Stand Your Ground by William W. Johnstone Read Free Book Online Page B

unworkable it might be, especially if it involved raising taxes and soaking the evil rich.
    The Republicans came in handy, too, because they gave the Democrats an enemy and kept them united. The pundits kept saying that the Republican Party would eventually wither away and disappear because of demographics.
    Hamil hoped that wouldn’t actually happen. If the Democrats ever attained complete control, with nothing to hold them back from implementing their ideas, the United States would collapse into complete and utter chaos, probably within twenty years.
    That was obvious to anyone who looked at the situation with clear, unbiased eyes. Hamil and those like him needed the country to stay at least somewhat functional.
    Who wanted to take over a madhouse? That would be more trouble than it was worth.
    None of which kept Hamil from despising Texas and everything that it stood for. Thanks to the relentless politically correct drumbeat of the American media on both coasts, “cowboy” was an insult these days, but that didn’t stop many of the people in Texas from continuing to embrace what it had originally stood for.
    In fact, there was one of them now, Hamil thought as he turned the car into the motel driveway. The man, tall and broad-shouldered and wearing one of those ridiculous-looking cowboy hats, was going into the office with a stunning blond woman in jeans and a dark blue blouse.
    Hamil brought his car to a stop. His hands tightened on the wheel. Wait a minute , he thought. He recognized that woman.
    She was Alexis Devereaux.
    A smile slowly appeared on Hamil’s lean face. He hadn’t known that the Devereaux woman was going to be in Fuego this weekend. This was an unexpected but welcome development.
    The whole world needed to know about what happened here, and Alexis Devereaux could help get the story out.
    He would have to be sure that she wasn’t killed right away, Hamil decided.
    The blond American bitch could die after she had served her purpose.
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    Jerry Patel leaned on the counter in the office lobby, feeling dizzy and trying not to collapse. If he didn’t know better, he might have worried that he had been exposed accidentally to the same poison he had used in the ice machine.
    He knew that wasn’t the case, though. He was all too aware of why he felt so weak. He had spent the day running to the toilet and throwing up, and he hadn’t been able to eat a thing.
    So much death. So much.
    And most of it seemed completely pointless to him. The motel could have served as a rendezvous point without it. Nearly all of the guests would have checked out and moved on, and if anyone else stopped during the day looking for a room, Patel could have told them that the motel was booked up. Mr. Stark was the only one staying for several days, and somehow he was still alive. Patel had seen him walking to the café a while earlier.
    But Fareed’s orders had been explicit. He had shown up the night before with the cylinder of poison and instructions to hook it up to the ice machine’s water supply line so that the odorless, tasteless, deadly stuff would go into the ice and kill anyone who used it.
    Dozens of Americans would die for no good reason except . . . dozens of Americans would die.
    Patel supposed that was reason enough for Fareed and the other leaders of the clandestine network that ran across the entire country. All he knew was that he was too afraid of Fareed not to follow the man’s orders.
    The office door opened. Patel looked up and saw a woman coming into the office. Mr. Stark had opened the door and held it for her.
    Patel caught his breath and straightened as he recognized the blonde. He couldn’t put a name with the attractive face at first, but he was sure he knew her from television or the movies. She was that beautiful.
    Stark followed the woman into the office, nodded, and said, “Mr. Patel, this is—”
    â€œAlexis Devereaux,” Patel