Page 21 of Austin (The K9 Files #29)

He grinned at her. “Look who’s talking.” It wasn’t long before they heard the sound of a four-wheeler, racing toward them. “I hope that’s a friendly coming at us. Does your dad drive one of those?”

“Only under duress,” she muttered, “but this might qualify.”

“Or it could also be somebody else,” Austin noted. “So let’s take the prudent course and step back into hiding.”

She quickly nodded, then pulled Charlie farther back out of view, at least for the initial go-round. As soon as she did that, she called out and added, “Don’t you be a hero either.”

“No,” he replied, “my hero days are over.”

“Are you sure? Because at one point in time, you weren’t ever going to quit.”

“I would quit eventually,” he admitted, just loud enough that she could hear. “It’s just that my timing wasn’t your timing.”

“I don’t think your timing was ever my timing,” she muttered. “If I had had my way, you never would have gone back out again.”

“No, and I would have been a lesser man for it.”

“And you also would have been whole,” she pointed out. “I don’t know when you were injured, since you won’t talk about it, but at least you would have been home in one piece.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, “but that was a lesser consequence than doing what I felt was my duty to do.”

“You always were stubborn that way.”

“So were you,” he stated. “Didn’t we just have that conversation?”

The four-wheeler broke into view, and Jake roared up to them, glaring. “What the hell is going on out here?”

Austin sat up and motioned toward the hole in the ground. “You need to take a look at this.”

He glanced around the area and frowned. “We’re rarely here. This is just one of the familiar haunts for the cows when it gets hot, but it’s an area where we don’t have any trouble.”

Austin groaned. “That may have been true,… until now.”

Jake hopped off the four-wheeler and, without another thought, jumped into the hole that Austin had just come out of. Seconds later, he swore at the top of his lungs. “What the fucking hell is going on here?” he roared.

“Yeah, that was my reaction too,” Austin replied.

Jake glared up at him. “Who the hell is running this?”

“I don’t know, but I suggest we contact the authorities and get somebody in here to take control of this.”

At that, Jake shook his head. “I don’t want people crawling all over my land.”

“Okay, but you don’t want gun-runners using your place either, right? Plus, I’m pretty sure drugs are in that blind as well, although it appears to be more firearms than anything.”

Jake turned around, and, instead of hopping out, he started taking photos, and Austin didn’t blame him. This was one of those things where you wanted hard evidence before you called in anyone else.

Jake noted, “You know, ever since you’ve come back, it’s been nothing but trouble around here.”

Austin laughed and answered in the same tone, “Ever since I left, you guys have had nothing but trouble.”

Jake frowned and shrugged. “You could be right there, son,” he muttered, his tone tired. “You could be right. That doesn’t say much for when you leave again.”

Jake scrambled up over the ledge a whole lot easier than Austin had and sat down on the ground, just staring around him. “Where’s Rox?”

“I’m right here, Dad,” she replied, as she walked Charlie forward.

He nodded, looked over at Charlie, and then realized that Cowboy was here as well. His face lit up. “Oh my God. Hey, Cowboy.”

The dog broke loose from the hold Rox had around his neck and raced over and jumped into the big man’s lap, knocking him over.

“I can see that Cowboy’s been well loved here,” Austin noted, a smile on his face.

Still laughing at being knocked over, Jake snorted. “We always love dogs around this place, and this one is more of a character than many.”

“Oh, I can see that,” Austin agreed. “Now, what do you want to do?”

He glared at him. “If I had my way, I’d bury this whole mess somewhere else and ensure they couldn’t dig it up again.”

“You also know that they would just find it, dig it out, and, if you tried to move it on them again, they’ll come after you or Amie or Rox.”

Jake winced at that. “I would like to set up a welcome committee for them, but the times have changed, and I can’t just shoot everybody,” he complained, shaking his head. “But I’m damn well more than ready to shoot anybody I find on my property now,” he muttered. “This is complete bullshit.”

“Oh, I’m in agreement there, but—”

Jake raised a hand to interrupt Austin. “I know. I know. I can’t just wait for them to come back and gun them down.”

“No, you can’t,” Rox confirmed in a sharp tone. “Not even if the law allowed you to.”

When he just glared at her, she glared right back.

“Nice to know you guys are getting along so well,” Austin teased, with a smile.

Jake continued to glare at his daughter. “She doesn’t get how the world works.”

“I’m not a child,” she snapped. “Of course I get it.” Her father opened his mouth to say something, and then thought better of it. She nodded. “That’s a really good choice.”

Jake just rolled his eyes and looked back over at Austin. “So, what do you think we should do?”

“I think you should bring in somebody above the local sheriff. That’s not to say your sheriff is bad.

I’m just saying that he’ll have his hands full, and, no matter what he does, he’ll have trouble.

So, if you bring in authorities above him, it’ll be a lot easier to deal with these gun-runners and possibly drug dealers.

And, if the local sheriff should be involved somehow or even looking the other way, someone will be on hand to deal with it. ”

“Yeah, and who will that be?” Jake asked, staring at Austin. “As gun-runners go, this is not a lot,” he pointed out, waving his hands. “Yet it’s still a lot to be buried on my land.”

“It’s a lot of trouble regardless,” Austin muttered. “Between thirty to sixty weapons are in there that I can easily see. No telling how many more may be buried in there,” he added. “So, whether somebody is planning a shootout or making trades, I don’t know.”

“I think way more than sixty weapons are in there.” Jake groaned. “Honest to God, it seemed as if it was a pretty bottomless well.”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. I just don’t know who’s involved and how long these guns have been here,” Austin stated. “You also need to know about the characters we met earlier.” And, with that, Rox interrupting once again, they managed to tell Jake about the three men they had encountered.

“Here on my land?” Jake roared, staring at them in astonishment, as they both nodded. “What the hell?” he snapped. “That is not okay.”

“Agreed,” Austin said. “Given their proximity to this weapons stash, and the fact that they were here and were fairly aggressive about it,” he added, “I’m pretty damn sure that we’ll find out that this is their cache, or whoever they are working for.”

Jake looked over at his daughter. “Did you know them?”

She shook her head. “No, but the one looked familiar. Yet I really don’t know why,” she shared. “I don’t think he’s from town, but still I recognized something about him.”

“I did too.” Austin pondered in silence for a moment. “So, if we drove through town, do you think we might see him?”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t say, but obviously I’ll keep an eye out for him now.”

He nodded at that. “I think we’ll need to do more than that.

We don’t want these weapons getting out into the public.

You guys here in Texas can buy weapons wherever the hell you want, so why are these ones stashed here?

With the laws on gun possession as relaxed as they are here, it’s not as if we need a cloak-and-dagger black market operation like this.

So, if they are stashing them here, it’s not for any good reason. ”

Jake stared out across his land, facing the Mexico border.

“The border is not that far away, although my land doesn’t reach Mexico for sure.

While everyone is surely now very aware of drug smuggling going on nearby, coming back and forth, plus people coming back and forth,” he added, “I just never think it’ll touch our ranch.

Plus, why bury this stash here? Running , whether drugs, guns, or people, implies moving all this along the black-market highway.

And my ranch definitely is not part of the usual running route.

So I don’t understand why the weapons are stashed here. Why stop right here and bury all this?”

Rox asked, “When you say people , are you talking illegal immigrants or human trafficking?”

“Both. Absolutely,” Jake interjected, “and the fact is that we have a problem with slavery, prostitution, and all kinds of stuff. There was a smuggler’s trail through here at one point, but that was a very long time ago. I was pretty-darn sure we didn’t have any of that happening now.”

“Was that in your day?” Austin asked, frowning.

“No, that was back in my granddad’s time,” he clarified. “They were bringing women across from Mexico and forcing them to work in town.”

“That sounds pretty ugly,” Austin muttered.

“Oh, it was, and it still sounds like a nightmare. We haven’t had anything like that since.”

“Guess what?” Austin noted. “Seems you probably do now.”