we’ve been talking about doing? That’s pretty much over at this point.”
“Guess what, genius,” Victor said. “Once I figured out you were a Fed, whatever business you and I might have had was taken off the table.”
Thumper’s eyes hardened. “We were talking about a supply of meth.”
“I got to be honest with you about that,” Victor said almost pleasantly. “That was just me and Fat Mike setting you up. We were just yanking your chain.”
Thumper glowered at him. “Setting me up for what? To rip me off?”
Listening to the desperation in Thumper’s voice, Victor knew that someone was monitoring the encounter. Maybe Thumper hadn’t worn the wire to the meeting, but that didn’t mean he’d arrived without any backup.
“We got hookups,” Victor said. “You want something, we know a guy who can get it for you. We just take our cut out of the middle.”
Thumper looked at Victor, then at Fat Mike, then back again. “You guys have got cooks working for you.” He was referring to meth cooks.
Victor fanned the photographs in his big, callused hands. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Thumper snarled a curse that was loud enough to draw the brief attention of two bikers at a table only a short distance away. Victor looked at the men for a long, hard minute and they looked away.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Thumper stated angrily. “You garroted Hobo Simpson. Garroted him and dropped him into a hole somewhere out in the woods.”
Victor smiled coldly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“If you got proof of that, then arrest me.” Victor shoved his hands out in front of him. He hadn’t planned the move and it caught Fat Mike by surprise too. Fat Mike shifted uneasily and for a moment Victor thought he was going to bring the shotgun into play.
“I ain’t no cop.” Thumper sounded sullen.
“Yeah, you are.” Victor spread the photographs across the desktop in a move so smooth it would have done a riverboat gambler proud. “Got you a six-pack here, Thumper. Isn’t that what the cops call mug shots?”
“Don’t know.”
“If you’ve been arrested and held for questioning, you’d know that.” Victor delighted in turning the knife a little, letting Thumper know he wasn’t thinking straight enough to keep himself out of trouble.
“Okay. Maybe I heard it called that.” Thumper’s eyes never went to the photographs.
“Take a look,” Victor said in a soft voice. “See what I see.”
“I ain’t here to play games,” Thumper said. “I got people who are gonna be all up in my grill if I don’t hook them up with the meth I promised them.”
“The meth won’t be a problem,” Victor stated. “Like I said, I know a guy who knows a guy.” Passing on information about someone selling drugs wasn’t illegal. Not as long as he didn’t ask for money. “Look at the pictures.”
After a moment, Thumper did. As soon as he recognized the people in the pictures, he froze. Then he called Victor a vile name.
Victor knew that the undercover cop had recognized the people immediately. They were his ex-wife, son, and sister.
“Where did you get those?” Thumper demanded in a hoarse voice.
“Chill, dude. They’re just pictures.” Victor turned the photographs over, then spread them again.
“They’re of my family,” Thumper said.
Victor knew the name Thumper had called him was a tell. He’d known it as soon as Thumper had said it, and he knew they weren’t going to finish their conversation alone.
Victor left the photographs lying facedown on the table. He passed a magazine he’d brought with him to Fat Mike, who got up and walked away without a word. From here everything was a gamble, a desperate roll of the dice. The kicker was that the club had an excellent attorney on retainer, and Thumper had recognized his family.
Quietly Victor sipped his beer and waited. Less than a minute later, FBI agents in black riot gear burst through the doors with guns drawn. They started shouting at once. There was a brief flurry of activity as some of the bikers tried to escape. The agents put them down with stun batons, then screwed the muzzles of their weapons into the base of those men’s skulls.
Victor finished his last sip of beer and put his hands in the air. He didn’t resist when one of the men grabbed him out of the chair by his hair and made him drop to his knees.
“He had pictures of my family,” Thumper said to a grizzled guy wearing glasses. “I wouldn’t have blown cover if he hadn’t.”
Victor just grinned.
Without a word, the grizzled agent reached for the photographs on the table and flipped them over one by one. Victor laughed as he saw the surprised look on Thumper’s face. The pictures-each and every one of them- showed Thumper drunk and drugged out with other members of the Purple Royals. None of the pictures, though, were of Victor or Fat Mike.
He’d made sure they weren’t compromised.
Thumper picked up the photographs. “I don’t understand. I saw them! I swear I did!”
The grizzled agent swung his attention to Victor. “Like to think you’re cute, don’t you?” the agent asked.
“Cute enough,” Victor responded. “And about to get cuter. Me and you, we gotta talk. Now that I got your attention.”
8
›› Four-Mile Tavern
›› Outside Fort Davis, Texas
›› 1648 Hours (Central Time Zone)
Seated at one of the small round tables that dotted the floor in the tavern’s TV room, Tyrel McHenry looked like he’d been carved from stone. He was sixty-three years old. Age and a lifetime of hard work had eroded the excess flesh from his lean body.
He was not quite as tall and broad-shouldered as Shel was, but looking at the two of them together, a person would know where Shel had gotten his build.
Don had always thought-though he would never mention it to either one of the other men in his family-that his daddy and Shel were more alike than they were different. If anyone didn’t fit into that family, Don felt certain it was him.
Tyrel’s hair had finished going iron gray a few years back. Long exposure to a blistering sun and harsh winters had bronzed his skin. Permanent wrinkles wreathed his cold blue eyes and pleated his leathery cheeks, which he kept smooth and shiny with a straight razor he used every morning and every evening if he was going to go out.
He wore straight-legged jeans tucked into cowboy boots. Tyrel had always maintained that the difference between a working ranch hand and a drugstore cowboy had been whether the jeans were worn on the outside of his boots or tucked in. A ranch hand tucked them in so they didn’t catch in the stirrups or get caught on anything while he was working.
The black Western shirt was carefully pressed and had white pearl snaps. Tyrel’s high-crowned black cowboy hat sported a silver hatband etched with Native American symbols. Don’s mama, part Lipan Apache, had made the hatband for her husband and marked it with signs that she’d claimed would bring him peace.
Though his mama had been a devout Christian woman who went to church every Wednesday and Sunday, she’d also held on to some of the old ways because she hadn’t wanted the culture to disappear. And if her husband was dead set against believing in the works of the Good Lord, maybe he’d have been a little more open to something else. Anything that would have brought him peace.
Tyrel smoked an unfiltered Camel cigarette and kept his gaze focused on the baseball game on the big-screen
