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CHAPTER ONE

Four years later:

GRAHAM BARON stepped out of the terminal at the Austin airport and wondered how he’d ever survived spending the first seventeen years of his life in Texas He was thirty-three and lived in New York now but whenever he came back here, the fact that he’d been born in this place always surprised him It all seemed alien The people Their lazy drawls The vastness of land and sky The weather

Oh, yeah, he thought, the weather, as the heat washed over him like an open furnace And it wasn’t really summer Of course, there were those who said this wasn’t really Texas, either The guidebooks called the area hill country So did people back East

“Are you really from Texas?” somebody would say, if the subject of his birthplace came up

“Yup,” he’d reply, hooking his thu on a John Wayne drawl, “ah surely am”

It always got a laugh, considering that he had no accent, didn’t wear cowboy boots and had washed away the stink of oil, cattle and horses sixteen long years ago

“Where in Texas?” they’d ask And when Gray said he’d been born in Austin, someone would nod wisely and say, Austin, huh? Wasn’t that, like, different? Weren’t there green trees and rolling hills in Austin? It wasn’t really the saht?

Like hell it wasn’t, Gray thought as he put down his briefcase, peeled off his suit jacket, loosened his tie and rolled back his shirtsleeves AManhattan skyline had little use for the puny imitation of this one, and the hills of Central Park rolled as much as the land around here

Dammit, he was in a rotten mood For what had to be the hundredth ti, he wished he hadn’t let hi this trip…but he had What was that old saying? Curiosity killed the cat In his case, it had put hiht to Texas

A horn beeped at the curb Gray looked over, saw a dark green Jeep with the Espada longhorns painted on the door Abel Jones waved a hand Gray waved back and trotted over

“Nice of you to pick ot into the seat beside Abel and dumped his briefcase in the back

Abel gave hi look, then spat out theand pulled into traffic “Jes’ part of the job,” he said laconically

So much for conversation Not that Gray was surprised Jonas Baron’s forely ageless, and not given to small talk Well, that was fine Gray wasn’t much interested in conversation He sat back, let the coolness of the air-conditioning wash over hihway that led froure out what his uncle could possibly want

Jonas had phoned late last night The call had drawn Gray fro war for several weeks, murmured a soft complaint as he rolled away from her and reached for the telephone, an auto criminal law