I thought about telling Hondo, but knew that if I did he would go after Magilla because Sykes proved he was able to get that close to Jett, and Hondo hadn’t noticed him.
Magilla frightened me. The only man I’ve ever met whose mere physical presence intimidated the crap out of me. So I decided. I wasn’t going to let my great friend risk his life if he didn’t have to.
I smoothed out the tracks, found the water hose and squirted the window. While I was doing it, Hondo opened the door and looked at me.
“You feeling horticultural this morning?” He asked.
“Yep, Ronny Baca, Green-Thumb Detective, that’s me.”
I acted as if I was going to squirt him and he jerked back and chuckled, “Hey now.”
Jett’s head appeared under Hondo’s arm, “Morning Ronny.”
Man, she was beautiful. Maybe it was the combination of her physical beauty and the freshness of her youth combined with the intelligence and thoughtfulness in her eyes. Whatever the combination was, she was striking.
She said, “I put on coffee. It should be ready.”
I trotted toward the faucet to turn off the water and said, “Don’t let Hondo drink all of it before I get there.”
“Better hurry, then,” she said.
Marcus came into the kitchen yawning and scratching his shoulder. He looked at us sitting around the table with our cups and said, “You save me any?”
“Sure,” Jett said. She pointed to an insulated carafe. “I made some more and put it in there.”
“Bless you, child.”
I said, “What did Emma think of my running scene?”
Marcus said, “Didn’t you watch TV last night?”
“No. I saw you had TiVo.”
“The political announcement was in our time slot. We didn’t air last night.”
“So it’ll air tonight?”
“Emma said it will unless we get something else with the bus station scene.”
Hondo said, “So she’s for it?”
Marcus said, “Kind of.”
I said, “What’s that mean?”
Marcus said, “I told her you wanted to shoot some background as you explained what happened, like walking through a battle site and telling how things occurred step by step.”
“And?”
“She said that was a lame excuse, that she could see right through it.”
I said, “She say anything else?”
“Uh-huh, she said she knew…and I’m just the messenger here, that it’s all Ronny’s idea because Hondo would never try to deceive her.”
I said, “Heck, I can’t argue with that.”
Marcus said, “So, what now?”