Part 27 (1/2)
”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?