Unbound Pursuit

by Lindsay McKenna

  “I’m glad for her. You said Mark went to a federal penitentiary?”

  “Yeah, he got two years for drug running and just got out a little while ago. Appears he’s back doing the same thing. My dad’s really bothered by it, and I don’t blame him. It’s not a good sign.”

  “What does it mean, Wyatt?”

  “That the Cardona drug cartel is now moving east and thinking about using our ranch land as a route to transport drugs through back roads,” Wyatt admitted grimly.

  “Is this the first time any of your dad’s wranglers have seen Mark and his drug convoy on your land?”

  “As far as I know, yes, this is the first time. What I worry about is that Cat and Jake work here on the ranch. They’re out there either riding an ATV or on horseback, often by themselves, in some of the far reaches of our property. What if Mark and his cartel soldiers run into one of them? What will they do? Shoot them? Jesus, I worry about Cat being taken captive, hauled back over the border, and raped by cartel soldiers, and then held for ransom or even worse.”

  Tal made a sympathetic sound and slid her arm across his torso, trying to comfort him. She heard the edgy anxiety in Wyatt’s deep drawl. He wasn’t a man to worry much about anything. He was a man of action. And in this case, she felt every protective cell in Wyatt’s body orienting toward his brother and sister, who might become casualties of drug running along the Texas-Mexico border. “What else does this cartel do?” she asked, fearing the answer.

  She felt Wyatt squirm.

  She reached up, sliding her fingers along his sandpapery jaw, feeling him withdrawing, trying to protect himself from his own emotions or the answer she was seeking.

  “Diego Cardona is the leader of the Cardona cartel,” Wyatt began heavily, sliding his fingers through her loose hair. “He’s forty-five, bloodthirsty, and took over the cartel seven years ago from his father, who he murdered in order to become the leader.”

  “Great,” Tal muttered. “A psychopath. But which one of them isn’t?”

  “Just different shades and intensities of the same thing,” Wyatt agreed.

  “Did he change the course of the cartel?”

  “Yes. When his father had it, it was strictly focused on bringing drugs over the border. Now the son, Diego, is up to his ass in the sex-slave and sex-trafficking trade. He captures young kids, eight years old up to their teen years, as they try to cross the border to get into the U.S. Then he gets buyers in the U.S. and Canada, or he moves them by truck to either the East Coast or West Coast. Container ships from China and other Asian countries take these sex-slave captives on board, hauling them to other ports around the world and selling them off as they go.”

  “God,” Tal breathed. “That’s horrible!”

  “Yeah, and it’s a very lucrative business. The latest stats Artemis has received from Border Patrol say Cardona is making sixty percent of his money now in the sex-slave trade. The other forty percent is from running drugs from Central and South America into the U.S.”

  “You think this intrusion onto your family’s property is new?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted wearily, running his fingers through his hair. “I’m going to sit down with Dad tomorrow after breakfast and see what else he knows. Then I’m going to contact Artemis, and we’re going to connect with the U.S. Border Patrol and other federal players who are tapped into this issue, and try to get a fuller picture of the situation. If they don’t have a drone flying over the northeastern boundary of our ranch, I’m going to get someone to do just that, so we have twenty-four-hour surveillance to prove it out one way or another.”

  “This is awful,” Tal whispered. She stilled her hand across his slowly beating heart.

  “I’m sorry, Tal,” he said, easing up on one elbow. Wyatt held her dark, turbulent gaze. “This was supposed to be a vacation for you, no stress, no threat level.”

  “It’s okay, Wyatt,” she reassured him, searching his angst-ridden eyes. “Let’s figure out what we can do together here to keep your family safe from that cartel. We’ll be here until January second. You’ve brought your Toughbook laptop, and you have every kind of electronic device known to mankind, so you can hook up with Artemis back in Virginia to get what we need to know.”

  “I wanted this to be a happy time for you down here, Tal. To get to know my siblings, my parents, under less pressured circumstances.”

  “I still will, silly goose.” She smiled and saw his eyes become less stormy as she smoothed her hand across his cheek, threading her fingers through his short hair. “You can do the black ops stuff here in your bedroom. We don’t need to tell anyone what you’re doing, except your parents, of course.”

  “I sure as hell don’t want Mattie knowing a thing about this. She’s been in a depression since Mark disappeared. Nothing has pulled her out of it. I really worry about her.”

  “I’ll spend some time with her,” Tal reassured him. “Not that I’m so great on guys.” She gave him a warm look. “You chased me for three years before you caught me. I wasn’t interested in getting into a new relationship because of my past, either. Mattie and I have some common ground, Wyatt. Maybe I can lift her spirits. Or get her to see she has a future regardless of what happened in the past between her and Mark.”

  “Good luck on that one,” he grumbled. “All of us, myself included, have tried to get Mattie to let go of Mark. I just don’t know why she doesn’t. It confounds the hell out of me.”

  “I know what it’s like to love deeply, Wyatt.”

  “Yeah . . . I know you do.”

  “It took me years to climb out of my own heartbreak over losing Brian before I allowed you into my life.”

  “Maybe that’s good news. She could still crawl out from under her heartbreak and find a nice wrangler who’ll love her, who’ll know what he’s got in Mattie.”

  She heard the pain in Wyatt’s voice for his sister. “It’s a process,” she whispered, looking into his eyes. Wyatt was not normally this emotional about anything. He always hid how he felt under that Texas good-ol’-boy drawl and easygoing nature of his, as if nothing bothered him. Now she was seeing squarely his feelings and worry, which had come to the surface. He was hurting for Mattie. And she wished she could do something to assuage his pain. Family dynamics could be a bitch; she knew that firsthand from her own. None were perfect. They were always a work in progress. She saw that everyone wanted to help Mattie but knew that sometimes a person just needed time to work through a painful process on her own terms.

  “You need to go to sleep,” Wyatt growled, gathering her up into his arms and kissing her lips lightly.

  “We both do,” Tal agreed, exhaustion stalking her. “It’s been a long, hectic day.”

  Grunting, Wyatt pulled Tal in beside him, holding her gently. “This mess is unexpected as hell. I was looking forward to doing so many things here on the ranch with you.”

  Tal smoothed her hand across his chest. “We still can, Wyatt. Let’s take it a day at a time. You go about your black ops business after breakfast tomorrow morning, and I’ll see if Mattie will let me tag along with her to work. I think she needs a friend.”

  “I just wonder if Mark realizes he needs to give the pieces of her broken heart back to Mattie,” Wyatt sighed.

  Tal smoothed his T-shirt across his shoulder, wanting to ease some of his sadness. “For all of Mattie’s idealism and being a softy, she’s got the Lockwood backbone, which isn’t anything to sniff at. I feel Mattie’s a lot stronger than any of you suspect.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Wyatt tried to tame the nest of snakes churning in his gut as he walked out into the equipment barn of his father’s ranch. He found Hank Lockwood working on a tractor engine. It was midafternoon, and he tried to gird himself as he approached.

  “Hey, Dad, do you have a minute?”

  Hank looked up from where he had his head stuck into the engine of his tractor. “Sure, son. What’s up?”

  Wyatt pointed to the laptop he held
in his left hand. “Got some stuff I need you to look at. To make some decisions about.”

  Hank grunted and pulled a rag from the back pocket of his jeans. His fingers were greasy. “What have you been up to? I’ve not seen hide nor hair of you all morning,” he said, gesturing to a bench out near the entrance to the shed. He grabbed his straw cowboy hat sitting on top of the tractor hood.

  Mouth turning down, Wyatt walked with his father to the bench, sitting and opening his Toughbook laptop. “I was doing some black ops investigation on this problem with drug runners coming across our land. And I saw something I didn’t really want to see,” he muttered. He turned the screen so that his father could see it and said, “This is the northeastern corner of our ranch.” He traced it with his index finger on a black-and-white photo that was rather grainy.

  Hank narrowed his eyes, leaning forward, studying the photo on the laptop. “What am I lookin’ at, Wyatt?”

  “It’s a satellite flyover that includes that section of your ranch, Dad. And it was taken five days ago.” He pointed to the date and time stamp in the corner of it.

  Hank scowled. “Satellites are taking photos of this area?”

  “Yes, they’re moving them around all the time. Because of all the issues on our southern border with Mexico, the government is utilizing satellite flyovers as well as drones to cover large, empty areas to try and stop the intrusions over the border. But this is from a commercial satellite. It’s not classified, which is why I’m showing it to you.”

  “What am I looking at, then?” Hank asked.

  “A satellite has camera equipment on board, and it photographs everything within a certain distance,” Wyatt explained. “This morning, I had my Mission Planning people go through the photos to find the coordinates of our ranch. Then they narrowed it down to that section and began studying the photos. Now, with one of the government’s Keyhole satellites, which are top secret, you can see a quarter on the ground from fifty thousand feet, and see it clearly. But since this is just a common commercial one that’s on lease to the U.S. government, the photos are grainy. If you look at it close, you’ll see a black vehicle with four white pickup trucks behind it on that dirt road that’s inside the boundary of our property. The women in our Intel section looked at the photo with special equipment to refine the image and could identify it as a black Jeep with four white Toyota pickup trucks behind it,” Wyatt said.

  Scowling, Hank straightened. “That’s Mark Reuss’s black Jeep, then.”

  “Most likely,” Wyatt agreed.

  “And he was on our property five days ago without my permission. Again?”

  “Yes.” Wyatt saw his father’s face tense. Property rights were a big deal in Texas. Where one lived was sacred, and no one trespassed on another person’s land without asking first for permission to cross it. Ranchers were well known to use buckshot to warn trespassers off their land upon occasion. “Don’t mess with Texas” wasn’t just a saying; it was a warning. His father was strict about keeping people from crossing their ranch’s boundaries, so Wyatt knew this was going to upset him a great deal.

  “It was just two weeks ago that my wranglers saw these same vehicles.” Rubbing his jaw, Hank growled, “That means that Mark is regularly trespassing on our property, then.”

  “’Fraid so,” Wyatt said glumly. It took a lot to anger his father, but Hank’s face had turned a dull red. He was certainly angry now. “Look,” Wyatt said amiably, trying to calm his father down, “I’ve got some contacts within Border Patrol, as well as other federal agencies, Dad. I talked to them earlier, and Artemis sent them these sat photos to back up the request I made to them.”

  “What did you ask for?” Hank demanded. “A couple of shotguns?”

  Grinning weakly, Wyatt shook his head. “No, not birdshot, Dad. Something better, though, I think.”

  “Better be,” Hank growled, shoving his hands down the thighs of his jeans.

  “Here’s the deal,” Wyatt said. “The Cardona drug cartel is always switchin’ up where they make their border crossings. Other ranches in the area have been their routes before this. It’s typical of a cartel to change its tactics regularly to avoid the Border Patrol. Cardona has chosen the northeast corner of our property and is using that dirt road to get to the highway about twenty miles north. Once he’s got those vehicles on that highway route, they’re free of any further Border Patrol interference.”

  “So they’re moving their drugs and stuff to a new area? Through our ranch?”

  “Looks like it. I’m having my people at Artemis begin going through the last six months of sat flyovers of that corner of our property to see if there are other sightings of Mark and his drug mules there. I should have more intel on that by this evening.”

  “You got a plan, son?”

  Grimacing, Wyatt said, “There are a number of options that my Mission Planning people are going over right now.” He held his father’s dark gray gaze. “I’ll know more by tomorrow noon, I hope.”

  “Does it include birdshot?”

  Chuckling, Wyatt shook his head. “No. We’ll deal with this issue at the state and federal level, Dad. What I’m hoping is to get a drone to ply that area twenty-four-seven. It’s going to be a lot closer and can take very clear, defined photos of not only truck license plate numbers but the drivers and any passengers as well. Also, the drone I want to use has infrared capability, which means it can look through something like a canvas tarp or the side of a truck and see what they’re carrying.”

  Rubbing his jaw, Hank said, “I always knew you were a smart kid, but this sounds pretty high-tech and pretty high up in our government.” He clapped Wyatt’s shoulder. “I’m really proud of you, son. You’re doing good things for people, for our nation.”

  Humbled by his father’s look of pride for him, Wyatt muttered, “Well, don’t congratulate me yet, okay? Trying to tear a drone out of the U.S. Air Force’s hands to get it down here is a big deal.”

  Snickering, Hank said, “I remember you with those wild mustangs we brought in to break. You always had the right voice, the right gestures, and you were smart as a whip with ’em, bringing ’em buckets of water to win ’em over. They were all dying of thirst after a three-hundred-mile truck ride to our ranch. You figured it out, and look at you now. You’re talking about getting federal support to help us out.”

  A good feeling moved through Wyatt. His father had always been one to praise his children when they deserved it. He loved his dad deeply because he’d been such a good role model. All four kids had turned out well. Unlike Mark Reuss, who had a snake for a father. “Well,” he murmured, shutting the lid on his laptop, “let’s see where this leads us. When I know more, I’ll pull you aside and we’ll talk privately.”

  “But you’ll have a plan, right?”

  “For sure,” Wyatt said, smiling a little as he shut the lap top, leaving it on the bench as he rose.

  Hank stood a little stiffly, rubbing his lower back. “Okay, but now I’m worried about putting anyone out in that area, Wyatt.”

  “What I’d do, Dad? I’d get your wranglers together and tell them to stay away from that zone. As long as your fence line is standing, you can wait a couple of days or weeks until I can get a mission plan created for you to resolve this problem.”

  “Sounds good.” Hank clapped his hand on Wyatt’s back as they sauntered toward the tractor. “How’s your lady doin’?”

  “Tal wanted to drive in with Mattie to see her kindergarten class.”

  “Yeah, saw ’em leave after breakfast,” Hank said. “I don’t know what to do about Mattie,” he grumbled, shaking his head.

  “She’s depressed,” Wyatt said, feeling that same sense of helplessness he heard in Hank’s voice. “You and Mom have tried to get her to a doctor?”

  Snorting, Hank picked up a wrench. “More times than I care to add up. She absolutely refuses to take drugs to help her depression. She says it’s grief and that it will end when it’s supposed to.”
>
  Wyatt set the laptop aside and rolled up his sleeves to his elbows. Often, his mechanically minded father would fix the ranch equipment. Wyatt had learned everything from him. Just getting to spend some downtime with him warmed his heart, despite the circumstances. “Come on, let me help you with this engine. Two people working on it should get it done in half the time.”

  Hank grinned and handed the wrench to Wyatt. “Just like old times, huh?”

  Wyatt grinned and took off his black baseball cap, setting it beside his father’s straw hat on the tractor’s cowling. “Yep, the good ol’ days, Dad.”

  *

  Mattie had hugged the last of her five-year-olds good-bye for the day. It was three p.m., and she smiled over at Tal, who had sat quietly in the back of her large classroom, observing. “I want you to sit and keep that ankle rested while I clean up around here,” Mattie said, hurrying toward the front of her room. Her students had been painting today, and there were a lot of Mason jars to pick up and brushes to clean before the place would be ready for tomorrow morning.

  Tal smiled, sitting at one of the long wooden tables. “I’d say these thirty kids keep you hopping, big-time.” Mattie was wearing a red corduroy jumper with a white long-sleeved blouse beneath it. Although “official” kindergarten wasn’t going on right now due to the long holiday, Mattie had offered to babysit her charges so their parents could go back to work after Christmas, which Tal thought was damned nice of her. Mattie’s auburn hair was twisted up into a thick mass at the top of her head. Tal admired the smattering of freckles that stood out against her cheeks.

  “Well, school doesn’t officially start again until January second, but I like to offer this place so the parents don’t have to put their kids in day care. I try to do more creative things with the kids, like painting, drawing, and making things with their hands.”