Chapter 8

West Abilene Tech was a small school. The running joke was "Which College do you go to?"... "WAT"... "I said, which college do you go to?"

The office of the college president was small too, but well appointed and appropriately austere. The man it belonged to was Ethan Moore and he came from a long line of Texan's dating back to the Alamo and beyond. A tall, wiry academic with thinning gray hair and a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose, Ethan didn't particularly look like he'd do very well in a battle, but that's what he found himself in at the moment.

Sitting on the other side of his antique mahogany desk was a rather attractive woman named Barbara Welch. She did not come from a long line of Texas heritage. In fact, Barbara didn't even come from Texas at all. She was from Connecticut, of all places, and had gone to college at Vassar, wherever in the hell that was. Ethan thought Barbara had permanently clenched teeth; they just never seemed to open with the rest of her mouth when she spoke.

She was 38 years old and the women's athletic director. Barbara coached the swim team at WAT and was very good at it. The woman had been on two Olympic teams, even winning a medal one year. She'd been on the thousand meter relay team that had set an NCAA record that still stood and her team at WAT was ranked nationally. That was a big deal in a small town like West Abilene.

Barbara was also tall and lithe, toned with muscles that didn't look like muscles. They just made a man want to reach out and...

Ethan looked out the window for a moment and closed his eyes.

Barbara was very attractive. She had rather short black hair that suited her pretty face, hazel eyes, and smallish breasts that gave her a pleasing, graceful shape. Barbara refused to wear a bra, but mainly because she was very nearly always in her blue and gold one-piece bathing suit. Her legs were long and tan and lean.

A man who could appreciate all of that in a woman, he really could, happened to be leaning against the college president's bookcase that very minute. But he wasn't in much of an appreciative mood. William "Buck" Riles, Coach Riles to everyone concerned, was the men's athletic director and the AA college football team's head coach. They were the Tigers and at football games half the people said, "There's Tigers!" and the other half said, "WAT Tigers?" and then everyone cheered and said "Yeeeeah! WAT Tigers!"

Coach Riles had been teaching eager young Texas boys how to play Texas football for nearly three decades. He was the third winningest coach in Texas collegiate history and had been to three bowl games, which was quite a feet for such a small school. He stood a full three full inches shorter than Barbara, but the man had a barrel chest and was strong as a bull. He had sandy gray hair and a cowlick that just wouldn't stay down. His skin was leathery and creased from countless seasons in that hot Texas sun. He had a wife and three children, all girls unfortunately, but nothing was more important to him than good hard played Texas football. And that included the WAT women's swim team.

"I am being realistic, Ethan. If my girls are going to compete on a national level, this is the bare..." Barbara stressed the word, " ... bare minimum that we need to do it."

"That's thirteen thousand dollars over your budget, Barbara." Ethan took off his glasses and rubbed his nose.

"I've looked at the books, Ethan. You can get it," she said, pointedly staring at Coach Riles, "out of the football program."

"Now hold on there a minute, missy!" He'd been expecting this as soon as he'd heard about the budget meeting the woman had asked for. "This here's Texas football. This ain't some mamby-pamby back east Yankee charm school!"

"Mamby-pamby?" She smiled, knowing he was putting on the good 'ol boy act just for her benefit. "Is that a football term?"

"Don't you get smart mouthed with me," Riles warned her. "Football brings a lot of money to this school. Hell, to this whole danged community. Folks don't pay good money to see girls going swimming, we got the pond for that." He turned to the college president. "You tell her, Ethan."

"Now, Barbara..." Ethan began. "The football program does make us some money. It's a valuable resource that supports an awful lot of programs that we otherwise couldn't fund. You know that. But..."

"Oh, please. You spent 35 thousand renovating a stadium that hasn't been filled to capacity once since I've been here. You have a local radio contract bringing in ten grand a year, and some team promos that might bring in another two. All your money comes from national and state college education funds, boosters, and NCAA profit sharing. Don't tell me football is big business around here, because it's running in the red."

"Running in the red? What? You little..." Coach Riles almost said a bad word, but he didn't. "Now you looky here, none of that matters a whit cause it's Texas football, you understand?"

Barbara nodded. "I understand fine. That's your entire argument: It's Texas football. Well excuse me, but it's time for a reality check. Texas football isn't the only game in town, Coach. Didn't you hear the news? We're national. West Abilene is on the map."

"What's she talking about, Ethan?" he asked, fishing a cigar from his pocket and clamping his teeth around it.

"ESPN2 is coming to town. They want to do a couple of our swim meets, the big ones against Texas A&M and San Diego State." Ethan looked kind of happy about it too, which made Coach Riles decidedly unhappy.

"When's the last time you played a real football team, coach?" Barbara rubbed it in. "My girls are favored over those schools. We're ranked third in the nation behind UCLA and USC." Her voice softened a little. "I'm not asking for a lot, just what we need. You can afford it Buck, everybody knows about the Fun Budget."

Ethan turned around and sighed, sincerely wishing she hadn't said that.

Coach Riles stared at her. "That 'Fun Budget' as you call it is a valuable recruiting tool. There ain't nothing illegal about it, now you know that, Ethan." He jabbed his cigar at the college president who couldn't see the gesture. "I've got to get good players, good players mean wins, wins mean bowls, and bowls mean money, and that means..." he shrugged like the answer was obvious, " ... good players."

"Riiiight." Barbara nodded. "Okay. Anyway, what it means to me is that the NCAA might be interested in that new truck your quarterback is telling everybody he's getting. Or how about the uh ... pep squad that came down from the Mustang Ranch in Nevada to pep up the defense?"

She stared at Ethan's back, but he refused to turn around.

"That was eight grand right there," Barbara continued, looking back at Coach Riles. "Your running back, Lopez? He goes home every month to Phoenix, roundtrip and all expenses paid. The wide receivers got, what was it? Oh yeah, twenty-five hundred apiece in clothing expenses last year. I didn't know Armani made football jerseys, Coach. Do you want me to go on?"

"You little whore..." Riles stared at her.

"My girls get what they need," Barbara told the two men seriously. "Or I'll put your football program on ESPN ... Primetime."

"That was the budget meeting on Friday?" Tina asked. "The day Barbara died?"

"Yeah," Ethan nodded, sitting in the front seat of the Ranger's car while she drove them towards the Howard Johnson's and Emily Thomas.

"Was she right?"

"About the budget? Yeah, Barbara wasn't stupid. Riles was grabbing a lot of money and passing it around."

"And you knew about it?"

"I knew," Ethan admitted. "Everyone knows, but ... Football is like religion around here and people want to believe."

It wasn't much of an explanation, the college president thought, and certainly not an excuse of any sort, but the truth rarely is. The football program was part of the college and the college made the community. It had just gotten out of hand is all and that was Ethan's fault, he knew, more than anyone else's. He didn't have an excuse for that either.

"Shit," Vasquez breathed as soon as she found the door to Emily's room ajar. The anchor for the chain lock had been pulled out of the door frame, leaving the wood torn and splintered.

"Stay here," she told Moore, pulling her Beretta from her purse. She stood to the side and slowly pushed the door open.

There'd been a struggle, that much was obvious. The cheap motel furniture was askew, a chair fallen over and one of the bedside lamps broken on the floor. The mattress had been pushed across the box spring and Tina found Emily's purse and her car keys, but no sign of the woman.

"What happened?" Ethan wondered, looking in from the doorway as Tina shook her head.

"Are you the police?" an old voice asked, and he looked to see grey haired woman of about seventy peering from her room two doors down.

"Uh ... Detective?" Ethan called Vasquez.

"We heard the noise," one of the women, Bernice, told Tina. She was the younger of the two sisters, being only sixty-six.

"I wanted to call the police," Mona, the older one, said.

"But we're on our way to Santa Fe," Bernice explained. "My granddaughter just had her first baby."

"Eleanor Rose."

"We don't want any trouble and those two men..."

"One was black," Mona whispered.

" ... Well, we were so frightened!"

"I understand." Tina nodded sympathetically, but it was a struggle to control her emotions. "These two men ... One was black, the other one..."

"Oh, he was white," Mona said, almost smiling. "A young man too and so handsome. I thought he was the girl's boyfriend."

"I knew he wasn't." Bernice wrinkled her nose and adjusted her tortoise shell glasses with both hands. "She was too old for him."

"Okay, they were both young?" Tina asked with a patience she didn't feel. "Like ... How old would you say?"

Mona frowned. "Oh, it's so hard to tell with the darkies."

"About thirty, I think," Bernice said.

"No! They were younger than that." Mona glanced at her sister and then looked at Tina. "We only saw them out the window."

"Just for a second," Bernice agreed. "I wanted to call the police."

"Yes ma'am," Tina nodded. "The white one, what did he look like?"

"Oh! He was handsome."

"He had black hair and, um ... It was short too," Mona said.

"Kind of brown hair," Bernice decided. "He was clean though. Such a nice looking boy."

"The other one looked mean." Mona actually shivered. "Those people frighten me."

"Okay." Tina glanced at Ethan and the man shook his head. "You said they took her downstairs?"

"Right past our door!" Bernice nodded.

"Downstairs," Mona said. "They carried her. The black one did, over his shoulder like a sack of flour."

"She wasn't struggling?" Tina asked "Yelling or..."

"Oh no." Bernice shook her head.

"I think she fainted," Mona said. "I know I would have!"

"They put her in a truck," Bernice said. "A white one."

"It was brown," Mona corrected her sister.

"Cream colored?" Bernice looked at Mona and they both nodded.

"What kind of truck?" Tina asked.

"A pickup truck. It had those big tires on it."

"One of those monster trucks," Mona said with a smile. "Like Bigfoot."

"She likes monster trucks," Bernice explained. "It's too noisy for me."

"Setter," Ethan said, and Tina looked at him. "Mike Setter. He's the quarterback of the football team. He drives a truck like that. I don't know why he'd..."

She cut the man off. "Where would they take her?"

The why wasn't all that important to her just then; whoever had Emily had a thirty minute head start on the Ranger.

"I don't know." Ethan rubbed his jaw. "But I know someone who probably does."

"Ladies, thank you for your help," Tina said to the sisters as one of the sheriff's patrol cars pulled into the parking lot. "A deputy will be up here shortly to take your statements."

"Oh." Bernice nodded at that.

"We'll be able to leave town, right?" Mona wondered. "We don't want any trouble."

"You'll be fine." Tina forced herself to smile. "Congratulations on your new granddaughter."

"She was nice," Tina heard one of them saying as she and Moore left the room.

"For a Mexican," the other woman agreed.

"Riles?" Tina asked, and the college president nodded his head.

"He lives on campus," Moore told her. "He should have a good idea where his boys are."

"I hope so," she sighed.

"Now what?" Riles frowned as he looked through the screen door leading to his front porch. "Come to arrest me?"

"Later," Tina said. "I'm looking for one of your players."

"Mike Setter," Ethan said. Riles narrowed his eyes, looking past Tina. He hadn't realized someone else was there with her.

"Haven't seen him," he said, shifting his gaze back to the Ranger. "So if you ain't arrestin' me..."

"But you know where he is," she said, pulling the door open with her right hand. Behind her the college president's eyes widened as he realized the woman was holding her pistol behind her back.

"Nope." Riles put on a wry smile and shook his head, and all of that was a little more than Tina was willing to put up with under the circumstances.

Vasquez grabbed the man's shirt with her right hand and jabbed the muzzle of her 9mm painfully into his crotch with the other, pushing the surprised football coach back into his own living room. He was a thick man, and strong, but none of that seemed to matter as the woman holding him spun a very surprised Buck Riles around and pinned him against the wall like a wayward schoolboy. Tina, like any Texas Ranger, wasn't uncomfortable with physical confrontation when it became necessary.

"You might want to take a moment to think about it," Vasquez breathed. "I'll blow your balls straight to hell if I have to ask again."

"Ethan ... You see what she's doin' here?" Riles swallowed hard, his face turning red with anger and not a little fear. The woman looked and sounded crazy serious.

"Not sure I do, Coach," Ethan replied slowly.

"Where is he?" Tina asked, her green eyes flashing through the shadows covering her beautiful face.

"Canyon," Riles gasped with a grimace as Tina pushed her weapon against his scrotum even harder, angling the pistol upward. "Mule Creek Canyon ... Fuck!"

"You know where that is?" she asked Moore without looking at him.

The older man nodded. "About an hour from here."

"Buck? What's going on?" The man's wife was coming out of the kitchen and Tina let him go.

"I'll have your badge for that." Riles glared at the Ranger. "That's police brutality. I'll sue your ass, bitch!"

Tina was already out the door and she didn't bother with an answer. She was an hour behind Emily now and if Riles had been lying ... Well, having a gun shoved into his balls would be the least of his worries; it was the bullet that would really hurt.

"That goddamn Yankee bitch!" Coach Riles slammed his fist into a locker as he pushed through his locker room towards his office.

Mike and Dale looked at each other and shrugged. They were the team's star quarterback and middle linebacker respectively and they were just finishing a good workout.

"Coach is pissed again," Dale said.

"What else is new?" Mike looked at his thumb. He'd pulled the tendon the other day, but it seemed to be healing quickly. "Maybe I should see what's going on."

His friend nodded and grabbed a towel, heading off to shower.

Mike, being the quarterback, was the team's leader on the field, and off it too. A big, good-looking 22-year-old senior, the boy was looking at European Football, since he had serious doubts about getting drafted by the NFL. He wrapped a towel around his waist and knocked on the coach's open door. It would be better to talk to the coach first, Mike knew, rather than let the man stew and decide to take out his anger on his players during practice. Coach was like that sometimes and nobody enjoyed it.

"Coach Riles?" he ventured. The coach sat in his swivel chair, smoking a cigar and looking through an old playbook.

"Yeah?" He looked up. "What is it, Mike? How's that thumb, boy?"

"It's getting better." He held it up and worked it a little for the man. "I just uh, heard you come in a few minutes ago. Is everything okay, Coach?"

"What? Oh, yeah. Yeah, hell, everything's fine." He looked at Mike and an idea suddenly struck him. "Hey, what do you think about that swim coach?"

"Miss Welch?" Mike shrugged. "I dunno. She's okay, I guess." He watched the coach's face trying to figure out what Riles might be looking for. "She's got a great body."

Coach grinned. "Hell yeah. She's a breeder, ain't she?"

She also had balls the size of Texas watermelons, sticking it to him the way she had in front of that little prick, Ethan. Well, two could play that game ... Texas style! Coach Riles laughed to himself as his puzzled quarterback shrugged and turned away, heading back to his locker.

"Hey, Mike."

He turned around and looked to see Riles sticking his head out the door. "Yeah, Coach?"

"How about we call a little team meeting this afternoon, round 4:30 or so. Just the offensive line, you, and Lopez. I got a new play I want to look over with you boys." He stared at his young quarterback until the young man nodded.

"Sure, Coach."

"And let's just keep this under our hats, huh? Defense don't need to know." Riles winked and went back in his office, closing the door.

"This here's Texas football, you girly girl!"

"I can't believe you did that!" Lisa Thomas laughed at Barbara as the older woman did a fair imitation of Coach Riles.

Lisa was only 19 and a college freshman. She looked awfully pretty, with sunny blonde hair and bright blue eyes, a generous mouth and a tight little body that being on the swim team had toned into something special. She had a genuine gift for the water as it turned out, much to her surprise.

That Friday afternoon, Lisa wasn't in the water. She lay on Barbara Welch's bed, bare naked and basking in the afterglow of making love with her coach, friend, and lover. She played with her hard brown nipples absently and rubbed her thighs together, trying to tease Barbara back into bed.

"Yeah, I can hardly believe it either, but I did it!" Barbara smiled and felt her own body still flushed. "I got us the money. Now all we have to do is win, girlfriend."

"That's not all we have to do, is it?" Lisa smiled impishly and the older woman shook her head.

She crawled across the bed and into Lisa's open arms, kissing her sweetly on the mouth. Barbara had always been gay, but she'd always avoided getting involved with a student at all costs -- Until now. Somehow love just had a way of making you forget about what you should or shouldn't be doing. And a moment later, feeling the girl's warm body moving beneath her, Barbara sighed and forgot about everything else...

... Or something like that, Tina figured.

Ethan had spoken of what he knew and suspected, giving the Ranger his own visions of what had happened the afternoon before the murder. Maybe he was right, maybe not. Nobody would ever know what Barbara and Lisa had shared the last time they were together, but Tina could imagine the warmth between them easily enough. The love they found in each other wouldn't have been so different from her own feelings about Emily.

"Why do you think they took her?" Ethan asked, and Tina shrugged.

They were driving down a dirty road through the Texas night as fast as she dared. It was unpaved and unmarked, and the big Crown Victoria bounced wildly at times, but she wouldn't slow down. Just then Vasquez noted the speedometer needle passing eighty miles an hour and that seemed much too slow.

"People get away with something, they figure they can do it again," Tina said, and if there was a anything she regretted about her chosen profession, it was this. She knew exactly the sort of things that could happen to Emily and tried hard not to think about the cases she'd worked in the past.

"I wonder if they know who she is?" Ethan frowned, thinking it was all too unfair to be coincidence or bad luck. Barbara, Lisa, and now Emily...

"You think they'd care?" she asked him, sparing the man a glance even as her foot pressed down on the gas.

"No," he shook his head.

"Me neither." Tina frowned, knowing they would soon enough. She'd see to that personally.

Vasquez changed her clothes, which may have seemed a little odd, but running around the desert at night in high heels and a business suit wasn't going to get her too far. It didn't take but a minute anyway. Tina was buttoning her jeans beneath the modesty of her skirt while Moore looked politely in a different direction.

"What are you doing?" she asked him a moment later.

"Going with you," Ethan replied.

"No." The Ranger shook her head. "Stay here with the car. If I'm not back in half an hour, use the radio..."

"You don't know how many of them there are," he reminded her. "I'm in it now, I always was. Let me help."

Tina looked at the man and she knew she wasn't being smart. She hadn't done anything like she was supposed to, not since finding Emily's motel room empty. She should have called for backup, started a real search and set up roadblocks, and Moore was right, she didn't know how many of them were out there. She could hear the music coming over the rise a few hundred yards away. She could see the glow of a large fire reflected off the scrub. Maybe it was just the two of them, Setter and his black friend, but more than likely it would be more than that.

Making decisions had never been her problem, however, and in Tina's experience a quick decision could make even a bad one right. Occasionally.

"Have you ever shot a gun?" she asked the college president.

"We're standing in Texas." Moore almost smiled at the woman, but he looked down instead. "I did a tour in 'Nam. I think I can remember how to shoot one of those." He pointed at the M16 strapped into the trunk.

"Yeah?" Tina nodded. "Alright. You wear this though and you stay behind me at all times, understand? I do the talking and I do the shooting, you just keep your eyes open."

Moore took the Kevlar vest from Tina's hands after removing his suit coat and he put it on without much trouble. She picked up the assault rifle and a thirty round clip, ramming it home and snapping the bolt before handing it to the man.

"The safety's on," she told him with one last look to make sure he wasn't playing cowboy. Involved or not, Moore radiated a desire to do something good and the Ranger trusted her gut.

He nodded tersely. After forty years, he was surprised to realize that his hands felt right at home around the weapon.

"Take a bunch of these, stuff them in your back pocket." Tina gave him a dozen plastic zip-ties, thick and strong. "Anything goes wrong, you get back here and drive away. Don't wait on me. Don't try and be the hero."

"I'll be okay," Moore said, watching as Vasquez fed eight shotgun shells into her Remington 12 gauge.

The Model 1100 was semi-automatic shotgun and Tina worked the bolt, chambering a round before replacing it with another in the magazine. She was already wearing light combat webbing over her blouse and the Ranger's Beretta hung just beneath and to the side of her left breast. She picked up a small, but powerful flashlight and handed it to Moore who pushed it into his pocket.

"Ready?" she asked the man, and Ethan didn't show any false bravado.