Page 17 of Ransom
"We can't just..." Ransom said.
"We don't kill federal or state, Ransom. We never have." Rafe held his eyes. "You kill one Texas Ranger and inside a week you've got every Ranger within three hundred miles breathing down your neck, and the second wave won't be the ones who'll sit down at a table with you. Piensa, mijo. You want to protect the ranch, you do it smart. You don't do it scared. Now get the horses."
Ransom looked at me. Then at Rafe. Then he turned and walked into the dark without another word.
Coyote tilted his head at me. "You're lucky Rafe likes you."
"He doesn't know me."
"He likes you anyway. He's good at that." Coyote reached up and unwound his snake from his shoulders, holding her out toward me. "Nimue wants to say hello."
She had to be five feet long, reddish-brown, with black patterns down her back. Her tongue tasted the air an inch from my face.
Rafe sighed. "Coyote. Put the snake away and find this man's hat."
Coyote looked genuinely disappointed, but he wound Nimue back around his shoulders and disappeared into the dark. Rummaging sounds came from deeper in the camp, and his humming with them.
"Roy Castillo was in your pocket," I said to Rafe.
Rafe didn't blink. "What makes you say that?"
"Because Ransom's ready to kill me to protect this place, which means you've got something worth protecting. And a judge in your pocket would be worth protecting."
"Lots of things are worth protecting."
"Sure."
Rafe studied me for a long moment. "You're smarter than you act."
"I get that a lot."
"Whoever killed Castillo sent a message. I want to know who sent it."
"So do I."
"Then I guess we're on the same side."
Hoofbeats approached. Ransom rode up leading a second horse, and my heart did something complicated at the sight of him.
Coyote materialized beside me, holding my hat in both hands like it was a dead bird. "Found it. It was under the tarp with the judge."
"The judge is still here?"
"Where else would he be?" Coyote thrust the hat at me. "You should check it for spiders."
I took my hat back and checked it for spiders. There weren't any. I settled it on my head and felt approximately forty percent better.
Ransom dismounted and held out the reins to Faye. "Can you ride?"
"I can manage."
"If you fall off, we're leaving you."
"Noted."
I got a foot in the stirrup and pulled myself up. The world tilted again, and I had to grab the saddle horn with both hands until everything settled back where it belonged. My head pounded like somebody drove nails through it from the inside, and my whole body ached like I'd been stomped on, which I more or less had been.
Ransom swung back up onto Galahad and didn't look at me.
