Strong Cold Dead by Jon Land Read Free Book Online

believed the body and soul were prime parts of what creates our nature, that a man’s identity belongs to a holy trinity of the mind, body, and spirit. The first time I visited Father Boylston I told him the first man I killed had murdered my first priest, back home in the slums of Venezuela, for daring to stand up to the gangs. He bled to death in my arms, the food he’d bought to feed the poor scattered in the street. I watched the life fade from his eyes and knew what I had to do. And I’ve been doing it ever since.”
    Paz churned the wire cage holding the numbered bingo balls, then grasped the one that had found its way to the top.
    â€œUnder the G , fifty-four. That’s G fifty-four. G for goodness, something I look for in my eyes every day. I came here all those years ago to kill a woman, a Texas Ranger. But when I looked in her eyes I saw something I didn’t recognize. I didn’t know what it was, only that I wanted to see it in my eyes too. All of you have lived a long time and done a lot of things, both good and bad. But how many of you ever thought that life could change in a single moment, a single glance? I mean, isn’t that something?”
    Most of the elderly bingo players looked at Paz blankly, but a decent number, women mostly, were nodding up a storm.
    â€œEver since that moment, I’ve wanted nothing more than to see the same thing in my eyes. Was it bravery? Determination? Conviction? Belief? Only recently did I realize it was goodness, G for goodness . In the course of my transformation, I’ve done a lot of good. But my eyes haven’t changed yet, so I keep trying.”
    Sensing the crowd’s impatience, the eager residents of Menger Springs ready with their dabbers once more, Paz spun the cage again, so hard the balls inside rattled up against each other, clacking like hailstones against glass. He grasped the ball that emerged out the top, but he stopped short of reading it because he spotted the figure of a V-shaped man with a military-style haircut standing in the back of the room, smirking as he nodded Paz’s way.
    Paz looked down toward the first row and at a man with a John D. MacDonald paperback stuffed in the pocket of a button-down sweater that fit him like a smock.
    â€œYou mind taking my place, Francis?”
    The man started to stand up, then stopped. “How’d you know my name?”
    â€œWe must have met.”
    â€œMy name’s Frank. Only my mother ever called me Francis.”
    â€œYou must’ve told me.”
    â€œI did?”
    â€œMust have,” Paz said, stepping down off the slight stage and handing the ball he’d yet to call to the rail-thin man, who looked like a broomstick with limbs.
    Paz walked straight out of the dining room that doubled as the bingo hall, ignoring the man who’d just arrived, until he fell into pace alongside him.
    â€œYou’re a piece of work, Colonel, I’ll give you that,” the man said, smirking again as he shook his head.
    â€œWhat is it this time, Jones?” Paz asked the man from Homeland Security, for whom he worked when the need arose. “It better be good, for you to interrupt my bingo game. Those old people depend on me.”
    â€œISIS in Texas,” the big man he towered over told him. “Is that good enough for you?”

 
    8
    B ALCONES C ANYONLANDS, T EXAS
    The call she’d received sent Caitlin to the Comanche Indian reservation, located on the outskirts of the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge.
    â€œI can’t believe you’re calling me,” Conseulo Alonzo said, when Caitlin reached her on her cell phone.
    â€œI wanted to apologize for last night, Deputy Chief.”
    â€œSave it for your hearing before the Department of Public Safety’s oversight committee.”
    â€œI’m heading up to the Comanche Indian reservation near Austin.”
    â€œWhy am I not surprised, you and trouble being