The Texan by Joan Johnston Page A

suppose that’s one way of looking at it. But there’s no more proof my father committed the crime than there is against my mother.”
    “Somebody should have pressed Russell Handy for the truth.” She watched Owen shift uncomfortably in his seat. “You did!” she realized suddenly. “You went and talked to him! What did he say?”
    “He wouldn’t admit anything. Except that he loved my mother. And respected and admired my father.”
    Bay realized they were descending. The CJ1 had made the five-hundred-mile trip across South Texas in a littlemore than an hour. Owen set the jet down smoothly on the short landing strip in the tiny West Texas town of Alpine, which was only an hour’s drive from the entrance to the Big Bend National Park.
    “If you find you can’t keep up with me, I want you to say so right away,” Owen said.
    “I won’t be turning back,” Bay said.
    “The sooner you quit, the less backtracking I’ll have to do to get you headed back home,” he said flatly.
    “Don’t you worry about me. I’ll keep up.”
    “We’ll be picking up some safety equipment in Alpine.”
    She gave him a questioning look. “Rappelling equipment, you mean? Climbing stuff?”
    “Nerve gas stuff,” he said bluntly. “Rubber safety suits and atropine-oxime autoinjectors.”
    Bay felt her body go cold. “You’re kidding, right?”
    “I’m not only hunting down the man who killed my best friend. I’m looking for those missing VX mines. If I find them, there’s a chance that in the confusion one of them might go off. So yes, we’ll be picking up gas masks and rubber suits, along with an antidote for VX gas. But honestly, if I thought we’d be needing them, you wouldn’t be coming along with me.”
    “I did a college paper on chemical warfare,” she said.
    Owen eyed her sideways. “What did you learn?”
    “A single drop of VX nerve gas on your skin is enough to kill you.”
    “I think they told me that when they offered me the rubber suit.”
    “What else did they tell you?”
    “If I even suspect I’m exposed, I need to inject myself with the antidote immediately.”
    “Did they tell you VX gas can hang around in the air for days on end?” She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Although, heat can make it evaporate more quickly.”
    “Thank God we’re headed for the desert,” Owen said.
    Bay frowned at his flippancy. “Organophosphate poisoning is gruesome. It attacks the nervous system and reacts with neurotransmitters—”
    “You’re losing me,” he said. “Too many big words.”
    “I can use small ones,” she said. “When you’re exposed, you get a headache and your eyes hurt and your chest gets tight. Then you get bronchospasms—”
    “Lost me again,” he interrupted.
    “You start wheezing,” she corrected. “And drooling and hallucinating and vomiting. Are those words small enough for you?”
    “I’m getting an ugly picture of what this stuff does to you.”
    “There’s more.”
    “How long was this paper?”
    She ignored him and said, “You start to sweat. Probably because you realize it’s all over. You begin defecating and urinating, your arms and legs twitching, unable to breathe. Think of it. Just one tiny drop. And you die a swift, agonizing death.”
    “Guess we can forget the rubber suits.”
    “You’d be smarter to bring along a gallon of Clorox.”
    “Clorox?”
    “The brand doesn’t matter. Just some household bleach. It works to neutralize the gas and decontaminate surfaces. Assuming we’re still alive.”
    “Remind me to stop by the Safeway in Alpine,” Owen said.
    Bay stared soberly at Owen. “Until you forced me into that ridiculous recitation, I never really considered what we might be walking into.”
    “Does that mean you’ve changed your mind about coming?”
    She shook her head. “I have to believe that whoever stole those mines knows how dangerous it would be to detonate one of them.”
    “Or that they won’t want to waste one in such