Tank grinned. “Sheriff Carson?”

“Hayes.” He shook hands. “If it’s not too early for you, I thought I’d ask if you could come over to my office for a chat.”

“Go ahead,” Cy told him. “If you need a ride back, I’ll send one of the boys.”

“No need.” Hayes grinned. “I’ll bring him back.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

* * *

TANK CLIMBED INTO the patrol car with Hayes and they drove to the sheriff’s office.

“How’s your arm?” Tank asked him.

Hayes grimaced. “Still painful. I’m doing physical therapy and hoping I’ll regain at least partial use of it, but things are unsettled right now.” He shook his head. “I’ve been shot before, but I never had consequences like these.”

“I know what you mean,” Tank replied quietly. “I had injuries that required multiple surgeries. It was a few months ago, but I still get jumpy if there’s a car backfire.”

“Law enforcement is not a job for the weak of heart.”

“I totally agree,” Tank said. “That’s why I market cattle now.”

Hayes laughed. He led the way inside the building to his office, and offered Tank a seat. “I like my coffee strong.”

“Me, too.”

“Good thing, that’s the only way you’ll get it around here.” He produced two cups of coffee and put Tank’s in front of him. “There’s cream and sugar...”

“I don’t want either. ”

“Same here.”

Tank leaned back in the chair. “Did you ever catch the would-be assassin who shot you?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Hayes said with evident irritation. “We’ve put pressure on everybody we know. I even had my father-in-law ask around.” He leaned forward with a grin. “That’s how you indicate you’re really desperate—you involve a drug lord in your investigation. But my wife’s father has a good heart. He’s just in an illegal business.” He shook his head. “He doesn’t seem to run out of applications for jobs on his horse ranch in Jacobsville. But just between you and me, I think a lot of the applicants are undercover narcs.” He chuckled.

“That wouldn’t be a surprise.”

Hayes sipped his coffee. “We identified the shell casing,” he said. “Unfortunately the bullet’s still in me. The surgeon refused to remove it. He said it would complicate my recovery if he went in digging around delicate tissue.”

“I’m still wearing one of mine, too,” Tank replied. “I remember reading about Doc Holliday of O.K. Corral fame—they said when they examined his body, he was carrying several ounces of lead...bullets that doctors had just left in him.”

“In those days, the late 1800s, it would have been lethal trying to remove them,” Hayes agreed. He put down the coffee cup. “I’m still trying to understand why this man, whoever he is, targeted you and me. Neither of us can actually describe him. We don’t know who he is, or who he works for.” He frowned. “My office computer was destroyed, and when I had one of Eb Scott’s computer techs try to recover the hard drive, he was killed.” His eyes narrowed. “What is this guy trying so hard to cover up?”

Tank shook his head. “I have no idea. But he’s good at what he does. I had a friend of mine, Rourke, come up and check my place for bugs. It turns out that the surveillance company I hired was bogus. Their consultant, who was supposed to plant surveillance equipment, bugged everything, too.”

Hayes shook his head. “I can’t remember a case like this, not in my whole life.”

“I wasn’t in law enforcement that long, but neither can I,” Tank said. “There hasn’t been another attempt on your life?”

Hayes shook his head. “Well, that’s not quite true,” he added with a short laugh. “It seems El Ladŕon, before his untimely death, hired a new assassin to come after me.”

“And...?”

Hayes’s eyes twinkled. “He hired a guy who worked for my father-in-law briefly. He’s gone back to Houston, but he still keeps in touch, just in case the assassin wants to take me out.”

“They didn’t know who he was?” Tank exclaimed.

“Nope.”

“It wasn’t Mr. Parks’s employee, the other Carson?”

“No. Now there’s an interesting case,” Hayes mused. “He actually blew up El Ladŕon with a couple of hand grenades down in Mexico. The Mexican government did take a brief interest in the case, but we have a DEA agent who’s related to the former president. He made a couple of calls for us and they dropped the inquiry.”

Tank just shook his head. “This is one odd case.”

“Indeed it is.”

“I understand that Carson doesn’t carry ID and can’t be found in a database anywhere,” Tank replied.

“He’s an enigma. I owe him my life. So does my wife.” Hayes shook his head, too. “He has some unique skills. In fact, he just went on our honeymoon with us before he went to shepherd you down here. In a separate room,” he added with a chuckle. “He’s thick with Cash Grier, which leads to an assumption I probably shouldn’t make.”

“That he works, or worked, for the government in covert assassination,” Tank said, nodding at Hayes’s surprise. “I happened to mention to him that I noticed his gait. It’s one I saw in spec ops people in Iraq. Men who hunt men walk that way.”

Hayes nodded. “I know. If you ever see Cash Grier walk, it’s an experience. He’s still skilled with a sniper kit. In fact, a couple of years back, he took out a kidnapper who was holding a DEA agent’s child hostage. Did it from an astonishing distance, in the dark. Amazing.”

“His wife was a movie star, wasn’t she?”

He nodded. “They have a little girl, so he’s not so much into dangerous occupations as he was. They have Tippy’s younger brother living with them also. He’s just fourteen. He and Cash go fishing together and they game online. They’re best friends.”

“Nice for him. For both of them.”

“Yes.”

“You said she sees things,” he began.

“She has premonitions,” Hayes told him. “They’re uncanny. Saved Cash’s life a time or two.”

“My...friend,” he said hesitantly, “sees the future, too. But she’s never certain exactly what she sees. Sometimes it’s clouded. Like the guy who’s stalking me. She saw him sitting in front of a mirror trying on wigs. We concluded that he’s good at disguise.”

“That reminds me. I had Rick Marquez ask his father-in-law if he could check into that for us.”

“His father-in-law?”

Hayes nodded. He grinned. “Runs the CIA.”

Tank whistled.

“Anyway, he found a whole list of undercover agents from several agencies who have a reputation for their use of disguises. So I’m afraid it’s going to take a long time to narrow it down to even a handful.”

“Another dead end,” Tank agreed. He sighed. “I could stand in the center of town and wait for him to come shoot me.”

“From what we’ve been able to put together, he avoids crowds when he’s planning a hit.”

“Which would explain why he didn’t just shoot me in the front yard of my own ranch when he came out to put in the surveillance devices,” Tank told him. “He did seem disconcerted that we had so many armed men just standing around.”

“Good thing,” Hayes said. “I don’t think he’d have minded killing you face-to-face.”

“Nor do I. But if it hadn’t been for Merissa, I wouldn’t have been expecting it.” He shook his head. “She didn’t even know me. She came walking up to the back door, in a blizzard because her car wouldn’t start, to tell me I had to be careful. She said it was because of something I didn’t remember.”

Hayes frowned. “Was she more specific than that?”

“Not really. It comes and goes with her. She said that I knew something that I wasn’t aware of knowing, and it posed a risk to the man.”

“Nebulous.”

“Yes. But even so, it probably saved my life.”

“What do you remember about the man, the supposed DEA agent, who led you into the ambush in Arizona?” Hayes asked.

Tank sighed. “I remember that he wore a suit. It’s still sort of hazy. He was medium height, nothing remarkable about his features. He was the sort of guy you wouldn’t even notice on the street.”

Hayes was remembering. “Yes. The guy I remember was pretty much the same. But he had a marked Texas drawl.”

“I think it was the same guy, after I was shot, who was giving a drug mule hell for calling 911 for me—he had red hair and a Massachusetts accent. But he was dressed the same.” He shook his head. “I thought I was hallucinating.”

“Nice of the mule to call for help.”

“Yes. Unexpected. I don’t even know who he was. I owe him my life. I hope they didn’t kill him for it.”

“You never know. I’ve heard of whole villages wiped out just for revenge against one man who lived in it.”

“So have I.”

“My wife and I saved one man from El Ladŕon,” Hayes recalled. He laughed. “My wife held an AK-47 on him and never knew if it was even loaded—but she bluffs well. Anyway, he didn’t want to hold us hostage, but his bosses knew his family and threatened to kill them if he stepped out of line. Carson, who works for Cy Parks, got his family out of Mexico.”

“So he does have at least one soft spot?”

“Not sure about that,” Hayes said. “He doesn’t seem to care about much. Although, he does have something of a reputation with women.”

“Deserved.” Tank chuckled. “I saw him in action at the airport. He draws them like flies to honey.”

“Draws them, yes. But he’s not a sentimental man.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so, either.”

“How about your brothers?” Hayes asked. “This must be hard on them, too.”

“They worry. My older brother Mallory has a new son.”

Hayes smiled. “I like kids. My wife has a little brother and sister who live with us. They light up the place. We’re hoping to have one of our own.”