Wyoming Bold

CHAPTER SEVEN

TANK LIKED CY Parks and his wife. They were surprisingly down-to-earth people, despite Parks’s unconventional background. He, along with local doctor Micah Steele and counterterrorism teacher Eb Scott, had formed a small unit of mercenaries who went all over the world as part of their jobs. They were taught, in turn, by a group of legendary fighters, now retired, whom they still kept in touch with.

Eb Scott’s school drew pupils from all over the earth. He taught all sorts of subjects, including small-arms instruction, defensive driving, hostage rescue and demolition. There were rumors, unsubstantiated of course, that the occasional government agent benefited from Scott’s instruction.

“Is there anything you guys haven’t done?” Tank asked Parks when they were strolling through the barn to look at some of his prize yearlings.

Parks shrugged. “We never took over a country.” He chuckled. “But one of our locals, Grange, did. He used to work for Jason Pendleton, but he’s got his own place now. His father-in-law manages it for him while he’s occupying the Military Chief of Staff position in Barrera, over in South America.”

“I understand the president of Barrera has family locally, too,” Tank remarked.

He nodded. “His son is Rick Marquez. Rick’s a lieutenant of detectives with San Antonio P.D. now, and his mother still runs Barbara’s Café in town. Good food. Almost as good as what my wife cooks.”

Tank nodded. “That was good cake.”

“She’s a wonder.” He glanced at his companion. “You married?”

Tank shook his head. He smiled secretly. “But I have prospects.”

Parks chuckled. “Good for you.”

“I appreciate the hospitality,” Tank added. “I travel a lot for the ranch. You get sick of hotels, no matter how good they are.”

“Tell me about it.”

Tank sighed. “I just hope your sheriff has some ideas about how we can track down this guy before he offs one of us,” he said quietly.

Cy nodded. “You’re worried about your family.”

Tank agreed. “And not just my family—my girl,” he added softly, referring to Merissa. “She’s the one who warned me. This rogue agent bugged her phones, as well as the ranch. Rourke’s got his eye on all of them, but it’s still unsettling.”

Cy clapped him on the shoulder. “I know how it feels, believe me. But we’ve got plenty of people trying to ferret out his identity. He can’t hide forever.”

“I hope you’re right,” Tank said.

TANK ENJOYED CY’S two little boys. They were smaller versions of their father, both with dark hair and green eyes. They wanted to know all about Tank’s ranch and what sort of cattle he ran. He got a kick out of listening to them hold forth on the subject of genetics. Obviously they were already headed in the direction of becoming ranchers when they grew up.

Tank called Merissa early the next morning.

“Anything going on that should worry me?” he asked her gently.

She laughed breathlessly. She hadn’t expected him to call, and she was all aflutter at the sound of his voice. “Not much,” she said. “Your man came and fixed the car for us. Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome. You’re sure he was our man?” he added worriedly.

“Oh, yes. Rourke came with him,” she added. “He’s a very interesting person.”

Tank ground his teeth together. “He’s my friend, but he’s a merc,” he began.

“You aren’t...jealous?” she asked shyly.

“Jealous?” he burst out. “Of course I’m jealous! You’re my girl!”

There was a soft gasp. He could almost hear her heart beating. “Oh, that sounds...very nice.”

He grinned from ear to ear. “Does it?”

“I like Rourke a lot. But not in that way,” she said primly.

He chuckled. “That sounds very nice, too,” he repeated her words.

She laughed.

“I love to hear the way you laugh,” he said softly. “I miss you.”

There was an indrawn breath. “I miss you, too. You aren’t going to be there a long time, are you?”

“No, just today. I’m going to talk to the sheriff later...” He paused as a car pulled up out front. He peered through the curtains. It was a squad car. He grinned. “Speak of the devil.” He laughed. “It’s the sheriff. I have to go. You take care of yourself. I’ll see you soon.”

“Yes. You do the same. Bye.”

“Bye.”

He hung up and went outside. Cy Parks joined him on the porch.

A tall blond man in a uniform got out of the Jacobs County Sheriff’s Department vehicle and came toward them.

“Tank Dalton?” the man asked with a smile as he studied Cy’s companion.

Tank grinned. “Sheriff Carson?”

“Hayes.” He shook hands. “If it’s not too early for you, I thought I’d ask if you could come over to my office for a chat.”

“Go ahead,” Cy told him. “If you need a ride back, I’ll send one of the boys.”

“No need.” Hayes grinned. “I’ll bring him back.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

TANK CLIMBED INTO the patrol car with Hayes and they drove to the sheriff’s office.

“How’s your arm?” Tank asked him.

Hayes grimaced. “Still painful. I’m doing physical therapy and hoping I’ll regain at least partial use of it, but things are unsettled right now.” He shook his head. “I’ve been shot before, but I never had consequences like these.”

“I know what you mean,” Tank replied quietly. “I had injuries that required multiple surgeries. It was a few months ago, but I still get jumpy if there’s a car backfire.”

“Law enforcement is not a job for the weak of heart.”

“I totally agree,” Tank said. “That’s why I market cattle now.”

Hayes laughed. He led the way inside the building to his office, and offered Tank a seat. “I like my coffee strong.”

“Me, too.”

“Good thing, that’s the only way you’ll get it around here.” He produced two cups of coffee and put Tank’s in front of him. “There’s cream and sugar...”

“I don’t want either. ”

“Same here.”

Tank leaned back in the chair. “Did you ever catch the would-be assassin who shot you?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Hayes said with evident irritation. “We’ve put pressure on everybody we know. I even had my father-in-law ask around.” He leaned forward with a grin. “That’s how you indicate you’re really desperate—you involve a drug lord in your investigation. But my wife’s father has a good heart. He’s just in an illegal business.” He shook his head. “He doesn’t seem to run out of applications for jobs on his horse ranch in Jacobsville. But just between you and me, I think a lot of the applicants are undercover narcs.” He chuckled.

“That wouldn’t be a surprise.”

Hayes sipped his coffee. “We identified the shell casing,” he said. “Unfortunately the bullet’s still in me. The surgeon refused to remove it. He said it would complicate my recovery if he went in digging around delicate tissue.”

“I’m still wearing one of mine, too,” Tank replied. “I remember reading about Doc Holliday of O.K. Corral fame—they said when they examined his body, he was carrying several ounces of lead...bullets that doctors had just left in him.”

“In those days, the late 1800s, it would have been lethal trying to remove them,” Hayes agreed. He put down the coffee cup. “I’m still trying to understand why this man, whoever he is, targeted you and me. Neither of us can actually describe him. We don’t know who he is, or who he works for.” He frowned. “My office computer was destroyed, and when I had one of Eb Scott’s computer techs try to recover the hard drive, he was killed.” His eyes narrowed. “What is this guy trying so hard to cover up?”

Tank shook his head. “I have no idea. But he’s good at what he does. I had a friend of mine, Rourke, come up and check my place for bugs. It turns out that the surveillance company I hired was bogus. Their consultant, who was supposed to plant surveillance equipment, bugged everything, too.”

Hayes shook his head. “I can’t remember a case like this, not in my whole life.”

“I wasn’t in law enforcement that long, but neither can I,” Tank said. “There hasn’t been another attempt on your life?”

Hayes shook his head. “Well, that’s not quite true,” he added with a short laugh. “It seems El Ladŕon, before his untimely death, hired a new assassin to come after me.”

“And...?”

Hayes’s eyes twinkled. “He hired a guy who worked for my father-in-law briefly. He’s gone back to Houston, but he still keeps in touch, just in case the assassin wants to take me out.”

“They didn’t know who he was?” Tank exclaimed.

“Nope.”

“It wasn’t Mr. Parks’s employee, the other Carson?”

“No. Now there’s an interesting case,” Hayes mused. “He actually blew up El Ladŕon with a couple of hand grenades down in Mexico. The Mexican government did take a brief interest in the case, but we have a DEA agent who’s related to the former president. He made a couple of calls for us and they dropped the inquiry.”

Tank just shook his head. “This is one odd case.”

“Indeed it is.”

“I understand that Carson doesn’t carry ID and can’t be found in a database anywhere,” Tank replied.

“He’s an enigma. I owe him my life. So does my wife.” Hayes shook his head, too. “He has some unique skills. In fact, he just went on our honeymoon with us before he went to shepherd you down here. In a separate room,” he added with a chuckle. “He’s thick with Cash Grier, which leads to an assumption I probably shouldn’t make.”

“That he works, or worked, for the government in covert assassination,” Tank said, nodding at Hayes’s surprise. “I happened to mention to him that I noticed his gait. It’s one I saw in spec ops people in Iraq. Men who hunt men walk that way.”

Hayes nodded. “I know. If you ever see Cash Grier walk, it’s an experience. He’s still skilled with a sniper kit. In fact, a couple of years back, he took out a kidnapper who was holding a DEA agent’s child hostage. Did it from an astonishing distance, in the dark. Amazing.”

“His wife was a movie star, wasn’t she?”

He nodded. “They have a little girl, so he’s not so much into dangerous occupations as he was. They have Tippy’s younger brother living with them also. He’s just fourteen. He and Cash go fishing together and they game online. They’re best friends.”

“Nice for him. For both of them.”

“Yes.”

“You said she sees things,” he began.

“She has premonitions,” Hayes told him. “They’re uncanny. Saved Cash’s life a time or two.”

“My...friend,” he said hesitantly, “sees the future, too. But she’s never certain exactly what she sees. Sometimes it’s clouded. Like the guy who’s stalking me. She saw him sitting in front of a mirror trying on wigs. We concluded that he’s good at disguise.”

“That reminds me. I had Rick Marquez ask his father-in-law if he could check into that for us.”

“His father-in-law?”

Hayes nodded. He grinned. “Runs the CIA.”

Tank whistled.

“Anyway, he found a whole list of undercover agents from several agencies who have a reputation for their use of disguises. So I’m afraid it’s going to take a long time to narrow it down to even a handful.”

“Another dead end,” Tank agreed. He sighed. “I could stand in the center of town and wait for him to come shoot me.”

“From what we’ve been able to put together, he avoids crowds when he’s planning a hit.”

“Which would explain why he didn’t just shoot me in the front yard of my own ranch when he came out to put in the surveillance devices,” Tank told him. “He did seem disconcerted that we had so many armed men just standing around.”

“Good thing,” Hayes said. “I don’t think he’d have minded killing you face-to-face.”

“Nor do I. But if it hadn’t been for Merissa, I wouldn’t have been expecting it.” He shook his head. “She didn’t even know me. She came walking up to the back door, in a blizzard because her car wouldn’t start, to tell me I had to be careful. She said it was because of something I didn’t remember.”

Hayes frowned. “Was she more specific than that?”

“Not really. It comes and goes with her. She said that I knew something that I wasn’t aware of knowing, and it posed a risk to the man.”

“Nebulous.”

“Yes. But even so, it probably saved my life.”

“What do you remember about the man, the supposed DEA agent, who led you into the ambush in Arizona?” Hayes asked.

Tank sighed. “I remember that he wore a suit. It’s still sort of hazy. He was medium height, nothing remarkable about his features. He was the sort of guy you wouldn’t even notice on the street.”

Hayes was remembering. “Yes. The guy I remember was pretty much the same. But he had a marked Texas drawl.”

“I think it was the same guy, after I was shot, who was giving a drug mule hell for calling 911 for me—he had red hair and a Massachusetts accent. But he was dressed the same.” He shook his head. “I thought I was hallucinating.”

“Nice of the mule to call for help.”

“Yes. Unexpected. I don’t even know who he was. I owe him my life. I hope they didn’t kill him for it.”

“You never know. I’ve heard of whole villages wiped out just for revenge against one man who lived in it.”

“So have I.”

“My wife and I saved one man from El Ladŕon,” Hayes recalled. He laughed. “My wife held an AK-47 on him and never knew if it was even loaded—but she bluffs well. Anyway, he didn’t want to hold us hostage, but his bosses knew his family and threatened to kill them if he stepped out of line. Carson, who works for Cy Parks, got his family out of Mexico.”

“So he does have at least one soft spot?”

“Not sure about that,” Hayes said. “He doesn’t seem to care about much. Although, he does have something of a reputation with women.”

“Deserved.” Tank chuckled. “I saw him in action at the airport. He draws them like flies to honey.”

“Draws them, yes. But he’s not a sentimental man.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so, either.”

“How about your brothers?” Hayes asked. “This must be hard on them, too.”

“They worry. My older brother Mallory has a new son.”

Hayes smiled. “I like kids. My wife has a little brother and sister who live with us. They light up the place. We’re hoping to have one of our own.”

“You said something about Cash Grier’s secretary having a photographic memory, and that she saw the rogue agent,” Tank said. “Any help there?”

Hayes shook his head with a long sigh. “She had a police artist draw the man she remembered. But the nose was different, the hairline was different...” He grimaced. “The only thing familiar was the ears.”

“Now ears are a pretty good identifier,” Tank replied. “You don’t usually try to disguise those, even if you use makeup or wigs.”

“That’s true.” Hayes agreed. “Maybe we should issue a BOLO for a pair of ears.”

“It’s not so far-fetched,” Tank assured him. “I’d really like to have a look at that sketch.”

“That’s one of the reasons I asked you to come down here. Just a sec.” Hayes picked up the phone and called Cash Grier. After a brief conversation, he hung up. “He’s got a few free minutes. Let’s go over to his office and have a look at that sketch.”

Tank smiled. “Now you’re talking.”

CASH’S SECRETARY, CARLIE Blair, had wavy dark hair and green eyes and a pert smile. She greeted Tank as if he’d been her neighbor all her life. She pulled the sketch out of a nearby filing cabinet and handed it to him.

“That’s the best the artist could do,” she explained. “It’s not perfect. I think the nose was a little longer and thinner, and the chin had more of a square look.”

“How about the ears?” Tank asked.

She blinked. “The ears?” She looked at the sketch and slowly nodded. “Yes, he certainly got those right. I remember because he had sort of a notch in one, as if he’d been cut and it had healed but left a scar.”

Tank’s jaw was clenched. “Yes,” he said. “I remember now. It was his left ear. And he wore an earring in it, a small gold circlet.”

“Yes!” she agreed.

“I remember the earring myself,” Hayes said. He frowned. “Odd, I’d forgotten that.” He scratched his head. “It was overshadowed by the shirt he was wearing. It was paisley, I think.”

“I remember the shirt, too.” Tank laughed. “It must be a favorite piece of clothing, if he was still wearing it when you saw him.”

Carlie was frowning. “It was gold paisley,” she recalled, closing her eyes so that she could focus better. “With beige and brown patterns.”

“Yes,” Tank agreed. The memory came back along with the pain. He was looking at the shirt when the bullets hit.

“Well, I’ve got a favorite shirt,” Carlie remarked. “I wear it at least twice a week. Of course, it’s not paisley. It’s a black T-shirt with a green alien face and it says, They’re Coming! under it.” She grinned.

“She likes to wear it if we get visits from feds,” Cash Grier remarked as he joined them, glowering at his secretary. “She’s unconventional.”

“But I can type, I have a pleasant phone personality and I can find anything you lose, Chief.” She grinned even more broadly.

He shook his head. “Yes, and you can spell. It’s just that mouth...”

“What do you mean?” Tank asked.

Carlie looked past him and her face took on a sarcastic expression. “Well, look what walked in the door. I need to start a fire out back. Got any spare hand grenades on you?” she added.

The newcomer was Carson, Tank’s shadow on the plane.

He gave Carlie a glowering stare. “Something wrong with matches?” he asked. “Or don’t you know how to use them?” he added with a bland smile.

“I can use a Glock,” she retorted. “Wanna see?”

“She cannot use a Glock,” Cash Grier interjected. “The last time she tried, on the firing range, she hit two windshields and a tire, and the cars weren’t even parked on the range.”

“It was a horrible accident,” Carlie defended herself.

“Yes, it was. You picked up a gun.”

“Your coffee will have salt tomorrow morning in place of sugar,” Carlie assured Cash.

“If I fire you, your father will make me the subject of his next two sermons,” Cash said grimly. “But I’ll risk it.”

“Sermons?” Carson asked, frowning.

“Her father is a Methodist minister,” Cash explained.

Carson’s expression was indescribable. He narrowed his eyes as he looked at Carlie, who avoided him and went back to the drawing on her desk.

“Don’t worry, religion isn’t contagious,” she told Carson without quite looking at him.

“Thank goodness,” Carson drawled. He looked at Tank. “Did you recognize the face in the drawing?”

“Not so much,” Tank replied. “But we’ve all agreed that the ears are the one thing we all remember about him.” He turned to Hayes. “You should talk to those two feds, Jon Blackhawk and Garon Grier...” He frowned and looked at Cash. “Grier?”

“My brother,” Cash said. “He’s always been FBI. I worked with, shall we say, less structured government agencies.”

“Covert,” Carson said with a mock cough.

“Look who’s talking about covert,” Cash said pointedly.

“Takes one to know one,” Carson shot right back. But he grinned. So did Cash.

“I’ve already talked to Blackhawk and Cash’s brother,” Hayes told Tank. “Which reminds me, they wanted me to tell you that they can’t set up that hypnotist they wanted you to see. He had a family emergency and is out of town. Maybe another time.”

“Another time,” Tank agreed, secretly relieved.

“It turns out that he—” Cash indicated Carson “—worked with an associate of mine from Brooklyn, New York.”

“Should we ask what sort of work?” Hayes mused.

“It would be safer not to,” Cash told him.

Tank shook his head. “I’ve never been in a place where so many people were ex-feds.”

“Or ex-mercs,” Cash added. “We’ve cornered the market on them.”

“It’s a good place to retire, or that’s what Cy Parks always says.” Hayes chuckled.

“He’s a nice fellow,” Tank remarked. “I was perfectly happy to stay in a hotel, but he insisted.”

“He knows you’re in the market for a new bull,” Cash said with a big grin.

“Well, I am, actually,” Tank had to agree.

He went back to Carlie’s desk and took another look at the man. “He really is a chameleon,” he remarked. “But why is he so worried about what we might remember? I couldn’t pick him out on the street. Well, maybe that scarred ear would give him away, but there’s nothing else really memorable about him.”

“Maybe it’s something that doesn’t readily show,” Carson remarked, joining him. “Or maybe he’s just paranoid.”

Hayes shook his head. “He killed a computer tech who tried to restore his image on my computer.”

Carson’s black eyes narrowed. “Yes. He was a friend of mine,” he said tautly. “Sweet kid. Never hurt a fly. Knew everything about computers.” His face set in hard lines. “I’d like to meet the man who popped a cap on him.”

“He feeds people to crocodiles,” Cash said in a mock whisper, jerking his head toward Carson.

Carson glared at him. “It was hungry. Poor old thing hadn’t been fed in days.”

“So it was an act of charity. I see,” Hayes mused.

Carson shrugged. His expression went even tauter. “The man tortured Rourke’s friend, a female photojournalist covering the assault on Barrera. She’ll carry the scars for the rest of her life.”

“I don’t doubt that Rourke helped you feed the croc,” Cash replied.

Carson’s black eyes met his. “Sometimes you do what feels right, even if it’s not quite legal.”

“Well, it wasn’t in my jurisdiction, so I’m not concerned,” Cash told him. He wagged a finger at him. “But you feed anybody to a crocodile in my town, you’re looking at life behind bars.”

“No problem,” Carson said. “I like whiskey.”

“Life...behind...bars. Whiskey.” Tank burst out laughing. It was a play on words that almost got by him.

Carson actually grinned.

“And it would be nice if you stopped wearing that damned knife in public,” Cash told the younger man, indicating the huge Bowie knife strapped to his hip. “It makes people nervous.”

“Makes her nervous, you mean,” Carson replied, jerking his head toward Carlie.

“I don’t like knives,” she muttered under her breath.

“Men with guns walk around in here all the time, you don’t mind them,” Carson retorted.

“I’ve never seen a gunshot wound. I have seen the result of a knife fight.” She gave him a long look. “I had nightmares...”

He frowned. “When was this?”

She averted her eyes. “My father was attacked a few months ago by a man with a knife. We don’t know why. He was lucky, because it went in just at the waist and didn’t even nick a vital organ.”

“Who would attack a minister?” Hayes asked, shocked.

“We don’t know,” Carlie replied sadly. “Just some crazy guy, we think. Sometimes, I think the whole world’s gone mad.”

“It does seem so, from time to time,” Tank had to agree. “Did they catch the man?”

“Not yet,” Cash answered for her. “But we’re still looking.”

“I don’t like knives,” Carlie reiterated, glaring up at Carson. “Especially that sort.” She indicated the Bowie. “It’s scary.”

“I’ll start wearing a suit so I can conceal it from you,” Carson promised dryly.

“Why would you carry something that big?” Hayes wondered.

“Snakes,” Carson said, deadpan.

“Good luck going after a sidewinder with a knife,” Tank told him. “You’d get bitten before you could reach him with it.”

“Not if it was thrown,” Carson returned. He looked so confident that the others just shrugged and let the subject go.

“Do you remember anything else about the man?” Tank asked Carlie as he studied the sketch. “Anything you didn’t tell the police artist?”

She was thinking, hard. “I’m not sure. That’s basically what he looked like,” she added, nodding at the portrait. “He was very friendly. Personable. I remember he talked to me about sharks.”

“Sharks?” Tank probed.

“He said that they were misunderstood, that people just assumed they were dangerous. But that they really weren’t. It was just when they were hungry, they killed.”

“What an odd thing to say,” Hayes remarked.

“I thought so, too,” Carlie agreed. “He said that he liked to swim with them in the Caribbean, in the Bahamas.”

“Now that might be interesting,” Hayes said.

She laughed softly. “I’d forgotten, until just now.” She glared at Carson. “He reminds me of a shark. That’s why I thought of it.”

Carson’s eyebrows arched. “A shark? Me?”

“Dark and lithe and stealthy and dangerous,” she returned. “Attacks when you least expect it, from cover.”

“An apt description. Not of you,” Tank told Carson with a grin. “But it would fit the perpetrator.” His expression became grim. “He led me into an ambush that almost cost me my life. And he did it so easily, with such finesse, that I never suspected a thing. She’s right about his personality,” he added, alluding to Carlie. “He put me at ease the minute he walked into my office. He seemed just like one of the guys.”

“I got that impression, too,” Hayes said. “He put himself right in the middle of a drug bust.” He frowned. “Something else I remember, I had two armed deputies with me. They came up unexpectedly when they heard the call go out over the radio about a traffic stop involving narcotics.” He looked at Tank. “He was shocked to see them. That was just before the other feds showed up.”

“He might have been planning the same thing for you that he did for me,” Tank suggested.

“Yes, but there was no reason for him to want me dead.” Hayes tried to make sense of it. “He was in on the arrest. He went to my office with me and waited while I filed the report on my computer, along with a photo my deputy took at the scene of the arrest and one of all of us with the drug haul and the confiscated gold-plated weapons. I wasn’t the only law enforcement officer at the bust.”

“I don’t think he meant to kill you. Not then, anyway,” Carson interjected with narrowed eyes. He perched himself on the edge of Carlie’s desk, to her obvious dislike. “I think it was something that happened after both shootouts. Something connected, but apart from them.”

“He was obviously in with the drug cartel,” Hayes replied. He nodded slowly. “He was trying to protect his people from arrest. He failed in my case, but not in yours,” he told Tank.

“Yes, but he has no reason to come after me now,” Tank said slowly. “I haven’t even spoken about the case since I gave my last report, just before I resigned from the job.”

Cash Grier leaned against the wall, arms crossed, deep in thought. “Attempted assassination,” he said, nodding toward Hayes. “Kidnapping, for no apparent reason.” He glanced at Tank. “Armed assault, followed much later by stalking and surveillance. He’s after something that happened as a result of both shootings. Maybe not the shootings themselves at all.”

“What?” Hayes asked.

Cash shook his head. “I don’t know. But there is a feverish political race going on right now for a congressional seat vacated by the unexpected death of our senior Texas U.S. senator. There’s a special election coming, although someone will be appointed to fill out the rest of his term, which ends this year. There are rumors that the leading candidate has ties to the cartel over the border, and that at least one rival candidate has been blackmailed to quit the race.”

“I had heard about that,” Tank said. “You think there may be a connection?”

“There just may be,” Hayes said. “Especially if the man we remember could be part of the drug cartel.”

“We know he is,” Cash replied. “The problem would be proving his connection. If he’s close to the candidate, that might be enough incentive for him to get rid of any witnesses. Also, he was a rogue DEA agent, a mole. I’m sure he was passing sensitive information to his cronies.”

“Maybe somebody found him out,” Tank guessed.

“Yes,” Cash replied. “But who he is—that might be the heart of the problem. If we find out his identity, and it can link him to the cartel and the candidate for the Senate...”

“That would be a motive for murder,” Hayes agreed. “A very good one.”