“Don’t let everyone know I let her cheat on me,” I replied with a jingle of keys, “else even Richard’s gonna wanna give her a spin. And he’s practically a married man already.”
Jake laughed as I tossed him the keys.
“Let Peter know what we found out when you get back to the office?”
“Sure thing,” Jake said as I headed down to the deck to meet Ashley, who was standing there with hands on hips and purse slung over her shoulder. “Oh, and Frank?”
I turned my head slightly but kept walking. “Yeah?”
“Have fun on your date to the grocery store.”
I gave him the finger.
Chapter Ten – Ashley
“So,” I began as we both climbed into my SUV, the sports vehicle rocking back and forth as Frank’s comparably giant frame settled into the passenger seat next to me, “I have a question. And this may sound weird and totally out of it.”
“Shoot.”
“Where do I buy some heavy duty cleaning supplies?”
He burst out laughing.
“Stop!” I cried. “I’m serious! I’ve never really had to do this kind of thing.”
He kept laughing.
“Come on, Frank! You said you were going to help me! If I’d known you were just going to laugh at me, I wouldn’t have asked you to!”
He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. “Asked? Sorry, Ashley, but that’s one of the worst descriptions I’ve ever heard of what you did. Requisitioned at gunpoint is more like it.”
“Oh, shut up and just tell me what store I should go to.”
He chuckled, shook his head. “Alright, what all do we need?”
“Like, everything. I have some paper towels and a vacuum.”
He whistled low. “Well, at least you got that. Hardware shop in town should have what we need. Brooms, all purpose cleaning supplies, that kind of thing.”
“Got it.” I started the car up and pulled away from the cabin, his silver Mustang disappearing in the rearview mirror as we headed back down the long, twisting driveway to the main road. “So, Frank, where’d you learn to speak Spanish like that? Back in Texas?”
“Got my basics, bare basics, like colors and that kind of thing. Like, Amarillo, the place people generously call a city that I grew up outside of, really means yellow in Spanish.”
“Yellow? That’s a weird name.”
“Not so much if you’ve been down there during the summer. Yellow grass, far as the eye could see. Makes sense to me, I reckon. Picked up some of it back home, but not enough to really get by on. Just enough to ask where the bathroom was because I’d had too much cervesa. When I got into the military, though, I was buddied up with this guy, Mendoza. He taught me a good chunk, then I picked up the rest along the way.”
We came to the end of the long driveway and pulled up a stop at the highway. “Speak any other languages?” I asked as I looked both ways.
No one was coming or going. This time of year, things were pretty much dead around here.
“Portuguese and a little Arabic. Some Farsi. Enough to get by when I was serving over in Iraq.”
I turned right, towards Enchanted Rock, gunning it to get me up to highway speed. “You were in the military?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a wry, knowing smile, perfectly relaxed even though I was accelerating fast enough that my mother would have screamed in the passenger seat. “Four long years. Anything to get away from Amarillo.”
“Why not college or something?”
“How was I gonna pay? Loans?” He chuckled. “And just so I could sit at a desk for the rest of my life? No, ma’am, not the career path for me.”
I shrugged. “Well, I went to college. I guess it was fun. Partying, meeting new people, joining a sorority. I had a blast.”
“Believe me, there was plenty of partying when we were on leave. Put most college campuses to shame, I reckon, from the times I’ve been to keg parties. I dunno, I had a buddy who went to North Texas, down in a little town called Denton, and he’d tell me what he was learning about when I saw him on my couple leaves. None of it seemed worth thousands of dollars, especially when I could spend the time reading the same books while I was in the barracks at night. Way he talked made it seem like college was always just setting me up to either go to work at a university, or go to work for someone else. Don’t get me wrong, I like learning new things, but just didn’t see how it’d help me, that’s all.”
That was fair. I had no idea what college did for me, either. Of course, I didn’t do all that well. I spent more time partying and hanging out with friends than I did in class. And, just like everything else, my father had paid for it.
Geez. What had I done with those four years? Partied with the girls and slapped Frat guys when they got too handsy? Some of the girls just took the partying thing a little too far, and I was never completely down with that. Me? I’d had my college sweethearts, the guys I dated. None of them lasted after I graduated, of course.
I nodded. “Okay, I see your point,” I conceded. “What about the military? What was all that like? I’ve never really talked to anyone that signed up.”
He turned, a shocked look on his face. “Really? Never?”
“What? Is that weird?”
“Just reckoned, well, you gotta know somebody. Everybody knows somebody that’s been in, right?”
After just such a short amount of time knowing Frank, I was beginning to realize how much I’d missed out on by not knowing any of them. He was dependable, came running when he thought he was needed. I hadn’t ever known a man who’d be willing to run into a building like he had, gun drawn, looking to protect me.
For instance, if we’d been out in the woods and encountered a bear, he’d try to lead it away or wrestle it to the ground. Probably the second one.
Most of the other guys I knew? They’d probably run and try to push me to the dirt so I’d give them a head start.
I shook my head and smiled a little. “Most of my friends are like me, Frank. We all went to college. That’s what we were supposed to do.”
He snorted. “Yeah, guess you’re right. Most of the guys I knew who joined, joined up for the benefits or free college afterwards. Chance at a better life. Guess you guys didn’t really need the help.”
“So?” I pressed. “What was it like?”
“Pretty damned boring, to answer your question. Long, boring days and long, boring nights, punctuated by moments of extreme terror. Lots of sand, too, depending on where you’re stationed. Guess it wouldn’t too bad if you were in the Navy, though. For me, Iraq was dusty, sandy, and hot, and people shot at you. Most of the guys, they spoke to their families a couple times a week maybe. Got care packages from home that took six months to get there. That kind of thing.”
“What about you? Did you call back a lot?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t really have a family or a sweetheart or anything to talk to.”
“Well, what about now?” I asked.
He didn’t answer at first.
I realized as I sat there in the momentary silence that maybe he was thinking I’d asked if he had a girlfriend—a sweetheart like he said. That wasn’t exactly what I’d meant, of course!
But now that the question was out there, I kind of wanted to know the answer.
“Nope, not really. Just the guys. They’re what I got.”
“Been together long?” I asked teasingly.
He smiled. “Couple years. Peter came down and recruited me for the firm after a job down in Brazil. Sao Paulo. That’s where I picked up the Portuguese…”
After he trailed off, I glanced at him.
His eyes were focused outside the window, following a tiny cabin with a red Jeep Wrangler parked out in front as we drove by. At that moment, he turned back and saw that I had glanced at him. “One of the guys at work, that’s his Jeep.”
I realized then whose place it was. Jessica Long’s. That must have been Richard’s Wrangler, then, parked
out her little place.
“Right,” I said. “That’s who I asked for the recommendation. How long have they been together?”
“About five or six months, I reckon. Seems right.”
“And they’re engaged already?” I asked. “Weird!”
He chuckled, shook his head. “People say that. But it ain’t all that strange if you know them the way I do.”
“True love, huh?” I joked.
“It’s something, alright.”
I wanted to ask him right then if he’d ever been in love, if he’d ever been hurt before. But I didn’t. It just seemed too personal a question to ask so soon after meeting him. Here it was, just barely past noon, and I’d just taken my case to him right after business opened.
“Is this what your job normally is?” I asked instead. “Driving around with young women, helping them clean up their messes?”
“Nah. Normally, it’s even less fun.”
“Whatever, Frank.”
He laughed. We fell into a comfortable silence, then, for the rest of the short drive into town.
We pulled back up Main, past the Curious Turtle with Jessica’s little Jetta out in front, and I followed Frank’s directions to the hardware store. I parked in one of the spaces at the side of the shop and we went inside.
Beside me, it was like Frank’s head was on a subtle swivel. He seemed to take everything in as we moved. Every car that moved on the street; every old, beat up truck parked beside us; every single one of the few pedestrians we passed. This wasn’t New York, or anything, but downtown Enchanted Rock still had some foot traffic.
Weirdest thing, though? As we were about to step inside, I swear he stopped and sniffed the air.
I turned and gave him a look, eyebrow raised.
“What?” he asked, innocently. “I like mountain air.”
Chapter Eleven - Frank
We headed inside the rundown little hardware store and I gave a nod to Zeke, the little old man working behind the counter. Far as I could tell, he was practically a fixture in the shop, and had more contractor knowledge squirreled away in his brain than ten men could learn in their lifetime. If I remembered correctly, he was actually a partner in the business.
The pack did a lot of fixer-up work on our different properties, whether it was the office or the safe house, and we all knew well enough. First, Peter and Richard had pretty much rebuilt our mountain cabin from scratch. Then, over the last several months, we’d re-rebuilt it after a biker gang followed our IT girl up there and shot up the place.
Ashley flitted up and down the aisles, looking over everything, all the different tools, supplies, and gardening implements. Everything you’d expect.
I watched her with one eye with a bemused expression on my face, and kept the other locked squarely on the shop’s front door. We were being followed.
Somewhere between Ashley’s and Jessica’s cabins, we picked up a tail. A black town car with heavily tinted windows that pulled out from a side road when we were about a mile from her daddy’s place.
Course, I couldn’t be completely certain that town car was following us. On stretches of country highways like the one leading into The Rock, it’s damn near impossible to tell if the driver behind you is just there by chance or not. There are only so many ways to get into town, especially with mountainous terrain.
Since I wasn’t sure, I didn’t mention it to her when we were in the car. I Just kept answering her questions as she asked them, and asked her questions when I was supposed to. I figured if I balked, kept staring at the side mirror without answering, or turned my head around to check out the back, it’d just scare her. Didn’t see any sense in that, in case whoever was in that car was just headed into town for groceries or a burger.
And then there was the fact that I didn’t want to accidentally tip off the guy following us.
The questions weren’t too bad, either. It was almost nice to be able to talk to someone new about my life. Most clients didn’t ask questions the way Ashley did. It was all very business-like. Nothing about her, though, seemed business-like. That was for damn sure.
But, as we turned at the stop sign, the town car turned right after us. Now, how many town cars on that stretch of road just happened to also need to stop a block away from the same hardware store were headed to? My gut said not many.
As we walked through the shop, Ashley peppered me with questions about cleaning supplies of all things.
“Seriously never bought 409?” I asked incredulously.
Her laugh was like a jingling bell. “What can I say? I’ve been sheltered!”
Spoiled was more like it. So spoiled she’d never had to clean up after herself. Fitting, then, that she’d decided to clean up a mess she probably had nothing to do with. Might learn a lesson on taking care of her own shit.
“Get the industrial one. It’s more concentrated,” I explained as I glanced to the front and sniffed the air again. I’d gotten a whiff of something outside, but it hadn’t been exactly what Jake and I had smelled out in the creepy hideout behind the house. But, still, there was something distinct about it that I couldn’t quite place, like when you’re trying to remember a day from your childhood long ago. “Gonna need a dustpan, too, and some contractor bags.”
She spent the next fifteen minutes looking at trash bags.
Ashley glanced over at me from the display, a box of heavy-duty landscaping bags clutched in her ring covered hands, a little smile dancing on her lips. “You don’t like shopping, do you?”
“Most guys don’t.”
“Why is that?”
“Why is what? Why do women seem to enjoy it so damn much? Even trash bags, apparently.”
“For me,” she began, putting the cardboard box of bags back on the shelf, “it’s that I don’t get much choice in anything else. At least with shopping, I get to choose, you know?”
“You can choose plenty of things,” I countered. “Not just what you buy.”
“Not the big things, though. Like the college I went to?”
I nodded.
“That was my father’s alma mater. He donated a wing in the school library to make sure I got in and graduated. Said that Maxwells had been attending that school since it began, and I was no exception.”
I snorted.
“Then there were the guys,” she continued. “You know, I’ve never managed to date a guy he approved of? Well, not one that I liked, anyways. The only ones he ever seemed to like were the ones that he handpicked for me, the ones that were families we were already close to. Business partners, families with good genes.”
“Sounds like your family tree has more in common with a stump.”
“Oh, shut up,” she said with a laugh, but then tilted her head a little as she seemed to consider my words. “Ew, I think you’re right. I remember one time mother and father tried to hook me up with a guy who was like my third cousin or something.”
I laughed. “I’m from Texas, and that sounds bad even to me.”
She laughed with me. “But, seriously, you’re dismissing this stuff, but at least you had a choice in what you wanted to do with your life. Like, if I hadn’t gone to the school he wanted, he’d never have spoken to me again, so I did.” As she spoke, a distant look entered her eyes, and she turned back to the garbage bags. “So, just let me shop, okay?”
“Your father and you?” I asked as she settled on some bags. “You ain’t close, are you?”
“What makes you say that?” she asked with an uncertain laugh.
“Way you talk about him. Same way I sound when I talk about my uncles.”
“He and I were close once, but only when I was younger. When I was his little princess.”
“But little princesses grow up, don’t they?” I asked as we walked down the aisle in search of dustpans.
“And try to make their own choices, become women.”
“What’d you choose to piss him off?” I asked, laughing as we rounded the corner and headed down the
aisle with brooms and mops.
This would take another twenty minutes, I was sure.
“After mother died, he married someone I didn’t approve of.”
“Wicked stepmom type, huh?”
She shook her head as she began looking over the dustpans and brooms. “Not quite. Bimbo’s young enough to be my older sister.”
I laughed.
“So we just stopped speaking,” she said, her voice flat.
I stopped laughing. “Oh.”
She shrugged. “We still pass messages back and forth through his assistant, but I haven’t said anything to him since their wedding.”
I was just about to ask about her mother, but I was cut off by the jingling of the bell over the shop’s front door. I glanced down the aisle, but I didn’t have a clear line of sight. But sight wasn’t my only sense. Without a word, I set out to the front counter, hand on my concealed holster beneath my coat, the newly appeared distant smell of Marlboro cigarettes and Stoli vodka wafting through my nose.
“You okay?” Ashley asked as I began to meander down the aisle, a concerned look on her face, like she knew something was up.
“Just need to use the restroom is all. Zeke keeps the key up front.”
“Oh, okay. Don’t worry, we’ll be done soon. I think I’ve picked out the perfect broom.”
I nodded. “Get two. Makes it easier if we can both sweep.”
“Good point!”
The smell grew stronger as I headed to the front.
I heard Zeke an aisle or two over, the one where they kept all the screws and nails in their tiny little drawers, all brimming to the top, so you could buy them individually. “Finding everything alright today, mister?” he asked.
“Thank you, yes. I am just browsing right now,” replied a man with a light Russian accent, his voice deep and raspy, clearly stressed and scarred from decades of cigarettes. “I will ask if I am in need of assistance.”
“Sure thing, mister,” Zeke said. “Just holler if you got any questions, all right?”
“Yes. I will give a shout,” the man replied, his words sounding forced and fake, like a gangster pretending to be polite.
Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series Page 31