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“No.”
“Please. It’s a long ride.”
He exhaled loudly. “Fine. I met Angeline in college. She was hot, and I was instantly in lust. I was already in the ROTC at that point. I knew I wanted to be career Army. Before I was deployed, I gave her a ring. She wanted to get married before I shipped out.”
“Did you do it?”
He shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Something held me back. Anyway, back then, shit was hitting the fan with the war on terror. My tour of duty was extended several times. I ended up being over there fourteen months.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Yep. Evidently too long for Angeline. One day at our base in Bagram, I got a letter in the mail. She’d met someone else. She even enclosed the ring I bought her.”
“Wow. Doing that while you were deployed. That’s cold.”
“I thought so.”
“What’d you do?”
“I wired the ring to a grenade and shot it out of a launcher into the desert.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“You didn’t call her or ever see her again?”
“Nope. No point. She didn’t want me; I sure wasn’t going to beg her to love me.”
“Anyone since then?”
“No one serious.”
They drove a long time before Tinsley pointed out the window. “Turn here. It’s that one in the distance.”
Grady drove them down a long dirt road and into the gravel lot. A Texas flag snapped in the wind, and a tall oil derrick towered a hundred feet above the rig floor, standing about the size of a ten-story building. He’d never actually seen one up close before, and he leaned forward to peer out the windshield. “That’s somethin’, isn’t it?”
“I guess,” Tinsley said, pointing to a spot. “Park there.”
Dust blew up as Grady drove to where she indicated. He threw it into park, and Tinsley reached for the door handle.
“Wait there,” Grady said, climbing out on his side and going around to get her door.
“Such a gentleman.” He took her hand as she jumped down in her jeans and boots.She shaded her eyes with the papers she’d come to have signed and waved to a man up on the rig watching them. “Where’s Bodie?”
The man jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward what looked like a shipping container. Except it had windows like an office trailer. “In the doghouse. Come on up.” He tossed two hardhats down.
They climbed the long, narrow metal staircase up to the rig floor and over to the door of the doghouse.
Grady was surprised at how loud the drilling was. Screeching metal on metal sounds at incredible decibels. It was like nails on a chalkboard to him and he didn’t know how they stood it all day long.
Inside the doghouse, it was a bit quieter, and cooler. A tall man stood, downing a bottle of water and wiping his forehead with the back of his glove. He glanced over.
“Tinsley. What the fuck are you doing here?”
