Blood Lines

49

›› Rafter M Ranch

›› Outside Fort Davis, Texas

›› 0125 Hours (Central Time Zone)

Someone was knocking on the door.

Worn and exhausted though he was, Shel woke immediately. Out of habit, he reached for the SOCOM. 45 hidden under the cushion of the couch where he slept. Don had tried to get him to come home with him, but Shel hadn’t been ready to do that. He’d needed time alone to think and decompress.

In the end, after much talking-which had only further exhausted him-and because Don didn’t have the strength to continue, his brother had left. Shel had also invited Will and the other NCIS agents to stay at the house, but they’d declined, and he’d been glad. He’d dropped his duffel on the bed in the room he’d once shared with Don, then headed out to the couch to sleep.

Max was already up and awaiting orders.

The knocking repeated.

The house was dark. After everyone had left at eight o’clock or so, finally relinquishing the site, satisfied there was nothing more that could be learned about what had happened, Shel had raided the refrigerator. He’d found leftover pinto beans and some cold corn bread. He’d microwaved both and ate at the table. He had never felt lonelier or less certain.

“Shel?” It was Will’s voice.

“Yeah?” Shel stood by the door and peered through the window.

Will appeared to be alone. His rental SUV was parked out front next to the one Shel was driving.

“Can I come in?”

Shel tucked the pistol in his waistband at his back and unlocked the door. He could tell by Will’s face that something bad had happened.

“What’s going on?” Shel asked.

“The El Paso police called,” Will said.

Shel took his cell phone from his pocket and glanced at it. The battery was dead. During all the confusion, he’d forgotten to charge it. The home phone lines had been cut when Victor Gant and his crew had tried to kill Tyrel. Shel looked at Will but couldn’t ask what was most on his mind.

“Your father’s been located,” Will said. “There was an incident at the border. It appears he stopped to help a boy who was choking, then suffered a heart attack.”

A heart attack? The words poured ice water through Shel’s veins. People die from heart attacks.

“Is Daddy going to be all right?” Shel asked.

Will’s face softened. “They don’t know. The doctors say it’s too soon to tell. They’ve got him stabilized.”

Shel nodded and took in a deep breath. He felt dizzy and hurt all at the same time. “Does Don know?”

“Estrella went to tell him. I figured this was news he didn’t need to hear over the phone, and since we’re staying at a hotel outside of town, we were about equal distance. The sheriff’s loaning us a helicopter so we can get to El Paso sooner.”

“All right,” Shel said. “I’ll get my kit and meet you in the car.”

Will turned and headed back to the SUV.

Real fear settled in over Shel as he walked to the back bedroom.

He took a moment to get everything organized, but he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. His daddy was in a hospital, maybe fighting for his life. The Marines hadn’t had a checklist or training for that.

Shel felt helpless. In a situation like this, Don would pray. Shel envied his brother that feeling of being useful. But Shel knew he didn’t believe or trust enough to do that. He’d be a hypocrite if he tried to pray, and he didn’t wish for that.

Unable to do anything else, Shel grabbed the handles of his duffel and hoisted it to his shoulder. As he headed for the door, he looked around the house and wondered if it would ever feel like home again.

›› Love Field

›› Dallas, Texas

›› 0239 Hours (Central Time Zone)

Shaved and sporting a new haircut, wearing a suit for the first time since his last court arraignment, Victor Gant sat in the waiting area for his flight. Beside him, made over in a similar fashion, Fat Mike sat reading a copy of Playboy he’d bought in one of the magazine shops.

Neither one of them was GQ material.

A few bleary-eyed travelers gave Fat Mike hard stares over his choice of public reading material, but the biker ignored them.

Victor controlled the anger and frustration that slopped around inside him, but only just. If it hadn’t been for alcohol, he wouldn’t have been able to contain himself. He drank just enough to keep the edge off.

“You’re gonna have to let it go,” Fat Mike said quietly from beside him. “Maybe you didn’t kill Tyrel McHenry, but you seriously jacked his life.”

The local news had been full of the attack on McHenry’s ranch. Victor had seen footage all day while he’d made the necessary arrangements to catch this morning’s flight. If all went well and no one saw through the false papers he was carrying or identified him-which, based on the mug shots they were displaying on the television, Victor doubted-he’d be back in Vietnam in a few days.

He’d be safe.

That irritated him too, because it had been a long time since Victor had truly felt threatened. But there was something about that big Marine, something so intractable, that Victor had lost some of the confidence he’d always had even at the worst of times. Shel McHenry was one of those bona fide human assault weapons that just wouldn’t stay down.

Victor knew he’d have felt better if Shel were dead. But being in Vietnam didn’t mean he couldn’t work on that. He still had friends in the States, still had people who owed him favors and money.

It was just a matter of time.

“Did you hear me?” Fat Mike asked.

“Yeah,” Victor said irritably. He felt naked sitting there without a gun.

“Says here in this magazine that stress will kill you if you keep it internalized.”

Victor glanced at Fat Mike. “You saying I’m stressed?”

“No,” Fat Mike replied coolly, suddenly realizing he might be on dangerous ground. “I’m telling you it’s a good thing you’re not.”

Victor turned back to the windows overlooking the airfield. “I’m not stressed.”

“You don’t look stressed. Want a magazine? I got Penthouse too.”

“That old man should have been dead last night,” Victor said. He spoke in Vietnamese so none of the other passengers around them could understand their conversation.

“He got lucky. That’s all.”

“Lucky enough to kill three guys.”

“You and me, we seen guys go down in the jungle that shoulda lived, bro. And we seen cherries that should have gone down the first time Charlie opened fire live to fight another day. Don’t mean nothing. Just means we gotta let it go for now. We’ve put stuff on the back burner before. Ain’t no thing, brother.”

“The Marine should have been dead too. Out of the two of them, somebody should have been dead. Instead, we got a lot of dead guys behind us and a whole lotta heat coming down on top of us.”

“Maybe this just happened so you can get them both later.”

Victor didn’t believe that, but he knew he wasn’t going to stop trying.

“We get back to Vietnam, you’ll wrap your skull around this thing,” Fat Mike said. “You’ll figure out a way to get them. Nobody escapes you in the long run. But I’m telling you, bro, once you’re back in the jungle-where only the quick and the dead show up-you may decide it wasn’t all that important anyway. After a few days there, it might not even matter.”

That wasn’t going to be the case, though. Victor was sure of that. Whatever it took, he was going to balance the scales between himself and Shel McHenry.

›› Intensive Care Unit

›› Las Palmas Medical Center

›› El Paso, Texas

›› 0648 Hours (Central Time Zone)

“Are you his son?”

Shel disengaged himself from the confusion that filled his mind and focused his attention on the nurse who had just entered the ICU room.

She was Hispanic and looked like she was in her early thirties. Her scrubs fit her athletic build well. She wore her black hair pulled up.

“Yes, ma’am,” Shel said. His voice was thick from disuse. He’d sat at his daddy’s side for hours, worrying about him and wondering what he was supposed to do now. The constant chirping of the heart monitor and humming of other assorted machines provided an undercurrent of noise.

“Don’t call me ‘ma’am,’” the nurse said. “You’ll make me old before my time. My name is Isabella.” She turned from the chart and stuck her hand out.

Shel got to his feet and took her hand.

She smiled, obviously pleased. “So, you’re a gentleman.”

“No. I’m a Marine.”

“Is that better or worse?” Isabella’s face showed that she might have really been interested in the answer and not just making small talk.

“I guess it depends on who you talk to.”

“Well, either way, your father is going to be all right.”

“That’s what they said.” Shel resumed his seat out of the way while Isabella manually took his daddy’s vitals. Shel watched her with interest.

“I trust the machines,” Isabella said. “They’re good. But I don’t ever want to get out of practice doing things the old-fashioned way. In case I’m ever in a situation where I have to.”

“Redundant systems,” Shel commented.

She smiled at him. “I guess you could call it that. I just think of those kids working fast food when the computer crashes. They act like they don’t know how to add or subtract or how to make change. Computers are supposed to make things easier, not impossible. We’re supposed to be the redundant system. I suppose the military is really big on redundancy.”

Shel nodded.

“I’m going to be with your father-and, I suppose, you-during this next shift,” Isabella said. “The other nurses told me you were here most of the night.”

“Some of it, anyway.”

“And I’ll also tell you that if Dr. Abelard wasn’t a fan of the military, you wouldn’t be sitting in that chair. He likes his ICU kept clear of civilians. I suppose you can empathize with that.”

Shel felt magnanimous enough not to point out that the hospital didn’t have enough security people and orderlies in the building to make him leave if he decided to stay. He remained quiet.

“But Dr. Abelard can be a generous man if nobody makes any trouble,” Isabella said. “So here you are. They said there were two of you.”

“My brother, Don,” Shel said. “He was here for a while. But he had to go take care of his family. They’re going to stay in town for the next day or so. Until we get Daddy through this.”

“Like I said, your father is going to be fine. There’s no need for anyone to get stressed. In a few days, barring any complications, we’re going to send him home.”

But there already were complications, Shel couldn’t help thinking. The murder and Victor Gant were out there lurking like land mines along their path.

“We know that,” he said. “This isn’t about being here waiting for something bad to happen. We’re here for Daddy. When he gets better, we want him to know we were here for him.”

Isabella smiled. “I can understand that. I just didn’t want you to worry needlessly.”

“I’m not.” He was worried but not over anything the hospital could help with. Shel was more concerned about what the Army was going to do to his daddy once Victor Gant’s charges got out into the open.

“They said he Heimliched a boy before he had his heart attack.” Isabella held her chart on one cocked hip. “From what I was told, he probably saved that boy’s life.”

Shel nodded. He’d read the police officer’s reports too.

“He had a busy day,” Shel said, thinking his daddy had also killed three men who were going to take his life and escaped to the border.

“He’ll have others.”

Shel nodded again, but he wondered where his daddy was going to spend those days.

“Were you guys in a car wreck?”

Shel gave her blank look.

Isabella touched her face with the end of her ink pen, causing Shel to realize she was referring to the bruises on his face. His daddy had them too.

“I know your father didn’t get the bruises on his face from the cardiac event,” the nurse said.

“No. It was a separate thing. We were working on the farm. Stacking hay. Things… things didn’t go as well as they could have.” Shel felt bad about the near lie, but he didn’t want to have to explain the fight. Dr. Abelard knew, and Will had had to vouch for Shel to be allowed to remain in the room.

“I see.” Isabella looked into his eyes, and he couldn’t tell if she believed him or not.

Shel crossed his arms and looked back at his daddy.

“He’ll probably sleep for a while longer, but if he doesn’t or he seems like he’s having problems, buzz the desk.”

“I will.”

“If you need anything, just let me know.”

Shel stood again out of respect as the woman left the room, and she smiled at him over her shoulder. Then he resumed his vigil.

For a moment, he let his vision linger on the silent television set in the corner. CNN showed the top news stories. He’d muted the audio.

When he gazed back at his daddy’s still form almost lost in the huge hospital bed, he saw that Tyrel McHenry’s eyes were open and staring straight at him.