Chapter 5 #2
"We don't kill federal or state, Ransom.
We never have." Rafe held his eyes. "You kill one Texas Ranger and inside a week you've got every Ranger within three hundred miles breathing down your neck, and the second wave won't be the ones who'll sit down at a table with you.
Piensa, mijo. You want to protect the ranch, you do it smart.
You don't do it scared. Now get the horses. "
Ransom looked at me. Then at Rafe. Then he turned and walked into the dark without another word.
Coyote tilted his head at me. "You're lucky Rafe likes you."
"He doesn't know me."
"He likes you anyway. He's good at that." Coyote reached up and unwound his snake from his shoulders, holding her out toward me. "Nimue wants to say hello."
She had to be five feet long, reddish-brown, with black patterns down her back. Her tongue tasted the air an inch from my face.
Rafe sighed. "Coyote. Put the snake away and find this man's hat."
Coyote looked genuinely disappointed, but he wound Nimue back around his shoulders and disappeared into the dark. Rummaging sounds came from deeper in the camp, and his humming with them.
"Roy Castillo was in your pocket," I said to Rafe.
Rafe didn't blink. "What makes you say that?"
"Because Ransom's ready to kill me to protect this place, which means you've got something worth protecting. And a judge in your pocket would be worth protecting."
"Lots of things are worth protecting."
"Sure."
Rafe studied me for a long moment. "You're smarter than you act."
"I get that a lot."
"Whoever killed Castillo sent a message. I want to know who sent it."
"So do I."
"Then I guess we're on the same side."
Hoofbeats approached. Ransom rode up leading a second horse, and my heart did something complicated at the sight of him.
Coyote materialized beside me, holding my hat in both hands like it was a dead bird. "Found it. It was under the tarp with the judge."
"The judge is still here?"
"Where else would he be?" Coyote thrust the hat at me. "You should check it for spiders."
I took my hat back and checked it for spiders. There weren't any. I settled it on my head and felt approximately forty percent better.
Ransom dismounted and held out the reins to Faye. "Can you ride?"
"I can manage."
"If you fall off, we're leaving you."
"Noted."
I got a foot in the stirrup and pulled myself up.
The world tilted again, and I had to grab the saddle horn with both hands until everything settled back where it belonged.
My head pounded like somebody drove nails through it from the inside, and my whole body ached like I'd been stomped on, which I more or less had been.
Ransom swung back up onto Galahad and didn't look at me.
Rafe took point. Ransom fell in behind him, and I brought up the rear. Coyote vanished into the trees without a word, and I had the unsettling feeling he'd be tracking us the whole way back, just out of sight.
We rode in silence.
The moon was up, half-full, throwing enough light through the pines that I could see the trail.
My head pounded with each step Faye took, and I kept my eyes on Ransom's back ahead of me.
He rode straight-spined with his hat pulled low, shoulders set like a man who'd made a decision and was living with it whether he liked it or not.
Forty minutes of his back. Forty minutes of his shirt pulling tight across his shoulders every time Galahad shifted under him.
Forty minutes of the small adjustments his hips made to the saddle, automatic, the kind of thing a man only learned by riding since he was a boy.
I watched all of it. I couldn't stop. There was a name for what was wrong with me, and it wasn't a kind one.
The badge on my hip was supposed to keep me alive.
The wanting was going to do the opposite if I didn't get a handle on it.
The trees thinned. The trail opened up, and the ranch spread out below us in the valley.
Main house, bunkhouse, barn, paddocks, all of it dark except for a light burning in the main house window.
The land around it stretched out flat and empty under the moonlight, running all the way to the mesa on the horizon.
It looked like the kind of place you could disappear into and never be found.
We rode down into the yard. A man came out of the main house onto the porch, backlit by the lamp inside, with a dog at his side. He was tall and lean, moving with the easy grace of someone who knew his way around a kitchen and a crisis.
Rafe dismounted. "Sierra."
"See you found them." Sierra came down the steps. The blue heeler at his hip stopped when he stopped, ears up, watching me. Sierra took in the scene: me on the horse with sand still stuck to my clothes and my hat back on my head, Ransom refusing to look at anyone. "This the Ranger?"
"Winston Valverde," Rafe said. "He'll be staying with us for a bit."
"Staying how?"
"As a guest."
"That's a polite word for it."
Before Rafe could respond, two figures emerged from behind the barn. Young men, maybe early twenties, moving in sync like they'd choreographed it. The taller one carried a flashlight. The shorter one had his hands in his pockets and walked like his bones didn't quite fit right.
They stopped beside Galahad, where Roy Castillo's body was still lashed across the horse's back.
"We can take him," the taller one said. "Got the west plot ready."
"No," I said before anyone else could respond. "Body stays where it is."
The taller one looked at me. The shorter one tilted his head.
"He's evidence," I said. "Murder investigation. He goes to the county morgue for an autopsy, not into the ground."
The shorter one crouched beside the body anyway and tilted his head, studying the judge's face in the lantern light. Then he reached out and touched the dead man's hand where it hung loose against Galahad's flank.
"Don't worry," he said softly, like he was comforting a child. "They'll be gentle with you. They usually are." He looked at the taller one. "Root cellar?"
The taller one nodded. "Coldest place we've got."
"I'll stay with him," the shorter one said. "Keep the coyotes off."
"Fenix," the taller one started.
"He shouldn't be alone." The shorter one looked at me. "You'll come get him in the morning? For the morgue?"
"First thing," I said.
He nodded slowly, like I'd passed some kind of test. "Good. He deserves that much." He touched the dead man's hand again. "Don't worry. I'll keep you company. Being dead's not so bad once you get used to it."
I'd watched a kid in a Midland holding cell do exactly this once, talking softly to nothing and looking comforted by it. He'd hung himself before the day shift came on. My hand wanted to go for the badge on my hip, and I made it stay where it was.
Ransom's voice came from behind me, low. "Don't look at him like that."
I looked over at him.
"Fenix is family," he said, looking out over the ranch. "They all are."
They untied the body and lifted it between them, the taller one taking the shoulders and the shorter one taking the legs, moving with the easy competence of men who'd done this a hundred times before.
They carried Roy Castillo toward the main house, the shorter one humming something tuneless as they rounded the corner toward what must've been the root cellar entrance.
"What the hell was that?" I said.
"That was Linc and Fenix," Sierra said, like that explained anything. "They handle the burials."
"The kid just said he's going to sleep with a corpse."
"The boy's got some things he's working through," Rafe said. "But he's good with the dead. Respectful. Your judge will be looked after."
"That's not reassuring."
Rafe turned to me. "You can sleep in the house. Sierra'll get you settled. We'll talk in the morning."
I slid off the mare. My boots hit the dirt, and the world tilted for a second before it settled. Ransom still sat on Galahad across the yard, his hands loose on the reins, his face half-shadowed under the brim of his hat.
Our eyes met.
He tightened his jaw and looked away first, turning Galahad toward the barn without a word.