KILLER DATE (SCANDALS) (14 page)

I walked over and
dragged my foot across the foot long, six-inch tall ant hill. 

“What the
heck are you doing, Reno?  They didn’t do anything to you.”  Jenny jumped off the table and walked over to get a closer look.

“No…but look at them scramble.”

“Oh my golly…that’s a colony of crazy ants!”

“Crazy ants?
  Really?  They just look pissed.”

“The
y’re a new breed that they named crazy ants because they don’t run in straight lines but in all kinds of directions.  They’re attracted to electrical impulses and love to crawl inside outlets and eat the insulation off the wires.  I’ve heard they destroy air conditioning units and even find their way indoors where they get inside TV sets and toasters.  They pretty much ruin everything they touch.  And when they attack humans, they don’t bite right away.  They wait until they’ve covered your foot or your leg, then they attack all at once.  They’re bad news….ask those nasty little red ants they killed.”

“I hate to ask
, but how do you know all this?”

“Tommy…Tommy Tuttle…his family owned an exterminating company
.  We went out a few times, and he liked to talk about his job.”  Jenny smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

I had a surge of emotion I’d never felt before.  Could it be jealousy?  Nah…Reno Marks didn’t get jealous.  I was just curious about this Tommy Tuttle
, the termite king.  Had Jenny cared about him?  Had he gotten past third base?  Had he broken her heart?  I wanted to know, but I didn’t want to make a fool of myself by asking.  And the distracted expression on her face didn’t give me a clue.  Was she still focused on her sister or had fond memories of Tommy friggin’ Tuttle lingered in her thoughts?

The door to the building opened
, and Nick and Christopher walked out.  They were both carrying an extra bottle of water.

“We thought you guys would be thirsty.”  Christopher hand
ed a bottle to Jenny while Nick took care of me.

“Thanks,” Jenny said as she
screwed off the cap and took a drink.

Nick looked down at the now disturbed ant hill.  “Oh,
crazy ants…you need to get rid of these Christopher.  You don’t want them to get inside your building.  Your lights will flicker and go out, and then it’s too late.”

“You’ve heard of the
m?” I had to ask.  I had honestly thought that Tuttle jerk had been full of shit.

“
Hasn’t everyone?  These guys aren’t attracted to ordinary ant baits or anything you can buy at Home Depot,” Nick explained.   “Plus, these colonies have multiple queens, so killing one queen won’t kill the ant hill.”

“Sort of like a drug cartel,” I
commented, thinking that the analogy of us running into an ant hill in Del Rio wasn’t at all comforting.

Nick just shrugged. 
“Yeah, sort of.  With them, there’s only one kingpin, but there’s always someone waiting in the wings.”

Christopher’s cell rang
.  He pulled it out and glanced at the screen.  “It’s Dallas.”  He answered it on the speaker.

“Dallas…I
’ve got Nick, Reno and Jenny here.  Are we flying yet?”

“
Almost.  He had one ready to go, and we’re setting it up in his driveway.  I’m getting my check flight with him.  I should be back in a couple of hours.  You guys outside?”

“Yeah
, why?”

“
Sounds windy.”

“
Isn’t it always?  We’ll meet up here later.”

“
Look I gotta go.  Jared’s ready…bye.
”

Christopher slid the cell back into his pocket.
“So Nick…what about Ricardo?”

“Let’s roll…he wants to talk today!”

“Yeah, let’s go,” Jenny said as she stomped her feet on the blacktop to make sure she didn’t have any ants on her.

I could tell by Nick’s face that
he was opposed to Jenny going with us to meet Ricardo…and probably to Del Rio.  I couldn’t say I blamed him because I didn’t want her to be that close to danger either.  But hell, I didn’t want to be the one to tell her no…that would be a fail of Biblical proportion.  She already had dropped me to the friend list.  Excluding her from these trips would probably drop the name Reno out of her vocabulary forever.  I couldn’t do that to me.  I still had hopes that she would eventually add benefits to our friendship.  I looked at Nick and subtly shook my head, trying to kill what he was about to do.

“What
do you think, Reno?” he asked, totally ignoring my pain.  Was that a twinkle in his eye?

My eyes d
arted away, not focusing on either Jenny or Nick.  I stood very still and tried to keep my face from reflecting my dilemma.    I just needed to stay frozen and trust that someone else would break the bad news to her, then I’d be there to console her. Patience.  Don’t make eye contact.

“You ready to go Nick?”
Christopher broke the silence, thank God.

“
Yeah, but Jenny and Reno need to stay back,” Nick stated flatly.  “I don’t want to spook Ricardo with a car full of people…he seemed really nervous.”

Shit…that came out of nowhere.  Sure, I wanted Jenny to be safe, but I didn’t want to stay behind and miss out on the action.  “Dude, I don’t agree.   I think it’s important that we all meet with Ricardo so he understand
s the human element of this.  You and he have a business relationship, but he needs to know this is different than giving up a drug mule or staying out of Austin or whatever you guys talk about.”

Christopher glanced at me
, then looked long and hard at Jenny.  “I think Reno’s right.  Ricardo needs to see Jenny’s face and hear her story about Angela and Miguel.  I think that in spite of all the drugs and killing, Ricardo is a family man and Jenny will add some urgency and serious cred to Angela’s rescue.”

Nick considered our arguments with a frown.  Finally, he nodded.  “Yeah, I guess it might help.  He’s a sucker for hot women.  Let’s take your car.”

Well, that hadn’t gone exactly as I planned.  As we loaded into a company SUV, I was still unhappy that Jenny was coming with us…and not too thrilled that Nick thought she was hot.  Was he more her type?  Shit…this day had started badly and was getting worse by the minute.

We had been driving for
a little over an hour when we arrived in a quaint little town named Fredericksburg.  Nick instructed Christopher to head south on Highway 16 toward Kerrville.

What could have been a fun road trip was turning out to be uncomfortable and painfully long. 
The back seat was roomy, so there was plenty of space between Jenny and me…a fact that I couldn’t quite figure out.  I could accept that last night she’d been a little drunk and eager to put her fears about her sister out of her mind…and I had been a convenient distraction.  Okay, that I understood.  I’d done my share of taking advantage of a warm body to forget about my problems. 

What I couldn’t understand was how resistible she found me. 
It wasn’t like I was a stud or a player, but in all modesty, I attracted more than my share of female attention.  I always had my choice. 

Jenny apparently was
totally immune to my charms.  She didn’t even seem to be aware that we were sharing a confined space.  If I had hoped for a little conversation, maybe a little clarification…then I was to be disappointed.  As the miles clicked by, she stared out the window as if she was fascinated by the monotonous scenery. Nick and Christopher chatted in the front seat, and I felt completely out of the loop…all the loops.

We passed through the small town of Kerrville and continued south for a few more miles before Nick spoke up.

“Everyone needs to turn their cell phones off and leave them in the car when we get there.”

“What?” I asked.
  That seemed kind of random.  It wasn’t like we were going to be making any calls.

“Ang
ie might call,” Jenny reminded him.

“
It’s part of Ricardo’s requirements.  He doesn’t want any GPS tracking going on…turn them the fuck off or we head back.”

Christopher’s eyes glanced in the rear view mirror to check on us as he
picked up his cell phone and turned it off.  Jenny and I decided this wasn’t a deal breaker, so we also shut our phones off.

The two-lane road followed the rolling hills and the curves and t
here wasn’t any traffic to slow us down.  Gradually the houses and barns became fewer and further apart and the ranch spreads became larger and larger. 

“
After that water tank slow down…we’ll be turning left.”  Nick pulled his cell phone out, hit one button and held it to his ear. After a minute, he said, “Yeah…we’re here.”  He shut off the cell phone and put it in the glove compartment.  “We’re on their turf, and we just have to trust them.”  Nick pointed toward the edge of the road.  There…turn left…and drive over the cattle guard.”

“Will that hold us?” I
asked, looking skeptically at what appeared to be small pipes placed several inches apart across a wide pit with a tall fence on each side.

“Never been to a Texas ranch
before?” Jenny seemed amused at my concern.  “The livestock don’t feel comfortable walking on the pipes, so they stay inside the fence, and the ranchers don’t have to bother with a gate.

“
Are you sure?”  They looked too fragile to hold the weight of the large SUV.

“I s
uspect it’s held up under a pot truck or two.” Nick didn’t seem to be the least bit concerned.  In fact, nothing about this seemed to upset him.

Sure, he dealt with these crazy shits on a daily basis, but it felt like we were going into an anthill and trusting the ants to
not bite us.  Who was really crazy here?

The SUV rattled roughly over the cattle guard and
Christopher drove up a long gravel drive until we reached a heavy steel pipe framed gate.  Several security cameras were mounted on it, staring at us from every possible angle.  Two heavily armed men emerged from a shabby guard station and circled our vehicle while passing large round detectors mounted on long poles above and below our SUV.

“They’re sweeping us for radios, cell phones…even bomb
s…just sit still,” Nick explained.

A couple of minutes later, the
men returned to the guard shack and an old Mexican man in a jeep pulled up.  He turned his vehicle around so it was facing away from us and parked about a hundred feet inside the gate.  We watched as he exited the driver’s seat, ambled to the gate, unlocked the heavy chain and walked the gate open to the right side, then waved us forward.  I looked through the rear window to see the man had closed the gate, looped the chain through it and snapped the padlock shut.  I felt like we were now Ricardo’s captives and wouldn’t be leaving unless Ricardo wanted us to.

“The old man is
Ricardo’s father, Pedro…or it might be an uncle, I’m not really sure,” Nick explained.  “These cartels are a family business.  Greeter is an important job.”

“How’s he going to stop anyone?
” Jenny asked.

“We’re stopped
, aren’t we?” Nick pointed out.

I looked out
both sides of our vehicle with a new sense of concern.  Nick had said it all.  Both sides of the road leading to the house were lined with large boulders, making the road impassable except behind Pedro.  He stuck his hand out his window and indicated for us to follow him. Christopher put the SUV in gear and slowly moved forward.

“I heard that
Ricardo bought a bunch of rattlesnakes and dropped them all over the ranch for added security,” Nick added.  “He figured if someone made it past the guards and over the razor-wire fence, it was unlikely they’d survive the snakebites.”

“
I have no objection to staying in the car the rest of the way,” I offered.  I had worked with a few snakes in some magic shows, and I had a healthy respect for them, venomous or not.

Pedro drove slowly, which was a blessing. 
The gravel drive was like a washboard and even at this snail’s pace, our teeth rattled together, and Christopher had to hold the wheel with both hands to keep the car from skidding into one of the boulders.  High speed driving would be nearly impossible.