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?
Had the Tejas unit been helping the Serrano Brothers tighten that noose, stealing or harrying Nemesio drug loads? That could account for all their seizures . . . all those alleged successes. Over the past year, they easily could have been using their badges to “legally” steal Nemesio drug loads, turning around and then selling them on behalf of the Serrano Brothers. Local rip crews in El Paso did the same thing all the time. Why buy the dope and incur the risk and expense of smuggling it over the border, when you could just steal it from someone who already had?
It was an effective business model, but a goddamn vicious one. Missing drug loads bred distrust and reprisals. You ended up with a lot of people disappearing, whole families wiped out.
Bodies dug out of makeshift graves.
Garrison had all but given up convincing Chesney that the Terrell task force was worth a hard look, but maybe it was at least worth another discussion. And if that one word alone—“Tejas”—hadn’t caught his eye, another term in that intercept would have: el viejo, the old man. Again, that could be a reference to Diego Serrano—another honorific, the way some had called Fox Uno “El Patrón”—but Diego was barely in his thirties, and his brother, Axel, only a year or two younger, so that didn’t fit. When Garrison had pressed his intel folks, they’d admitted they had no idea who el viejo was, and wouldn’t hazard a guess based on the limited context. All they did have was a handful of garbled words across thirty seconds of static, a coded conversation buried in white noise. Trying to make sense out of that was like putting together a thousand-piece puzzle without any idea of what the final picture was supposed to be.
Every piece might as well have been a shade of black or gray, nearly indistinguishable.
Garrison had two pieces: Tejas . . . and the old man.
But it had only taken a couple of similar puzzle pieces to spur Darin to take a hard look at the heart of Murfee, searching for Rodolfo Reynosa and evidence against the corrupt Sheriff Ross. Darin just hadn’t survived long enough to see the finished picture.