Chapters (110)
- Cover
- ALSO BY J. TODD SCOTT
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- PROLOGUE
- I
- II
- PART ONE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- PART TWO
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- PART THREE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- FIFTY-SEVEN
- FIFTY-EIGHT
- FIFTY-NINE
- SIXTY
- SIXTY-ONE
- PART FOUR
- SIXTY-TWO
- SIXTY-THREE
- SIXTY-FOUR
- SIXTY-FIVE
- SIXTY-SIX
- SIXTY-SEVEN
- SIXTY-EIGHT
- SIXTY-NINE
- SEVENTY
- SEVENTY-ONE
- SEVENTY-TWO
- SEVENTY-THREE
- SEVENTY-FOUR
- SEVENTY-FIVE
- SEVENTY-SIX
- SEVENTY-SEVEN
- SEVENTY-EIGHT
- SEVENTY-NINE
- EIGHTY
- EIGHTY-ONE
- EIGHTY-TWO
- EIGHTY-THREE
- EIGHTY-FOUR
- EPILOGUE
- I
- II
- III
- IV
- V
- VI
- VII
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Excerpt from LOST RIVER
- LITTLE PARIS
- DILLON
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next onyour reading list?
He’d never seen it on any wanted posters or in any High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area—HIDTA—intel reports, or the occasional bulletin he got from the El Paso Intelligence Center. The folder Garrison had given him didn’t include any recent pictures, either; only grainy photos many years old. This man could have been anyone.
Or no one.
Still, Chris had imagined he’d be more like Sheriff Ross. It was as if he’d expected the man to have some dark aura, some twinned shadow . . . something. Something ominous. While the former sheriff had always appeared to bend the very light around him—bend everything around him so that he was always the center of it—this man wasn’t like that. His hands had a slight shake and his voice was quiet and he moved slowly, carefully. Maybe it was an act, maybe it wasn’t—Chris hadn’t decided yet—but he wasn’t intimidating or threatening, at least not in any overt way. He was calm, deferential. If Chris didn’t know better, he’d say Fox Uno—if that’s who he was—had the demeanor and pallor of a very sick man, something Chris had experienced firsthand when his own mother had passed from cancer. For months, she’d carried her body in the same careful way, as though afraid that if she moved too fast or tried to do too much, she might wake the disease. Anger it.
The only thing this man did share with Ross was the eyes, a certain sharpened hardness in them you saw only when you caught them at the right angle and in the right light, when he thought you weren’t looking. He didn’t try to hide those eyes behind sunglasses, and his thin hat did nothing to shield them. But as they stepped in and out of the shadows and sun along Main Street’s sidewalk, he never blinked—not once—even as the hot light hit those eyes again and again. It lit them up, made them shine like steel, like sunlight on a rifle muzzle, and that was enough to remind Chris just how dangerous this man could be.
“You tried to have me killed,” Chris said. It wasn’t a question, simply a statement. As true as the sun rising and setting.
The old man disagreed. “I did not. That was your Sheriff Ross, I think.”
His English was heavily accented and little used, but it was passable.
“You expect me to believe that?”