Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Spur
Sunday morning comes up gray over Sharp, and I'm up before the sun, per usual.
Dakota sleeps beside me in the back bedroom of the main house with her face turned into my shoulder and her wrapped wrist on my chest.
We could’ve gone back to my cabin last night, but we didn’t.
I think there’s some sort of comfort in being together like this.
I've been awake an hour, watching the ceiling, thinking about the man I'm going to kill today.
I get out of bed carefully. Boots. Jeans. Clean shirt. Cut.
She wakes when I reach for the Glock on the dresser. "Spur."
"Hey, baby," I say, turning to look at her.
"What time is it?"
"Five."
She sits up, her braid coming loose on the pillow, the hoodie of mine she slept in pushed up over her shoulder.
She looks at me a long second, and then her eyes go to the Glock in my hand and she's awake the rest of the way. "You're leaving."
"Yeah."
"Now?"
"In about an hour."
She swings her legs out of the bed, reaches for the jeans she had on yesterday, and pulls them on under the hoodie. "I'm going with you."
"No, baby."
"Spur. Pops promised."
"Pops promised you were in the room. You were in the room when we built the picture yesterday. That was the room."
"Don't do that," she says, voice sharp.
"Don't do what?"
"Don't twist his words around so you can keep me here."
I sit down on the edge of the bed while she stays standing.
The hoodie hangs off her shoulder and her bare feet are on the cold hardwood.
Her jaw is set the way her jaw sets when she's about to fight me. "Dakota."
"What?"
"Your father is not putting his daughter on a hit. Your uncles are not putting their niece on a hit. And I'm not putting my woman on a hit. Not today. Not ever. It’s too risky. Risky enough for the brothers, and I’ll be damned if any of us are too distracted worrying about you and someone else gets killed. "
"That's not your call to make, Spur."
"It is all of ours, baby. We already discussed it. Voted on it. Phantom. Holt. Roan. Me. Even phoned Cash. The vote was unanimous."
She closes her eyes. Opens them. There's water in them and she's blinking it back. "You voted on me."
"We voted on the op. You weren't part of the op."
"Spur."
"Dakota. Listen to me."
I stand up, cross to her and put both hands on her face.
"I'm going to this barn to put a man in the ground.
I'm going to do something there I don't want you to ever see.
Not because I think you can't take it. Because I love you, and what's about to happen in that barn is going to be ugly, and I want to be the man you come home to at night, not the man you watched kill somebody this morning. "
She doesn't answer for a long second. Then she leans her forehead against mine and closes her eyes. "Promise me you’ll come home to me."
"Yes, baby."
"You don't get hurt."
"No, baby, I won’t."
"You finish him."
"Yes."
"And when you come home, you tell me it's done. You don't tell me what you did. You tell me it's done."
"Yes, Dakota. I promise."
She kisses me hard. The kind of kiss that tastes like sleep, anger, and the love that's been between us for longer than we care to admit.
Then she pulls back. "Go."
I do.
Phantom's at the kitchen table when I get there, coffee already in his hand.
Holt's across from him eating a plate of eggs Marlena likely made.
Roan's at the sink washing his hands.
"She up?" Phantom asks me.
"Yeah."
"She fight you?"
"She fought."
"Good. She's a Lyle. Wouldn’t expect anything less." He stands up and drains his coffee. "Holt's running the property. Wells, Tread, and Bullseye on perimeter. Banshee comes with us."
"Yes, Prez."
"Cash and his men will meet us there. They've had eyes on Asher's barn since last night. Asher comes in at five-thirty every morning to feed before his crew shows up. We'll be inside the barn tomorrow morning, waiting for him."
Roan dries his hands and turns from the sink. "Are we taking trucks?"
"Two," Phantom says. "You and your man in yours. Spur, Banshee, and me in mine."
He looks at me. "Six hours to Big Spring. Let’s move."
We all head out, get in our trucks, and hit the road.
The drive across the panhandle goes slow.
The hill country gives way to brush country and gives way to the flat brown stretches west of San Angelo.
Phantom drives. I'm in the passenger seat.
Banshee is in the back with a thermos and a bag at his feet that I know for a damn fact has his folding knife, his paracord, his cleaning kit, and his personal Smith & Wesson.
Roan and his man, a brother named Coyote, are in the F-350 behind us.
We don't talk much for the first three hours.
Around Sweetwater, Phantom breaks the quiet. "Spur."
"Yes, Prez?"
"You get the kill shot."
I look at him.
"Roan and I talked at the kitchen table this morning. He wanted the kill. I told him no."
"Why, Prez?"
"Because Roan brought him to this family. He'd carry it. The man who brought a problem to my door doesn't get the closure of cleaning it up. That's mine to give to somebody else."
"And you're giving it to me."
"He came to my daughter. You're the man she chose. You're the man whose name is on her wrist. You're the one who closes it, Spur."
I don't answer for a long second. "Yes, Prez."
"Roan'll be in the barn with us. He'll watch. He doesn't pull the trigger. He gets the closure of seeing it done. If you ask me, that's more than enough."
"Does he know that's what you decided?"
"He knows. We agreed. He's at peace with it."
I look out the window at the brush country going by. The sun is up now, and the light is hard and yellow the way it is in West Texas in May.
The mesquite is throwing short shadows across the highway. A red-tailed hawk on a fencepost watches us pass. "Prez, I think this goes without saying, but thank you."
"You earned it, Spur. You’re my daughter’s ol’ man. No one else should have the right."
* * *
Cash meets us at a Phillips 66 outside Big Spring just after eleven.
He's leaning against a black Suburban with a coffee in his hand when we pull in.
Same dark hair as Phantom, Holt, and Roan, more weight in the shoulders, the kind of patched man who runs a major-metro chapter and looks like it.
The Shotgun Saints rocker on his cut says San Antonio.
Two of his brothers are on bikes, parked behind the suburban.
He embraces Phantom first. "Brother."
"Brother."
"Roan."
"Cash."
He looks at me. "Spur."
"Cash."
"My brother says you're the man closing this."
"Yes."
He nods once. "Good."
He turns and leans against the Suburban, pulls a folded paper map out of his cut, and spreads it on the hood.
Banshee, Roan, Phantom, Coyote, and I gather around.
"The property's ten miles south of here," Cash says. "Stock barn is here." He taps the map. "House is here. Quarter mile between them. Hog pens are behind the barn. Asher comes in at five-thirty every morning to feed the hogs and check on the broncs. Crew shows up at seven."
"How many in his crew?" Phantom asks.
"Three on a normal day."
"Good."
"My boys have been on the property since Friday. Watching from a hunting blind in the live oaks at the back of the property. Asher's wife is at the house. She doesn't go out to the barn. She runs the books from the kitchen."
Roan looks at the map. "Loretta."
"Yeah."
He looks at Phantom. "Brother, about the wife."
"She gets dealt with," Phantom says.
"How?"
"We send one of Cash's men to the house when Asher's down. He puts a gun in her face and tells her her husband died in a stock accident. He tells her to stay in the kitchen for the next two hours. He tells her if she calls anyone, the men who came for Asher will come back for her. Then he leaves."
Cash nods. "She'll know."
"Yeah," Phantom says. "She'll know. And she'll know what happens if she opens her fucking mouth too."
Roan looks at the map for a long second. "All right."
Phantom speaks. "We move at four-thirty. Trucks parked behind the live oaks. Walk in on foot. Two men through the front of the barn, two through the back. Spur goes through the front with me. Roan and Banshee through the back. Coyote stays with the trucks. I don’t want anyone on bikes.
Get in, get shit done, and get the fuck out.
Take the plates off everything, and I want us to put wraps on the vehicles on the off chance there are cameras around.
Cash's men hit the house when Asher hits the barn floor. "
"Yes, Prez," sounds from around the hood.
Phantom rolls the map up. "We eat, rest for the day, and move first thing in the morning."
The afternoon at Cash's place goes slow.
Cash's chapter clubhouse is a metal building on a piece of land outside Big Spring. Industrial. No frills.
We eat brisket sandwiches his ol’ lady brought over and don't talk much.
I lie on a couch in the back room for two hours and don't sleep but rest my eyes. I think about Dakota in the kitchen of the main house six hours away.
I think about her wrapped wrist. I think about her face at five o'clock this morning when she figured out where I was going.
Any sane man would pray everything goes well. But I don't pray. I haven't prayed in twelve years.
I lie there on Cash's couch with my eyes closed and silently vow to the woman I love that I'm coming home tomorrow, and I mean it.
The day goes by as slow as molasses, and when it’s finally time to ride out the next morning, we’re all yearning for it.
The five of us—Phantom, Roan, Banshee, Cash, Coyote, me—in two trucks, plus Cash's two brothers in the Suburban, drive out of the clubhouse and ten miles south to the access road that runs back to Asher's property.
We park behind the live oaks Cash named.
The hunting blind one of his boys has been in for two days is fifty feet off, and the brother climbs down out of it and meets us at the trucks with a thermos and a face like he's been awake for forty hours.
"He's already out there," the brother says.
"What?" Phantom asks.
"Came out fifteen minutes early. He's in the barn. Lights on."