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  A federalé captain approached Caitlin halfway between her SUV and the truck, seeming to ignore Cort Wesley. “I am Captain Sanchez,” he said in excellent English. “I’m afraid there’s no sign of your son.”

  “He’s my son,” Cort Wesley said, before Caitlin could say anything at all.

  “And who are you?”

  “I’m a Texas Ranger,” Caitlin interrupted, flashing her identification. “I came down with the boy’s father here to bring him home.”

  “We’d like to see the truck, if you don’t mind,” Cort Wesley cut in, his feet disappearing as he waded through the muck toward it.

  Sanchez backpedaled to keep his pace, eyes shifting between Cort Wesley and Caitlin as if to determine which he should be addressing.

  “What are your people telling you, Captain?” she asked Sanchez.

  “Skid marks up on the road indicate the boy lost control of the truck. Ended up down here in the ditch after banging it up a bit.”

  “That how you explain the broken driver’s side window?” Cort Wesley pushed.

  “The door’s jammed. The boy could have knocked the window out to escape.”

  They reached the truck, both Caitlin and Cort Wesley gazing inside the cab.

  Cort Wesley grabbed the rubber sill and squeezed, not seeming to care about the glass fragments digging into his skin. “That how the glass ended up inside, instead of out, Captain?”

  “What the boy’s father means to say,” Caitlin picked up, “is that we were in touch with the boy just before he was taken.”

  “Did you say taken?” the captain asked her.

  Caitlin nodded. “He was describing what sounded like a staged accident before him, this truck here getting boxed in from the rear.”

  Sanchez didn’t look convinced. “You believe he was kidnapped?”

  “We do.”

  Caitlin eased up next to Cort Wesley so Sanchez could see her tracing a neat line over the air even with the smashed window’s perimeter. “See how there are no shards left attached to the framing?” She waited to make sure Sanchez did. “That tells me they used a special tool made with a conical-shaped hardened steel head to crack out the entire window. A random attacker would’ve likely used a simple hammer or rock. Whoever did this has done it before.”

  Sanchez traced the line her finger had made with his eyes, still not looking convinced. “You believe this boy was targeted?”

  “As a kid driving a truck alone through the middle of Mexico, yeah, I think he was targeted for his vulnerability. That a recurring MO in these parts?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “MO—modus operandi. Like a pattern.”

  “Kidnapping?”

  “Kidnapping.”

  “No more than in your American cities.”

  “This isn’t a city, Captain.”

  “But the boy was on his way to one, Señorita Ranger.”

  “Cut the crap, will you?” Cort Wesley snapped, glaring at the captain with a pair of dark eyes glistening with moisture. “We all know what happened here and my guess is you, or somebody you know, knows exactly where my son can be found. So just tell us, or call whoever you have to so we can go pick him up and get ourselves home.”

  The quiet assurance of Cort Wesley’s voice was as unsettling as it was chilling.

  “Why would you think I’d know such a thing, señor?” Sanchez asked him.

  “Because federalés are corrupt as hell.”

  “Oh boy,” Caitlin muttered.

  “Not all of you, but plenty choose to pad their pockets with some look-the-other-way money in times like this.” Cort Wesley leaned back inside the truck through the busted-out window glass and spotted some snack wrappers on the passenger seat and an unfinished soda, diluted by melted ice in a cup holder.

  “My guess is they had a spotter wherever he picked up the food,” Caitlin chimed in, before Cort Wesley did any further damage to their cause. “Man must’ve called in Dylan’s location and general appearance. Maybe the spotter’s face is on a security tape or somebody at the store will remember him. Either way that’s your first clue.”

  “Second is to throw a stone at that group chewing cigarettes over there,” Cort Wesley added, gesturing toward a smoke cloud that had formed atop a group of five stiff-spined officers. “Whoever it hits can likely tell us exactly who has my son.”

  “My superior is en route now, señor,” Sanchez said dismissively. “You can voice your suggestions to him.”

  And he walked away, leaving Caitlin and Cort Wesley at the truck with the local police officers for want of a crime scene unit.

  “I don’t think this had anything to do with you,” Caitlin said to him. “I think it was random.”

  “That scares me more, Ranger. Makes me wonder how I’m ever going to get him back. We’ve got lots of enemies down here.”

  “And a few friends, Cort Wesley. I get a few minutes, I’m gonna call one of them straightaway.”

  Cort Wesley gazed at his wrecked and stripped truck reflectively, perhaps picturing Dylan still behind the wheel. “What the hell was I thinking?”

  “What, in not telling him the girl was dead or that you killed the man who did it?”

  “Kid had a right to know,” Cort Wesley said, not really answering her question. “That got lost somewhere in the equation.” His eyes filled with self-loathing. “Me letting him write letters to her weeks after she’s in the ground. Great fatherly work.” Cort Wesley shook his head. “Could this night get any worse?”

  Caitlin saw a pair of camouflage-colored SUVs pull to a halt on the road above the ditch and a host of men climb out in unison.

  “Oh, shit…”

  “What?”

  “It just did.”

  22

  MEXICO; THE PRESENT

  “If it’s not my old friend the Ranger,” said the stout federalé major whose nametag identified him as BATISTA. He grinned. “Didn’t I warn you never to return to Mexico again?”

  Caitlin fought not to look back toward the shadows where Cort Wesley had retreated. “I’m here on a personal matter, Major.”

  “So I understand, el Rinche. But that does not change the terms on which I released you from custody last year in Juárez after you and your outlaw friend nearly destroyed the city.”

  The last time they’d met had been in the wake of what had become known as the Battle of Juárez, already reaching mythic stature among the common people of Mexico. Batista was most interested in the location of the man who’d made it all happen, the former Venezuelan assassin Colonel Guillermo Paz. Paz had a hefty price on his head in four countries, not the least of which was Mexico thanks to the drug gangs against which he’d gone to war and ultimately laid waste to.

  “You know I’m still looking for the big man, Ángel de la Guarda, a legend to the people who don’t know any better,” Batista told her. “I know his real name is Guillermo Paz, an ex-colonel in President Chavez’s secret police. They say he’s starting to build his own secret army somewhere in Mexico now.”

  “Then if I were you,” said Caitlin, “I’d want to be somewhere else when he finishes.”

  Batista grinned at her insinuation. “There’s no place for vigilantes in my country, any more than there is in yours.” A smirk fell over his features. “Then again, that’s what the Texas Ranger code is based upon, sí?”

  “Just how bad do you want to find out, Major?” Caitlin asked him.

  Cort Wesley fought himself to remain silent through the exchange, relieved Batista hadn’t noticed him or made the connection yet. Even from ten feet away, the oily stench washing off Batista was so strong it nearly made him gag. A combination of dried sweat, unwashed clothes, and something that reminded Cort Wesley of cooking grease. He turned away to distract himself, looking off toward the local Mexican cops who continued to battle each other for who could blast the most tar into his lungs. One met his gaze and looked away; didn’t just look away, but actually shuffled farther back amid the grou
p with fear evident through the smoke rising from his lips.

  Cort Wesley angled his eyes to trail the cop, taking all of him in. Noticing he was wearing slip-on, ankle-high boots instead of the standard variety his compadres wore laced over their trousers.

  Dylan’s boots, the pair Caitlin had gotten the boy for his fifteenth birthday from Allen’s Boots in Austin. She’d made the drive to pick them out, not trusting the Internet.

  And then, before he could think further, Cort Wesley felt himself in motion.

  * * *

  Batista never noticed Cort Wesley slip past him, and by the time Caitlin did it was too late. Before the cops could react, he was on all six of them with a flurry of blows so quick and blinding that the smoke cloud barely moved. He whirled into the cops in a fashion more befitting a ballet, unleashing moves too fast for the mind to make record of. His hands swept around, dovetailing and curling back for strikes that blended from one to another. His feet whipsawed, slicing into knees and kicking out legs. The cops were standing and then they weren’t, all left writhing in the mud as Cort Wesley stooped over one and yanked off his boots, Dylan’s boots, in the last moment before the federalés converged and swallowed him.

  Caitlin pushed past Batista, finding herself in the midst of the fray with no memory of passing any distance. Shielding Cort Wesley as best she could. Saw gunmetal flashing in the spray of stilled headlights from the road above and came up just short of drawing her SIG, having the presence of mind to consider the utter disaster a gunfight here and now would yield.

  The best she could do was keep herself between Cort Wesley and the federalés so their bullets would hit her instead, the move forcing the hesitation she’d hoped for. Long enough for Batista to make his way over yelling, “¡Parada! ¡Parada!… Stop!”

  The major’s pistol, though, was out and steadied by that time, hard to tell whether aimed at her or Cort Wesley, but ready to fire either way.

  23

  MATEHUALA; THE PRESENT

  “It’s been a long time, Ranger,” Fernando Lozano Sandoval, now chief of the Chihuahua State Investigations Agency, said the next morning. His bodyguards flooded the lobby of Matehaula’s Las Palmas Midway Inn moments before he entered, setting up a perimeter both inside and outside the building.

  “Thanks for coming,” Caitlin told him.

  “A man is eternally in the debt of someone who saves his life. Now, let’s get some breakfast.”

  A year before, Caitlin had rescued Sandoval from drug cartel assassins dispatched to Thomason Hospital in El Paso to finish the job they’d started in Juárez. They’d remained in contact ever since, trading both information and mutual admiration. Sandoval had lasted longer than any Mexican official with the cajones to take on the cartels, becoming a virtual phantom in the process. No one knew where he lived, and one legend said he slept in a different place every night. Another insisted that the government had built an elaborate network of tunnels beneath the country that Sandoval and other officials now used to get around without ever showing their faces. Caitlin figured the mythology suited Sandoval well, and he exploited it to the fullest in his capacity as the country’s chief drug enforcer.

  Caitlin had checked into Las Palmas after following Batista and his federalés to the local barracks in Matehuala. Cort Wesley would be incarcerated there until such time that his formal extradition was secured, if he managed to live that long. Only the more expensive cabana rooms were available at Las Palmas, so she booked one and reluctantly accepted a hotel “runner” to guide her across the spacious grounds bisected by bike paths, phoning Sandoval on his private number to set up this meeting as soon as the door was closed behind her.

  “I’ve heard about your most recent exploits north of your country’s border,” Sandoval continued, taking the seat across from her in the hotel restaurant and crossing his legs to expose his sockless feet shoed in white Italian loafers. “It would seem America’s drug problems are not limited to Mexico, eh?”

  “Unfortunately, no. But it’s a problem down here I needed to see you about.”

  “So you explained, so you explained.”

  Sandoval looked much better than the last time she had seen him, weak from blood loss and pale with fear. He wore an elegant cream-colored silk suit that exaggerated his tanned features even more. The hair she recalled as limp and thinning in the hospital had regained its luster and shape, styled without a single black strand out of place. He was a picture of health and confidence in stark contrast to his status as the number one enemy of the primary cartels operating out of Juárez and Sinaola.

  Caitlin imagined the restaurant would normally be bustling with activity by now, but Sandoval’s bodyguards had subtly emptied it of other diners and kept new ones out so he and Caitlin could have the place entirely to themselves for the duration of their meeting.

  “I notice your suit looks finely pressed,” she told him. “I figure you had to drive through much of the night to get here and just changed into it.”

  Sandoval’s shrug confirmed her suggestion. “I wanted to be more presentable than the last time we met.”

  “You’re as brave a man as any I know, sir. That makes you presentable no matter how you look.”

  “I haven’t slept at home in a year or seen my children in six months. When I speak with people like yourself, fighting the same war I’m fighting, I know my sacrifice is worth it.” Sandoval’s dark, deep-set eyes sought hers out, as he poured both of them glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice from a pitcher. “You risked everything in Juárez last year.”

  “We’re both just doing our jobs.”

  “Our friend Colonel Paz, the people’s guardian angel, received the credit.”

  “Deservedly so, sir.” Caitlin leaned a bit forward. “Is it true he’s building his own army down here?”

  A smile played at the edges of Sandoval’s lips, enough to answer Caitlin’s question before he responded. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Of course not.”

  “But you didn’t ask me here to rehash politics and old times.”

  “No, sir, the truth is I’m here about the other man who was with me in Juárez: Cort Wesley Masters.”

  Sandoval ran a perfectly manicured finger across the bridge of his nose, as if to join his eyebrows together. “I understand he is in custody, wanted for the murder of a Mexican national.”

  “A drug dealer from the Juárez cartel who killed a family while fleeing the police not far from here a few months back.”

  “I’m sure there’s more to it than that, Ranger.”

  “There is. You just don’t need to hear it.”

  “But I need to arrange for Mr. Masters’s release, is that it?”

  “There are extenuating circumstances.”

  Sandoval weighed her words, nodding. “The federalés are loyal to anyone who pays them. I have ample funds in my budget to secure Mr. Masters’s release. I hear Major Batista is hoping to install a swimming pool in his yard this year.” Sandoval leaned forward and lifted a breakfast pastry from the basket centered on the table. “But the warrant for Mr. Masters’s arrest and extradition request will remain.”

  Caitlin nonetheless felt her chest relax, her breaths coming easier. “I understand.”

  “Then help me to understand what brought the two of you back to Mexico like this.”

  “Mr. Masters’s son was kidnapped down here last night.”

  Sandoval stopped just short of biting into his Danish and laid it down upon his plate, expression suddenly somber.

  Caitlin leaned forward to shrink the distance between them. With the restaurant all theirs, she didn’t have to lower her voice but did anyway. “How bad is it?”

  “The theft of our children is the real scourge of Mexico, Ranger. It has increased tenfold in the past year, better organized and capitalized.”

  “Capitalized?”

  “We do not believe the leaders of the ring are Mexican.”

  “American?”

 
“All indications point to that, yes.” Sandoval slid closer to the table and lowered his voice. “Utterly reprehensible, I know. You have my apologies.”

  “Sir?”

  “It is a terrible place in which I find myself.”

  Caitlin looked in his eyes, the sadness and embarrassment building in them, and knew. “You’re letting it go on.”

  “The slavery rings aren’t my department.”

  “In other words, you’re looking the other way.”

  “We have a war to win, not a battle. Our resources are already stretched too thin, and the slavers are everywhere.”

  Caitlin fought not to sound as angry as she felt, tucked her hands into her lap to keep Sandoval from seeing them clench into fists. “I’m just interested in one of their victims, sir.”

  Sandoval raised his coffee toward his mouth. “The slavers operate numerous safe houses throughout my country. The closest is twenty miles from Matehuala.”

  “You telling me Dylan Torres is there for sure?”

  “If he was taken from the road between here and Altiplano, yes. But he won’t be there long. It’s just a way station, the subjects are seldom in residence for more than a week.” Sandoval looked about the restaurant as if to confirm they still had it to themselves, then jotted something down on a piece of paper and slid it across the table. “I think this is where you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

  Caitlin pocketed the paper without opening it. Considering the whole ugly process splashed the bitter taste of bile up her throat. She swallowed it down with some orange juice that burned all the way to her stomach. Her heart thudded and perspiration was starting to mat her denim shirt to her skin, soon to soak through in patches. Her hand trembled as she laid the glass back on the table, fitting it into the same ring of condensation.

  Sandoval rose, taking the rest of his Danish with him. “I’ve already spoken with Major Batista. It took a much bigger pool than I was expecting.”

  “I’m in your debt, sir.”

  “No, Ranger, it’s I who will always be in yours.” He finally took a bite of his Danish and licked the remnants of icing from his fingers. “But if Mr. Masters runs afoul of our law again, I won’t be able to help him.”