“We’re on it. I tell you, they’re so close I can taste them.”
“Asshole.” He hung up.
Hondo rolled the top of the bag to close it and said, “That’s enough. We need to save some for Hunter, she brought them.”
My insides fluttered. “When’s she coming?”
“Any minute.”
“My hands are clammy.”
“Dig into your chi. Chant one of those sayings you always tell me, like, ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping’, one of those.”
I didn’t have a chance to reply because Hunter opened the door. I hadn’t seen her in over a year but she still looked great. I felt a jumble of confused feelings: guilt, sorrow, joy, affection, and yes, love, but the way one loves a lifelong friend. Well, maybe a little lust, too, because she was so good looking.
Hunter walked over, sat in the chair by Hondo’s desk, and turned it to face me. “Hondo and I talked a lot last night. You’re lucky to have such a good friend.”
“Yes, I am.”
I started to say more but she held up her hand, “Let me say this, then we’ll see where things stand.” I nodded and Hunter continued, “I don’t know what to feel. I was ready last night to get back with you, be with you from now on.” She leaned forward, put her elbows on her knees, and looked at the floor as she clasped her hands together. She raised her head and looked at me, “When that Meadows woman started laying it on last night about you and her, well, my self confidence has never been very high when it comes
to me being able to keep a relationship. I bought everything she said, and she was good, going into detail about how she pleased you, doing this and that,” I started to speak but she held up her hand again, “Let me finish. So she convinced me, and adding that to the surprise of finding her in your home, well it was too much. I left and called Hondo later. I was ready to book a flight back to El Paso when he talked me into coming to his house.”
She sat up in the chair and looked at both of us. She said to me, “You know what the first thing was he said to me?”
I shook my head because my throat was too constricted to talk.
“He said, ‘Quit trying to convince yourself you want Ronny as a lover. It makes it too hard on all of us.’ I sputtered and cried and fumed and stomped around, and Hondo let me. He let me get it all out. We talked a lot after that, and I thought more about it after I left him. And here’s what I think.” She got up from the chair and went to Hondo, held his face and kissed him on the lips, then came to me and did the same. When she sat back down she said, “I love you both, as friends, the way it should be for us. Ronny, you and I never, ever should have gotten involved. Man, that was doomed from the get-go.”
Hondo said, “What she told me last night was you were an idiot around beautiful women.”
Hunter interrupted him and said, “I meant you had strong desires and weak control in that area.”
Hondo said, “I told her you stayed as horny as a forty-balled tiger.”
Hunter nodded, “Yeah, that’s what Mr. Eloquence said. But the point is, that’s my problem to deal with, and for all the years before we got involved, I was fine with it. It was only after I brainwashed myself that you and I were meant to be together that it became a big deal.”
I said, “You’re not wrong, we were meant to be together.”
Hondo said, “Yep, we were.”
Hunter said, “The three of us. Maybe so. Just give me some time to work on it. Now, you have anything to eat?”
Hondo reached for the bag of chips, “I’ve got just the thing.”
CHAPTER SIX
While we ate the rest of the bag, we filled Hunter in on the case. She was particularly interested in Carl Rakes.
“His tattoos, were they bright?”
“I guess you’d call them that. They were dark ink, but showed real well, shiny, no fading anywhere.”
“Those are Russian prison tattoos. They make the ink from shoe soles and urine.”
“What?”
“Yeah, they take a shoe sole and burn it until it all turns into soot, then sift it through a handkerchief until it’s a very fine dust, then they mix urine with it. They prefer to use the urine of the person they’re going to work on.”