explain myself and ask her to do likewise to my dad, who’s likely tearing down walls somewhere right now he’s so pissed.”

  Dylan smiled at the image, then felt his eyes moisten with tears and lapsed back into silence. He knew his dad well enough to be sure Cort Wesley Masters would be coming after him, figuring he’d given Dylan the lay of the same land the boy could cover in his sleep. But Dylan already had his spot to cross the border picked out, and it was nowhere near any of the ones his dad and grandfather had used in their smuggling operation in times long past.

  Half the drive south was spent fighting the lump in his throat and the urge to turn the truck around and head home. Every time he got as far as looking out for a spot in the shoulder wide enough to handle the swing, he thought of Maria and knew he’d come too far to do anything but keep going. Too far after ten miles, after fifty, and after a hundred. Too far in his mind from the moment he’d climbed up behind the wheel of his dad’s truck and gunned the engine with the spare key attached to his ring.

  Still, the lump was there, along with a stubborn temperature needle that kept climbing and climbing. Dylan ended up shutting down the AC, leaving his jeans matted to the upholstery and his long black hair feeling like a damp dishrag making a puddle on the kitchen counter. The more he tried pushing it back off his face, the more it strayed forward, heating up his skin and moistening the shirt collar it seemed to steam bake.

  He stopped to get gas and snacks at a one-pump station on the outskirts of Altiplano and, having not slowed to grab cash in Texas, stuck his ATM card in an old machine with dust sandblasted into its steel. The machine wouldn’t work, then wouldn’t spit his card back, and the rail-thin woman inside behind the counter was no help at all, so Dylan stormed out, slamming the screen door behind him with all of eight bucks left in his pocket.

  Back on the road, he greeted the first signs for Matehuala with the rise of tears to his eyes. He swabbed them with a forearm shed of his long-sleeve shirt, but it was too wet to do much good.

  What the fuck have I done here?

  The stubborn rashness of his thinking had reached a point where it seemed like somebody else had been doing it for him. Dylan slowed the truck through the steamy night, palmed his throwaway cell phone, and thumbed the keypad. Just thinking of dialing his dad gave him shivers and sent rocks sliding through his mouth. Caitlin Strong would be with his dad by now for sure, the two of them likely hot on his trail. His head start was worth something, though not very much. It wasn’t like they didn’t know exactly where he was headed; Maria’s letters had come with return addresses, after all, and Matehuala wasn’t hard to find. And just what was he supposed to do with no ATM card now? Eight bucks wasn’t going to get him much farther than this.

  Without his own cell phone in hand, Dylan had to reconstruct Caitlin’s number in his head, feeling his heart start to hammer his chest as he pressed it out.

  20

  MEXICO; THE PRESENT

  “Don’t tell my dad it’s me, okay?” Caitlin listened to Dylan say.

  “I hear you, sir.”

  “If you do, I’ll hang up. I’ll swear it.”

  “I never disobey an order from a superior,” Caitlin said, Cort Wesley driving now and busying himself with the road.

  “I messed things up good, Caitlin.”

  “We’ve all been guilty of that from time to time. Mexico seems to bring it out in folks.”

  “Like you torturing those drug mules who shot your partner?”

  “I don’t recall ever telling you any such thing.”

  “My dad did. You sure he can’t hear me?”

  “Not a lick, Captain.”

  “He told me when I asked him why you quit the Rangers for a while. Made me promise not to tell that he did.”

  “Guess you just broke it. Now where you wanna meet once I’m back home?”

  “I’m somewhere in Altiplano. I want this over, Caitlin. I want to go home.”

  Caitlin heard Dylan sniffle on the other end, imagined him swiping a hand across his nose. “We can arrange for that much I’m sure.”

  “I could drive on another hour, two maybe. Meet up with you in Matehuala. It’s where you’re headed anyway.”

  Cort Wesley shot her a glance at that, his eyes telling her he’d figured things out. “Is that Dylan, ’cause if it is…”

  Caitlin held a hand up to keep him quiet and away from the phone. “Do you trust me, Dylan?”

  “My dad onto us?”

  “Do you trust me?” she repeated, instead of answering him.

  “More than anyone.”

  “Then just stay put wherever you are and let us come to you. You need to trust me, that I’ll explain everything as soon as I get there.”

  A deep sigh filled the line, followed by a clacking Caitlin figured was Dylan clicking his teeth together, a habit of his for as long as she’d known him. Cort Wesley kept glancing over, glaring at the phone clearly ready to snatch it from her grasp.

  “All right, Caitlin,” Dylan said finally. “I’ll pull over in the next parking lot.”

  “Someplace with light. And people.”

  “I know the drill. I’m not stupid.”

  “Think I’ve figured that out by now.”

  “I don’t wanna talk to my dad right now, but tell him I’m okay.”

  “I will.”

  “Caitlin?”

  “I’m here, son.”

  “Don’t let him shoot me.”

  She smiled in spite of herself, the gesture seeming to relax Cort Wesley slightly. “That’s a promise.”

  Another pause followed.

  “Whoa, what’s this?”

  “Dylan?”

  “Something’s going on up ahead.”

  “Say that again.”

  “Something’s happening up ahead. Like an accident or something.”

  Caitlin felt herself tensing, straining forward against the bonds of the passenger seat’s shoulder harness. “What?” She was conscious of Cort Wesley’s slackened gaze tightening again, electricity dancing off his skin, the SUV slowing involuntarily.

  “Couple cars look like they been in an accident. No, a truck and a car. I gotta slow down.”

  Both Jim and Earl Strong had told her you never know where a feeling comes from but to never disregard one. “No!”

  “Huh?”

  “Get the hell out of there! You hear me? Get the hell out of there!”

  A pause.

  “Dylan?”

  “There’s a truck behind me. I’m boxed in.”

  “Shit!”

  Cort Wesley grabbed for the phone. “Lemme talk to my son, goddamnit!”

  Caitlin jerked her BlackBerry away from him, pushing herself against the window. “Get your ass out of there! You hear me, boy?”

  “There’s men coming toward the truck. I think they’re cops. They’re waving me out, Caitlin.”

  “Jesus Christ…”

  “Give me the goddamn phone!” Cort Wesley demanded, veering the SUV onto the shoulder, twisting it to a gravel-rattling halt. He flail
ed at Caitlin, iron grip locking on her wrist.

  “Lock your doors, son!” she said, not about to let the phone leave her ear.

  “They’re locked.”

  “Pull a U-ey, whatever it takes. Just get your ass out of there!”

  “I can’t!”

  “All right, tell me where you are. Be as specific as you can.”

  “I don’t know the name of the road. It slopes out of the Sierra Madre, maybe halfway between Altiplano and Matehuala. They’re at the door. I think I’m—”

  Crack!

  The sound of glass shattering split her eardrum, sounding impossibly loud.

  “Dylan!”

  A thump followed, Dylan’s cell phone hitting the truck floor or passenger seat.

  “Dylan!”

  Then came the struggle, the screams. And nothing.

  21

  MEXICO; THE PRESENT

  They found Cort Wesley’s truck dumped in a marsh, the shit stripped out of it. Mexican state cops, mixing with locals out of Altiplano, milled about in the muck and shook the mud from their shoes and pant legs. They were there when Caitlin and Cort Wesley finally pulled up to the scene after a miserable two hours spent winding their way through the mountain-heavy, mist-laden darkness, trying to find the road on which Dylan had ended up.

  Caitlin had called Captain Tepper and he, in turn, had called the Department of Public Safety, who had reached out to the police in both Altiplano and Matehuala. She harbored few expectations anything would come of it, so she was frankly surprised when Tepper called her back with news of the truck being found another thirty minutes from their current position.

  “You should’ve let me talk to him,” was all Cort Wesley could say as his feet churned through the muck.

  Caitlin let him have his rage and studied the scene around her. The federalés, Mexico’s infamous national police force, were on the scene as well, in the process by all accounts of taking control of the investigation while the local cops continued to linger near the truck.