Page 78 of Fatal Strike
“He’s a skinny fish in a big pond. Tell you what, he ain’t smart enough to pull off three murders.” Rawlyns drew in a sharp breath that appeared to pain him.
Stage 4 had a way of taking the fight out of a man.
“He had a loaded syringe on him,” Jon went on. “Said he’d been ordered to inject it in Father Gabriel.”
“He ain’t smart enough to fill a syringe with rattler juice either.”
“But you know who is.”
Rawlyns appeared to wrestle with how much to say. They needed to get his son to the prison.
Jon pressed on. “What can you tell us about Kantore?”
“I’ll give you his record. You could learn these things from his file anyway. He started back in 2013 with Houston cocktail.”
Jon was familiar with the Texas-based drug, a mix of Norco, Xanax, and Soma. “And?”
“Ecstasy, blow, oxy, some cheese.”
The latter was another Texas-based drug, heroin with cold meds and an antihistamine.
“Henry snorted his profits,” Rawlyns said before abruptly leaning back and calling an end to the interview. “Been a nice visit, but I’m done here. Don’t come back without my boy. Best hurry ’cause I’m dying, and you want to know who’s doing the murderin’.”
The guard escorted Rawlyns from the interview room, leaving the stench of an unwashed body, laden with bitterness and unmanaged pain.
As Leah and Jon left the prison, Leah looked back at the closed doors. “I’m finding a way to get his son here. Rawlyns has nothing to live for but hope Will Jr. won’t travel the same road as his father.”
Jon drove them back to Houston, his thoughts lingering on Rawlyns. When this was over, he’d make a trip to visit the man again, try to offer some comfort. Maybe Father Gabriel was rubbing off on him. Speaking of priests ... he needed to find a church for tomorrow, which meant research. He’d be visiting a lot of them in the weeks ahead until he found the right one.
His dry mouth was due to only one thing—baring his soul. In the early hours of this morning, he’d turned his life over to Christ, and now he planned to tell Leah about his last jump? What next?
“You have a strange look on your face. Angry?” she said.
“Thinking about what I wanted to tell you.”
“I’m listening, Jon.”
“My ego tells me I’m about to look like a coward.” His forced bravado fell flat.
“Doubt it. You couldn’t look any worse than I did today, failing to confront my snake fear. Someone could have been hurt out there. Never understood how I can be okay on a sniper mission where they’re usually located.”
“Every person on the planet has secrets, some worse than others. I think you’re braver than I am.” He glanced at Leah, who graced him with a wide smile.
Time for honesty. Truth. He waded through how to begin. “Ever feel stalked or haunted? Just plain scared?”
“I assume you’re not talking about our job.” She paused. “You mean the kind of fear like being around you?”
Okay, he’d take this segue. Might make his confession easier. “What are we going to do about this crazy attraction?”
“I’d like to run, but I’m stuck on the passenger side of this truck, traveling sixty miles an hour. Your secret’s safe with me.”
He chuckled to ease his nerves. “I used to be a smoke jumper.” What had he gotten himself into?
“I had no idea. Were you a hotshot? Daredevil? No fire too huge kind of guy?”
He tossed her a feigned scowl. “I was the spotter. I had two close friends, partners—Hanson and Chip. We were like brothers. We came from different places, different backgrounds,but we shared the drive to stop wildfires. I led out, the jumper in charge. My job was to calculate wind, topography, ground hazards, and the beast’s behavior.”
Vivid scenes from that final fire played like a movie montage. “In Utah, we learned a man had hiked into the mountains, fell, and was trapped. A fire was sweeping toward him. He requested a rescue before the battery on his cell phone died. The three of us went after him. We choppered over the fire. It was an inferno. No place to jump.” He could practically feel the heat of the flames, taste the smoke in his mouth. “I should have turned them around. Instead, I believed we were invincible. Thought I’d found a decent jump spot on a slope. Thick timber, but not far from the fire. I parachuted first. Chip and Hanson followed.” Jon swallowed hard. “The smoke and flames got to Hanson and Chip. They didn’t make it. I carried the injured man out.”
