Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Rogue
The credit card alert hits my watchlist at six twenty-two in the morning.
Todd Whitley just rented a Ford Explorer from a Hertz in Tyler, Texas, on a personal card with his real name on it.
I sit back in the chair.
Phantom hired a treasurer. He got a treasurer. He also got a man who can find anybody on the internet inside an afternoon, and Phantom hasn't asked once where that other set of skills came from.
There's a reason for that.
We worked it out the second week I was here, in his office with the door closed, the one and only time I've ever said the word firm out loud to him.
He doesn't ask what's on the right monitor. He never has
He just lets me work.
I pull the rental record up.
Todd paid with a Capital One card and listed Sharp, Texas as his destination in the agreement, which the Hertz kid didn't have to ask for. Most people leave that blank. Todd is the kind of man who fills in every blank because rules feel like manners to him.
Tyler to Sharp is about five hours.
He'll be at my gate sometime between ten and noon.
I take a long swallow of cold coffee and reach for the phone.
Phantom picks up on the second ring. "Talk."
"Hadley's dead husband's best friend just rented a car in Tyler."
"Comin' here?"
I pull the rental agreement up on the right monitor. "Comin' here. Should be at the gate by noon."
"Why?"
"To remind her she's a widow who oughta be available."
A long silence stretches between us. I hear Phantom take a slow breath on his end.
"You want me to send a brother to the gate with you?"
"No. I want him to meet me."
"Mm."
I lean back in the chair, the keyboard cold under my fingers. "Phantom."
"Yeah."
"Don't worry about it."
He laughs—short, dry, no humor in it. "I wasn't gonna. I was about to tell you don't kill him on the property."
I almost smile. "Wasn't gonna."
There’s a moment of silence.
He says, "Yet."
I say, "No, not yet."
He hangs up.
I walk over to Hadley's cabin around seven-thirty with the chicken salad plate she sent home with me yesterday, clean and dry, in my hand.
The morning's already getting hot. The cicadas haven't started up yet, but they will soon.
Nash is in the dirt yard with Diesel throwing the football, and Diesel has stopped pretending he's not Nash's dog now, which means somebody at the kennel is gonna lose a fight to a six-year-old about custody before the end of the week and it isn't gonna be the kid.
I climb Hadley's porch steps.
She's at the screen door before I knock in a yellow sundress.
The kind of pale yellow that's almost cream, with little white flowers on it that I'd bet money she picked up at a thrift store in Sharp because the hem has been let down once and re-stitched by hand.
Her hair's up but loose. She's got bare feet and a coffee mug in one hand and the screen door propped open with her hip. "Mornin', Rogue."
"Mornin', Hadley."
I hand her the plate.
"You bring it back washed?"
"I did."
"You didn't have to do that."
"I know."
She takes the plate, sets it on the kitchen counter behind her and comes back to the door.
"You eat breakfast yet?"
"No, ma'am."
"Want some? Nash and I were just about to sit down."
I should say no.
I'm a man with a Ford Explorer headed south on US-69 right now and a half-decade-old account at the firm that just went hot.
The last thing I've got time for at seven thirty-five on a Wednesday morning is eggs at Hadley's kitchen table.
But, I want to have breakfast with her, terribly bad.
I say, "I'd appreciate that, Hadley."
She steps back and lets me through the screen.
Her kitchen smells like bacon, coffee, and the lavender soap she keeps by the sink.
Nash is at the table eating a bowl of Cheerios. He looks up when I come in and grins. "Mornin', partner."
"Mornin'."
"Mama's makin' me eggs."
"Lucky."
"You want eggs?"
"I do."
Nash slides over on the bench to make room for me even though there are two other empty chairs at the table.
I sit down beside him. Stitch is on the bench between us. I move him gently, set him on the chair across from me where he can keep an eye on things.
Nash giggles.
Hadley brings me a plate.
Eggs scrambled. Two strips of bacon. A piece of toast with butter. A mug of coffee, black.
She sets it down in front of me.
She sits across from us with her own plate and we eat.
"Rogue."
"Yeah, partner."
Nash sets his fork down on his plate. "I had a dream about Diesel last night."
I take a sip of my coffee. "Yeah?"
"He could drive a tractor."
"He could?"
Nash nods, serious as a tax return. "Yeah. He had to use both paws on the wheel 'cause he didn't have hands, but he was real good at it. We went to the Whataburger drive-thru and he ordered."
I lean back against the bench, my elbow brushing the top of Stitch's head. "What'd he order?"
"A kid's meal. With the apple slices."
"That's a sensible order."
"And then they gave him the toy and he didn't know what to do with it 'cause he's a dog, so he gave it to me."
"That was nice of him."
"Yeah, I thought so too." Nash picks his fork back up and stabs a piece of egg, chewing while he thinks. Across the table, Hadley is watching the two of us with her coffee mug halfway to her mouth.
"Rogue?"
"Yeah, partner?"
"You think Diesel could really drive a tractor?"
I rub my jaw, considering. "Probably not. But I wouldn't put it past him."
Nash nods, like that was the answer he expected, and goes back to his eggs.
Hadley laughs quietly into her coffee mug.
I look across the table at her and our eyes lock. Neither one of us look away, and I think we both know what this is turning into.
At least, I hope she realizes it. I’ve been ready.
Nash, with a mouth full of eggs, oblivious as only a six-year-old can be, asks me if I want to throw the football with him after breakfast.
I tell him I've got a thing this morning. Maybe later.
I don’t tell him what that is, or his mother.
After breakfast, I say my goodbyes and go park my truck about forty yards inside the gate, in the live-oak shade where my outline gets broken up by branches and dappled light, and I wait.
The thermos of coffee is sweating on the dash.
The cicadas have started up in the cedar behind me.
A red-shouldered hawk is making lazy passes over the western pasture.
Eleven-oh-seven.
Eleven-twenty-three.
Eleven-thirty-eight.
At eleven-forty-one, a black Ford Explorer slows on the county road and turns into my gate.
The driver pulls in past the cattle skull pillars and stops on the gravel.
Sits there for a second, then opens the door and gets out.
I take one last drink from the thermos, screw the lid back on, and step out of my truck.
I walk down the gravel toward him without hurrying.
The white hat is pulled low. My sleeves are rolled to the elbow. The Shotgun Saints tattoo on my left forearm is the first thing he sees.
I make sure of it.
He watches me come.
He's mid-thirties. Soft around the middle, the kind of soft you get from sitting at a desk for ten years.
Clean-shaven, sandy hair parted on the side, the kind of pressed jeans a man buys when he wants to look like Texas without actually owning a horse.
He's wearing a button-down with the sleeves rolled clumsily, the way a man rolls them when he saw somebody else do it and thought it looked good.
He's holding a bouquet of sunflowers wrapped in grocery-store plastic.
On the passenger seat of the Explorer, propped against the dash so it won't fall over, is a framed photograph in a cheap wood frame. I can see it through the open driver's-side door.
It's a wedding photo.
Of him and Garrett.
He's the best man.
He brought a wedding photo of himself and another man as a gift for that man's widow? Either that, or this guy is seriously fucked in the head.
Actually, I know he has to be fucked in the head.
I stop about six feet from him on the gravel.
I don't say anything.
He tries a smile. "Hey there. I'm here to see Hadley Cross."
"And you are?"
He extends a hand. "Todd Whitley. I'm an old friend of the family. Used to be best friends with Garrett, her husband. May he rest."
I look at the hand.
I don’t take it.
I say, "What's your business with Mrs. Cross?"
His hand falls. The smile stays. The smile is a trained one—I can see the work behind it the way I can see the work behind a tax filing somebody touched up by hand.
The corners of his eyes are not in on it. "Just checkin' on her. We haven't talked in a while. I was in the area, and I wanted to bring her these."
He holds up the flowers. I look at the flowers. I look past him at the framed photo on his seat. I look back at his face.
I'm going to kill this man.
I don't know the day yet. The place isn't clear, and neither is the method.
But I know it the way I know the tide is going out—it's already in motion, and there's nothing on Earth that's going to change it.
I say, "Mrs. Cross is at her cabin. I'll walk you up."
And, I do.
I don't talk to him. He fills the silence the way men who are nervous fill silence.
Small comments about the property, about the weather, about how nice the cattle are looking. I let him talk.
I clock the cadence of his breathing, the way his right hand keeps adjusting his grip on the flowers, the way his eyes keep flicking past me toward Hadley's cabin like he's been picturing this walk for a long time.
Hadley is on her porch when we come up the gravel.
She has a glass of sweet tea in her hand.
She must have heard the Explorer roll in. She's standing, not sitting, with her back against the porch rail and the glass held against her chest like a shield.
She sees Todd and her face goes still.
I watch her face the way I'd watch a deer in a clearing. Not staring. Tracking.
She flinches.
It's a flinch so small that anyone who hasn't spent two months watching her wouldn't see it.
The corner of her mouth tightens, her shoulders rise a quarter inch, her eyes go from soft to careful in less than a second.
She catches it before it shows on her whole face.