Best Kept Secrets(111)
"Not this time, Reede. I need you. Junior needs you. So
does ME."
"Why now? After all these years, why does ME's future
rely on me coming back?" Reede's features sharpened with
realization. "You're scared."
"Scared?" Angus repeated with affected surprise. "Of
what? Of whom?"
"Of Alex. You're scared that she might pluck the candy
apple right out of your hand. You're trying to pack all the
power you can behind you."
"Wouldn't we all be stronger against her if we stood together?"
"We are standing together."
"Are we?" Angus fired.
"You've got my loyalty, Angus, just like I've got yours."
Angus stepped closer to Reede. "I damn sure hope so. But
I recall the look on your face when I walked through that
door a while ago," he whispered. "You looked like you'd
been walloped in the nuts, boy. And she looked all rosy and
wet around the mouth."
Reede said nothing. Angus hadn't expected him to. He
would have considered a babbling denial or an apology a
weakness. Reede's strength was one reason he'd always admired
him.
Angus relaxed his tension. "I like the girl, myself. She's
saucy, and cute as a button. But she's too smart for her own
good." He pointed a stern finger at Reede. "See that you
don't get your cock up so high you can't look around it at
what she's trying to do. She wants to bring us to our knees,
make us atone for Celina's murder.
"Can you afford to lose everything you've worked for? I
can't. Furthermore, I won't." Ending the discussion on that
grim promise, he stamped out of the hangar.
"Where's my boy?" he stormily demanded of the bartender,
almost an hour after leaving Reede. During that time,
he'd been making the rounds of Junior's haunts.
"In the back," the bartender answered, indicating the
closed door at the back of the tavern.
It was a shabby watering hole, but it had the largest poker
pot in town. At any time of day or night, a game was in
progress in the back room. Angus shoved open the door,
nearly knocking over a cocktail waitress carrying a tray of
empty long-necks on her shoulder. He plowed through the
cloud of tobacco smoke toward the overhead beam that spotlighted
the round poker table.
"I need to talk to Junior," he bellowed.
Junior, a cigar anchored in one corner of his mouth, smiled
up at his father. "Can't it wait till we finish this hand? I've
got five hundred riding on it, and I'm feeling lucky."
"Your ass is riding on what I've got to tell you, and your
luck just ran out."
The other players, most of whom worked for Angus in one
capacity or another, quickly swept up their stakes and scuttled
out. As soon as the last one cleared the door, Angus banged
it shut.
"What the hell's going on?" Junior asked.
"I'll tell you what's going on. Your friend Reede is about
to get the best of you again, while you're here in the back
room of this dump pissing your life away."
Junior meekly extinguished his cigar. "I don't know what
you're talking about."
" 'Cause you've got your head up your ass, instead of on
your business, where it belongs."
By an act of will, Angus calmed himself. If he hollered,
Junior would only pout. Yelling never got him anywhere.
But it was tough to keep his disappointment and anger from
showing.
"Alex was at the airfield this afternoon with Reede."
"So?"
"So, if I'd gotten there ten seconds later, I'd've caught
them screwing against the side of an airplane!" he roared,
forgetting his resolution to restrain his temper.
Junior bolted from his chair. "The hell you say!"
"I know when animals are in heat, boy. I make part of
my living breeding them, remember? I can smell when they
want each other," he declared, touching the end of his nose.
"He was doing what you should have been, instead of gambling
away money you didn't even earn."
Junior flinched. Defensively, he said, "Last I heard, Alex
was out of town."
"Well, she's back."
"All right, I'll call her tonight."
"Do better than that. Make a date, see her."
"Okay."
"I mean it!"
"I said, okay!" Junior shouted.
"And something else, just so you'll hear it from me first.
I've asked Reede to rejoin ME."
"Huh?"
"You heard me."
"What . . . what'd he say?"
"He said no, but I'm not taking that as final." Angus