is gone.
We hike toward the river. The air is cool, and the desert hills look blue in the moonlight. We don’t say much on the walk. My mouth is drier than I can ever remember it feeling. My muscles are sore from what I’ve put my body through in the last twelve hours. Inside my boots, my feet burn with blisters. My arms are scraped up from running through brush and cacti, and even though it hadn’t been bothering me too much lately, the rash on my right hand seems to be flaring up, particularly on my trigger finger. I probably scraped it on a rock during our escape. Or it might simply be that the act of shooting so much was comparable to me scratching my finger over and over.
Whatever the reason, the hand and finger itch irritatingly.
I have no doubt Ariana feels as bad as I do—minus the rash—but to her credit, she never complains.
We arrive at the river and find Ariana’s stash of supplies. We open cans of soup and choke them down cold. We’ve been starving all day, but now that we have access to food, neither of us feels particularly hungry. We have no appetite, but we certainly have thirst. We gulp from water bottles until our stomachs feel bloated.
Finally, when we have some energy back, Ariana says, “Rory, what the hell are we going to do?”
We’re sitting at the riverbank where we went swimming, which feels like a hundred years ago.
“I’ve been thinking about that while we walked,” I say. “You know that greenbelt that runs through McCormack’s property? That little tributary with all the vegetation growing around it?”
Ariana knows what I’m talking about—the ribbon of oasis outside the fence line that passes the shooting range and the oil derrick.
“I’m assuming that waterway comes from the open space somewhere, right? Do you think you could find it?”
Ariana knows right where it is. When she was in high school, Gareth would drive a four-wheeler parallel to it and meet her in the open space.
“They’ve blocked every dirt road out of here,” I say, “but I bet they won’t expect me to walk right onto their property.”
“It’s a hell of a hike,” she says. “Maybe ten miles.”
Once the land begins to flatten out, she says, that means I’ll be on McCormack’s land.
“And at that point, I’ll be able to get a cell phone signal, right?”
“Rory,” she says, “what have you got in mind?”
I tell her my plan.
When I’m finished, she says, “That sounds like suicide.”
“What other options do we have?” I ask.
She can’t think of any.
Chapter 93
GARETH McCORMACK CAN’T sleep. He rises from his bed and paces through the ranch house, anxious for dawn to come so he can mobilize the men to hunt down Yates and Ariana. He can’t wait to get his hands on them.
When he was in high school, he started a trophy box, keeping souvenirs of all the girls he slept with.
When he was in the army, he started a different trophy box—one that held souvenirs from all the people he killed.
Ariana avoided making it into his first trophy box. He’s glad he’ll have the chance to put her in the second. And as for Yates, Gareth doesn’t think he’s ever wanted to kill someone so bad.
He hates that fucking Texas Ranger.
His father thinks Yates is a worthy adversary, and Gareth can admit the guy is good—for a civilian. But Gareth has no doubt that in any contest—fists, knives, rifles, pistols—he could take the Texas Ranger. There is no scenario in which Rory Yates could best him.
Gareth steps out onto the front porch. The moon and stars provide some light, but most of the property is hidden in darkness. He can make out the gate and some of the fence line, white in the blackness, but the oil derrick a thousand yards away is completely invisible.
The land is silent, the air chilly.
A light comes on in his peripheral vision, and he turns his head to see a dull glow coming from his father’s study. Gareth takes a plug of snuff and stuffs it in his lip. He spits into the grass, then heads back into the house.
“Can’t sleep?” Gareth says, seeing his father behind his desk. “Me neither.”
“I was just thinking about your mother,” Carson says, leaning back in his plush chair.
The only light in the room is a desk lamp. They call the room a study, but it’s bigger than some houses, with a vaulted ceiling and a picture window that