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“Vesta? Is that you?”

Silence. Then:“My name is Ida LaBelle. And I’m calling about my butt boil.”

“Oh, fiddlesticks, ‘Ida.’ And your butt boil! I’m telling Tex you’re harassing me!”

“You’re denying me medical treatment! That’s a federal crime! I could bust you for that, you booby bimbo!”

“Buzz off, Vesta,” said Scarlett, and thunked down the phone.

Just then, Tex walked in from the office, a smile on his face.“And how is my favorite receptionist doing? Was that a patient?”

“Nah. Just your mother-in-law trying to mess with me.”

The smile disappeared.“Vesta? What did she want?”

“I don’t know. Something about a butt boil and a license.” She waggled a nail. “She’s going to make trouble for you, Dr. Tex, I’m telling you. That woman is like a dog with a bone. She’ll keep coming back until you give her a kick in the bony rear end and be done with her.”

“I can’t kick my wife’s mother in the rear end,” said Tex, a little wistfully.

“Well, you should. I’ve known Vesta all my life. She’s a terror. I know she’s family and all, but sometimes you just have to draw a line in the sand, Dr. Tex. Take a stand.”

Tex didn’t look like he was prepared to take a stand. “If she calls again just tell her…” He hesitated, rooting around for a possible solution. “Just tell her not to call again,” he concluded lamely, then turned on his heel and disappeared into his office.

Scarlett smiled.“I’ll tell her just that and more,” she said to herself, then resumed the study of her nails. She needed more sparkle, she thought. Sparkle was the new pink.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_2]

The Agent Smiths that had converged upon Chase’s aged pickup now opened the door—both the passenger side and the driver’s side—then proceeded to escort the cop and his assistant out of the car. They all had those black sunglasses, making it impossible for Odelia to see their eyes, and for some reason they kept pressing their fingers into their ears.

But instead of taking them into the house, they escorted them right around it.

“Where are you taking us?” asked Odelia. The men assumed a dignified silence, though. She turned to Chase. “Where are they taking us?”

“To see the President. I hope.”

He didn’t seem worried, so Odelia tried to relax. If the hardened cop wasn’t worried, she probably shouldn’t be, either. But she couldn’t help it—she was worried.

“I think they found out I’m a reporter, Chase,” she said now. “They must have scanned my face or something and got a hit in their database and now the secret is out. It’s just like I told you: they’re taking us out back to give us neck shots and bury our mangled corpses in the woods!”

“And how would our corpses end up being mangled?” asked Chase, amused.

“They’ll torture us first! Try to find out what we know!”

“Know about what?”

She flapped her arms.“I don’t know!”

He placed a reassuring hand on her lower back.“See? You don’t know. So there’s no need for them to torture you.”

“Okay, I’m taking back the mangled corpses thing. So they’ll just shoot us and bury us. Where we’ll never be found.” She took out her phone. “I need to tell my parents.”

“Tell them what?”

“Where we are! If they have a last known location maybe they can tell Uncle Alec to come and find us. Give us a proper Christian burial!”

“I think you’re overreacting, honey. The President of the United States doesn’t kill people in his backyard. At least not as far I know.”

At this point, the Men in Black—or Agent Smiths—seemed to have entered the final straight, for they were talking into their wrists again, muttering incomprehensible jargon under their breaths. And then she saw it—or rather, she saw him: the POTUS.

They’d arrived at what looked like an animal enclosure. It was a circular area, cordoned off by a three-foot-high fence, and offered the weirdest sight Odelia had ever encountered, and in her days as a reporter she’d encountered many weird sights.

This one took the cake, though: the President of the United States was… wrestling with a very large hog, both of them down and dirty in two inches of mud, and they were really going at it, the President holding the hog in a death grip, and the hog kicking its legs and desperately trying to escape.

Both man and beast were covered in mud from top to toe, but that didn’t seem to bother either. And then Odelia saw that a second hog had entered the fray, and was now jumping on top of the President, presumably to open a second front and save its buddy.

“What’s going on here?” Odelia asked as she watched the proceedings, wide-eyed.

“The President is wrestling a hog,” said Chase, who seemed more amused than surprised. “Two hogs, in fact. Oh, look, there’s number three. Raising the stakes.”

About a dozen Secret Service agents guarded the hog enclosure’s perimeter, their expressions inscrutable, and their stance vigilant and alert. If those hogs tried any funny business they’d be on them in a heartbeat, that stance seemed to indicate.