Unbridled. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ those of us who only serve will suffer right along with the people who make the big decisions,” John chuckled. “But by then, we may be hit by a giant asteroid or a comet or an EMP, or a coronal mass ejection...”

      “Stop!” the officer groaned. “I get enough anxiety just watching the national news.”

      “I stopped years ago,” John confessed. “I get so much stress on the job that I couldn’t handle any more. It helps to remember that the news is news because what they report is the exception, not the rule. Dog bites man, who cares. But man bites dog, then you have a story.”

      “I see what you mean.”

      “And there they are,” John remarked, standing to watch a white van pull up in the parking lot beside them.

      A tall brunette with short hair and blue eyes gave them a wry look. “And here we are again, Ruiz,” Alice Mayfield Jones Fowler teased. “We were just together last week on another homicide. We really have to stop meeting like this. My husband thinks I have a secret yen for you.”

      “You tell gang members to stop killing other gang members in my jurisdiction, and I’ll be happy to wave you goodbye,” John chuckled.

      “That’s never going to happen.” She slipped on latex gloves and put booties over her shoes. She went to kneel by the victim.

      “How long dead?” John asked.

      She was examining his eyelids, neck and jaw, as she listened. “Rigor’s just now setting in. I can’t give you an exact time, you know that. But rigor usually presents two to six hours after death, first in the areas I’m checking.” She looked up at them with pursed lips. “As many autopsies as you Texas Rangers have attended, Ruiz, I expect you already knew that.”

      John gave her a Latin shrug and a smile.

      “An approximate time of death will help us retrace his steps,” the officer interjected.

      “Double tap,” she noted after inspecting the wounds, both of which had penetrated the boy’s heart. “Execution?” she asked, looking up at the men.

      “That would be my call,” John replied. “He made someone very angry, apparently. Note the tats as well.”

      “Los Serpientes,” she muttered, grimacing. “And unless my eyes are going, that little wolf’s head in chalk means that the little devil wolves are responsible for the DB. If there’s a hell on earth, that gang of teenage imbeciles created it.”

      “They’re trying to take over some gang territory that’s owned by Los Serpientes,” John noted. “And I’ll tell you frankly that Los Serpientes is a better class of gang. They operate mostly in Houston. They don’t require initiates to shoot people and they actually do some good in low-rent areas where crime is rampant. They never hurt children or old people. And they go after people who do.”

      “A gang is a gang, Ruiz,” she said heavily. “Why do we still have gangs in the twenty-first century?”

      “I was going to ask you that,” he chuckled. “I don’t know. I guess we’ve got Mom and Dad both working to keep the bills paid, or just Mom or Dad trying to support several children. The kids get left in daycare or on their own too much. Gangs offer lonely kids a family and emotional support and affection... Things they sometimes lack at home. It gets them a lot of traffic.”

      “If I ever have kids, they’ll never have time to join a gang,” she murmured as she worked bagging the victim’s hands. “We have a ranch. It’s small by Texas standards, but it’s a ranch. We never run out of work. Of course, it’s not as big as Cy Parks’s spread, or yours.”

      “You and Harley have a nice ranch,” John said, and smiled. “I buy stock from your husband’s boss. Cy Parks has some of the finest young Santa Gertrudis bulls in Texas.”

      “I keep forgetting that your ranch is outside Jacobsville.” She made a face. “Not that we’ll ever be any threat to you. My gosh, your place is almost as big as Jason Pendleton’s ranch!”

      “Ah, but he built his from the ground up. Mine is an old Spanish land grant,” he replied, making light of it. “I inherited it from my grandfather. All I had to do was let his people do their jobs. I’m still doing that, while I work at my own.”

      “Cattle baron,” she teased.

      He chuckled. “Hardly that. A cattle ranch is a money pit.”

      “Tell me about it.” She stood up. “After the floods this year brought on by that stupid hurricane, half the ranchers in south Texas had to buy hay to feed their herds.”

      “Most of them. But I’m totally organic, like Parks and J.D. Langley and Jason Pendleton. We never use pesticides or packaged fertilizer, and that helped us recuperate faster than ranchers who do,” John replied.

      “Not you, too,” she groaned. “Honestly, even my own husband is starting to go the organic route. I can’t even use spray on my roses to keep bugs from eating them!”

      “Research prey species that feed on your bugs,” he said with a grin.

      She shook her head. “I guess I’ll have to.” She sighed. “The worst of the hurricane was the displaced people, though,” she added softly. “It broke my heart, to see so many homeless.”

      “Mine, as well,” he agreed. “We’ve got several families in Jacobsville, living with relatives. It’s so small that we can hardly house our own population,” he chuckled. “But we managed to secure housing for an elderly couple from Houston.”

      “Cy Parks had an empty cabin on his place. He’s letting a big family from the coast live in it, and they’re working for him.” She laughed. “He says they’re not sure they want to go home. There are six kids, and they all love working on the ranch around the animals.”

      “I hate cities,” John said. “Well, I like San Antonio,” he amended. “But, then, I don’t live here. I live in Jacobs County.”

      “How’s your boy?” she asked.

      His face hardened. “Not so good. He hates going to school up here.”

      “Why doesn’t he go to school in Jacobsville?” she asked.

      “We had a few problems there,” he said, and turned his attention back to the body. He didn’t add that he had to pay a fee for Tonio to go to school near the hospital where his cousin worked. It was a special school, San Felipe Academy, one for boys who were disciplinary problems.

      Sadly, Tonio had discovered Los Diablos Lobitos in San Antonio just a few weeks after the change of schools and joined them before John found him. That had been a year ago, after John brought a woman home for dinner. It was the first time he’d even dated since the death of his wife. It was a colleague from work, not a romantic interest, just a woman he liked who was very attractive. But Tonio had hated her on sight. He’d gone crazy. He’d run away from home the very next day, while he was in the canteen at the children’s hospital in San Antonio, where he waited every afternoon for John’s cousin to get off work to take him home. Unknown to John, Tonio had met some member of the gang around town, who befriended him when he ran away. He ended up staying with the boy, who lived with his СКАЧАТЬ