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  The son looked displeased, and he huffed and sighed and saw that it was all the cash Widow had. In the end, he agreed and took the money. He said, “He’s here. He checked into the room on the end.”

  Jackpot. Widow smiled.

  He asked, “Was there a little girl with him?”

  The son nodded.

  CHAPTER 16

  WIDOW’S HOTEL room was the cliché of every motel and hotel room he’d ever seen. It was better than some and worse than others. The A/C wall unit was turned off, and the room was musty and hot. No one had stayed in it for a while—he was sure about that—even though the mother had made a big deal about him being lucky enough to get one when they weren’t all sold out. Right now, Widow doubted they were ever booked solid.

  He had nothing to leave in the room, no luggage. The only extra things he was carrying were the keys to the Jeep. He wanted to wash his face and use the bathroom. And the truth was that he could use a nap, but he had a head start over the guy he had spoken to on the phone earlier, and he had caught up to Hood. He wanted to keep it that way. So he used the toilet and washed his hands and then his face.

  Widow left the room and pocketed the card.

  He walked down to Hood’s room and looked through the window. He saw no movement. No lights. He knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again, and still there was no answer.

  He knocked harder and said, “Mr. Hood? I’m a friend.”

  He leaned in close and listened to try and hear something on the other side. There was nothing. No sound. No movement. No sudden jump from the intrusion—and there would’ve been.

  He turned and inspected the parking lot. Surely, Hood would park close to his hotel room. The lot wasn’t full, but not completely empty, either. In front of Hood’s room, there were trucks of different models and makes. Some new. Some old. No way to know which was which. Two of them were Hertz rentals. They had the stickers on the windshield. Widow guessed it was probably one of these two vehicles, but it was only a guess.

  He gave up and decided to look in the next logical place, a restaurant.

  WIDOW SAT, back to the wall, at a table for four people. The restaurant was full. It was an Applebee’s, which wasn’t his first choice of a place to have dinner. There were two perfectly good local establishments on the same street, but in the end, he decided Hood would take Jemma to a more corporate kind of place. Applebee’s and Chili’s and all of those kinds of American chain restaurants tended to have larger crowds, and they normally offered a child’s menu. Some of them might even offer a kids-eat-free deal. Widow wasn’t sure because he had no kids, and he hadn’t been a kid in decades. But it seemed logical.

  The waitress had offered him a happy hour deal and asked him to try a plate of this and to add on that. She did everything she was supposed to do. She tried to upsell items from the menu before he even ordered anything. The hostess had handed him three different menus. One was for the bar, one was entrees, and the other was for specials. To come into one of these American chain restaurants nowadays reminded him of trying to go to a government office and get something done. Between a glass of water and dessert, there was more red tape than the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.

  The waitress was a twenty-something brunette—slim and tall. She must’ve figured Widow was alone—and he wore no wedding ring—so she saw him as a target to do a little flirting to get extra tips. Widow knew it from the first word to the end of the meal. But when you’re a drifter in your mid-thirties, and a young woman wants to flirt with you, you take advantage of the situation. So instead of ordering a black coffee, which he normally would’ve done, he ordered a domestic beer. By the end of the meal, he’d drunk two cold Buds. As for the other menu items she wanted to serve him, he had said no to them.

  He ordered a grilled chicken sandwich and fries. Simple.

  He ate and drank and paid his check. He waited a little longer and drank the rest of his last beer. There was no sign of Hood or Jemma.

  Widow paid his check and said a goodbye to the waitress and then started to walk back to the hotel.

  Before he returned, he took a look around the town. It didn’t take long. He discovered in less than forty-five minutes that he had seen everything the town had to offer on his way in. The downtown area was small. It was everything required for a municipality and nothing else. There were two small areas to the west of the town, all subdivisions—suburban America. Nothing unusual. But it did strike him again how many Hispanic Americans he saw. It was like they had gotten together and decided to build a town.

  He walked on and cut through a minuscule kid’s park. The playground equipment was unlike anything he’d ever seen. It was all steel and painted blue. The only things he recognized were the swings and a slide. Everything else was some new kind of addition that had changed since he was a kid.

  He walked through it and back down a street toward his hotel. He had had no luck finding Hood. He knew they were staying in the hotel. It was best to wait there.

  BACK AT THE HOTEL, Widow waited in his room with the lights off, but he left the window open so he could hear Hood and Jemma returning. He was only three doors down from them.

  He waited on the bed with the Sig Sauer next to him, still loaded with the five rounds he had remaining. He lay back and stared at the ceiling. He tried not to think, just keep his ears open and alert and sensitive to cars starting up or pulling into the lot or engines shutting off or doors opening or voices talking.

  What he hadn’t expected was that the hotel room bed was a little more comfortable than he had thought, and that the silent night would rush by without a disturbance. He fell asleep. Not a long-deserved deep sleep, but a nap. It wasn’t a power nap, too long for that, but too short for a proper sleep.

  Widow jumped up, instinctively checked for the Sig Sauer, which was exactly as he had left it. He glanced out the window. All was quiet. He checked over his shoulder at a desk clock with huge red block numbers. The night had moved into the primetime hours. He had slept for two hours.

  He still had his shoes on, laced up. He got up and stuffed the gun into the seam at the small of his back and puffed out his T-shirt to conceal it. Then he left the room.

  He walked down three doors and looked again at the window to the room that Hood was supposed to be in, but there was still no activity. Nothing to be heard from the door.

  Widow didn’t bother to knock. He turned and looked over at his Jeep and then walked back toward the office, where he had checked in. Before he entered, he stopped and turned back to the lot. He scanned it. Before there were two vehicles with Hertz stickers in the window, and now there was only one. He closed his eyes and tried to picture them. Two trucks. Both white. One was a single cab F150. It was gone.

  He entered the office and looked for the son. He wasn’t there.

  The old lady was seated behind a desk, and there was a flat-screen TV. She had it on one of those twenty-four-hour news channels. They were talking about the election, as Widow expected they had done twenty-four hours a day for the last year. Widow wasn’t interested in the topics or the opinions, but it sounded like they were talking about the building of the border wall.

  Widow said, “Sorry to bother you, ma’am.”

  The old woman said, “Can I help you?”

  “Is your son around?”

  “What for? You need something fixed?”

  “No, ma’am. I just need to speak to him.”

  “Is there a problem with the room?”

  “No, ma’am. The room is fine. The bed is especially comfortable.”

  “That’s good. So what do you need my son for?”

  Widow said, “I just need to ask him a question.”

  “Any question you need to ask him, you can ask me.”

  Widow thought for a moment. He didn’t want to ask her about Hood and potentially get her son in trouble because he may not give him an answer later. So he said, “Well, ma’am. I’m a lonely traveler.”

&
nbsp; She nodded.

  Widow said, “I’m interested in where to go to find some…”

  She nodded again and leaned up in her chair.

  “I want to find some female company.”

  “Oh, gosh,” the old lady said. She slumped back in her chair and said, “He’s a good boy.”

  “I didn’t mean to suggest he’s not, ma’am.”

  “He’s out back, taking out the trash. Go around the front of the building and around the corner.”

  Widow nodded and said, “Thanks, ma’am.” And he left her where she was. He walked out of the office and followed her instructions. He circled past a group of soda machines and an ice maker. He walked around to the back of the building, where he found the son, only he wasn’t taking out the trash.

  The son saw him and coughed and spewed a little. He was leaning up against the back wall, smoking pot. He said, “Whoa! You scared me.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “I thought you were the sheriff.”

  “No. It’s just me.”

  “If you got a leaky toilet, then you’ll have to wait. I’m gonna smoke the rest of this bud.”

  Widow said, “That’s not it.”

  “What ya want? You want a puff?”

  Widow waved it away and said, “The guy I showed you. Is he still here?”

  “Man, sorry about that. He left right after you came asking about him.”

  Widow said, “He checked out?”

  The guy nodded and said, “Yeah, man. I tried to knock on your door, but there was no answer.”

  “What time? How long ago?”

  “More than two hours.”

  Widow shook his head. Hood had left right when he went to dinner.

  The guy said, “I’m not giving your money back, man.”

  Widow said, “Keep it.” He stopped for a moment, and he asked, “Did he still have the little girl with him?”

  The son took another puff of his pot, and then he answered, “Yeah, man. There was a little girl.”

  Widow nodded and turned to walk back to his Jeep with no idea of where to go next. He went to the corner again and heard the son speak. He said, “Wanna know where they went?”

  Widow stopped and turned back to him. He asked, “Where?”

  “They went camping.”

  “Camping?”

  “Yeah. They had camping gear in the back of their truck. So they must’ve gone camping.”

  Widow asked, “Do you know where?”

  “Sure,” he said, and he pointed south. He said, “They went up to Miner’s Rock. That’s where everyone goes. There’s a road that leads up past the rock shelf, and there’s some really cool spots out there. You can see the stars really great.”

  Widow said, “Thanks. How do I get there?”

  “You can follow the signs, man.”

  “Thanks,” Widow said again, and he half-walked and half-ran back to the Jeep. He still had a big advantage over the people who were after Hood, but the truth was he didn’t know how many more there would be. He knew that eight hours ago they didn’t know where they could find Hood, but that could’ve changed.

  He got to his Jeep and jerked open the half door and dumped himself down in the driver seat. He fired up the engine and took off the emergency brake. He shifted it into first gear and hit the gas and headed up to Miner’s Rock.

  ACCORDING TO GOOGLE MAPS, the route to Romanth is best taken down I-35 toward Laredo. But Glock had been down there many times. He had never stayed in Romanth, but he knew it was there. It wasn’t far from their compound, less than an hour’s drive. So Glock knew that the fastest way to get down there was to take the off-map roads and stay in the desert.

  He accelerated the Chevy Tahoe, and the tires bounced. The engine hummed a good healthy sound. He checked the clock on the dash, just above the full-screen map that showed him the route through the desert.

  He had his phone synced in with the onscreen dash computer. Chevy has a state-of-the-art computer system installed in the expensive models of the Chevy Tahoe. One of the key features is hands-free talking and commands. This didn’t matter to Glock because the talk features for the computer were programmed for human voices, and his was virtually inhuman. Instead of trying to order it to call Danny, he simply picked up his phone and clicked the buttons. He kept the phone hooked up to the onboard computer and heard Danny’s voice come over the speakers.

  Danny said, “What’s up?”

  “Danny. Get the boys ready. I’ll be there soon.”

  “You’re coming here?”

  “Yeah. Any more movement on the phone?”

  “It’s in Romanth,” he said. He had texted Glock earlier and told him the location.

  “I got the text.”

  Danny said, “We can narrow it down to a precise radius.”

  “Good enough. Get ready. I’ll be there soon.”

  Glock hung up the phone.

  WIDOW DROVE about a mile and a half south of Romanth and found the sign to Miner’s Rock. He followed the rocky road, passing twists and turns up through the rocks and into the gloom. Suddenly, the desert landscape merged with more green pastures. There were low trees and grassy lands. The stars were out, and the night was breezy but not cold. Texas temperatures. Long, hot days and short, cold nights.

  The Jeep had big square lights on the front that rested behind a big chrome grill. But the beams were low and not bright. Widow switched on the high beams, which didn’t help, but then again, there was nothing to see that he couldn’t see with the lights off because of how bright the stars were. For a moment, he considered switching them off completely.

  He drove until he came to a circle that was high up on the rock shelf. The circle was the last stop for campers before they took to hiking. He parked the Jeep behind Hood’s rented truck and hopped out. There were four vehicles in total—his Jeep, Hood’s F150, and two SUVs.

  Widow grabbed the Sig Sauer and looked around. There was no one there. He knew that the woman had fired the Sig Sauer at him, but Widow was a firm believer in testing your own firearms. So he ejected the magazine and the chambered bullet and reinserted it back into the magazine. He aimed the gun over the valley and dry-fired it. It worked like a dream. He reinserted the magazine and chambered the round.

  He slipped it back into his jeans at the small of his back and walked over to the F150. He felt the hood. It was cold. The door was locked.

  He looked around for signs as to which direction they had gone. He saw that there were basically two paths. One headed down into the valley, and the other headed up to a ridge. He scanned the horizon, down in the valley, and saw two campfires. He looked up at the ridge and saw one. If Hood was using any kind of brainpower, he’d know that higher ground was always better. Widow headed up the path toward the higher ground.

  CHAPTER 17

  JAMES HOOD was a slim man. He used to weigh more, but two years in prison had…done things to him. He was an ex-con who’d had quite an experience being incarcerated. It was not an experience he cared to repeat. No way in hell was he ever going back. He had been released early, and he ran the first chance he got.

  His daughter sat next to him, staring up at the stars. He had stolen some camping equipment out of another truck, back in town. He wasn’t proud of it, but the equipment was the least of his concerns. In the last twenty-four hours, he had abducted his daughter, stolen two different vehicles, and stolen money from an old friend back in El Paso. Of course, the friend had thought he was merely borrowing it, but surely by now he knew Hood wasn’t coming back with it. It was only five hundred bucks, of which he had two hundred left. Soon he would have to commit more crimes just to keep him and Jemma safe and eating.

  He needed a better plan, but everything had happened so fast.

  They had a fire going, finally, and Jemma was cuddled up next to him.

  She said, “Daddy, how many stars are there?”

  He looked down at her and smiled. He said, “Millions.”
/>   “Millions?”

  He nodded.

  She asked, “How many is that?”

  “It’s a whole lot.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Yeah, Pip?”

  “When is Mommy coming?”

  He paused a long beat. He wasn’t ready to explain it to her yet. He wasn’t ready to tell her that her mom wasn’t coming. In fact, he wasn’t sure she’d live much longer. The FBI agents had told him she was on her deathbed.

  Just then, out of the darkness, the silhouette of a bear emerged from out of the brush. At first, Hood thought it was a grizzly, but he wasn’t sure if there were any grizzlies in Texas. He didn’t see why not. Then again, it could’ve been a black bear. That’s when the thought occurred to him that it didn’t matter what kind of bear it was. Anything short of a Teddy bear wasn’t a bear he wanted to see in the dark. Another thought hit him in that short second—weren’t bears afraid of fire? This one certainly wasn’t.

  Jemma saw it about one second after he had because she sat up straight as a board and grabbed his arm tight. She said, “Daddy! Daddy!”

  “I see it. Stay still, Pip!” he said, but truthfully, he wasn’t sure what kind of advice to follow when it came to avoiding being mauled by a bear.

  A voice came from the bear. It said, “Relax. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  It wasn’t a bear, but a man—a big guy. He came up to the camp slowly. He held his hands out so they were clearly visible and nonthreatening, but the truth was that Widow had the Sig Sauer in his right-hand back pocket. He had taken it out of his jeans and shoved it into his back pocket. Too many times, he had seen undercover officers in the Navy try to draw their weapons from a pancake holster in the back, and the weapon got caught on clothes. No amount of oil could compare to a loose gun, ready to grab. He didn’t expect that Hood would shoot him, but you never know. A desperate man on the run, trying to protect his daughter, might have shot his own mother in the dark first and then asked questions.

  Hood said, “We ain’t got no money here!”

  Widow made no reply. He was surveying the situation, making mental notes of all of the visible equipment and looking for weapons.