Four Summoners Tales Part 27

"What brings you out?" Zeke asked.

Lester's smile slipped away and suddenly he looked his age. "Didn't have much choice. You're not answering your cell and you haven't returned my calls from yesterday."

Zeke wiped the back of his hand across his brow. "This doesn't sound like a lunch invitation from Anita."

"No," Lester said in agreement. "You're right about that. I need you to come with me, Zeke. We've got an appointment in town. Vickers said someone's gotta be there to represent everyone we lost, and Savannah doesn't have anyone but you to stand for her."

Zeke felt a trickle of ice along his spine. He stared at the ground, at a blade of gra.s.s growing up through the dirt road. "This some insurance thing?" he asked without lifting his gaze.

"I asked Vickers the same question. He says no." "Then what is it?"

"Asked him that, too. He says 'revenge.'"

Zeke stood a little straighter. Doubt and suspicion flooded him, but logic prevailed. Vickers had lost his wife, Martha, that terrible night. The cartel had killed twenty-three people in all, with Savannah the youngest of them. As much as the Keegans and some of Zeke's other friends might have wanted to see him leave the ranch for some human interaction, even just for a few hours, none of them would stoop so low as to hold out the possibility of revenge for bait.

"Feds say they're working on it," Zeke said. "We get directly involved, more of our people are gonna die. Leave it to them, they say."

Lester's blue eyes narrowed, the edges crinkling, and suddenly he looked older than ever.

"Leave it to them? We've tried that before and it didn't work. h.e.l.l, that's why we formed the Volunteers, ain't it? The Mexican government is too d.a.m.ned disorganized and too corrupt, top to bottom, to stop the drug war and all the killing that goes on around it. If you could call this an act of terrorism, maybe you'd get the funding it would take to launch an all-out war on the cartels, and to h.e.l.l with Mexican sovereignty. But the Feds know it's all drug related, so what do we get? Exactly what we got the last time the media got up in arms about killings along the border: another fifteen hundred National Guard troops for additional patrols and promises from the FBI that they're infiltrating the cartels, working to dismantle them from within, 'cause they've had so much success in the past. Now even the media's forgotten about us, not that they were much help. All the spectacle they put on, all that mock horror, only lasts until the next tragedy comes along. That school shooting in Rhode Island knocked us right out of the news cycle."

Lester gave a slow nod, as if to affirm everything he'd just said. He glanced up at Zeke.

"They can send all the National Guardsmen they want, but if there's revenge to be had, n.o.body's going to go out and get it for us. h.e.l.l, I didn't get to be my age without learning at least that much, and neither did you."

Zeke felt an all-too-familiar rage burning in his chest. It had been there ever since that October night.

"You don't have to preach to me, Lester," he said. "I'm living this too, remember?"

Lester pushed his s.h.a.ggy hair away from his eyes and slid his hat back on.

"I haven't forgotten," he said, and glanced away from Zeke, up toward the main house.

Zeke averted his eyes, not wanting to see his vacant windows for fear that his voice might betray him and he might speak aloud the question that concerned him the most. Did he even belong out here anymore? Without a wife or a child, with his sister up in Virginia and their parents dead in the ground, what was the point of this life, holding every breath an extra beat just in case the bullets started flying?

Zeke had spent four months trying to come up with a reason to stay. The only one he'd found was the promise he'd made to himself-the promise that he wouldn't leave until he knew the men with Savannah's blood on their hands had paid the price, in full.

He slid the toolbox and the drill kit off the tailgate and onto the truck bed, then slammed the tailgate.

"You drive."

As they made their way into town, Zeke spotted small cl.u.s.ters of people gathered near parked cars or milling about in front of shops. Victoria Jessup was in front of the post office with her two younger boys, and she looked to Zeke as if she were holding her breath. Sarah JaneTrevino, little sister to Ben, sat on the hood of her mother's Ford. Some of the people in Lansdale that day watched Lester Keegan's Jeep as it rolled through town and pulled into a spot across from the hardware store, but most of them ignored the new arrivals.They were all watching the front door of the Magic Wagon.

"What the h.e.l.l's going on here, Lester?" Zeke asked as they left the Jeep and started across the street toward the diner.

"Your guess is as good as mine, amigo."

Bells jangled overhead as they entered the Magic Wagon. All around the diner, familiar faces turned toward them. Victoria Jessup's eldest boy was there, along with Ben Trevino's mother, Linda, and the pretty young wife of Tim Hawkins, the sheriff's deputy who'd been shot through the throat. Mrs. Hawkins looked about five months along with her pregnancy now, and as sorrowful as her loss had been, Zeke couldn't help thinking how lucky she was to have her new baby to remember Big Tim by. Now that he and Lester had arrived, there were more than two dozen people gathered in the diner, all but three of whom he knew had lost someone to the cartel's bloodl.u.s.t back in October. Two of the three were employees of the Magic Wagon, a waitress named Deena Green . . . and Skyler Holt.

It shamed Zeke to see Skyler, though he'd suspected she would be there. She smiled tentatively at him and he could muster only a nod in return. She'd gotten blond highlights in her hair and the look suited her. Curvy and bright and charismatic, Skyler was ten years his junior and the first woman he'd met in his life as a widower who had brought a lightness to his heart. She had called a dozen times after Savannah's murder, but he had returned not a single one and had avoided her when he'd seen her in town. This was the first time he'd set foot in the Magic Wagon since October.

She nodded back, just a little tilt of the head. He would have liked to talk to her-had thought all along how nice it would be to see her smile again and hear her laugh-but he had nothing to offer in return. No joy to give.

Of all the faces that'd turned toward him and Lester as they'd entered, only one was entirely unfamiliar to Zeke.A stranger.The little man with the brown skin might have been thirty-five or fifty-five, depending on how many years he'd spent working in the sun. Perhaps five feet three inches tall and tipping the scales at a mighty one hundred and twenty-pounds or so, he ought to have gone almost unnoticed in the room, but Zeke could feel an aura of intensity around him, as if he had everyone's attention though everyone studiously avoided looking directly at him. He wore loose black cotton pants and a white s.h.i.+rt that made his sun-darkened skin stand out even more starkly, and his eyes were wide and round . . . the eyes, Zeke immediately thought, of a man who sat in the last row on a bus, talking to people n.o.body else could see.

His eyes were unnerving, and Zeke lowered his gaze, discomfited by his regard.

Alan Vickers stood up from the stool where he'd been perched.

"Zeke, welcome," the white-bearded rancher said. "I'm glad Lester could persuade you to join us."

Zeke glanced again at the little man, and again he looked away.

"Well . . . yeah, I'm here, Alan. But I've got work to do, as I'm sure we all do, so why not say your piece, whatever it is."

"Of course," Vickers replied. He glanced around the diner. "Deena? Skyler? If you ladies would step out for a time, maybe go on down to the park, I'll send someone to fetch you when we're done. And thank Agnes for the use of the place."