“Was it any better in the military?”
“Yes,” he said immediately. “Lots of people don’t understand, but the dogs are well-trained, and they are well looked after. They have regular vet visits, training, break times, and they also learn to bond with people, so they know who they are protecting,” he said. “Guys like this bastard, they’ll put Beowulf on a chain, and they’ll just keep beating him, making his life miserable.”
“Well, in that case,” she said, “we have to rescue him.”
“Yep, we sure do,” he said. “Now if only I could figure out a plan to make that happen.”
They kept driving for another twenty minutes. “It’s a huge property,” she said, amazed.
“Yeah, and I want background on who owns it too,” he muttered, pulling off the road for a second. “Let me see my phone.” She handed it over, and he texted Badger. Nothing quite like making legal hell happen for some of these guys.
By the time they had completely circumvented the property and headed back to the cantina, they were late for their meeting with the tipster.
“Do you think he’ll wait?”
“He’ll wait because he wants the money,” he said. “Although we spent longer than I planned to getting back here.”
Chapter 8
They pulled up to the cantina. “Do you want me to come in with you?” Laysha asked Caleb.
“Better if you don’t,” he said. “I won’t know who I’m meeting, and I don’t really want them to see you.”
“Oh, I doubt that’s an issue,” she said. “I would suspect that I’ve already been made.”
He looked around and nodded. “That’s quite possible. Which makes me even less happy.”
“Go in, take care of business,” she said, “and then let’s go home.”
“On it,” he said. “Make sure you keep the dogs with you.”
“Will do.” She sat and waited, hating as the door closed behind him because places like this could get rough. And once he was inside, he could get surrounded, and they’d beat the crap out of him, if not worse. She sat on pins and needles, until the door opened, and he stepped back out again. She slowly released her pent-up breath when he got back into the truck.
“Okay,” she said. “How bad was it?”
“Nobody was there,” he said. “Except for the bartender, who I talked to, but he wouldn’t accept the envelope. In fact, he said, Hell no. Didn’t know anything about it and didn’t want any part of it.”
“So that’s good?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “I’ll drive around to the back to make sure nobody’s sitting there and waiting.”
“But surely that person would have called to let you know to come to a different drop spot, wouldn’t he?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Fact of the matter is, nobody called. So we’re sitting here, not sure who and what to look for.”
“Right.” She didn’t know what to say to that. But, as they sat in the parking lot, Graynor started to growl. “Well, he’s not happy,” she murmured, looking around. She didn’t see where the danger was coming from. She studied the dog and said, “He’s looking behind the cantina.”
“Yeah, that’s where we’re going,” he said.
“What are you expecting to find?”
He looked at her and said, “Honestly? A dead body.”
Caleb shouldn’t have made it quite such a shocking announcement, but, with the look on the bartender’s face, and the fact that he quickly told Caleb to get out of there, Caleb realized that somebody had already blown the tipster’s cover. The bartender wanted nothing to do with it. That’s just the fearful grip this asshole had on this town. Caleb drove around to the back and moved slowly. A big Dumpster was here, but, other than that, he didn’t see anything. He pulled up to the Dumpster, hopped out, leaving the truck running and the door open, and took a look inside. And he saw exactly what he expected to see: one dead man with a single bullet through the forehead.
He hopped back into the truck and kept on driving.
“And?”
“He’s in there,” he said. He pulled out his phone and made a 9-1-1 call to the local cops. Notifying them of the body. He kept his voice low and hollow, deliberately disguising it. When he was done, she looked at him in surprise. “You called it in?”
“I did on this side,” he said. “You know yourself how different the rules are, depending on which side of the border you are on.”
“What do you mean? No rules?” she said. “Will anybody care about him?”
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “You can help this family somehow, if we find out more about him, but, in this case, obviously for him, his time’s run out.”
“Just because he contacted you?”
“We don’t know that,” he said. “I know it’s easy to blame it on that, but it could easily be he was hired to phone me, and then somebody got rid of the messenger.”
She sat back and thought about it. “And that would imply a trap being set.”
“It would also imply that somebody just wanted to flush me out in the open so they saw who I was.”
“Okay,” she said, “and what do we do now?”
“What we’ll do is head home in a way that nobody can track us.”
“Because you really believe that we’ll be followed, don’t you?”
“I just don’t want to lead anybody back to your place,” he said. And, true to his words, she had no idea where they were, and then, all of a sudden, they were in her local neighborhood. The trip had taken twice as long, and yet she’d barely kept track of where he’d been going. “I guess it really helps to be good at geography for something like this, doesn’t it?” she asked.
“Navigating skills are definitely a priority.”
“And are you comfortable that we weren’t followed?”
“We weren’t,” he said. “I’ve been looking since we left.”
“What if they
