by Ben Rehder
Several players had recently taken Lacy’s advice and switched to the ’Horns, and at least one more—a kid from central Texas who was headed for UMT—was rumored to be waffling. That kid, the waffler, was one of the top offensive linemen in the nation, and he, along with a couple of other key players, would make UMT a legitimate contender for the national title. Crabtree hadn’t made any offers to that offensive lineman yet, but that might be the next step, if this meeting didn’t go well. Crabtree couldn’t risk losing him.
He’d already lost Sammy Beech a few months ago—although there was admittedly some consolation in the fact that nobody else could have the superstar either, not with him being dead. But there couldn’t be any more defections, or UMT would once again be nothing more than an also-ran.
Crabtree twisted around to face Adrian Lacy in the backseat and said, “Listen, son, I need to ask you for a favor.
“Really? Shoot.”
“It’s a pretty big favor.”
“No problem. Name it.”
“That’s very kind of you. It involves these tweets you’ve been sending out... very creative. But I want you to lay off of Spillar. We need him at UMT. He could really put our program over the top.”
Lacy smiled. “You want me to stop tweeting?”
“Only to Spillar. No need to be greedy, right? Leave a few of the good players for the rest of us. That seems fair, doesn’t it?”
“Man, I ain’t doing nothin’ wrong. Tweeting ain’t no big deal. I ain’t breaking no rules.”
Crabtree could feel his patience wearing thin. “I realize that, but—”
“Just using every advantage I can get. That’s how you win.”
Not only had the kid interrupted, his tone had become condescending.
“So you won’t quit tweeting to Spillar, even as a personal favor to me?”
“I’d like to, but I can’t do it.”
Crabtree said, “Ryan.”
Ryan opened the passenger door, got out, then got in the backseat with Lacy. The kid knew something odd was happening, but he wasn’t sure exactly what. He was looking back and forth between the two Crabtrees, starting to get a little nervous. Ryan outweighed Lacy by about fifty pounds.
Ryan held a hand out, grinning, as if asking Lacy to shake hands, and the kid took it. Maybe not so smart after all. Ryan made a quick move, immediately twisting Lacy’s entire arm downward and rotating it clockwise, putting a considerable amount of pressure on the wrist and elbow ligaments. Lacy yelped in pain. “Son of a bitch!”
“Quiet, Adrian,” Dexter Crabtree said.
“What the fu—”
“Quiet! One good twist and you’ll need rehab for a year.”
Lacy yelped again, but not as loudly. Learning quickly. Ryan was a meathead, but he was also an expert at some kind of Korean martial art with a strange name Crabtree could never remember. Useful as hell.
After a long silence, Crabtree said, “You know, the game has changed a lot since I played. Less physical contact nowadays. You can hardly touch a guy without drawing a flag. We keep adding all these new rules, it’ll wind up a sissy sport, like soccer. I’ve seen you play, Adrian. You never would’ve made it in my day. You’re not tough enough. You should be out there tearing heads off, but instead I see you limping around like some kind of pussy.”
Crabtree waited to see if Lacy would respond to the insult, but the kid wisely kept quiet.
“So here’s the deal. New plan. No more tweeting at all. Hear me? None. Not just to Spillar, but to any other recruits at any school. Agreed?”
Ryan must’ve been twisting pretty hard, because Lacy immediately said, “Yeah! Agreed!”
“If you decide to change your mind later—”
“I won’t!” The kid was almost crying.
“And you don’t say a word to anybody about this conversation. Ever.”
“I promise.”
“Not only would Ryan and I deny that it ever took place, but I happen to know a young man who’s ready to say he gave you a blowjob at a party last year. Not that you’re a homosexual or anything like that, Adrian, but you’d both had too much to drink and things sort of got out of hand. So you let him get a little freaky on you. A one-time thing. Maybe you were even imagining your girlfriend when this guy was going down on you, but it really doesn’t matter. See, something like that, whether it’s true or not—it’ll be all over the Internet in a matter of hours. Can you imagine how your teammates would react? Or the college coaches?”
“Fuck!”
“We cool, bro?” Now Crabtree was the one being condescending, and it felt good.
“We’re cool!”
Crabtree nodded, and Ryan released Lacy’s arm. “I knew I could count on you, Adrian. I appreciate it. I really do. Now you better go get some ice for that arm of yours, before it swells up.”
CHAPTER 6
“Were you aware that the average wedding costs more than twenty-eight thousand dollars?” Billy Don asked. He gave a whistle of amazement. “Dadgum. Of course, that includes the reception, but still.”
“I could not possibly care any less than I do right now,” Red replied.
“And the average engagement ring is nearly six grand. Six thousand bucks. For a goddamn ring. I’ve never even paid that much for a vehicle.”
Red was glad that Billy Don had managed to persuade Betty Jean that it made sense for him to hunt the $50,000 pig—which was what they were doing. But the downside was that Billy Don had done a lot of research and “number-crunching” to see how much it would actually cost for him and Betty Jean to get married. Now he felt compelled to share that information with Red.
“You know how many couples get married every year in the U.S.?” Billy Don asked. “You ain’t gonna believe this.”
Red didn’t reply, but instead kept staring out the window of the deer blind—a box at the top of a 12-foot tower—waiting for even one pig to appear at the deer feeder one hundred yards away. True, pigs mostly came out at night, but sometimes they surprised you. You might see them in the morning, or even in mid-day if they were hungry enough. So far, however, nothing was moving. Not even a squirrel or a rabbit. Red was normally a patient hunter, but he was getting antsy, and he was starting to understand why. This wasn’t much of a plan. Not much chance for success, really, now that he’d thought about it some more.
“Go ahead, Red. Take a guess.”
Red took a long drink from the 16-ounce Keystone that was nestled between this thighs. “About what?”
“About how many couples get married in the U.S. every year.”
“If I had free and clear title to a rat’s hind end, I would not swap it for that information.”
“Two point three million. More than six thousand weddings every damn day. Does that sound right? Where are all these weddings? I don’t know about you, but that don’t sound accurate to me. Otherwise, you’d be seeing cars draggin’ tin cans all over the place.”
Red had tried to be logical about it. Grady Beech had tattooed a wild pig and then turned it loose. Okay, but where? Red knew for a fact that you couldn’t just trap and move a wild pig all over creation. There was a law against it, because government types were always sticking their noses into everything, making up random, senseless rules and regulations for no good reason. But in this case, it was actually helpful. Red figured that a smart guy like Grady would’ve been careful to keep his scheme legal, which meant he couldn’t turn the pig loose on someone else’s property. He had to have turned it loose on his own ranch. And not on the high-fenced part where they grew the grapes, either, because pigs loved grapes.
In fact, Red and Billy Don had once taken Grady’s foreman—Emmitt Greene—up on his offer to let them hunt pigs at night on the ranch, because the pigs were always getting into the vineyard. Only problem, Emmitt hadn’t made it clear that he didn’t want them using Red’s SKS. That didn’t make sense, because if you wanted to get rid of pigs, a semi-automatic with a 65-round banana clip could get the
job done in a hurry. Just after midnight, with Red manning the spotlight, Billy Don had opened up on a herd of pigs. Five minutes later, Emmitt had driven up, grouchy as hell, saying it sounded like Da Nang down there. Then he said they’d have to leave. Show’s what you get when you try to do a favor for someone. Didn’t matter. There were plenty of pigs around. But where was the one special pig worth fifty thousand bucks?
“On the plus side,” Billy Don said, “the average wedding gift is worth about eighty bucks. Multiply that by, say, a hundred and fifty guests and that works out to... well, a lot. Think it’s tacky to ask for nothing but cash? Or, hey, gift cards!”
Red further deduced that, since the vineyard was on the west side of Grady’s property, fronting on McCall Creek Road, Grady had probably released the pig on the east side of his ranch, way in the back, in the hopes that the pig would be more likely to wander off his property. That was convenient for Red, because he happened to know that the landowner who shared a rear property line with Grady lived in Houston and never visited his place outside of deer season. Man named Kringelheimer. Never around. And that’s why Red hadn’t been worried about trespassing onto the ranch and taking up temporary residence in one of Kringelheimer’s deer blinds.
But even if some pigs showed, what were the odds that the tattooed pig would be in the herd? Slim, really, and to find out, Red and Billy Don would have to shoot as many pigs as possible. But since they technically didn’t have permission to hunt there, it would be wise to keep the shooting to a minimum, so they wouldn’t draw attention to themselves. Sure, Red could hear shotguns from all directions—dove hunters blasting away—but any idiot could tell the difference between a shotgun and a large-caliber rifle.
Red figured he was bound to start hearing rifle shots fairly soon. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Other hunters would be out looking for the pig, which would suck, but once the rifle shots started coming from every direction, every few minutes, Red would be free to shoot as much as he wanted. The game warden couldn’t possibly keep up with it all. Until then, shooting more than once or twice would be risky, because some nosy neighbor might call it in.
If only there were some way to know what the tattooed pig looked like. Black, white, brown, or a combination thereof? Big, small, or medium? Sow or boar? Would be a lot easier if they knew which pigs not to shoot.
“Then there’s the wedding dress,” Billy Don said. “That’s another two grand, easy.”
Red opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything. So close. He’d just come so close to disaster by saying that Betty Jean’s dress would cost twice that, because it would take twice the material of an average dress. Which would’ve been downright suicidal.
Instead, he said, “Where did you learn all this crap, anyway?”
“Magazine.”
“Which magazine?”
“Don’t remember. Just some magazine.”
“Not exactly the kind of thing they mention in Texas Fish & Game.”
“How long we gonna hang out? What time is it?”
Billy Don was trying to change the subject.
“You got somewhere to be?”
“As a matter of fact I do. Meeting Armando at four.”
“Armando?”
“Guy I’m working with.”
“Damn, man. You got some work and didn’t tell me? Does he need another hand?” Red was irritated that Billy Don had been holding out on him. Times were tight, and friends should share leads on possible projects.
Billy Don said, “It ain’t that kind of work. Well, it is for him, but not for me. I’m his customer.”
“Wait a sec. What does Armando do exactly?”
“Florist. For the wedding. Coming down from Marble Falls.”
Red hung his head for a minute and took a deep breath. This was almost more than he could handle. “Let me get this straight. We have to stop hunting a fifty-thousand-dollar pig because you have to go talk to some guy about flowers?”
Colton Spillar sat on the weightlifting bench in his garage and used a towel to wipe the sweat from his forehead. His heart was absolutely thundering, as it usually did when he worked out.
Colton was eighteen years old, a high school senior, and he could bench-press 380 pounds. That was his personal best. He could complete 28 reps of 225 pounds. His biceps were larger than the average person’s thighs. His thighs were larger than the average person’s waist. He stood six-foot-three, weighed 303, and his shoulders brushed on both sides of an average doorway.
Still, he didn’t know if he had the strength—in the mental sense—to do what he was about to do. Push one little button. That’s all it would take. Send a tweet and change his future. He would let a few people down, yeah, and he didn’t like letting people down.
He’d made a verbal commitment, but players changed their minds sometimes. Was that something to be ashamed of? Sure, it was nice of UMT to offer him a full ride, but so had the University of Texas. And the way things were shaping up, UT was the place to be.
Adrian Lacy said so.
Adrian Lacy was going to UT, and he had managed to convince some major badasses to join him. On both offense and defense. Not just stars, either, but less visible players who were nonetheless critical for a team’s success. Nose guard. Blocking back. Punter.
Colton fit in that category. Not a star, because how often were offensive tackles stars? You didn’t see many newspaper articles about offensive tackles, and they didn’t win trophies that the average person had ever heard of. Offensive linemen didn’t score heroic game-winning touchdowns, but they sure as hell allowed those touchdowns to be scored. So the stars—guys like Adrian Lacy—knew how important players like Colton were.
And Adrian Lacy had been reaching out to Colton on Twitter and Facebook. Flattering him. Reasoning with him. Promising big things. A shot at a national championship. A better chance at a pro career. Tempting as hell, especially now that Sammy was gone. Sammy had been a true superstar, and when he had originally committed to UMT, it had made Colton’s choice all that much easier. But now...
Colton looked down at the screen of his cell phone. He tapped out a message.
Got nothing but love for UMT, but I’ve decided to be a Longhorn instead. Hook ’em!
His finger lingered over the button. Not yet.
CHAPTER 7
Aleksandra Babikova made her way toward the boarding gate with a handful of her fellow first-class passengers, fully aware that she was the subject of intense scrutiny by virtually every person—man or woman—in her immediate vicinity. Some of her fellow travelers were ogling, others were glaring judgmentally. Some were simply in awe. Some were discreet, others were not.
It had been this way for all of Aleksandra’s adult life. She was, after all, a striking person to behold: Nearly six feet tall and ridiculously beautiful—even here in Dallas, where attractive women were as commonplace as cowboy boots. Many of these Texas women were blond, whereas Aleksandra’s hair was as black and shiny as a raven’s wing. Her eyes were a shade of turquoise normally only viewed from a beach in the Caribbean.
“Poarding bass, please,” the young man at the gate said. “Uh, boarding pass.”
She handed it to him, noticing that he was becoming flustered, as many men did in her presence. Their cheeks would flush bright red. They would become tongue-tied—even more so when she was dressed in a manner they found pleasing. Today’s ensemble included a form-fitting pencil skirt that reached mid-thigh, four-inch heels, and a sleeveless silk blouse unbuttoned just far enough to catch the eye.
“Thank you for flying American, Miss, uh, Babe...”
“Babikova.”
He grinned sheepishly. “I have to say that I really like your accent.”
A woman behind Aleksandra released a small sigh of impatience.
“Ah, but you are the one with the accent,” Aleksandra said.
“Ha. I hadn’t thought of it that way. Enjoy your flight to Houston. San Antonio. I mean Austin.”
She
continued down the ramp, to the airplane door, past the female flight attendant who gave her a quick up-and-down appraisal and showed the smallest frown of disapproval. Aleksandra did not care in the least. She took her seat in the first row, beside the window. A man across the aisle stole a glance at her. Then, a few seconds later, he glanced again.
It was possible some of the oglers recognized her. It wasn’t that long ago that she had made a career for herself as a volleyball player. It began with an Olympic silver medal and a starting position with the elite team Dinamo Moscow. Then came modeling contracts, mostly in eastern Europe, then in western Europe, and eventually here in the States, including one for a leading lingerie company. That led to a small part in an American big-budget spy thriller and appearances on various reality shows, followed by a tastefully done nude pictorial in one of the more discriminating gentlemen’s magazines.
It had been a whirlwind, but it was all behind her now. She had suffered a career-ending knee injury, and then, for reasons her American agent could not fully explain, the offers and opportunities slowly came to an end, despite the fact that she was every bit as stunning as she had been at eighteen.
“Your fifteen minutes of fame are up,” the agent had said with a shrug. “Remember Darva Conger? Carrie Prejean? Rebecca Loos? Those names ring a bell? Probably not. That’s how it works sometimes. Not much we can do about it. Be glad it lasted as long as it did.”
So that was it. She was washed up, as they say, at the age of twenty-three. Then, to add insult to injury, she’d discovered that her pig-dog of an ex-husband had not only been sleeping with her longtime volleyball teammate, he had squandered the bulk of the modest fortune she had managed to amass. So she had decided it was time for a divorce, and a new start. She had immigrated to the U.S. two years earlier and begun a new chapter in her life.