Chapter 6
I woke before dawn, the way I always did, no alarm, just my body knowing the dark had thinned enough that staying in bed was a waste of daylight.
The casita was cold. I reached for the watch on the nightstand.
Four forty-three. The photo beside it caught the gray light coming through the window.
It was of me and Chance when he was sixteen and I'd just turned eighteen, both of us grinning like idiots in front of Aguilar's cruiser the day he brought us fishing instead of booking us for trespassing.
Chance's arm was slung over my shoulder.
My hat was on backwards. We looked young enough that it hurt to look at.
I looked at it anyway, same as every morning, then got out of bed.
I pulled on jeans, boots, a flannel shirt that had seen better decades, and buttoned it up. I tried not to think about Winston's hands on me. Tried not to think about his mouth, his eyes, the sound he'd made when I told him to beg.
I failed at that, too.
The feral cat waited on the step when I opened the door. She was an orange tabby with half an ear missing, mean as a snake to everyone but me. She didn't move when I stepped over her, just held me in those yellow eyes while I filled her dish from the bag I kept by the door.
"You're welcome," I said.
She ignored me and ate.
On my way to the barn, I passed Coyote in the dirt about ten feet from the porch, flat on his belly, elbows under him, eyes locked on the cat at her dish.
He'd been there the whole time. He hadn't moved when I came out, and he didn't move now.
His chin was an inch off the ground, and he hadn't blinked in what looked like a while.
"Coyote."
"Shh."
"What are you doing?"
"Hunting."
"You're hunting the cat?"
He looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "No. I'm hunting Nimue's breakfast."
"You can't feed her to your snake. She's too big."
He rolled his eyes at me. "I know that. But she knows where all the fat mice are. When she's done eating, she's going to show me."
"Have fun," I muttered and left him there. Some mornings you took the wins where you found them.
Galahad huffed when I came into the barn and stuck his head over the stall door. I scratched behind his ears, and he leaned into it, eyes half-closed.
"Yeah," I said. "I know."
He snorted and pulled back, already bored with me.
Fenix was exactly where I expected him to be.
The root cellar door was propped open with a rock, and he sat on the top step with his back against the frame, legs pulled up to his chest, chin resting on his knees.
He didn't look up when I approached, just kept staring into the dark of the cellar like he was having a conversation I couldn't hear.
"You been here all night?" I asked.
"We both have." Fenix tilted his head. "He doesn't mind the company. Most of them don't once they realize."
I crouched beside him and looked into the cellar. Castillo's body was laid out on the stone shelf where we kept the potatoes in winter, covered with a clean sheet. Someone had put a candle on the floor beside him. It was still burning.
"Linc bring you the candle?" I asked.
"No. I brought it." Fenix's voice was quiet, matter-of-fact. "He's free now. Got out clean. The candle is so he can find his way." He gestured vaguely at his own body. "Without this slowing him down."
Fenix was the youngest of us at twenty-two, pale and thin like a rail. Linc was the only one who could get him to eat anything, and even then he only agreed to it because of some story about ghosts and offerings Linc had told him.
"Ranger's taking him into town this morning," I said. "Morgue."
"I know." Fenix paused. "He's got a good soul, the Ranger."
"Yeah?"
"Yes." Fenix finally looked at me, clear and calm, focused on something just past my shoulder. "I'm worried about yours, Ransom. It's starting to wear thin."
Something in my chest went still.
"I'll be okay," I said carefully.
"You don't have to be okay." He turned back to the cellar, unconcerned. "It's something you learn when you're dead. People spend so much time pretending to be okay when they're not."
I didn't know what to say that so I said nothing.
"Don't worry," Fenix said. "I won't tell anyone."
I stood up and brushed the dirt off my jeans and told myself that Fenix was just Fenix and Linc had it handled.
"You need anything, you come find me," I said.
"I will." He paused. "Ransom?"
"Yeah."
"Thank you for checking." His voice was soft and earnest.
I touched his shoulder once, but he didn't react. He just stared at the corpse and let out a small, longing sigh.
Rafe summoned me to the round table in the back room at six.
I went through the kitchen to get there.
Sierra was at the stove with his back to the door, stirring something in a cast iron pan. Pearl lay at his feet on the rag rug she'd claimed two summers back. She lifted her head when I came in, took one breath of me, and put her head back down. She knew me.
Coffee and chile in the air, and the wood smoke Sierra always carried with him. I stopped just inside the door because Sierra hadn't turned around yet. He'd been waiting.
"Coffee's on the counter," Sierra said, still not turning. "Made it strong."
I poured a cup.
"He's going to be hard on you, aguijón."
The word stopped me with the cup halfway to my mouth. Sierra had used that name for me since I'd arrived. He said I stung like a scorpion because it was in my nature to hurt people, and left it at that. I'd taken it as an insult at first, but I grew to realize it was just his read of me.
"I figured."
"Let him be hard on you. He needs to. Don't argue.
Don't explain." Sierra turned then, finally, and looked at me with those steady brown eyes that had seen every boy who'd come through this house and never flinched at any of them.
"He's a mustang, aguijón. You don't break a mustang.
You wait for him to come down. He cares about you.
That's why he's going to be hard. You have a place here.
No matter what comes out of his mouth in there.
" Sierra reached for the coffee pot and topped off his own cup.
"You remember that part. The rest is just weather. "
I looked down at the cup.
"Sierra."
"Mm."
"Does he know?"
Sierra paused with the coffee pot in his hand. Pearl lifted her head again.
"He knows enough," Sierra said. "He doesn't know what to do with knowing."
That was as close to a warning as Sierra ever gave. I took a swallow of the coffee. It was too hot and too strong, and I drank it anyway.
"Go on," Sierra said softly. "He's waiting."
I went. The door at the back of the kitchen opened on the room nobody named, and Rafe was already sitting at the head of the table when I came through it.
The table was petrified wood inlaid with turquoise in patterns that looked like water if you squinted, old enough that nobody knew where it came from or how it got here.
Rafe had his hands folded on the wood and his face set in that expression that meant he'd already decided something and was giving me the courtesy of hearing it directly.
Sierra came in behind me with the coffee pot and set it on the table. He pulled out the chair to Rafe's left and sat down.
I closed the door behind me and stayed standing.
"Sit down," Rafe said.
I sat.
Rafe looked at me for a long moment and waited until I looked away to speak.
"You took a Ranger into the desert," he said. "You want to tell me what part of operational discipline that satisfies?"
"He was investigating Castillo on our land. I was going to find out what he knew."
"That's not what you were doing."
Rafe's voice was quiet enough that I had to lean forward to hear it. That was how I knew how angry he was.
"Rafi." Sierra put a hand on Rafe's shoulder.
The silence stretched.
"You let him put his hands on you," Rafe said, still quiet, "and then you let Coyote decide what to do with him because you couldn't."
I didn't answer. There wasn't an answer.
Sierra reached for the coffee pot and poured a cup for Rafe, and slid it across without making a thing of it.
"I'm not telling you to hurt you, aguijón.
I'm telling you because you already know it, and somebody has to say it out loud.
" He set the pot down. "You couldn't do it yourself.
That's not the worst thing about you. That's the best thing about you.
But it's still something we have to talk about. "
"I could've done it," I insisted, meeting Rafe's eyes finally and holding them. It was a lie, and we both knew it was, but I had to say it anyway. "It's what I do for you. What I've always done for you."
"For Pae Saco," Rafe corrected, and the words felt cold.
For you, I thought immediately and felt a little sick about it. When Rafe said there was a man who needed to become a corpse, I made it happen. No questions. No complaints. He commanded, I obeyed, and we'd never needed to talk about it until now.
"You told me we don't do feds or state," I continued, knowing I was toeing a line I might not come back from.
"That's what you said yesterday. After you sent him out, knowing I was up on that ridge, knowing I had my rifle, knowing I might take that shot.
So, which is it? Did you want me to take the shot, Rafe, or not? "
"I didn't want you to bend him over in a shack and fuck him." Rafe's voice came out hard and cold.
Sierra squeezed his shoulder.
Rafe sighed and sat back. "But it's done.
He's here now, so we have to deal with it.
Which means we make him useful. You keep him close.
You keep him talking. You let him see what we want him to see and nothing else.
" He slid the truck keys across the table.
"You're driving him into town this morning.
He needs to file his report and get Castillo to the morgue. "
I stared at the keys. Why was he giving them to me? Handling the law had always been his job.
"You put us in this position," Rafe said. "Now you get us out of it."
I picked up the keys. The metal was cold in my palm.
"One more thing," Rafe said. I looked up. He met my eyes and held them. "Whatever happened between you and that Ranger, I need to know where your loyalties lie."
Sierra's brow furrowed, and he frowned at Rafe. "Rafe."
"No, it's all right," I said. "Better to have it straight from the horse's mouth." I looked Rafe straight in the eye. "You and Sierra gave me a roof and a purpose. This place is my home. A man's got to protect what's his. Otherwise, what's the fucking point?"
"Good." Rafe stood. "Then go get him. You leave in thirty minutes."
I walked out with the keys in my fist.
The guest room was at the end of the hall, door closed, no sound coming from behind it.
I stood there longer than I should have.
The smart thing would've been to knock, deliver the message, and walk away. The smart thing would've been to keep my face blank and treat Winston Valverde like any other problem Rafe had handed me to solve.
I was not feeling particularly smart.
I knocked twice before the door opened.
Winston stood there in one of my shirts, light blue chambray that was a size too small on him.
His hair was wet from the shower. He'd shaved.
The chapped spot on his lip had scabbed over, and he looked rested, clear-eyed, like a man who'd slept fine despite being buried alive and threatened with execution twelve hours ago.
"Morning," he said.
"Truck leaves in five," I said. "You're riding into town with me. Castillo goes to the morgue, you file your report."
"Rafe tell you that, or are you volunteering?"
"Rafe told me."
Winston leaned against the doorframe like we were two men having a conversation and not two men who'd fucked in a shack before I'd led him into the desert to die. He looked at my jaw, my mouth, and back up to my eyes. My pulse picked up.
"You sleep okay?" he asked.
"Fine."
"Liar." He said it mildly, almost friendly. "You've got shadows under your eyes deep enough to hide a body in."
I gritted my teeth. "Five minutes. Don't make me come back for you."
I turned to go, and his voice stopped me.
"Ransom."
I looked back.
He was still leaning against the doorframe. "We going to talk about yesterday, or are we pretending it didn't happen?"
"Nothing to talk about."
"That right?"
"You got what you wanted. I got what I wanted. Now we've got a job to do." I held his gaze. "That's all this is."
I turned to go.
He caught me by the wrist.
He didn't yank. He didn't have to. He just closed his fingers around it and held. The contact went straight through me. I let him pull me one step into the room, because breaking his grip wasn't something I was going to do. We both knew it.
He shut the door behind me with his other hand.
Now we were on the same side of it. The bed was made. Soap-smell from his shower, and the little pot of pot-pourri on the nightstand. He still had my wrist. His thumb settled against the inside of it, right over the pulse, and he held it there like he wanted to feel what I was doing.
"That's a real pretty speech, Ransom." His voice had gone soft.
He was looking right at my mouth. "You almost sold it to me.
But I had your hand in my hair yesterday, and I know what your face does when you're lying to yourself.
So you call this whatever you need to call it to get through the morning.
I'll keep my mouth shut about it." His thumb pressed a little harder.
"But don't stand here and tell me it's nothing. Because we both know it's not."
"Fuck you, Ranger."
"Ain't got time for that," he said and grabbed his hat off the hook. He smirked at me and leaned in close enough to feel how hard I was for him. "Ready to go when you are, darlin'," he said against my chin.
I shoved him back. He laughed like it was the funniest damn thing he'd ever seen. He was still laughing when I slammed the door in his face.