Page 37 of Ransom
"Yes."
"Are you on assignment?"
I didn't answer.
"Winston."
"No."
"No, what?"
"No, I'm not on assignment."
He nodded, slowly, like he'd known.
"Your captain know you're up here?"
"No."
"Anybody know you're up here?"
"My mama. And the man I owe rent to."
His lips twitched like he wanted to smile, but he looked away instead. When he looked back, he was the man who'd led me into the desert.
"What are you doing on my land, Winston?"
I had a story I'd practiced for this. I'd practiced it in the truck on the drive up from El Paso. I'd practiced it in the shower the morning I left. I'd practiced it the way you practice a deposition until I could deliver it without my eyes going anywhere they weren't supposed to go. The story was that I'd caught a rumor about Castillo at a bar in Las Cruces and decided to follow it on my own time because the case felt right.
Standing in the headlights of a truck on a highway with a man who'd just patted me down and palmed my cock and told me he'd break my fingers, I could not for the life of me remember the words.
"It's a long story," I said.
"I figured."
"Let's just say we've got history." I held his eyes. "He hurt people I care about."
My daddy was one of them. Took a fall that wasn't his. I'd said it that way in the shower in El Paso a hundred times. None of those times had Ransom Lanza six inches off my left shoulder with his blood drying on his face.
He waited.
"And you came up here to do what?"
"I haven't decided."
"Bullshit. You decided before you crossed the state line. You're just not telling me what you decided."
"Yeah," I said. "Maybe."
"Maybe." He pushed off the truck and stepped in close again. His hand came up and caught my jaw, two fingers under my chin, and turned my face toward him. His thumb pressed against my bottom lip, and a smear of his blood came off it. My whole body went hot at the same time my brain saidChrist, Winston, no.
"You came up here to kill him," he said quietly. "Didn't you, Ranger?"
"Maybe."
"Yes or no."
"... Yes."
