Page 29 of Ransom
"I got a mean hankering for a burrito."
He squinted at me. "You're joking."
"Do I look like I'm joking, darlin'?" I tossed the gloves in the trash and pulled on a fresh pair. "You're gonna take me to dinner and a show tonight out at Bonney Ranch. Then we'll see about round two of what we started during the monsoon."
He stared at me for a moment, like he wasn't sure I was serious. Then he set the notebook down on the counter and said, "I need to make a call. I'll give you some space to finish up."
He pulled the door shut behind him on the way out. The latch was the same loose latch the sheriff had wrestled with on the way in, and it didn't quite catch. The door drifted open an inch and stayed there.
I looked at it. I looked at the body. I looked back at the door.
I let it stay open and went back to the body.
Through the gap in the door, I could hear his boots on the gravel, moving away from the building, then stopping. I knew exactly where he was. Fifteen feet off the corner of the truck, where he could see anyone coming up the access road and nobody from the funeral home windows could see him. His hat was probably tipped low, phone to his ear. Ten to one he was calling back to the ranch to update Rafe. I'd bet my life on it.
"... Rex's place, yeah..."
Ransom's voice came through the gap. "... I know..." A long pause. Long enough for Rafe to do the talking. "... we're going there now..."
I picked up the curved needle and threaded it. I missed the eye twice and got it on the third try, and I told myself it was the latex on my fingers, and I told myself it was the latex on my fingers a second time so I wouldn't have to admit it was the man on the other side of the door.
There was another pause, longer than the first.
"... I'll handle it."
The line went dead. His boots moved once on the gravel as he settled his weight, and then they didn't move again.
I set the needle down on the steel.
Lawyers said I'll handle it. Assassins said I'll handle it. I'd been a Ranger for years, and I'd never met a third kind of man who said I'll handle it in that tone of voice. Ransom didn't have a law degree.
I stood there a moment with my gloved hands resting on the edge of the table. The hot part was admitting it. The hot part was that the man who had just almost put his lips on mine over a corpse stood on the other side of a cinderblock wall right this minute and arranged another one.
That was the moment I knew I'd let him do it.
To Rex. To anyone he wanted, if he came back through that door looking the way he'd looked an hour ago and put a hand on me. I'd let him do it and I'd watch him do it and I wouldn't ask the question a Ranger was supposed to ask. I'd known it on the ridge yesterday when he'd put a gun on me and I hadn't reached for mine. I'd known it when he caught my elbow at the tailgate and I didn't look at the place his hand had been because I was afraid of what my face would do. And I knew it now, with my hands red to the wrists and a man on the other side of the wall saying I'll handle it.
Then I picked the needle back up and started closing the Y.
The stitches were neat enough, but they weren't pretty. Roy Castillo deserved better than this. He deserved a real morgue and a real medical examiner and a real Ranger working a real case file, and what he'd gotten was me.
When I was done, I peeled off the gloves and tossed them in the bin. The mask came off after. I washed my hands at the sink. The water ran rust-brown for a long time before it cleared, and I scrubbed up to the elbows, anyway.
I covered him with a sheet from one of the carts. Wheeled the gurney over to one of the refrigerated drawers, slid him in, and labeled it in pen to make sure they didn't forget who was in there.
I picked up the notebook from the counter on my way out.
The heat hit me like a fist when I stepped outside. I pulled my hat off, wiped the sweat from my forehead, and put it back on.
Ransom stood by the truck with his phone in his hand. He looked up when the door opened, then slipped the phone into his pocket. His face was unreadable.
I walked over.
"You call the ranch?"
"Yeah."
"What'd you tell them?"
