Chapter 5
Somebody had taken a sledgehammer to my head and gone back for seconds.
When I tried to lift my arm, I found I couldn't move worth a damn.
Sand pinned my arms and legs, everything from the neck down locked tight as a drum.
I tried to shift and got exactly nowhere, which sent the sledgehammer pain from the back of my skull straight through to the space between my eyes where it set up camp and started a bonfire.
I opened my eyes.
It was dark. Firelight flickered off to my left, close enough I could feel the heat on my face.
The air smelled like smoke and juniper and something else underneath it, something animal and wild.
My head pounded. The world tilted sideways, so I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose until the urge to throw up passed.
I cracked my eyes open again, slower this time, and looked down at myself.
I was buried in sand up to my neck. Packed in tight, arms pinned to my sides, the whole works tamped down hard enough that I couldn't so much as wiggle a finger.
My boots were down there somewhere under about three feet of New Mexico dirt, and the only parts of me I could move were my head and my mouth, which was just about the worst combination of mobility a man could ask for in a situation like this.
My pulse came up fast at the base of my throat, faster than it ought to be, and the breath I was pulling in didn't seem to go down all the way. I steadied it. Made it go down. Panicking with three feet of dirt on your chest was a way to suffocate yourself before anyone got around to killing you.
I turned my head carefully, testing for worse damage, and took stock of my immediate surroundings.
There was a fire pit to my left, ringed with stones.
A canvas lean-to was strung between two pines.
Bones hung from the branches on bits of wire, clicking together in the breeze like some kind of deranged wind chime.
The horses were gone. Roy Castillo's body was gone.
And they'd taken my hat.
Now that pissed me off more than the concussion, more than being buried alive, more than the very real possibility that I was about to get killed in the middle of nowhere by a man whose cock I'd had in my mouth.
That hat was a genuine Stetson, broken in just right, and I'd had it for six years.
You didn't just take a man's hat. There were rules about that kind of thing.
I was fixing to say something about it when voices came through the dark behind me.
"I can hear your brain grinding from here," said an unfamiliar voice. "Sounds like bees."
"Shut up, Coyote." That was Ransom.
"You don't want to kill him."
Ransom didn't answer that, which was about as good an answer as any.
"You fucked him," Coyote said, cheerful as Sunday morning. "That's why. You got attached. Happens to dogs too. You feed them once and they follow you home."
"I said shut up."
"Are we killing him or keeping him? I need to know. Nimue's getting hungry."
There was a pause. Then Ransom's voice came quieter. "We need to know what he told them first. Who knows he's out here."
"He told nobody," Coyote said. "He came alone. He's a stupid Ranger. A stupid, pretty Ranger who let you fuck him in a shack."
"Shut up."
"You could fuck him again. Before. Seems like a waste otherwise."
Footsteps moved in the sand behind me, coming closer, and I got my first look at Ransom as he stepped into the firelight.
He'd cleaned up since the shack. He wore a different shirt, same hat, with his rifle slung over his shoulder.
He crouched by the fire and fed it a piece of wood, not looking at me, not looking at anything.
"If he reports back," Ransom said, "the whole operation gets exposed. Everything Rafe built. Everyone here. The boys in the bunkhouse, Sierra, all of it. Gone."
Coyote hummed. I still couldn't see him.
"So we find out what he knows," Ransom said. "Who he told. Whether anyone's coming. Then we decide."
"You already decided," Coyote said. "You decided in the shack. You just don't want to admit it."
"I didn't decide anything."
"You didn't pull the trigger on the ridge. You didn't kill him in the shack. You're not going to kill him now." Coyote's voice went sing-song. "Ransom likes the Ranger. Ransom wants to keep him."
"I want to protect the ranch."
"You want to protect the ranch and fuck the Ranger. You can't do both. That's why you smell confused."
Ransom drew his lips into a straight line and glared at the fire.
There it was. The killing didn't bother him; that part he'd done before. What he didn't have a frame for was killing the man he'd had on his knees a few hours ago.
And under that, God help me, was something worse.
My body had taken note of him. The line of his jaw under the hat brim, his crouch by the fire, the hands that had been on me three hours ago and might be on me again before this was over, just for different reasons.
Buried up to my neck in sand, and I still wanted him to put his weight on me.
That. That right there was going to keep me alive.
"Well," I said, loud enough to carry. "Y'all gonna give me back my hat before or after you kill me?"
Ransom turned toward me fast. Coyote appeared at the edge of the firelight like he'd materialized out of smoke, all wild hair and bare feet and a snake wound around his shoulders that was definitely not a goddamn garter snake.
"He's awake," Coyote said, delighted. "I told you he'd wake up. I'm very good at hitting people just hard enough."
"That's not something to be proud of," Ransom said.
"It is if you do it right."
Ransom tightened his jaw another degree and glanced at my mouth, then back up fast.
"Hey there," I said. "Hell of a second date."
"Shut up."
"I'm just saying. The sand was a choice. Could've just shot me. I'd have respected that more."
Coyote laughed. It was a bright, unhinged sound that echoed off the trees. "I like him. Can we keep him?"
"No."
"Why not? He's funny. And he smells like you. We could make him do tricks."
"We're not keeping him." Ransom looked at me. "Who knows you're out here?"
I met his eyes. This was it. This was where I either talked my way into staying alive or I didn't.
"My captain knows I'm investigating a body on Pae Saco land," I said. "Doesn't know I met you specifically. Doesn't know I'm out here right now. I was supposed to check in tomorrow morning."
"And if you don't?"
"Then he'll send someone looking."
Ransom worked his jaw. "How many people?"
"Depends on how nervous he is. Could be two Rangers. Could be the whole El Paso field office and the county sheriff. Hard to say."
That was the biggest lie I'd told in a year of telling them.
My captain didn't know I was in New Mexico.
My captain didn't know I was on this case.
There was no case. There was no field office on standby.
If Ransom and Coyote put me in the dirt tonight, the only people who'd come looking would be my mother and the man I owed three months of rent to, and my mother had stopped asking questions a long time ago.
Before Ransom could respond, hoofbeats broke through the dark, fast, coming from the direction of the ranch.
Ransom caught it too. He turned and reached for his rifle, and Coyote melted back into the shadows like he'd never been there at all. The snake stayed, watching me without blinking.
A horse broke through the trees, a big bay gelding, and Rafe swung down before it had fully stopped.
He took in the scene in about two seconds: me buried up to my neck in sand, Ransom standing there with his rifle, Coyote somewhere in the shadows with his snake, the fire crackling between us like the world's most awkward dinner party.
"Ransom," Rafe said. His voice was quiet, but it carried weight. The kind of quiet that made you shut up and listen. "What the hell are you doing?"
"He's a Texas Ranger," Ransom said. "He's investigating Castillo. He knows too much."
"So you buried him alive?"
"Coyote buried him alive. I was going to question him."
"Question him." Rafe walked closer, and I got a better look at him in the firelight.
Older than Ransom by a good twenty years, with silver threading through dark hair he wore pulled back at his nape.
He had the kind of face that looked carved out of the same rock as the mesa.
He looked at me. "You alright down there, son? "
"Well, I've got a concussion and I'm missing my hat," I said. "But other than that, I'm just peachy."
"Your hat," Rafe said.
"Genuine Stetson. Six years broken in. Sentimental value."
"I'll see what I can do." He turned back to Ransom. "Get him out."
"Rafe..." Ransom started.
"Now."
Ransom tightened his jaw, but he didn't argue. He leaned his rifle against a tree and crouched beside the pit, and started digging with his bare hands. Coyote appeared out of nowhere and crouched on the other side, humming under his breath while he scooped sand away from my shoulders.
"You smell less scared than I thought you'd be," Coyote said to me. "Most people smell like piss and terror by now."
"I've had worse days," I said.
"Have you?"
"Well, no. But I'm trying to stay optimistic."
Coyote laughed and kept digging.
It took about ten minutes to get enough sand cleared that I could move my arms. Ransom grabbed one, Coyote grabbed the other, and they hauled me up out of the pit like they were pulling a fence post. My legs didn't want to hold me at first. I stood there swaying, sand pouring off me in sheets, while the world tilted sideways and my head reminded me that getting knocked unconscious was bad for a person's health.
Ransom steadied me. His hand was warm on my elbow, and he pulled it back the second I had my balance, like he'd touched something hot.
"Can you walk?" Rafe asked.
"I can try."
"Good enough." He looked at Ransom. "Get the horses. We're heading back."
"We can't just..." Ransom said.