German immigrants settled most of the Texas Hill Country in the mid-1800s. The liberal Germans settled in Comfort. They called themselves "free thinkers." They opposed slavery and the Confederacy during the Civil War. Twenty-eight of those Germans paid for their beliefs with their lives; they were ambushed and massacred by the Confederates in 1862.
Located forty-five miles north of San Antonio on Interstate 10, downtown Comfort-which is to say, the three blocks of High Street-consists of antique shops, a bed-and-breakfast, a small library, a restaurant called the Texas Bistro, and a deli/wine bar called High's on High Street. It was eight the next morning, and Bode Bonner stood at the corner of Seventh and High across from the old bank that was now a museum.
He did not look like the governor of Texas that day. No Armani suits and French-cuffed shirts or even jeans and starched shirts. He wore a knit shirt, khaki shorts, and sneakers. His blond hair stuck out wildly from beneath a burnt-orange Longhorns cap pulled down low. He wore sunglasses. He hadn't shaved. He had woken at dawn, as he had always done on the ranch, but not because there was work to be done; because he had woken in a cold sweat from reliving Mandy's murder. He could not erase the image of her face exploding from his mind.
Chelo had already been up at the house, but Becca and the kids were still asleep, so she was holding off breakfast. He grabbed a cup of coffee then drove into the town where he had grown up. He was searching for something.
The man he used to be.
A loud noise startled Bode, but it was only an old pickup backfiring. He was as jumpy as Jim Bob these days. The town had not yet come alive; of course, you could stand in the middle of High Street during rush hour and not risk getting hit. To say life was slow in Comfort was like saying it was hot in Texas in August. Bode needed breakfast and more coffee, so he walked down to High's. He entered, removed his sunglasses, and made eye contact with the proprietor behind the counter; he recognized Bode, but only nodded then turned back to an old-timer ordering.
"And a scone."
The old man had white hair, a slumped posture, and a wood cane.
"Grady, you want two scones?"
"Why would I want two scones?"
"Because you already ordered one."
"I did?"
"Yep."
"I'll be damned."
The old-timer named Grady turned from the counter, leaned hard on his cane, and eyed Bode a long moment.
"You look mighty familiar," he said. "Like someone I seen on TV."
"The governor," the proprietor said.
"No," Grady said, "not the governor. Someone else."
Bode glanced over at the proprietor; they shared a smile.
"It'll come to me in a minute," Grady said. "You know he grew up here?"
"Who?"
"The governor. Helluva ath-a-lete."
"That so?"
"Yep. One game he scored six touchdowns."
"Seven."
"Or was it seven? Can't recall. Anyways, he don't come back much no more, wants to be president they say. Damn shame."
"That he wants to be president?"
"That he shot himself in the foot like that other boy wanted to be president, cheating on his wife."
Bode again glanced over at the proprietor, who averted his eyes this time.
"Saw it on Fox News."
"You figure that makes him a bad man?"
"Who?"
"The governor."
"What'd he do?"
"Cheating on his wife."
Grady shook his head.
"Nope. Makes him a selfish man. Man that don't think of no one but himself."
"What am I supposed to do when the president calls and says he needs my help? That he needs me to beat the governor so the governor does not beat him?"
Jesse and Lindsay drove to the colonia.
"What are you going to do?"
"What do you want me to do?"
"I don't want you to run for governor."
"Because of your husband?"
"Because of you."
"What do you mean?"
"It'll change you. Politics. It changes everyone it touches. For the worse. You're a good man, Jesse, too good for politics."
"How do you know this?"
"I've worked with you for four months now-"
"No. That politics will change me."
"Because my husband was a good man before he became a politician."
Bode Bonner had learned that he was special when he was twelve years old, when his superior athletic ability first became evident. Everyone-students, teachers, even grownups in town-assured him he was special. Often. Each year, the attention grew with his on-the-field exploits. By the time he was eighteen, that Bode Bonner was special was an accepted fact in town.
And in his mind.
That knowledge changes a boy. To walk into the feed store crowded with grown men and be greeted as if he were a god because he could play football, that changes a boy. Signing autographs when you're sixteen, folks wanting their photos with you when you're seventeen, college recruiters from around the country beating a path to your front door when you're eighteen: That becomes a part of you, like the blue of your eyes. It changes who you are, how you see yourself, how you view the world. Other people. Life. You start to believe that other people exist to serve you. That the world belongs to you.
It makes you selfish.
Ninety miles east in Austin, Jim Bob Burnet sat at his desk drinking coffee. Christ, Mandy's brains blown out and then Becca overdoses on sleeping pills. Now Bode, Becca, and the Mexican children had fled to the Comfort ranch. Jim Bob had elected to stay behind in Austin. He couldn't wait to leave Comfort when he was a kid, and he had never returned as an adult. And he never would. So he sat in his office.
With the blinds shut.
Bode Bonner had made a full recovery: the polls, the followers, the pledges to the Super PAC. They were all back. The scandal had been cremated with Mandy Morgan. The latest assassination attempt on the governor of Texas remained the number-one story in America. Reporters broadcast live from just outside the fence surrounding the Mansion grounds, almost as if hoping to catch the governor's expected assassination live, like a reality show. Jim Bob stood and stepped over to the window; he stayed to the side and peeked through the blinds. Satellite dishes rose high above a dozen TV trucks lining Colorado and Tenth Streets. The camera lights shone brightly. He returned to his chair and increased the volume on the television. The reporter outside was saying, "The governor of Texas remains secluded in the Governor's Mansion…"
He muted the volume. He would maintain the pretense that the governor was still in town with a steady stream of press releases and tweets. He picked up his iPhone.
At my desk. Won't let the devil himself keep me from working hard for the people of Texas.
"Cute."
Enrique de la Garza read the governor's tweet on his iPhone. He was one of the governor's twelve million followers, not because Enrique cared what the governor was doing at any particular moment, but because he needed to know where the governor was in order for Hector Garcia to put a bullet in his brain. He started to put the encrypted cell phone to his ear and assure Hector that the governor was still in Austin, but A thought struck him.
The governor was not in Austin. He had left town. They were pulling the trick on Enrique de la Garza. He put the phone to his ear.
"Hector, the governor is no longer there in Austin."
"But, jefe, we have had twenty-four/seven surveillance on the Mansion. He is here. Yesterday, his caravan journeyed around town."
"No. It is a decoy. He is gone. Find him!"
All his dreams had been born on that field.
Bode sat in the stands at the Comfort High School football stadium. On that field he had discovered two things: his football ability and his ambition. His ability fueled his ambition. His ambition expanded his world beyond Comfort and the ranch. He began to believe that there was more waiting out there for him. That his life would be played out on a bigger stage. That he belonged on such a stage. All he had to do was surrender to his ambition.
And he had.
"That you, Bode Bonner?"
Bode turned to an old black man standing there. It took him a moment to recognize the school janitor from thirty years before. He had been old back then, but he was ancient now.
"Mr. Jefferson. How are you?"
"Older. You still the governor?"
"Yep."
"Thought they killed you?"
"They tried."
Hector Garcia and one of his soldados followed the Texas Ranger into the restroom at the small taco bar near the University of Texas campus. They had trailed the Ranger in the SUV from the Governor's Mansion to the restaurant: lunch break. It would be this Ranger's last lunch. When they entered the restroom, the Ranger was zipping up. His soldado blocked the door. Hector pulled his switchblade and released the blade. The Ranger turned from the urinal, and Hector pushed him hard against the wall and swiped the blade across the Ranger's face, bringing the blood.
"Where is the governor?"
"Fuck you!"
Hector drove his knee into the Ranger's testicles; the Ranger went down. Hector felt the heat of hatred consume his body. He pushed the Ranger's head into the urinal and put the blade inside his nostril and slit it like butter. The Ranger started to scream like a child, but Hector clamped off his throat and all sound.
"Where is the governor?"
"Fuck you!"
Hector cut out the Ranger's eye. Before he died, he told Hector what he needed to know. Then they set fire to the taco bar to delay a warning to the governor.
They would only need that one night.
Bode Bonner had been a senior when Lindsay Byrne had moved to town, to this modest frame house. She had been the love of his life from the first time he saw her at school, looking lost in the main corridor. He walked up to her and said, "Hi, I'm Bode Bonner." He waited for the sense of awe to cross her face, but it didn't. It never had. Lindsay had never bought into his specialness. To her, he was not a god. He was just a man. She had brought him back down to earth that day. She had kept him grounded.
She had not idolized him as so many others had, but he had still been her hero. She had told him so one day on the ranch during spring roundup. They had worked side-by-side in the pens-he branded, she vaccinated. She had stumbled back over a calf; he had reached down and scooped her into his arms and off the ground before a cow could kick her. Her face was red from the sun and the work, and she was beautiful. He kissed her, and she kissed him back. Then she gazed into his eyes in that way she did, and she said, "You're my hero, Bode Bonner."
He had laughed and said, "Hell, I just plucked you out of cow shit-I didn't rescue you from Indians on the warpath."
"You're a good man," she said. "I'm proud to be your wife."
She wasn't proud anymore.
Now, all these years later, for some reason that he could not put into a complete thought, Bode Bonner wanted desperately to make her proud again. To be her hero again. He needed that. It was the part of him that was missing.
They had married after she graduated from UT with a nursing degree. She joined him on the ranch. And there they would still be had Ronald Reagan not won the presidency in 1980. Democrats had controlled the State Capitol since Reconstruction, but Reagan carried Texas and gave Republicans in Texas hope. That hope came to Comfort in the nineties. Republicans were plotting a takeover of state politics, and they needed young attractive candidates to run against old incumbent Democrats. Bode Bonner was thirty-one years old when ambition came into his life again. He had grown bored on the ranch. He again looked beyond the fences. Out there somewhere was excitement. Challenges. An adventure for Bode Bonner.
Perhaps in politics.
He had already run for the state legislature as a Democrat and lost to the incumbent in the primary. He then became a Republican and ran against the same incumbent in the general election. He won. The state legislature was a part-time job, only one hundred forty days every two years, so they had still lived at the ranch. Four sessions later, he ran for the Governor's Mansion and won. That was a full-time job, so they had moved to Austin. Four years after that, he had won again. His political career had soared-and his wife could no longer keep him grounded.
Between Comfort and Austin, he had lost his way.
He was governor-for-life, but it wasn't enough. It was never enough. Ambition and testosterone drive a man to greatness-and then to self-destruction. No man can stop when he's ahead. Not when there's more to be had. More money. More power. Higher office. Younger women. Ambition drives him forward and testosterone makes him want more, always more-until he destroys himself. And those around him.
It is man's nature.
Was it God's desire? Did God really want Bode Bonner in the White House?
He stared up at the crucifix above the altar in the Catholic church he had attended as a boy with his family. Where he had received communion and professed his faith in God. But he had lied. He didn't believe in God. He believed in Bode Bonner. Until that day at Kerbey's-until he had survived an assassination attempt-he had never thought much about God. He had thought about himself.
He had given in to his demon: ambition.
He wasn't God's chosen one. That was pure delusion fueled by ambition not faith. It was not real. What was real was that he loved his wife and daughter, but he had squandered their love. So his wife had left him and his daughter hated him. He had betrayed them both and now paid the price. Just as Hank and Darcy and Mandy had paid the price of living in the shadow of an ambitious man. It's a dark place. A dangerous place. They were dead, innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of Bode Bonner's ambition. They would never laugh or love again; they would never have children or be someone's child again; they would never live again. Their lives were over-because of him. His ambition had killed them as surely as if he had pulled the trigger. Their deaths were on his tab. He turned his eyes up to the crucifix above the altar. They had died for nothing.
Unless.
At two the next morning, Hector Garcia and his two soldados parked the SUV under a stand of trees just down from the entrance to the governor's ranch north of San Antonio. They donned night-vision goggles and slung silenced weapons over their shoulders. Not that anyone would hear the gunfire-the ranch was in the middle of nowhere-or the governor's death cries.
They hiked up the caliche road to the house on the hill. A dog barked out front of the house. Hector put the beast down with one silent shot. When they arrived at the house, they tried the front door. It was unlocked. He shook his head; the gringos live such sheltered lives. They entered the house.
Five minutes later, everyone sleeping in the house lay dead.
Hector removed his goggles and turned on the lights.
"The saw, for I must take the governor's head to el jefe."
The soldado handed him the small serrated blade. They returned to the large bedroom and stepped over to the bed. Hector turned the bloody head over and-he recoiled.
"Who is that?"
"The governor?"
"No. That is not the governor. That is an old man."
"Perhaps it is his father."
They checked the other dead Anglos. None was the governor of Texas.
"Who are these people?" Hector said.
The soldado shrugged. They returned to the main room where they found the other soldado eating in the kitchen. He held up a chicken leg.
"Barbecue. It is good."
Hector searched the room and found the mail. He read the name on the envelopes, blinked hard to clear his eyes of the gunpowder, and read again. He held up an envelope to his soldado.
"This is the Double V Ranch. I said Double B, as in boy. Not V as in Victor."
Hector threw his hands up.
"Ay-yi-yi."