A brutal string of murders linking back nearly 100 years stumps two Texas Rangers, who become the targets of the killers. It begins in Willow Creek, Texas. It's 1919 and two Texas Rangers discover the entire small town has been brutally murdered. The suspects are a band of former Mexican soldiers who work for the fledgling Mexican drug cartel. The murders are never solved and when a group of teens are found dead today in the same town, fifth-generation Ranger Caitlin Strong can't help think there might be a connection. Then both she and her boyfriend, reformed crook Cort Wesley Masters, are targeted by assassins, and they don't see the connection between the cases.
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It turns out the dead teens are the descendants of the families responsible for the death of a Mexican patriarch back in 1919. He and his family were ambushed in the days following the original Willow Creek murders and his grandaughter directly blames the long-gone ancestors of the slain teens. Two of the teens are members of powerful drug families, another is from a family battling the drug cartels. And one is just an unfortunate teen whose parents are teachers, but whose grandfather helped arrange for the ambush.
The mastermind behind the plot is Ana Guajardo, who not only heads Mexico's biggest crime family, she also controls a number of legitimate companies. And aside from the murder plots (which now involve Caitlin's two boys), she also has a plan to destroy the electrical gird of the U.S. It's a plan so ambitious that the U.S. government initally can't believe it. But by the time Caitlin and her fellow Rangers track down Ana's secret lair and confront her, the U.S. government agrees to dispatch drones that will halt the plan. They're successful, albeit only seconds before the plan was set to launch. Guajardo is killed and Caitlin and Cort's lives begin to return to normal.
Best part of story, including ending:
I can't imagine holding a grudge for nearly a century. But I know that some families do and while the plot concocted by Ana Guajardo was over-the-top, it was also pretty clever.
Best scene in story:
The book opens with a scene set in Willow Creek during the 1919 mass killings. It almost makes the book sound like a supernatural thriller, but when it's over you realize the killings are just the handiwork of some very bad people.
Opinion about the main character:
The think I like least about the two main characters is the tendency to rely on stereotypical Texas scenes and comments. The hard-boiled Texas Ranger personality is true enough, but it's juts pounded again and again into the story until it loses its specialness,