Strong Darkness (36 page)

History being made to repeat itself and the killings would go on and on, young women much like her senselessly murdered unless she did something. Because Kai felt certain her father was behind the murders. He was a monster. Perhaps her mother and sister had been the lucky ones. But the victims found murdered in a fashion identical to similar victims in America's Old West had not been lucky at all. And there would be many more of them, sacrifices to the times that her father believed destroyed their family's hope, unless she stopped him. Alone now, unless …

Unless …

Kai found an empty table in the back of a small bar in the terminal and pretended to study a menu resting beneath a sugar caddy. She eased the cell phone from her pocket and pulled up a number she'd lifted off Dylan's phone back in Providence. She started to dial it, stopped, then finished entering the digits. Staring at them for what seemed like a very long time before she pressed Call.

 

96

S
AN
A
NTONIO
I
NTERNATIONAL
A
IRPORT,
S
AN
A
NTONIO,
T
EXAS

Caitlin arrived at the Jetlinx private terminal in a detached building just off the tarmac in time to watch the private Lear heading in off the runway. She figured it must have taken off from Houston while she was still at the hospital with Jones. She felt like a kid, face pressed against the window as it taxied straight on course for the glass before veering off into a parking position.

She was through the door and heading for the Lear as its door opened and a set of steps lowered to reveal a pair of plainclothes Chinese guards standing at the top. She climbed the stairs and eased past them and into the jet to find an old, thin Chinese man rising from behind a table set in the middle of the cabin between four chairs, two on either side facing inward. He nodded and one of the men moved down the stairs to assume a post on the tarmac while the other eased the door closed and took up vigil before it.

“He speaks no English, Ranger Strong,” the old man told her, rising. His shock of stark white hair looked chiseled to his scalp, more a statue's than a man's. “So our words will remain secret.”

“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Consul General.”

“Please, join me. Sit. Can I get you something?”

“Just the information I requested and you kindly agreed to provide.”

The consul general of the People's Republic of China attached to Texas stiffened. “Kindness has nothing to do with it. It has become a matter of practicality now that Li Zhen has betrayed both our nations. Understand, Ranger, that only information relevant to Li Zhen's presence in your country was made known to Mr. Brooks and his people. The rest was withheld for obvious reasons.”

“And what would those reasons be, sir?”

The consul general leaned forward over the table, smiling reassuringly. “In China we consider information to be not just a commodity, but a weapon to be wielded to enforce control and keep underlings beholden and respectful.”

“Meaning you have information about Li Zhen you've never shared outside the family.”

The consul general's expression wrinkled. “Family?”

“The immediate circle in which you move, sir.”

He nodded, grasping her meaning now. “I'm afraid the information you seek is most unpleasant. We would never think of sharing it with anyone if the stakes did not call for it.”

“I understand.”

The consul general shook his head deliberately, the motion looking almost painful. “No, Ranger Strong, I don't believe you do.”

*   *   *

The consul general was right; she didn't. Incoming and outgoing air traffic hammered her ears, and one jet coming in for a landing passed close enough overhead to buckle Caitlin as she walked back to her loaner car. The depths of Li Zhen's depravity defied even her worst expectations, confronting her with the reality of a nemesis whose moral repugnancy rendered him utterly unpredictable. A sociopath for whom morality was a delusion.

And it was left to the Rangers to stop him, no one else was about to help in the little time they had remaining.

Caitlin's phone rang. With no Bluetooth to rely on, she jerked the handset to her ear, expecting Cort Wesley to be on the other end of the line.

“You know who I am,” a female voice greeted instead.

“Yes,” Caitlin said, feeling a chill surge through her, “I do.”

 

97

S
HAVANO
P
ARK,
T
EXAS

Cort Wesley was sitting on the porch swing when Caitlin pulled into the driveway. She wore only a T-shirt and jeans in spite of the cool bite to the fall air.

“Luke and Dylan are both inside,” he told her, the swing rocking slightly. “Guess this is what it takes to bring us all back together.”

Caitlin looked back at the street, then continued climbing the porch steps. “I don't see Paz's truck.”

“He's here.”

“You saw him?”

“Didn't have to.” Cort Wesley dug a heel into a slat and stopped the light sway of the swing. “Man, Ranger, you look white as a ghost.”

“That's because I just spoke to one, Cort Wesley.”

*   *   *

“Hello, Kai,” Caitlin said into her phone, the words feeling like marbles banging up against the sides of her mouth.

“I'm sorry Dylan was hurt.”

“He could have died. It would've been your fault.”

“I didn't have a choice.”

The phone felt cold in Caitlin's hand and against her skin. “Criminals say that all the time.”

“You think that's what I am?”

“It's what you're acting like, and I'm not talking about how you make your living.”

“You know I had no choice in that.”

“I'm starting to get a real notion and I'm sorry, I truly am.”

“People say that all the time, too.”

“Difference being,” Caitlin said, still seated behind the wheel of the loaner with the engine off and the windows starting to fog up, “I mean it.” She stopped and took a deep breath, unsure of exactly what she going to say next until the words began to spill out. “I watched my mother gunned down when I was a little girl. I've got no memory of that, but it's with me every day of my life, and maybe all these gunfights I keep getting in are about getting back at her killers. But I can't get all the monsters, Kai, nobody can.”

“You feel my pain, is that what you mean?”

“Not at all. But I know what pain feels like and what it can do to a person. And it's done the same thing to me it's done to you.”

“What's that, Ranger?”

“It turned me into something I can't control. Me not running from a fight, gun or otherwise, was never about being brave. It was about that night my mother was killed and doing to others what I couldn't do to her killers while hiding in a closet.”

“A shrink tell you that?”

Caitlin tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry to manage the effort. She started to reach for a water bottle tucked into one of the loaner's beverage holders, then stopped.

“I've never shared that with a single other person, but I know you can relate to what I'm saying. Thought it might be helpful for you to know you're not alone.”

“Your father didn't trade you in like you were an old car.”

“No, but Jim Strong pretty much ignored what I witnessed, like he was hoping I wouldn't remember. I only wish he was right.”

“I remember too. All too clearly. It never stops hurting.”

“And it never will, no matter what you do here or anywhere else. The pain never goes away and sometimes the more you try to get rid of it, the worse it gets.”

“Dylan's lucky, Ranger,” Kai said after a pause.

“To be alive anyway.”

“I meant because he's got you.”

“You've got me too, Kai, and that's a promise. I know you're in San Antonio. Let's meet up, just the two of us.”

“I called to warn you, Ranger,” Kai said flatly, instead of continuing to engage her. “I'm going to end this tomorrow.”

“Don't talk like that.”

“Stay away from Yuyuan,” she continued. “Dylan and his father too. I've been waiting a very long time for this day.”

“Your father's a monster, Kai.”

“That's the point.”

“No, the point is you don't have to be one too. You're the victim in all this. Dylan saw in you the same thing I'm hearing, so let me help. Just me. No cops or other Rangers, I promise.… Kai?” Caitlin waited again. “Kai?”

Caitlin looked down at her phone and saw the call had already ended.

*   *   *

“She called you?”

“Memorized the number off Dylan's phone. Said she was going to handle things tomorrow. Told me, all of us, to stay away from Yuyuan.”

“Handle things,” Cort Wesley repeated stiffly

“That was my thought too.”

“You think she can pull it off?”

“I wouldn't put anything past her. I'm betting she's spent a good portion of her life getting ready for this day.”

“You feel bad for her.”

Caitlin let some of her breath out and took a seat next to him on the porch swing. “Don't you?”

Cort Wesley started to shake his head, then stopped as something dawned on him. “I believe I finally get why you and Dylan are so close. Because the two of you are the goddamn same. You both think you can save the world, one person at a time.”

“You don't think we should bother trying?”

“I think it's a waste of time. Not because people can't be saved, but because they don't want to. I spent four years in prison, Ranger, so I've seen that firsthand. Know something? You can actually
smell
hopelessness. I thought it was just my imagination until I visited someone in the pen and there it was again, same as my time in the Walls.”

“So, what, you want me to learn the scent?”

Cort Wesley kicked the swing into a slight rocking motion again. “It beats hearing what you want to and seeing what you want to. Because not everybody deserves to be saved. You wanna believe they can, because it justifies the way you go about your business.”

“You're way off base here, Cort Wesley.”

“Am I? How many have you ever told about witnessing your mother's death? But that didn't stop you from telling Kai. Anything to help you win her over, put another trophy on your wall of those you've saved instead of bagged.”

Caitlin looked at him for what felt like a long time. “You finished?”

“I don't even remember what I just said,” he said, leaning backward with a sigh.

The swing coasted to a stop. “Then let's focus on tomorrow.”

“What do you think Kai's got planned for Li Zhen?”

Caitlin leaned forward, the color flushing back into her face. “I don't care, Cort Wesley, because we're gonna get him before she can.”

 

98

N
EW
B
RAUNFELS,
T
EXAS

Li Zhen clutched the phone tighter to his ear, numbed by what the man on the other end had just told him. “What do you mean
raided
?”

“Texas Rangers stormed the studio,” the man said, still trying to catch his breath. “I barely got away. They had a warrant. They took everything. I tried to call our lawyer, but he isn't picking up. I didn't know what else…”

Zhen found himself feeling cold again, just like yesterday when no amount of frigid water could wash away the weakness and frailty revealed by his killing a girl who became Caitlin Strong to him. His hands ached even more than they normally did, his split knuckles swollen to twice their normal size.

“Texas Rangers,” he repeated under his breath, when the man's voice drifted off.

“That would be me,” he heard a voice call from the doorway.

*   *   *

Li Zhen pocketed his phone, identical in all respects to General Chang's.

“That's an interesting phone, sir,” Caitlin continued. “Available only in China would be my guess, produced specifically to run on the new fifth generation network Yuyuan built.”

“Should I be looking for my pruning snips, Ranger?” Zhen managed, fighting against the urge to launch himself against this woman just as he had the whore who'd morphed into her the day before. Kill Caitlin Strong just as he had killed her likeness.

“You won't need them to hear about what we uncovered.”

“I assume this concerns me.”

Caitlin nodded slowly. “It's the reason why I'm here to arrest you.”

She had served the arrest warrant to the guards downstairs who, under threat of arrest themselves, had escorted her up here to a private laboratory that took up the entire corner section of the building's top floor and was reserved for Yuyuan's fledgling pharmaceuticals division. The floor was lined with various reptile, insect, and even a few plant exhibits on display within cages or terrariums placed on stands. Caitlin had the sense she was in some sort of living museum, except for the room's warm, humid conditions that were conducive to the various species collected.

Zhen moved to a case inhabited by horned toads, eased back a slot in the top and poured in a dish of dead insects. “Perhaps you'd like a snack, Ranger.”

“Already ate, sir, but thanks just the same,” Caitlin told him.

Zhen closed the slot. “You have no authority to arrest anyone here,” he said indignantly. “My company lawyers have been adamant about that.”

“Oh, I didn't tell you. It's an
international
warrant for arrest. I'm serving it on behalf of the Chinese government.”

Zhen's expression turned utterly flat, his face the texture of granite as he moved toward a larger terrarium case where a series of snakes coiled about a miniature jungle scene. A small case resting next to it held three small mice.