Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2) - James Patterson Page 0,36

says. “There’s no power steering, no power brakes. It will give you a workout just shifting gears.”

I tell Tom he has a very nice home, and I appreciate him letting me stay.

“It’s the least I can do,” he says. “I love this little town. If Susan Snyder was murdered, I want you to make it safe again.”

“I will,” I say, but the truth is, some cases are never solved, and right now, this one looks like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.

Chapter 39

COYOTES OUT IN the hills sing me to sleep, and I get my first decent night’s rest since I caught the guys vandalizing my truck. Shortly after eight o’clock the next morning, Ariana and I are heading out of town to McCormack’s place in the hills. We pull off the pavement and take a gravel road parallel to a riparian corridor full of mesquite trees, yucca plants, and cholla cacti. Jackrabbits and roadrunners take turns zipping across the road in front of us.

After a few miles, the land levels out and we start passing fields of pump jacks, networks of pipelines, and the valve stations—what the roughnecks call Christmas trees—that regulate the oil flow.

My parents own a big cattle ranch, but its size pales in comparison to this spread.

“You haven’t seen half of it yet,” Ariana says.

The road drops into a valley, and we spot an eighty-foot-tall oil derrick standing next to a ribbon of lush vegetation. The metal structure is purely decorative, stamped with the McCormack Oil logo, with creeping vines entwining its metal framework.

The road winds to the ranch entrance, surrounded by hurricane fencing topped with razor wire, the kind of fence you’d see along the perimeter of a prison, not a Texas ranch. The main house is huge, probably ten thousand square feet, and surrounded by big oak trees and smaller Texas mountain laurels. Nearby is a man-made pond, a tennis court, and a guest house bigger than the home my parents live in. Horses and longhorn cattle graze in separate pastures and shelter in separate barns.

We approach a wooden archway stenciled SADDLEBACK MESA. It’s a security gate manned by two guards armed with TEC-9s. We roll to a stop, and they approach the driver-side door.

One of the men has a metal splint secured to his nose with white medical tape. The skin around his eyes is the yellow of bruising that’s begun to heal—the consequence of a broken nose.

“Can I help you?” the other guy says.

I ignore him and stare at the one with the bandaged nose.

“Hello again,” I say.

“Have we met?” he says, his voice nasal.

“You should recognize me,” I say. “I wasn’t the one wearing a mask.”

“Mister,” he says, trying to sound tough, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t call me mister,” I say. “It’s Ranger to you.”

With that, I turn to the other guy, the one closest to me, and tell him that we’re here to see Carson McCormack.

“Do you have an appointment?”

Instead of answering, I nod toward the walkie-talkie on his belt and say, “Just call him and tell him we’re here.”

“And what’s your name?” he asks as he reaches for the radio.

“Don’t act like you don’t know,” I say and face forward to wait.

The man with the walkie-talkie turns and walks away, but we can still hear him.

“The Texas Ranger is here,” he says. “He’s got that other cop with him. You know, the girl.”

A few seconds later, the guy tells us to follow him. As the gate opens, he climbs onto an ATV and zooms off.

Before I pull away, I wave the broken-nosed guard over to my door.

“Just listen to me for a second,” I say. “You don’t have to say anything that will incriminate you. Just listen.”

He takes my advice.

“You need to think about what you’re doing here,” I say. “What happened the other night, if that had gone a different way, one of us could have gotten killed.”

“I did two tours in Iraq, Ranger. I ain’t afraid of you.”

“Then maybe you should be afraid of what you’re doing here—whatever you’re doing.” I sweep my hand toward McCormack’s spread. “Serving our country in Iraq is something you ought to be proud of. But sneaking around, vandalizing cars, taking a swing at a Texas Ranger with a tire iron, I don’t see how you could take much pride in any of that.”

He smirks.

“Be all you can be,” I say and point to my driver-side door, which still has the Go home law dog message