Page 19 of Never Stay Gone
“No,” Shane said firmly. “Libby’s familiar to the sheriff’s department, though. Unfortunately.” His thumb played with the edge of his coffee lid. “I thought she’d finally gotten out of town. Damn.”
Dakota waited, in case Shane was going to elaborate. He didn’t. “The final victim is an interestin’ one: Amber Serrano.” He leaned back, flipping the folder closed. “Amber is—was—a street-level operative for the Jalisco cartel. One of her brothers was a sicario for Jalisco, and he recruited her when she was too young to know any better. We caught her crossing the border illegally a dozen times. We think she moved drugs and money for the cartel, but we were never able to pin anything on her. At the least, she was runnin’ intelligence for ’em.”
“The Jalisco cartel. That’s the one that’s challenging Sinaloa for control across the border?”
Dakota nodded. “They’re bad shit. I mean, all of the cartels are bad. But Jalisco is the worst. They’re deep into black magic. Believe human sacrifice is givin’ ’em extra powers in their war against Sinaloa or some shit. Whenever you hear about massacres down south? Nine times out of ten, it’s Jalisco sicarios who have slaughtered ten, twenty, thirty people and left their dismembered bodies for everyone to see. They’re half drug cartel, half death cult. We’ve tried for years to keep them out of the US, but their influence is spreadin’. You can see Jalisco death cults croppin’ up in prisons across Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.”
“We?” Shane, finally, looked at him again.
“Yeah, we. The Texas Rangers, but more specifically, the Recon Rangers. Stopping Jalisco from coming across with their drugs and their cult is one of our primary missions.”
Shane’s eyes went wide. “You’re a Recon Ranger?”
Dakota nodded. In Texas law enforcement, the Recon Rangers were the shit. Texas tough, Texas proud, in a quiet way. Their names, their unit, were never publicly identified.
It looked like Shane wanted to ask more questions, and Dakota waited, wanting him to. Wanting him to be curious about him, his life, what the hell had happened to him after that afternoon on Main Street.
Jesus, he was pathetic. Thirteen years, and he still wanted Shane to give him any kind of attention.
Shane was spoken for now, though. Not quite a married man, but close enough. “Fiancé,” Betty Monroe had whispered in his ear. “No one saw that one coming.”
He’d been too afraid to ask why, but Betty, who loved the sound of gossip spilling from her painted lips, barreled on. “Shelly is so vivacious and full of life, and Deputy Carson is like a ghost haunting his own life. Who knows, maybe she’s good for him that way. Maybe she makes him happy. Lord knows he needs to smile more.”
Shane used to smile all the time. For me.
Dakota cleared his throat. “What can you tell me about Libby Lynn?”
Shane leaned against his desk, propping his hip and one ass cheek on the worn surface as he hitched his jeans over his thigh. Dakota’s fingers tightened around Shane’s chair arms, and he scooted a few inches back. Fought one of the hardest battles in his life to keep his eyes from roaming south, traveling over Shane’s rumpled long-sleeve khaki button-down, over his waist, down to that ass and the thick thighs Dakota used to wrap his hands around before he buried his face between Shane’s legs and put his mouth on—
“If it were Libby alone in that grave, I’d know exactly who put her there.”
Dakota blinked. “She got bad history with someone?”
“Her ex, Frank. They were high school sweethearts, but somewhere along the way, Frank got mad at life. He’s been thrown off a half dozen drill rigs. Kicked out of almost every bar west of the Pecos. They fought constantly, but about four years ago, Libby finally threw him out. I think she was waiting for their son to graduate high school. Didn’t quite make it that long.”
“Did he? The son, that is.”
Shane nodded. “Big Bend High. He stayed local.” He shrugged. “Started working on the Montgomery spread.”
Stayed local. Another way to say a kid didn’t have the money or the grades to get out of Rustler. Without one or the other, there was no hope of college, and a kid’s only choices were a thumb out on the highway or signing up for the military. Come to that, there wasn’t a recruiter for three hundred miles, so to get to where someone could sign their life away, they needed to stand out on the sunbaked asphalt and wait for one of the belching tractor trailers to squeal to a stop and ask them where they wanted to go.
“Anywhere but here,” Dakota had said to the trucker who picked him up. “Anywhere but right here.”
“I used to go to their trailer on domestic disturbance calls twice a month before Libby threw Frank out. She filed for divorce, but they haven’t finalized anything. Frank comes back into town every six months or so and goes banging up to Libby’s place to beg her to take him back. When she says no, he demands money from her so he can get out of town again. That doesn’t go over well. Libby doesn’t—didn’t—have much to begin with. Certainly not enough to be giving away to a piece of shit like Frank.”
“Where did Libby work?”
“At the restaurant at the truck stop. She didn’t have a set schedule. She picked up whatever shifts she could. That’s what you’d call a transient workforce out there. It’s not uncommon for waitresses to be there for one shift and never show up again. They may have hitchhiked in and leave the same way after a day of truckers leering at them, kids running amok after being cooped up in minivans for hours, and tourists asking the same questions about how to get from there to wherever. Here isn’t the right fit for everybody.”
Dakota managed a thin smile. The edge of emptiness collected a certain kind of person: the rugged, hardened individual who wanted a life apart and the solitude that came with it. Of course, emptiness also attracted outsiders… for a time. They washed up with the winds, marveled a bit at the scenery, spent their tourist dollars, and then moved on. But they inevitably clashed with the locals. “You sound like one of the old ranchers,” he said. The ones they used to make fun of when they were kids, pretending they were in overalls and talking about the “good ole times” and “back when.”
Of course, Dakota had his own Back Then, now. And his life had never even been half as good as it was those two years he lived in Rustler. Maybe he wasn’t so far off from those old men.
Or maybe looking back was dangerous.
Shane said nothing. He stared down at his scuffed work boots. Jiggled his knee, just a bit. Like it was an unconscious thing.
Dakota forced himself not to look at Shane’s knee.
