Love Under Two Wildcatters (19 page)

This had been their first tangible sign of success, and neither of them really wanted to let it go. Maybe they’d keep it, give it some sort of modified purpose.

Ryder held the door, and they let Susan enter first.

Just inside the front door sat a “parlor” with a couple of comfy chairs and one desk. “Usually, Nancy would be here, manning the fort,” Colt explained. “We have a small clerical staff, with most of our employees—drillers and roughnecks—working out in the field.”

The young woman who sat behind a large desk was in the process of hanging up the phone. She gave them a big smile. “Hey, guys. How’s Mike doing?”

“He’s doing good. He’ll be in the hospital for a few more days. Then you and Nancy get to babysit him.” Colt grinned, because the image of Mike being housebound for a few weeks kind of tickled his perverse sense of humor.

“Trina, this is Susan Benedict. Susan, Trina Gonzales, accounting clerk extraordinaire.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Susan extended her hand.

“Same here.” Trina shook her hand then picked up two stacks of message slips, handing one to Colt and the other to Ryder.

“We’ll be in back if anyone needs us,” he said, “going through our archives. But we’re still unavailable to the press.” There’d been a couple of messages at the hotel in San Angelo. He and Ryder had decided to keep mum, let any and all comments about the explosion come from the investigators. He led the way to the back of the house, where he and Ryder had their offices.

They’d stayed hands-on enough right from the beginning, so pulling all their old files and going through each job wasn’t straying into foreign territory.

“I like the way the two of you share this big space, rather than having separate cubbyholes for personal offices,” Susan said. She wandered from his desk to Ryder’s, looking at everything.

“In the beginning, we weren’t here much. Bought and refurbished this place to have a presence in this city that is so central to the oil industry,” Ryder said. “And when we were here, it was to plan our next moves, so it made sense to share space.”

He came over to the file cabinets and looked at them. “Where do we start?” Ryder asked him.

“I guess at the beginning.”

“The first beginning or the second beginning? Because if it’s the first, the only ones who got pissed off with us were us,” Ryder said.

Colt laughed and counted it a sign of his maturity that he
could
laugh. “True. So I guess we start at the second beginning.”

“You know you’re going to have to explain that,” Susan said.

“We actually started out, more than a decade ago, as
Tres Hombres
,” Colt said as he grabbed a big handful of files, then moved aside as Ryder did the same. “There were the two of us, of course—we’d learned the business as roughnecks, working long hours in crappy conditions for outfits that didn’t pay a whole hell of a lot. And we had a partner.”

“Partner.” Ryder said the word as if it were a smelly substance on the ground not to be stepped in. “Every time I think of that bastard, I feel the urge to puke.” Then he looked up and gave Susan a smile. “Speaking of those with silver spoons in their mouths trashing their inheritance with bad decisions and stupidity, I think Morton Barnes is the president of the club.”

“Should I have heard of this scion?” Susan asked.

“As it turns out, he only finished the job his daddy started of decimating the family fortune. We didn’t know that at the time, though. He came to us, offering to help finance us. We struck a deal, all legal and everything.”

“So what happened?” Susan asked.

“Asshole was looking for instant returns. He bailed on us, just before our first well came in. We had to pull out of the job—lost that derrick, too, the first big one we ever got. Client hired a bunch of roughnecks, they brought the well in a week later.”

“He shouldn’t have been able to do that—just bail on you that way,” Susan said.

Colt smiled because he’d bet the lovely Ms. Benedict knew more about contracts and clauses than most. “Truth of the matter is, he cleaned out the account, which was against the terms of the contract. Got his original investment back plus a couple of grand extra. Left us holding the bag on a loan, and we had to go back to being roughnecks on somebody else’s payroll for a two and a half years to pay it all off.”

“Then we began again,” Ryder said. “This time, just the two of us.”

“And you never went after Barnes?”

Colt could feel her outrage from across the room. “You have to remember, at the time, we were just a couple of roughnecks from the wrong side of the tracks over in El Paso, and Morton was a Barnes of the Houston Barneses.”

“Karma’s a bitch, though,” Ryder said. “Last I heard, he was damn near bankrupt. His second wife scalped him in the divorce, and his latest venture—a brokerage company—went belly-up.”

“Well, good.” Then she winced. “I really hate to say that, but I really do believe in the law of sowing and reaping.”

“Sometimes that law doesn’t work,” Colt said. “In this case, it took another eight or so years to catch up with that sniveling little bastard.”

“Well, I certainly see what you meant by the only ones being pissed off were the two of you.”

“Exactly. So we’ll go through every job we did, starting with the second.”

“What about employees?” Susan asked. “Maybe someone on the payroll now who’s not happy or someone who got let go who’s held a grudge?”

Colt shook his head. “Hate to think that someone who worked for us could have done this. But yeah, I guess we’ve got to look there, too.” He set aside the folders he was going to look through, then went to his desk and picked up the phone. He told Trina what he wanted. She told him she’d get it all together and send it as an e-mail attachment.

“So, none of the rest of your records are on disc?” Susan asked.

“Nope. I told you, we’re just a couple of wildcatters.”

Susan pulled a chair over to Ryder’s desk and reached for some files. “In that case, you need all the help you can get,” she said.

Colt thought truer words had never been spoken.

* * * *

Susan exited the office and stood on the veranda in the old neighborhood, taking a moment to appreciate the different examples of architecture. Most of the homes were homes, but a few had been remodeled to house small businesses.

Ryder and Colt came out to join her. “So now what?” she asked.

“Now, I guess, we leave everything in the hands of the investigators,” Colt said. “Maybe I’d feel differently if we’d found something that stood out.”

“Yeah, that was a nice walk down memory lane,” Ryder said, “but nothing stood out for me, either. Let’s hope when the cops piece together the clues they got from the scene then add in all that data we just sent them, they’ll be able to find something.”

“Do you want to head back to San Angelo tonight?” No one in the family was using the jet. It would take a couple hours, but she could have it ready if that’s what they wanted to do.

“No, Mike’s fine,” Colt said. “I spoke to him a few minutes ago. He said he’s had a fair number of visitors today already and it’s tired him out.” Colt’s brow furrowed, and Susan had to fight the urge to step up to him, smooth it over.

“He’s getting old, damn it,” Ryder said then.

“Yeah.” Colt obviously wasn’t any happier about that fact.

Susan could understand their emotions. There were times when she’d notice her fathers had gotten older, and that realization was humbling.

“Tell you what,” Ryder came over and stroked his hand down Susan’s back, sending delightful shivers down her spine, “let’s spend the night here in town, then we can make our way back to Lusty in the morning.”

“Sounds like a plan. We can have our pick of a couple of apartments the family maintains here in Houston,” Susan said. Every so often, she found it very convenient that she did have such a vast array of resources to fall back on.

“Well, now, that would be nice. But it just so happens, there’s another house.”

“Another house?”

“When the business began growing so that staying here overnight became impractical for us, we bought a house for ourselves. To live in,” Colt said.

Susan looked from one to the other of them. They’d admitted to being closer than brothers since the time they were each about eleven.

“The two of you have always lived together, haven’t you? Even when you got to the point where you could afford to do otherwise.”

“We’ve bunked together since that first big piece of cardboard in the alley behind Guido’s restaurant,” Colt said.

“Yep, and the minute we began bunking together, our luck changed. No need to disturb a winning pattern.”

“I have a feeling the two of you have more than one interesting story to tell,” Susan said.

“Could be.” Ryder’s response was laconic, but the twinkle in his eyes told her he was likely thinking of some of those stories right then.

“Come on, sweetheart.” Colt picked up her right hand and kissed it. “It’s been a long, boring day. Let’s go home and see what we can do to liven things up some.”

“All right.” Susan turned and stretched up to place a light kiss on his lips. Then she turned and did the same to Ryder. “Let’s go home.”

Susan found herself wondering during the short drive just what sort of house two thirty-something bachelors would share. Would they go for ultramodern, a condominium where landscaping would be done by others, or would they choose something of a Tuscan flavor in one of the new exclusive developments that had begun to spring up in the last few years?

Neither, she realized a half hour later when Colt wheeled his Buick into the driveway of a very nice middle-class family home. Two-story, brick, with shade trees in front and what appeared to be a fenced backyard, it seemed like the kind of place a body would feel good coming home to each night.

Susan imagined that for the homeless boys still inside the men, this home, more than anything else they’d ever accomplished, had been their dream come true.

“Very nice.” She got out of the car and stretched her muscles.

“Just over three thousand square feet, with four bedrooms. It was the first house we looked at,” Ryder said. “We just needed a place to call home, to kick back.”

“And to have a place for Mike to stay when he came to visit?”

“Yeah.” Colt smiled. “Stubborn old coot insists on living in El Paso. That’s fine for now, but we both know there’ll come a day when he’ll need family closer by than that.”

“Course, if he insists on staying in El Paso, then we’ll deal.”

“But since you already have a place for him…” Susan let the sentence fall. It didn’t surprise her in the least they’d consider the man who’d taken them in when they bought their first real home.

She reached into the car and pulled out her overnight bag. “I hope you have a washer and a dryer, because I am out of clothes.”

“You’re not going to need clothes, Ms. Benedict.” Ryder slid a hand down her back, brushed it across her ass. Just that quickly, Susan was aroused.

Susan laughed and skipped away from him. “Oh, no, you don’t, Mr. Magee. I’m wise to your tricks. If I let you, the two of you will have me flat on my back the minute we get inside the house.”

“Your point?” Colt took a step to bring him even with Ryder. Then they both began to come toward her, predatory gleams in their eyes.

“My point is, I want to see your house, first.” She turned away from them and headed toward the long, curved walkway that led toward the front door. The men weren’t far behind, and she thought briefly about breaking into a run, but they had to unlock the door, anyway. She took the first of three wide steps and stopped when her leg hit some kind of wire.

“Huh. I wonder what—”

“Jesus!” Colt’s curse and his tackle hit her at the same instant, and she landed on him on the grass, the wind knocked out of her as he rolled with her away from the house.

The world exploded in a maelstrom of thunder, fire, and brimstone.

Chapter 16

Morton wanted more than anything to drive past the house on Barclay Drive. He knew those bastards were back in town. Posing as a reporter, he’d called their office and the receptionist had confirmed their arrival but had refused to put his call through. Said they were too busy to talk to the press.