Kade: Santanas Cuervo MC (3 page)

Anders and Bicker looked at where Kade pointed. “Jesus. That’s out in the middle of nowhere.” Bickers drew the map a little closer and found Rio Bonita. “Christ! That’s at least an hour’s ride!”

“And over fucking dirt roads, too,” Anders agreed.

Kade chuckled. Anders was fussy about getting his bike dusty. “Yeah, but it’s also a grand a day. I can ride for a couple hours each day for that. Can’t you?”

Bickers grinned. “Yeah. And they don’t normally drill for oil in town. I’m not bitching, I’m just…okay I am bitching. But you’re right: it’s worth it to get the club back on its feet. And it’s only once every six days.”

“That’s the spirit!” Kade said, his voice dripping with false enthusiasm. “Can you two ride out with me in the morning?”

“I guess,” Anders replied. “There’s nothing happening at the shop that can’t wait a couple of hours. I’ll get Toni to open. Why?”

“Same here. I close tomorrow, so I don’t have to work in the morning,” Bickers added.

“Good. I want you two along in case you see, or think of, something I miss. Three pairs of eyes and all that.”

Anders and Bickers shrugged. “You were always in charge of security anyway. I don’t know what we would see that you wouldn’t, but sure. What time?”

“Want to meet for breakfast when Betty’s opens? We should be on the road no later than six-thirty, then. Let’s ride while it’s cool.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Bickers agreed. “We’ll meet you at Betty’s at five-thirty.”

Kade nodded. He knew he could depend on the two men, on all of the men in the Santanás Cuervo. The twenty-two who were left had bonded
tight.
“I’ll see you there.”

“I have to go,” Anders said as he glanced at his watch. “Toni sent the kids to her mother’s for the night. She told me she was going to be fucking by ten o’clock whether I was there or not. I have thirty minutes to get home.”

Kade and Bickers chuckled. Anders and Toni Wilton had been high school sweethearts, and after thirteen years and three kids, Anders had gotten the snip. Good thing, too, because it was common knowledge those two fucked like rabbits.

Once Kade had shown up unexpectedly at Anders’ welding shop. When Anders answered the office door, Toni was sitting on her desk with her hair in disarray, papers and pens strewn on the floor, and she was still buttoning her blouse. Kade had assumed Anders was mostly talk about how often he and Toni did it, but now he didn’t doubt they went two or three times a day, every day. Of course, if he had Toni warming his bed every night, he’d be horny all the time, too.

“You better go, then,” Bickers said.

Anders gave them a wave as he strode out, his bike rumbling to life then roaring away into darkness.

Bickers walked to the bar and poured two more shots. That would be their third, and last, for the night. He sat them down at the table then took the chair across from Kade. He picked up his glass and held aloft it until Kade did the same.

“To friends past, and a brighter future,” Bickers said solemnly.

“To friends and a brighter future,” Kade agreed as they tossed their drinks back.

“You did good,” Bickers said.

“Thanks, Tom. I hope this leads to something. The club could use a break.”

“We’ve held on this long. We can hold on for a little while longer. Sixty grand helps a lot. I think we should spend a little of that money sprucing the place up and do something nice for the brothers and old ladies. I also think we should refund the money we’ve put in to keep the club going.”

“It might be the last payday for a long time,” Kade reminded him.

“I know. But it’s the right thing to do. It’ll be nice to have some pride in the place again. Every brother and old lady has sacrificed for the club. I think the club needs to reward that. We can put it to a vote.”

Kade nodded. “I think you’re right. I just don’t want to blow it all.”

Bickers shook his head. “Nobody wants that. But a club funded picnic like we used to have? That doesn’t cost a lot and will remind people what this club’s about.”

“You’re right, but let’s not vote it. Let’s just do it,” Kade said with a smile. “Pull the numbers and we’ll pass out the cash at the picnic.”

Bickers nodded. “We’ll start getting together a list of things that need doing and get a price. See where we can get the most bang for the buck.”

Kade grinned. “Before we spend all the money, let’s go see Winter tomorrow and make sure we can actually do this.”

Winter had gone to bed early last night and woke up at first light. She’d whipped up a quick breakfast for herself and Gabbro then drove back to the recording truck.

“Morning, Jill,” she said as she entered the truck.

“Morning,” Jill replied sleepily. Winter might be bright-eyed this morning, but her shift was almost over and she was ready for some shuteye.

Winter sat down at “her” desk and plugged into the capture system. It took almost forty-five minutes to download all the raw capture data to her computer and then another twenty minutes for the program to crunch all the numbers, but finally the seismic data appeared on her screen. She whistled softly.

“Did you see these voids?” Winter asked.

“Yeah. It’s regular Swiss cheese down there. What does the wonder program say?”

“A lot of water, but a lot of gas, too. Not as much crude as we hoped, at least not in this section.”

“This is only the first of twenty-four, though.”

“I know. How much progress did you make last night?”

“We started mapping again about midnight. We’ll finish this section today, easy. The quads should finish placing geophones in the next section by noon. So we’re ahead of schedule there.”

Winter looked at a calendar on her computer and did some quick math. “Assuming we don’t run into any problems, we should be done by the Fourth of July. I’m sure that’ll make everyone happy.”

“Yeah. I’ll be nice to be home with the kids for the holiday.”

Winter nodded. It had to be tough on Jill. She had been with Kelly Oil for more than twenty years, and was one of their finest sounding technicians, but that meant long stretches away from home and her family. Why anyone would get married, and especially have a family, while working in the oil fields was beyond her. She could pack up Gabbro and bring her family with her, but that didn’t work so well with kids.

The two women chatted as the data rolled in, the map updating on her computer about every five minutes as more sounding data was collected and crunched. The wells were going to have to be deep, but you could sink one almost anywhere and hit something. The trick was going to figure out how to extract the maximum amount of oil and gas with the fewest number of pumps.

***

“Winter? I think we have a problem,” Charlie said as he reached for the radio. “Thumper One. Hold position.”

She looked up from the seismic reflection map she was studying. Charlie had come on shift about an hour ago, taking over for Jill. “What?” she asked as she rose and looked over his shoulder. Then she saw it. Even though the thumpers were stopped and no longer sounding, she could see the geophones were still picking up a disturbance. “Call it up.”

He typed a moment then a map appeared on the monitor with a line of blinking dots running more or less parallel with a road. “Damnit! Can’t people read!”

As the geophones and road diverged the noise diminished then faded away. “Hang on a minute. I need to back that data out of my database. Back the thumpers up about two hundred yards, give me the grid reference, then have them start again.”

While he coordinated getting the thumper trucks reset, she pounded away on her computer, quickly writing a query to back out data to where the trucks were restarting their run. On the production software this was easy, a few clicks with the mouse, but her software wasn’t there yet. One more thing to fix before it would be ready for primetime.

The thumpers had just started sounding again when she heard the rumbles of motorcycles outside. As Charlie worked she opened the door and bounded out. “Can’t you read?” she snapped as the three men dismounted. “You riding in here like this screwed up our sounding data!”

“I’m looking for Winter Kelly, with Kelly Oil,” Kade said. He’d seen the sign but ignored it. He was supposed to be here.

“Who wants to know?”

“Winter?”

She looked at him as her eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

He stepped forward and extended his hand. “Sorry. Kade Goddard. This is Tom Bickers and Anders Wilton,” he said as he motioned to each man in turn. “Are you Winter Kelly?”

She took his hand. “Yes.”

Kade nodded. “Your aunt hired me and my men to provide security for you.”

“Aunt Gail? Why?”

Kade shrugged. “She wants to keep you safe. Apparently there has been a lot of vandalism around, and someone took a shot at you.”

Winter rolled her eyes. “Someone didn’t want us driving across their land, despite the fact they signed over the mineral rights to us. We called the Sheriff and they were arrested. End of problem. We don’t need any security. You’ll just be in the way and screw things up, like you did just now.”

“Apparently your aunt doesn’t agree and thinks you do.”

“Well she’s not here.”

“But I am,” Kade said.

“Look, Kade, I don’t want your protection and I don’t need your protection. Look around you. I saw you coming from three miles away. What are you going to protect me from?”

Kade smiled. “People who don’t want you driving across their land, I guess. It doesn’t matter. We’re here and we have a job to do. Gail Kelly invited you to give her, or a guy named Hayden, a call if you have a problem working with us. Now I’d rather work this out between us, and not bother anyone else, but if that’s how you want to play it, we’ll wait here while you call.”

Winter stared at him a moment. “No, I guess not. If she told me to call her that means she has already made up her mind, and Dad would be even worse.”

“Hayden is your father?”

“Yeah. Hayden Alvin Kelly, President, CEO and Founder of Kelly Oil.”

Kade smiled. “Is there someplace we can talk? I don’t want to be a pain in your ass, so if we can come to some agreement on how we can best to do our job and not be in your way, that will make it easier on both of us.”

“I still think this is a waste of time.”

“Maybe, but that’s not my call. We’re here until your Aunt Gail tells me to stop showing up.”

She sighed. “Fine. We’ll go to my RV so we don’t bother Charlie. Let me get my computer.”

When she stepped inside Bickers grinned at Kade. “I’m liking this job better already!”

Kade nodded. Winter was stunning. There was a strong family resemblance with Gail, but Winter was a bit taller with a more athletic build, probably from hiking in the desert rather than sitting behind a desk. Her sun-bleached brown hair was short, falling to the middle of her neck, and worn in a messy is sexy style cut with a part on the side. Dressed in shorts, hiking boots and a loose men’s style button front shirt with the Kelly Oil logo on the left breast, he understood why Bickers said what he did.

“Down boy. We’re here on business.”

A moment later Winter appeared, laptop in hand. “Follow me,” she said as she slipped on a pair of sunglasses. As she opened the door to a bright yellow Jeep with the Kelly Oil logo on the door, the men mounted up.

As she bounced along in her Jeep she thought about the men assigned to guard her.
What a complete waste of time and money! They’ll only be in the way or slow me down. I don’t have time to babysit a bunch of tenderfoots if I have to go out in the field. What the hell is Aunt Gail thinking?

The Santanás Cuervo followed along, riding much faster than they normally would over such rough roads to keep up with Winter, but staying far enough back to keep out of her dust plume. Kade grinned, thinking of how upset Anders was probably getting over his bike being dirty
.
They were headed in a generally southern direction, back toward Eagle Pass road, but away from Rio Bonita. After fifteen pounding minutes Winter pulled to a stop by a giant RV.

“Nice place,” Anders muttered as they dismounted and fussed with the bikes to make sure they wouldn’t fall over in the loose dirt.

“Welcome to my home away from home,” Winter said as she opened the door and led the men into the coach.

“Damn!” Bickers drawled. “This place is nicer than my house!”

She smiled. Everyone had the same reaction. Though not loaded with all the luxury touches, such as marble counter tops and floors, her coach was still a nice place to spend time with plenty of wood and leather, and a tile floor for easy cleaning. Being the President’s daughter did have its perks.

“Have a seat. Can I get you anything? I have water, Cokes, and beer.”

“Water, please,” Kade said as he looked around. “It’s only eight in the morning.”

She twittered out a laugh. “Good point.” She filled four glasses from the jug in the fridge and passed them out.

“Thanks. I assume you sleep here?” Kade asked.

“Where else would I sleep?”

Kade shrugged. “I’m just working out details. Tell me about this guy who shot at you.”

Winter sat down in her spot on the couch as the men scattered about the room. “Not a lot to tell. We were riding across his land placing geophones and he came out in his truck and tried to chase us away. He’s just a crazy old coot. We showed him the lease he signed and I thought that was the end of it. A few days later, when the thumpers showed up, he went crazy. Said the thumpers were destroying his house, which is total malarkey. You can’t even feel the vibrations fifty feet from them, and even up close they just feel like a big truck passing by. Anyway, he was out there waving a gun around, so we called the Sheriff.”

“That’s when they arrested him?” Anders asked.

Gabbro jumped in her lap and she began to stroke the cat unconsciously. “No. The Sheriff got him calmed down and I thought that was the end of it. But the next day Charlie and I were getting some weird readings and we went out to talk to the thumpers to try to figure out what was going on when we heard a gunshot. We heard the bullet ping off the thumper somewhere. It was just the one shot.” She shrugged. “We called the Sheriff again and the guy was arrested.”

Kade nodded. “And no shots since then?”

“No. Of course he denied shooting at the truck, but I think the evidence speaks for itself.”

“Gail thinks its drug smugglers pushing back. She may be right. We’re only a few miles from the Rio Grande.”

Winter shrugged. “Why would they shoot at us? If they were to run across a geophone we would know it, but it would be simpler to just go around. It’s not like we’re hiding out here. The thumpers are big, loud, and lit up like beacons at night. Same for the recording truck.”

“Maybe that’s what they’re afraid of: that you’re tracking them somehow.”

Winter snorted. “We do one square mile grids. We sound that one square mile, then pick up and move to the next. It’s not like we’re strung out all across the border.”

“They may not know that,” Bickers pointed out.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kade said. “Crazy old desert rats or smugglers, if they’re shooting at you, you’re in danger, so we need to figure out how to minimize the risk. Do you work a regular schedule?”

Winter grinned. “Hardly. I have a special project I’m working on, so I generally work eight to five in the recording truck, but if the weather closes us down I might work from here that day. We run twenty-four seven, so if there is an equipment problem, or we get an anomaly on the soundings, I could get a call at any time.”

“That actually makes our job easier,” Kade said. “The problem is, as you point out, it’s wide open out here. I’m thinking the best way to handle this is to put one man on you all the time, and have another out in the field, well away from you on the most likely approach, to try to pick up a threat before it becomes a threat.”