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got bigger fish to fry. Feds are thinking about charging you with use of a weapon of mass destruction.”
    â€œAre you serious?”
    â€œRanger, you poisoned a whole section of the city with whatever spewed out of that crop duster.”
    â€œI dropped a stink bomb.”
    â€œThat’s your defense?”
    â€œHow about the fact that it worked? Locals and Feds who spent the rest of the night interrogating me have reclaimed the neighborhood. You know what’s going on here as well as I do, D.W.”
    Tepper continued to simmer, doing his best not to seem to see her point. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”
    â€œI got it done when they couldn’t. And since when is skunk oil a weapon of mass destruction?”
    â€œSince you dropped it on the city of San Antonio, Ranger.”
    â€œI tried to play ball here, Captain. Took my intentions to Deputy Chief Alonzo, who practically spit in my face.”
    â€œSpeaking of which, you’ve looked better.”
    Caitlin touched the bruises on her face, left by her fight with Diablo Alcantara, and tried to move the jaw he’d cracked with an elbow. Paramedics were pretty certain it wasn’t broken, but she was supposed to go for precautionary X-rays just to make sure. Her hands, too, were badly scuffed and bruised, knuckles swollen like those of the ex-boxer her father, Jim Strong, had busted, as peacefully as he could, when the retired fighter was having what he called one of his “episodes.”
    â€œGood thing SAPD let me take a shower and change clothes,” Caitlin told him. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to stand the smell of me, never mind the sight, thanks to that weapon of mass destruction.”
    Tepper shook his head, easing into his mouth the second cigarette he’d tapped out. “You mean stink bomb?”
    â€œCamouflaged the scene, to boot.”
    â€œI’m sure you had the whole thing thought out.”
    â€œAs much as I could, under the circumstances.”
    Tepper held up a cigarette lighter that looked more like a soda can, jerry-rigged with a computer lock to the top of his desk. He watched Caitlin shaking her head as he lit up.
    â€œWhat, you need me to explain why I gotta keep a lighter so heavy it gave me tendonitis chained to my desk? Do you really?”
    Caitlin settled back in her chair. “You want to kill yourself, D.W., that’s your business.”
    â€œThen why do you keep stealing my cigarette lighters? You know what’s worse for my health than Marlboros? You. You and this Lone Ranger role you’ve fallen into. Problem being that every time your trusty horse, Silver, leaves shit in the streets, it tracks right back here.”
    â€œNo pun intended.”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œNever mind.”
    Tepper nodded, puffing away and making sure Caitlin could see the smoke. “That’s what I told the chief of police and the commissioner for public safety: Never mind. Never mind that Caitlin Strong had a crop duster buzz east San Antonio, contaminated a quarter of the city, and shot up a street. Never mind all that. She’s old school. One riot, one Ranger, just like she told Deputy Chief Alonzo. Right or wrong?”
    â€œWrong. Because there was no riot. That’s why I did what I did.”
    â€œWhat you always do, Ranger,” Tepper said, with the cigarette holding to the side of his mouth. “Last night took Hurricane Caitlin to a whole new level. Forget hurricane, you’re a full-fledged tsunami now. They don’t name tsunamis, do they?”
    â€œGuess there aren’t enough of them.”
    â€œLucky me, having one all to myself, then. You know that desk downstairs I refinished a couple weekends back?”
    â€œThe one where the varnish never quite dried?”
    Tepper frowned. “It’s all yours, Ranger. Catch up on your paperwork until we get the mess you caused last night sorted out.”
    â€œI don’t