Page 34 of Three-Inch Teeth

Ogburn-Russell winced. “What’s the project?”

“I’ll tell you about it after you invite us in,” Cates said. “You owe me.”

“I haven’t forgotten. I knew this day would come.”

Ogburn-Russell lowered the torch and placed his helmet on a bench outside the shop. He gestured to them to follow him into his house.

“I’ve got some beer inside,” he said. “You can pull up a chair and tell me all about it. You,” he said to Johnson, “can sit on my face and wriggle around.”

“I hate this asshole,” Johnson said through clenched teeth.

“I wish I could say you’ll come to like him,” Cates said to her, “but that would be a lie.”

As he followed Ogburn-Russell, Cates said, “Lee, you need to cool it with comments in regard to Bobbi here.”

“Then tell her to stop provoking me,” LOR said with a smirk that vanished as soon as he saw Cates’s dead-eye glare.

“You’re serious?” Ogburn-Russell asked.

Cates didn’t indicate otherwise.

“Thank you,” Johnson whispered to Cates as they entered the cluttered home.

*

“SO WHAT IS it you’re looking for?” LOR asked Cates. He sat in a stained cloth-covered recliner across from Cates and Johnson, who were seated side by side in a mushy couch. The walls were covered with bizarre metal artwork and the house had a peculiar burnt-hair odor. Ogburn-Russell had given them cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and the three of them had toasted.

“Something special,” Cates answered. “That goblin out there times a thousand. I need a device that can clamp down at a short distance with eleven hundred pounds per square inch.”

“That’s powerful, all right,” LOR said. “That could kill a man.” He seemed to like the idea.

Cates noticed that Johnson recoiled at the exchange. She looked from LOR to him, trying to understand what was going on.

“I’ve got to run to our truck,” Cates said to Ogburn-Russell, handing his beer to Johnson and standing up. “I’ve got some materials I want you to work with.”

“This is getting interesting,” LOR said. To Johnson, he said, “He’s challenging me. I love a challenge.”

*

WHEN CATES WAS gone, Johnson narrowed her eyes at Ogburn-Russell. “Stop staring at me, you creep.”

Ogburn-Russell drained his beer and chinned toward the huge flat-screen television mounted on the wall. He grasped a remote control from a chairside table and aimed it.

“Do you like porn?” he asked.

“Fuck off.”

“Is that a yes or a no?” He crumpled his empty beer can in his fist and leered at her before he went into the kitchen for another.

That was when Johnson noticed that Dallas had left his burner phone face down on the arm of the couch. She quickly slid over on the cushions and grabbed it. Johnson knew from observing him use the device that Dallas hadn’t programmed in an access code.

She felt guilty about looking, but her curiosity outweighed that concern. Besides, she thought, if Dallas was going to invite someone else to their party, she deserved to know who it was.

There was only one text thread on the screen, and she quickly scrolled through it.

I’ve been released, Cates had initially texted. Are you still on for the project we discussed?

Absolutely, came the reply.

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