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?
Usually on a deal like this, he had Ringo or Chavez or Roman or Ortiz with him—other members of the Tejas unit—and someone would start making a shitty joke right about now, but this one was all on him. It meant he didn’t have to divvy up the take, of course, but it also meant he’d committed a double homicide and there was no one else to take the fall, to share the burden. It was a weird, lonely feeling, and a part of him wanted to get the fuck in the Charger and just drive away, not only from the cooling bodies in the car on the highway, or Zam and Rae, or even Terrell County (where he’d always be Chuy Machado’s son, nothing more and nothing less), but from all of goddamn Texas. But that was foolish, betting himself he wouldn’t get much farther than Houston before someone caught up to him. Either his daddy or those gangsters from Odessa, or the indios from Acuña.
Everyone owned a part of his ass nowadays, so all he could do was buy it back, one bloody piece at a time.
So he got that ass into motion, working it like Rae. He tore apart the Malibu’s backseat—trying to steer clear of the blood—finding the four pounds of meth and one pound of heroin the indios had told him would be there. He had a bag in the Charger, and an area scouted out back near the scrub by the pumpjack, where he could dump the dope for a few days until he could come back for it. He also had a man in Del Rio who’d move it for him and cash it out in Dallas. After he got done stuffing the bundles into the bag on the Charger’s hood, with a watchful eye down the road, he checked his main phone, where there were still no messages from either of those two bitches. But his other phone, the red one, was now blinking furiously in the Charger’s center console.
That was the phone—paired up with a small handheld radio—that no one else knew about, not even the other guys on the unit. Because, let’s be honest, there was a part of him that didn’t quite trust those fuckers, either, at least not enough to turn his back on them. Sure, he was their leader, the one with the connections who’d started it all and brought them all in. He’d handpicked them and made the sweet deals they’d all benefited from. But he also knew that Roman was talking shit about him all the time now, and Ringo had been trying to set up his own things on the side. In some ways, every member of the Tejas unit was a gambler, just like him. They were all just betting on different things.