Texas Ranger Read online

  “Do I?”

  I’ve never thought about that before. I look back and forth between Sara Beth and Patty, taking in their similarities.

  Sara Beth and Patty are of similar height, build, and facial structure, with their high cheekbones, little button noses, big smiles. They wouldn’t necessarily pass as sisters, but the similarities are obvious now that I’m looking for it. Anne had lighter hair, but otherwise she shared many similarities with the two of them. The three women could have worn each other’s clothes.

  What always made them distinct to me was their personalities. Sara Beth had a playful streak. Patty’s sweetness, her earnestness, was endearing. And Anne—she was no-nonsense. She told me what was what. She didn’t take any bullshit from me.

  Now I put Willow into the picture and see that she fits right in. Her hair is lighter than even Anne’s was, but if you were to line up Sara Beth, Patty, Anne, and Willow against a wall, in that order, you’d see similar-looking women with a gradually changing spectrum of hair color.

  As for Willow’s personality? I’m only starting to figure that out.

  “I’d say you fit the type, too,” I say to Willow, unsure if she’ll take this as the compliment I mean it to be.

  “My hair’s too blond,” she counters.

  “Anne’s hair was pretty light,” I say.

  “That’s right,” Willow says, taking a swig. “I forgot.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “A little,” Willow says. “She’d come in here with Patty and Sara Beth from time to time.”

  “What did you think of her?”

  “I didn’t really know her,” Willow says. “But she seemed nice.”

  I can’t help but feel she’s holding something back. I ask if they ever hung out, if they ever had a conversation beyond cordial pleasantries.

  Willow rocks her head from side to side, as if thinking about whether she wants to say what’s on her mind. She takes a swig and finally says, “Look, Redbud is a small town. Most of the women here don’t really like me.”

  “Really?” I say, taken aback. “How come?”

  “Come on,” she says. “You’re not that naive. Women tend to be catty and judgmental. Take your two friends over there.” She gestures with her bottle toward Patty and Sara Beth. “They’re good-looking women, but it’s pretty slim pickings around here for dateable men. Of course they’re not going to like some stranger coming in from out of town, strutting around onstage and tempting their boys away from them.”

  She may have a point, but I can’t imagine Anne, Patty, or Sara Beth being conniving or catty toward Willow, not even behind her back. Well, maybe a little, but nothing too malicious or bitchy. Just a sarcastic comment or two.

  I could actually see them all getting along. They could be friends. Willow and Anne might have become good pals—if they were given the chance.

  “I need to go back on in a minute,” Willow says, “but I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve never actually shot a gun before,” she says. “I was wondering if you’d give me a lesson. I know you’re having a crisis of conscience right now, so if that’s weird, then please say no. I just thought…I don’t know. It might be fun.”

  “As a matter of fact,” I say, “I’m supposed to help my dad sight in a rifle tomorrow. Why don’t you come over and shoot with us?”

  “Okay,” Willow says. “It’s a date.”

  I can’t stop myself from smiling. “How about afterward we go on a real date?”

  Willow looks away from me, and her smile disappears. My heart sinks.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Was that going too far?”

  “It’s not that,” she says, nodding toward the door. “Look who walked in.”

  I turn to look.

  It’s Cal.

  Chapter 38

  WILLOW PUTS HER hand on my arm to keep me in place.

  “You stay here with me,” she says. “Don’t even think about doing something you might regret.”

  Cal is wearing jeans, work boots, a plaid shirt, and a Houston Astros ball cap pulled down over his eyes. From across the bar, he’s actually hard to recognize. It hasn’t occurred to me before that Willow would know who he is.

  “Wait a second,” I say to Willow. “How do you know Cal?”

  “Same way I know your ex-girlfriends,” she says, and then repeats the refrain I’ve been hearing lately: “This is a small town.”

  I want to ask her more about this, but I can’t take my eyes off Cal, who walks straight for the table where Patty and Sara Beth are sitting. Thankfully, Jake is in the restroom.

  Patty and Sara Beth both look surprised to see Cal; they’re feigning delight and looking nervously over toward me. I wonder how they would react if I wasn’t here watching them. Would they hug Cal, ask how he’s holding up?

  If they were close to Anne over the past few years, then they would have developed some kind of friendship with Cal.

  Looking at the three of them interact, I realize that neither Patty nor Sara Beth actually thinks Cal is guilty. The awkwardness in their manner isn’t because they believe they’re talking to a murderer—it’s because they simply don’t want trouble between me and Cal.

  I turn away, sickened and furious with my past girlfriends. I’ll ignore them and focus on Willow.

  But then I spot Jake walking back from the bathroom.

  My youngest brother steps close to Cal and says something I can’t hear. I don’t have to. I know everything I need to from Jake’s body language—and from Cal’s reaction. The two begin to argue, their faces red with anger.

  I rise from my barstool.

  “Don’t,” Willow says.

  “I have to,” I say. “That’s my brother.”

  Jake pushes Cal, sending him a few steps back. Then Cal surges forward, throwing a wide roundhouse that Jake would have been able to duck if he weren’t so drunk. Cal’s fist collides with his chin, and Jake wobbles on his feet before falling onto the floor.

  Then I’m there. And this time there’s no DeAndre Purvis to stop me. I drive my fist into Cal’s face. His head rocks back, and his cap flies off.

  I thought the punch would knock him down, but it doesn’t. Cal takes a wild swing, and I dodge back out of its arc. Cal lunges at me, shooting low to take out my legs. I have the sudden memory that Cal was an all-state wrestler—This might not be as easy as I thought—and he wraps his arms around my legs and takes me down onto the hardwood floor. I try to get my bearings underneath Cal, but before I can, Darren and one of the bar’s bouncers wrap their arms around Cal and yank him off me.

  I scramble to my feet to go after him again, but Willow is there in front of me. She puts both of her hands on my chest, firmly, and my anger begins to dissolve.

  “Call the police,” Cal shouts, a smear of blood coming from his nose. “That was assault. I want those damn Yates boys arrested.”

  “Take it easy,” Darren says. “Let me get you a drink—on the house.” Over his shoulder, he shouts, “Can you get those guys out of here?”

  “Come on,” Willow says, taking me by the arm. Her voice is a mix of sympathy and concern—the right blend to convince me it’s genuine.

  Jake is sitting upright but still looks dazed. Sara Beth helps him up, and the four of us go outside. Jake is too drunk to drive, so Sara Beth says she can give him a ride. I can do it, but Sara Beth insists. His house is on her way home.

  I have the strange fear that the two might hook up, but I push the thought away. Even if my brother isn’t in a responsible state of mind, I can’t imagine Sara Beth going for it. She, just like Anne, seems to see Jake as more of a little brother than any sort of romantic interest.

  Once Sara Beth’s car pulls away, I stand with Willow in the parking lot. Cal’s semi is visible at the truck stop lot.

  The moon is nearly full, and its light reflects off Willow’s skin translucently. I want to take her in my arms and kiss her, but after
the way I acted inside the bar, I’m not sure she still likes me.

  “I need to get back in there and start a new set,” she says. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m sorry about all that,” I say. “Thanks for looking out for me.”

  She reaches out to fix the collar of my shirt, which was bent during the scuffle. She brushes some imaginary dust off of my chest and offers me a sympathetic smile.

  “Hang in there, Rory Yates,” she says.

  She goes up on her tiptoes and places a firm kiss on my cheek. Then she spins on her heels and heads back to the bar without looking back.

  I can’t tell if it was a kiss that promises a future between us—a kiss that says that more kisses, passionate ones, will follow.

  Or if it was a kiss good-bye.

  Chapter 39

  IN THE MORNING, Dad and I take my truck out to the shooting range on the ranch. Even though I invited Willow, we never set up a time or made firm plans, and I don’t even know her phone number. I figure her shooting lessons will have to happen another day. That is, if she still wants anything to do with me.

  The shooting range on the property is far from the house, where the shots won’t spook the cattle or be a danger to anyone. The homemade range is located on a flat spot that rises gradually into a knoll, where, a long time ago, Dad used a backhoe to dig out a swath of hillside, making the perfect backstop. After the bullets go through their targets, they’re submerged directly in the earth.

  My family has been shooting here for decades, and I can’t imagine how much lead must be buried in the ground here.

  We set up paper targets on four wooden posts, and then I park my truck a hundred yards away. I park it sideways so that we can use the bedcover as a rest.

  The morning air is cool, and the grass is still damp. I have a powerful nostalgic feeling. Being here with my father reminds me of all those times he and my brothers and I would come out and practice shooting.

  Tears well up in my eyes as I think about how this could be the last time I shoot with my father. And even if it isn’t, I know my father is getting older, and there won’t be many times left.

  Dad pulls out his new rifle, a .257 Roberts. It’s a beautiful weapon, with a polished blue-gray barrel and a dark-stained walnut stock. The rifle is perfect for Dad: it shoots at a flat trajectory and puts a lot of energy behind the bullet, but the recoil is light when compared to other high-powered rifles.

  The scope on the rifle is perfect for Dad also. It magnifies the image five times, and it has a low-light setting, which should help Dad at dawn and dusk, when the world still looks gray. His sixty-five-year-old eyes aren’t what they used to be.

  The rifle and scope might make sense for Dad—but what doesn’t make sense is that he thinks he’s going to be hunting in the first place. With Dad undergoing chemo and about to have major surgery, this is one hunting season he should skip. He’s deluding himself if he thinks he should be out tramping around in the woods. Can he keep the gun steady enough to make a good shot? And even if he does, what then? I picture him trying to field dress a deer with trembling hands while holding the buck knife. What would he do if he had to drag a ten point out of the woods?

  I suspect Dad knows in his heart that he won’t be filling out any deer tags this year. But our world is in such upheaval right now that my father would rather go on pretending life is normal.

  But I humor him anyway. He’s my father.

  I open the bolt action, insert the bullets, and hand him the gun. I lay a sandbag across the bed liner for Dad to use as a rest. We both put on noise-canceling headphones, and Dad leans over the bed of the truck and puts his elbows on the cover. I look at the target through binoculars.

  The crack of the rifle is muffled by the headphones but still loud. A puff of dirt bursts out of the hillside. Dad missed the paper target entirely.

  “Son of a bitch,” he groans.

  Dad tries again and at least hits paper. The next three shots do, too, but his pattern is all over the place, so it’s difficult to make any meaningful adjustments to the sight.

  “Ah, hell,” Dad says, frustrated. “You better do it for me, son.”

  Since I was a teenager, Dad and I have always had virtually identical shot patterns. If Dad sighted in a gun, I would be accurate with it. And vice versa.

  I take three shots, and they’re all high and to the left. I adjust the scope, line up the crosshairs, and take three more. They’re in the black, but still slightly high and to the left.

  One more adjustment.

  Three more bullets.

  Dead center.

  “Perfect,” Dad says, looking through the binoculars.

  “How about we let the barrel cool for a few minutes?” I say. “Then you can take a couple more practice shots.”

  “Eh, that’s okay,” Dad says. “I’ll be able to make the shot when it counts.”

  I start to give him some more shooting advice, but I notice his demeanor has changed. He looks sad. Defeated.

  “You okay, Dad?”

  “Yeah,” he says, but his expression suggests otherwise. Then he perks up. “Hey,” he adds, “why don’t you practice a little and let me watch you?”

  I’m not in the mood to play with guns, but I want to cheer up my father. I open the bed liner on the truck and the locked toolbox inside. In with my Kevlar vest, crime scene markers, and fingerprint kit are three more guns: a 12-gauge shotgun and two military-style rifles—a standard-issue .223 M4 and the heavier-caliber .308. The latter two are there just in case I ever need to shoot through cinder block walls.

  I’m reaching for the .223 ammo when I hear a car engine.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” I say.

  Willow’s pickup pulls up the gravel road. She hangs her head out the window and smiles.

  “Did you boys start without me?”

  Chapter 40

  I INTRODUCE WILLOW to my father, and she explains that she’s late because when she stopped at the house to ask my mom for directions to the range, Mom wouldn’t stop talking to her.

  Dad seems smitten with Willow, too. His face is lit up at the prospect of his oldest son finally being interested in someone new—and someone so attractive and charming.

  “Well,” Willow says, looking at the guns lined up on the bed of the truck, “what have we got here?”

  I show her the guns, explaining what each one does. If I knew she was coming, I would have grabbed a few others out of my dad’s safe: a .410 shotgun, a .22 rifle, a .38 pistol. Smaller guns that don’t pack as much of a punch.

  “What about this one?” Willow says, pointing to the .308.

  “Let’s not start with that,” I say. “It’s got a hell of a recoil.”

  I set her up with Dad’s .257 Roberts. She uses the bed liner as a rest, and I talk to her about keeping her breathing steady, squeezing the trigger slowly instead of pulling on it.

  When the rifle cracks, Dad hoots and says, “Hot damn, lady. You’re a natural.”

  I take the binoculars from Dad and see the bullet cut straight through the edge of the black center of the target.

  “Well,” she says, giving me a wink. “I might have fibbed about never shooting before.”

  She takes some more shots, and then I set some empty soda cans on the posts and let her try to knock them off.

  When it seems like we’re almost finished, Willow says, “Why don’t you show me some of your quick-draw skills?”

  “Not today,” I say modestly.

  “Oh, come on,” Dad says with a bigger smile than I’ve seen in a long time.

  I strap on my gun belt.

  “On the count of three,” I say, “toss this can into the air.”

  I ready myself, my hand positioned inches from my gun.

  “One,” Willow says, but then she giggles and tosses the can into the air, not waiting for “two” or “three.”

  Before the soda can even reaches its vertex, my hand goes to the holster, draws the gun, and squeezes
the trigger. The aluminum can bounces in midair and makes a tinging sound as the bullet passes through it.

  “Holy shit,” Willow says.

  I holster the gun.

  “That’s amazing,” Willow says, picking the can up out of the grass and fingering the .357 hole in the dented Coke logo. “How can you shoot like that?”

  “Practice. You do it so much that your hand kind of does it on its own.”

  I don’t say it, but I’m thinking about the time I shot Wyatt Guthrie. As soon as Guthrie made a move for his gun, my hand shot to my pistol and pulled the trigger. Everything happened so fast that Guthrie was collapsing into the dirt before my brain caught up and figured out what happened.

  “Your brother was right,” Willow says. “You can shoot just like Beethoven can play the piano.” Then she sees my uncomfortable expression and says, “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “It’s nothing to be too proud of, either.”

  “Modesty is a character trait I’ve always found sexy,” she says, and winks.

  Dad chuckles.

  We are silent for a moment. Dad pulls a toothpick out of his breast pocket and breaks the quiet.

  “Willow,” he says, “how about you join us all for lunch back at the house?”

  “I’d love that,” she says.

  When I open the truck door, I check my phone, lying on the seat.

  There are five missed calls from Ted Creasy.

  “What the hell?”

  The phone rings in my hand.

  “Hey, partner,” Creasy says. “I been trying to reach you.”

  “I had my phone on vibrate,” I say. “What’s happening?”

  “Bad news,” Creasy says. “I just got off the phone with your local police department. There’s been another homicide. Anne’s killer has struck again.”

  My skin goes cold.

  “Who is the victim?”

  I’m thinking of Sara Beth telling me she left her door unlocked for me.

  But I’m wrong. It’s not her.

  “It’s that sweet gal who was friends with Anne,” Creasy says. “Patty.”