The Ranch

This is a work of fiction. Although some of the action takes place at real places, all characters are figments of the author’s imagination and not any real person. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.

The Ranch

By D.O. Mann

Lisa Nelson placed a fourth large cola with light ice on the counter in front of the man who was finishing his fries while reading some forms that he had brought in with him. She had taken a measure of him when he first came through the door of the diner. With his hat in place, a western style with no adornments and as black as the beard he wore, he stood six feet five inches. That meant that his real height was probably six feet two or three. He wore a rugged black work shirt and blue jeans over a pair of western style boots.

The first thing she thought when she saw him was ‘ranch hand.’ After all, there were a number of ranches in the area, besides the Nelson Ranch which wasn’t a working ranch anymore. But on second thought, he looked to clean for that. His hat and boots were relatively new. No more than two, maybe three months old. No, he couldn’t be a ranch hand with that good of boots on his feet. And the shirt wasn’t very old, either. Maybe he was a wannabe. Or more likely, he was trying to fool people into thinking that he was in ranching. He was probably trying to get someone to sell something to him or buy something from him and thought that if dressed like them, they would be more receptable to his proposal.

But she wasn’t paid to speculate on the occupation or motives of the customers that came into the diner. She was only paid to serve them the meals they ordered. So, with her professional smile in place, she set the glass down and looked up as the bell above the door rang announcing another arrival. That smile drooped a bit as she saw the newcomer. Without a second glance, she turned back to the beverage station and poured a glass of sweetened tea which she took to the place at the counter where the woman sat, just three spaces away from the man.

“Hey, Lisa,” the blonde said cheerfully.

“Nancy,” she returned shortly.

Nancy gave a sigh. “When are you going to stop being mad at me?”

“I probably won’t,” came the answer. “You sold my home out from under me, Nancy. How am I to feel about that?”

“Your mom put it up for sale. She really didn’t have any choice. Either she sold it, or the government would have taken it away. She couldn’t pay the taxes on it.”

The man clunked his glass that he had been drinking from on the counter and shuffled through his papers quickly. He gave out a slight whew as he found something and visibly relaxed. Neither Lisa or Nancy took notice off it as they continued their own discussion.

“It was still my home. The place I’ve lived at for my entire life. I don’t want to just leave it, you know?”

“If your brother was still around, you might have been able to stay.”

“Watch what you say about my brother.”

“I wasn’t saying anything against him, Lisa. But the fact is, your father wasn’t much of a rancher. I don’t know how he paid for everything over the last seven years, but when he died, whatever he was doing stopped. Jeremiah was the one who was keeping that place going after your grandfather died, but he’s not here anymore. So, your mom had to sell. At least the buyer gave you time there after the sale went through. It’s been four months and no one has seen him or heard from him.”

“He’s probably a developer. Did you think of that? He hasn’t been here because he’s been too busy tearing up land and planting houses and roads someplace else. Now, this, what’s his name?”

“Turlow,” Nancy offered. “John Turlow. I remember because it’s such an unusual name.”

“Yeah. Turlow. Now this Turlow character is going to tear up the Nelson ranch and turn it into some kind of development. Probably hundreds of houses and ten to twenty roads all through that area that used to be grazing land for our cattle.”

The brunette noticed the man get up from his seat and slip his wallet from his back pocket. He placed a bill under the glass that had held his drink and made his way past the two women to the payment desk. She followed immediately to take his payment and wish him a good day.

“Was everything alright?” she inquired.

“Yes,” he answered. “Quite good.”

“That’s good. I hope you’ll come back again, Mr….”

“Turlow,” he provided as he put his hat on. “John Turlow.” With that, he gave her a mischievous grin and a wink of one of his ice-blue eyes, twinkling with amusement, and walked out the door towards a black Ford pickup with an enclosed trailer attached.

Lisa saw the amusement as well as the grin, but it was his eyes that really got to her. They were the same color as her brother’s. But unlike her brother’s eyes, his weren’t sad or haunted. Even when he was in a good mood, Jeremiah’s eyes had always retained that sullen haunted look. And, of course, he had a lot lighter hair than the man who had just left.

“Didn’t look like a developer to me,” Nancy declared. “Looked very much like a rancher.”

“Then you were not very observant,” Lisa countered moving to retrieve the tip. “His boots, hat and shirt were all recently acquired. It’s a ploy to make people trust him while he slips in to develop more land. Obviously, he wants more than just the Nelson Ranch.”

“Maybe he bought new because his old ones wore out.”

“Doubtful. Ranchers don’t tip ten dollars for an eight-dollar meal, either. I need to call mom.”

Sarah Nelson was in her living room and was able to see when the black ford F-450 pulled into her driveway towing a sixteen-foot Haulmark trailer matching in color. She noticed that they were relatively new. Her daughter was right, she thought. This was no rancher. Which meant that he was here to develop the land and erect buildings or homes on it. But that wouldn’t be any of her business. The man got out and glanced around the visible area, taking in the house, stable, and broken-down bunkhouse. As he reached back in the truck, she moved to open the door and go out to greet him. He came back out with his hat and a note pad. Putting his hat on, he withdrew what she could only assume was a writing implement out of his pocket.

“Mr. Turlow?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered matter of factly.

“I’m Sarah Nelson. I was the previous owner?”

“Yes. Mrs. Nelson. Nice to meet you,” he said in a voice that suggested otherwise. “Thank you for staying on and watching over the place the last four months as caretaker. How did you know who I am?”

“My daughter called from the diner. And as far as the caretaking is concerned, that wasn’t a problem, sir. It was quite nice of you to pay me to do so. Can I ask what you intend to do with the land?”

“Ranching, ma’am.”

“Really? I hope you have someone to help you to learn how to do it.”

“Ma’am, I grew up in the business,” he declared defensively. “I do have some other people coming in to help, but I’m the one who knows the ropes.”

“I apologize, sir. I made an assumption from the condition of your apparel and truck. They’re in too good a shape.”

“The truck is new,” he admitted. “And I haven’t had this hat for very long. It was time to replace the old one.”

“Shall I show you around?” enquired Sarah.

“Actually, do you have a place I could freshen up? I’d like to empty out the four colas I had back at the diner.”

Sarh gave a little laugh. “Sure. This way.” She walked towards the house that had been her home for more than twenty years.

John Turlow exited the bathroom after he was finished and noticed the room across from it. The door was open where he could see the things inside it. The bed was made up with a nightstand next to it supporting a small light and an alarm clock. He didn’t even think of what he was doing, but entered and looked around. It was obviously a room that had housed a boy in his teens. The posters on the wall as well as a few models spoke of that.

“This was my son’s room,” Sarah’s voice came from behind him.

“I’m sorry,” he began. “I shouldn’t have intruded.”

A sadness was in her voice when she spoke. “It’s all yours, now anyway. Besides. He hasn’t been here in seven years, so, it doesn’t matter.”

“Again, I am intruding. Please accept my apology.”

Sarah sighed. “You’ll need to know some of it anyway to know about the ranch. Let’s go into the kitchen. Would you like some coffee?”

“I think something cold would be better,” he suggested. “It’s quite warm out today.”

“I have some lemonade made. Or I can make some instant iced tea.”

“The lemonade sounds good. I’ll have some of that, if you don’t mind.”

They made their way to the kitchen and John sat at the table while Sarah got the lemonade from the refrigerator. Once the glasses were filled, she also sat and looked at the man, wondering just how much she should reveal.

“I don’t know if you noticed or if there was anything in the paperwork about it, but the stable is only seven years old.”

“No, ma’am. If there was anything in the paperwork about it, I didn’t see it. Just like I didn’t see anything in there about a bunkhouse that is in complete disrepair. For that matter, I don’t even know if a bunkhouse was mentioned.”

“Yes. That building is just a junk heap,” Sarah agreed. “Anyway, the ranch is from my husband’s family. It was in the family for five, six generations. I don’t remember which anymore. My father-in-law, Mike, was a rancher just as his father was. My son, Jeremiah, was learning the ropes from Mike. Mark, my husband, started off as a rancher, but after we married, he lost interest in it. So, he was not a rancher. Not even close. He was a drunk. His brother, Roy, wasn’t into it either. He started working for the sheriff’s office about half a year before Mark married me. So, with his sons not wanting the ranch, Mike set about making sure that my boy knew how to run it. That way, he could keep it going for the rest of the family. Maybe that was part of the problem, maybe not. Who knows?

“At any rate, Mark was extra hard on my son from the time he was about six on. There were beatings. I didn’t know what to do. But Mike was always able to get Mark to calm down a bit. And the punishments became not so bad. To a lesser degree, Mark was hard on Lisa, too. She wasn’t getting the beatings that Jeremiah was, but her punishments were usually quite severe and included many spankings. That is, until my son found out about it. Then, any time Mark went to punish her, he would step in and take her whippings.

“When Jeremiah was thirteen, Mike died of a heart attack. The beatings got progressively worse, and I wasn’t able to stop them. My Mother-in-law, Sylvia, wasn’t inclined to make him stop. Sometimes, it seemed like she was rooting him on. She died just three months after Mike, and I was left to deal with Mark on my own.

“In the meantime, Jerimiah had taken over the running of the ranch. All the ranch hands called him boss, and deferred to his decisions. Mark just kept drinking more and more. When he was drunk, if he wanted to punish one of the kids, the beatings were much more severe. And Jeremiah was taking them all.

“Then there was the fire. Jeremiah was sixteen, Lisa fourteen. And of course, my husband blamed my son for it.”

“Your son was responsible for the fire?” John inquired.

“No, sir!” Sarah replied with a bit of anger. “Jeremiah was into ranching and wanted to keep the place going. He wouldn’t have set that fire for anything.”

“It was Arson?”

“Yes. The day of the fire, Jeremiah was at a friend’s house from the time school let out until about eight-thirty that night. He and Richard, that was his friend, were working on some kind of project for their history class, and they always did the work there instead of here because Mark would have busted the thing up. Mark and I took Lisa to her friend, Nancy’s house when we left here about five-o-clock on our way out. Roy was running for sheriff and he was having a fundraiser for the campaign at the country club.

“It was just after nine that we got the call from the fire department that our stable was on fire. When we got here, we found Lisa and Jeremiah in the driveway by a cart that we had. Jeremiah was covered in soot, and Mark started accusing him of setting the fire. He tried to explain that he was sooty because he rushed in to save the horses and pull out a lot of the gear on the cart, but Mark wouldn’t believe him.”

“Did you?”

“Of course. I knew my son would never do anything to harm the ranch.”

“Are you still certain now that he didn’t have a hand in it?’

“Yes. There was an investigation, of course, and it was found that the fire was deliberately set. They questioned my son, trying to tie him into the crime, but they couldn’t. They checked his story diligently and found that he left the Bailey household where he was working with his friend at about eight-thirty for the first time that day. The Wright’s explained that he arrived at their place just ten minutes later to pick up Lisa. The cops almost gave him a speeding ticket for that, but it proved he wasn’t here at the time of the fire. When he and Lisa got here, the building was already ablaze. He told her to call nine-one-one and rushed in to save the animals and place as much of the gear as he could on the cart which he pulled out. He saved all our saddles, four of the seven bridles we had, and even a couple of bags of oats before he had to leave.

“I don’t know all the details of the investigation, but I do know that it was arson. And I know my son was innocent. But Mark wouldn’t believe him, and he sent him away to some military school somewhere. Mark had the stable you see today built, but he still wasn’t doing anything about running the ranch. Our foreman, Lamar Westfall tried, but without Mark’s support he couldn’t do much. A year later, he moved on and the ranch fell into disuse. If my son had been here, it wouldn’t have failed.”

“You can’t write to him to come back?”

“Mark never told me where he was. I wasn’t here when he was sent away, and was never given an address. Even if I had that, I’m sure he’s left that school. I have no idea where he might have gone after that. I don’t even know if he’s alive or not.”

John had a clear picture of what happened from her volunteered information, but he knew that there was something that she was hiding. He wondered what it was. Should he dig for it? She might not like that, but he felt that it might be necessary.

“You said that the fact that your father-in-law’s teaching of your son may have contributed to the problem. What problem?”

“The problem that Mark had with him.”

“What else was a factor? You kept saying ‘my son,’ quote, unquote. Why not our son?”

“I don’t know. I just did,” she answered nervously.

“There is something else there, Mrs. Nelson. Why didn’t you refer to him as our son? What was it that your husband didn’t like?”

“What difference does it make?”

“What’s the reason, Mrs. Nelson?”

“Because he wasn’t his, God damn it!” As soon as she said those words, she put her hands over her face. “Father, forgive me,” she prayed as she lowered her hands, tears in her eyes.

John calmed down. That was what she hadn’t wanted him to know. Her story began to make more sense with that bit of information. “Who was the father?”

She turned to John Turlow then and looked at him. Who was this man that could wring things out of her that she wished to remain hidden? But it didn’t matter now. He knew. She might as well tell him the rest of it. “I was raped,” she began. “I was babysitting for Britney Evans at the time. She and Sean were a young couple, just a couple of years older than Mark and I, and she had gotten pregnant while she was still in high school. I was only seventeen, Mark was nineteen. We had already planned to marry in a few years, but were not anywhere close to when we wanted to do that.

“Sean wasn’t home when I got there, and Britney seemed to be in a hurry to leave. She gave me the information that I needed to know about watching their son, Julien, and left. Sean came home an hour later and that’s when it happened. He did time for the rape, but it all led to bad feelings between the families. We stay out of each other’s way, but that’s about all we can do. Mark just decided to step up the timetable for our wedding, and we were married six months before Jeremiah was born. I think Mark resented him for not being his, and he could only handle it by drinking and punishing him every chance he could. Sean has been out of prison for about eight years now, released on parole, but no one has seen him since then. At least, not around here.” She paused a bit before continuing. “Now, you know. Please don’t ask for more. And would you please not tell Lisa about this? She doesn’t need to know that her brother is really her half-brother.”

He thought about it for a bit before answering. “Alright,” he finally replied. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. Mark wasn’t very nice a lot of the time, and at the end of it, he spent more time at the bar than with me, but I still loved him.”

“Actually, I meant for your son.”

“I don’t know that he’s dead.”

“He may well be alive, but it seems to me if he hasn’t made any contact in seven years, it is unlikely that he will ever do so. You obviously love him, so I’m sorry for your loss.”

“You’re right. I didn’t think of that as a loss. Thank you for your condolences.” She paused for a bit and bowed her head. “Maybe we should take a look at the rest of the ranch,” she suggested.

“Well, maybe just the buildings that are close by for now,” he smiled.

A laugh escaped her and they rose to their feet. “The house has seven bedrooms,” she began. “Three of them have en suite bathrooms. There is also a large study, a kitchen, of course, dining room, living room, great room, pantry, utility room, which also doubles as a laundry room, and an attached garage. The stable has room for twelve horses, although there are only four there right now.”

“Let’s start with the stable,” John requested. I don’t need to see the house at the moment.”

“Okay.” They made their way outside to the other building on the property that was in good shape. “There are two parts to the upper level. The lower level is where the stalls are, and half the top is storage. The other half, a small apartment. My husband would use it quite often when he came home from the bar so that he wouldn’t wake me up.” She opened the sliding door and they walked into the dimness of the stable.

“Here are the horses,’ she continued. “I’m sure you remember that they are part of the sale. This one is Betty.” She patted the horse in the closest stall. “Mark called her that because of the blonde coat. This one is Archie.” She moved to the next one with a dark reddish coat. “He liked the idea of Archie and Betty in the comics being together. He said that Reggie and Veronica belonged together and Archie should be with Betty, so he thought it great fun that we had a red horse and a blonde horse with those names. Archie was his mount while I rode Betty. They were acquired before the event.” She moved to the next. “This is Demon. Don’t let the name fool you. She’s as gentle as a babe in its mother’s arms. The name comes from her black coat and red eyes. Lisa has been riding him for years.” She moved to the last stall which held a speckled paint, but didn’t go too close to it. “This is Charger. He was my son’s horse. I wouldn’t get to close to him. He’s never hurt anyone, but he isn’t exactly on good terms with anyone. Jeremiah was the only one he would let ride him. Anyone else would find him laying down as soon as they mounted and then he would slowly role over on his side and wait for them to get off of him.”

John walked up to the stall. “We’ll have to get to know each other,” he declared. “Come on, boy. Let’s you and me have a little talk, shall we?”

The horse looked at him and gave a whinny as he moved forward. John pet his neck as the horse nuzzled his shoulder. “That’s it,” he spoke softly. “Do you have some sugar cubes, Mrs. Nelson?”

“I’m afraid I don’t. Jeremiah always caried some with him to give to him, but I don’t have any on hand.”

“Oh well. I’ll just have to give you a double portion the next time, huh.” The horse nickered and nodded his head up and down.

Sarah gasped. “He’s never acted like that before.”

John shrugged. “I’ve always had a way with horses. We’ll get along just fine, once he gets to know me a little better.”

“Storage up there,” she pointed to the area above where a ladder rose to the second floor. “That apartment I was telling you about is in the closed off part. Speaking of living space, it will be a chore to get everything out of the house in quick order. I hope you won’t expect us to move everything today. We can stay at my brother-in-law Roy’s place as long as we need, but he doesn’t have room for all our furniture.”

He thought for a few seconds before finally making a decision. This was something he hadn’t planned on, but after hearing her story, he felt right to change his original plans. “Do you have a job, Mrs. Nelson?” he asked.

“No. I figured on having to get something when you decided to take over the ranch, but I thought I would have more notification.”

“I would like you to consider a posting as cook and housekeeper. It is a live-in position, that includes housing for both you and your daughter. You would not have to worry about moving your furniture or anything. As you said, there is an apartment on the top level of this place. I’ll put my stuff up there, for now. You and your daughter can stay in the main house.”

“You mean working for you?”

“Yes. I do not need the room that you have in the house. I will be fine in the place above the stable here. That leaves you free to take care of the house in any way you would like. However, I should warn you that the job will require cooking for more than just me and a few others. It may include cooking for a large group of people as I hire more hands.”

“As long as the food bill is paid by you, I have no problem cooking for that many. I’ll take it.”

“Good. There is a lot of work to be done first, but I hope to have the place beginning to work by next year. As early as it is in the year, the month of April is just too late to hope to get everything done in time to do much this year. If you will excuse me, a had better get settled in and plan things out.”

The two parted, and John moved his truck so the trailer was next to the stairs that led to the apartment on the side of the stables. He quickly took inventory of the contents after opening it, grabbed the duffle bag that held his clothes, then locked it again and walked up the steps.

He was putting away clothing when Sarah entered the open door. She announced herself, laid a set of linens on the bed and told him she would serve dinner at five-thirty. Once she was gone, he hurriedly finished putting things away then sat on the bed as he looked around. Something didn’t seem quite right. Another trip to the trailer found him lugging his tool box back up the stairs. He pulled the tape measure from the box and set about measuring the inside of the room. Then he went to the lower part of the stables and measured again. He finished up measuring the storage side of the upper level and then added and subtracted numbers to discover if he was right.

There were five feet missing along a wall between the storage area and the apartment. He wondered what that was about and began searching for a way to enter the space. It was almost time for dinner when he finally found a secret lever that opened a door in the wall behind the bookcase in the apartment. He grinned to himself then closed everything up. There would be time to search the area later in the evening when he had more time.

Dinner did not go smoothly. Lisa still did not trust him to be what he said he was. Even more leery was her uncle, Sarah’s brother-in-law, Roy Nelson. The sheriff was not happy about the two of them staying in the house with him so close by. John assured him that he wouldn’t bother them. He suggested that they not give him the keys to the house. Which brought out the fact that no keys had been given to him and they had to find the key to the apartment for him. Roy still wasn’t happy, but he relented, although he ended up spending the night in one of the spare bedrooms.

Once he was back in the apartment, John made sure that he was alone and the door locked. He pulled his phone from his pocket and hit three buttons with a swipe of the screen after the first. The other end was picked up after the second ring.

“Hey, Sarge. How’s it going?” said a respondent.

“Jake,” John said. “You can’t call me Sarge. It has to be boss, remember?”

“Sorry, boss. I was sure you wouldn’t call without being secure.”

“I’m on a cell phone. How secure do you think they can be?”

“Point taken,” Jake agreed. “Are you at least alone?”

“Of course. Now. Update me.”

“Johnson called in a few hours ago. He got into the town yesterday.”

“Was he approached?”

“Not by the target. He did have a bit of a run-in with one of the local preachers. It wasn’t bad, but he did his best to put forth an impression that he was uninterested and that he wasn’t exactly a nice guy. I suppose the bike would’ve helped with that.”

“I suppose he went in wearing stuff that made him look like he was some sort of gang member.”

“Yeah,” Jake laughed. “Anyway, he went through the town and he found the warehouse. The people of Mt. Ayr gave him a pretty wide berth except for that preacher who caught up to him when he was setting up camp for the night in an out of the way place. Somebody had to be watching for him to know that he was there. Anyway, he figures that his best way in is to find the bar that the kid Julien goes to, a place called Desperado.”

“Good. Are all the others ready to go?”

“Just say the word and we’ll be there.”

“I want you here on Monday. The rest can hold off ’til closer to the end of the week. No bunkhouse here, so we’ll need trailers.”

“No problem, boss. We’ll rent a few nice ones for this.”

“One more thing, Jake. I decided not to kick the family off the property as I originally thought I would. I’m staying in an apartment over the new stable that was built seven years ago. We’ll have to be careful not to reveal too much when they are around. Also, I want an extended background check on everyone. Go back twenty-five years. That includes Sean Evens, his wife Britney, their son, Julien, Sarah Nelson, Mark Nelson, Roy Nelson, Lisa Nelson, Jeremiah Nelson, Lamar Westfall, and anyone else associated with them. Got it?”

“Got it. Anything else?” Jake asked.

“Yes. I want all the police reports on the fire that took place seven years ago including investigative notes. Be careful about all of this. Roy Nelson is the Sherriff here.”

“Understood, Boss. Maybe we should use a federal connection to get all that?”

“Probably a good idea. I don’t want any of the team to be recognized as other than anything that they are supposed to be. Captain Summerfield ought to be able to help out on that.”

“Sure thing. Okay, Boss. See you in two days.” The two hung up and John moved to investigate the hidden room.

He was surprised by what he found. He understood from all he had heard today that people didn’t know how Mark Nelson was able to keep all the bills paid. But now, John knew. The room was filled with recording equipment and hundreds of DVDs of recordings. The videos were labeled with names, some of them political office holders. When he plugged one in to the player, it became quite obvious how Mark had kept himself and his family in the black. He was blackmailing people. Usually, it involved sex. He found a ledger as well and found that sometimes he had been being paid not only by one person involved, but the other as well. He checked a few more of the videos and found that some of them had actually been made in that very apartment.

He was angry about what he had found, but it also solved a problem. The room could be used to safely secure the weapons and other equipment that he still had in the trailer. He would move everything during the night. He set his alarm for three A.M. and turned out the light to get some sleep.

Although he had taken almost an hour during the middle of the night to move the equipment inside to the hidden room, John was still up by six-clock the next morning. After a quick shower and taking care of the rest of his morning routine, he dressed in jeans and another work shirt. It was white, but still quite ruggedly made. He pulled his boots on over tube socks then made his way out the door and down to the front of the stable. The horses turned their heads at the sound of the door opening, but he made his way to the furthest stall. “Morning, Charger. How are you this morning,” he asked.

The horse nuzzled around his hands then raised his head almost as if in question.

“I haven’t been to the store yet so I don’t have any sugar cubes for you. I’ll get them later today. I promise.” The horse huffed and backed away from him. He gave a short laugh and grabbed some oats from the oat bin to dump in his feeding bag. He made sure that his water was full, then tried to get him to come back forward to pet him. The horse just huffed more and lowered his head as he stood at the back of the stall as far from him as he could get.

“Mom was talking about how you seemed to have a way with him,” a voice said behind him. “Seems like she may have been exaggerating.”

“He’s just peeved that I don’t have any sugar cubes for him yet,” he said as he turned his head toward Lisa. “I’ll make friends with him before too long.”

“We’ll see,” she exclaimed doubtfully. She still was uncertain of his claim that he had grown up on a ranch and wasn’t a developer. “Mom sent me to tell you that breakfast is ready. I saw you enter the stable so we knew you were up.”

“Alright. Let’s finish feeding the horses, then we’ll go in.” He moved to take care of Archie while she took care of Demon, then they collaborated on Betty.

“Good morning, Mr. Turlow,” Sarah Greeted as they entered the kitchen.

“Good morning, ma’am.”

“The horses are fed and watered, Mom.”

“That’s great, sweety.”

“They’ll enjoy a good rub down later,” John entertained as he washed his hands at the sink. “I also need to get into town and get some sugar cubes.”

“We could do that on the way back after church,” she suggested. “Would you like to come with us?”

“Thank you, ma’am. I would appreciate that.”

Roy dropped the newspaper, “The Mt. Ayr Record News,” that he had been reading a fraction and looked at him. “Somehow, I doubt that,” he said. “I better get going back to my place so that I can change, Sarah.” He gave her a small kiss on the cheek then hugged Lisa tightly kissing her on the top of her head before leaving. “I’m watching you, Mr. Turlow. You just remember that.” The look in Sarah’s eyes during his kiss did not escape John’s notice. Nor did the outpouring of feelings the man had for both the mother and her daughter.

“Will scrambled eggs do?” Sarah wondered. “I didn’t think to ask how you like your eggs.”

“Scrambled’s fine, Mrs. Nelson. After church, I’ll treat you all to dinner, if you know a nice place to go. Then when we get back, I’ll give the horses a good brushing.

Mark 10:25. That was the passage used in the church service that morning. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” The preacher told of the addition of two people within their town recently. The would be perceived quite differently from one another. The first rode in on a Harley Davidson motorcycle, wearing clothes that made it quite clear that he was most likely a drifter and having no visible support structure. The other came in with an expensive vehicle and pulling an expensive trailer. It spoke of the money he had. On first notice, most would consider the second to be a good person and be trustworthy, while the first would most often be rejected. But his opinion was that the first was more likely to be trusted then the second. However, he suggested that, at that moment in time he didn’t trust either of them very far as he had talked with the biker and found he wasn’t any more than what he seemed, and he had heard that the richer man was a developer and here to destroy the land and plant houses and roads for a new community of like-minded individuals.

The preacher was at the door as the Nelson family and John exited the building. Sarah Nelson lit into him with a vengeance. “You self-righteous pig!” she began. “Who made you judge over the people? Jesus may have said ‘it is easier for the camel to go through the eye of the needle than for the rich man to enter the kingdom of God,’ but he didn’t say that it was impossible. And I’m surprised at you listening to rumor without verifying anything. Have you not also read where Jesus said ‘judge not lest you be judged?’ I would never have thought I’d see the day when I was ashamed that I brought someone to the service with me.”

“Sarah, it’s your land that he’s going to be developing,” he defended. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“If that was what he chose to do with it, that would be his right as it now belongs to him. But just to let you know, I’ve got a job as a cook for the new ranch hands that he will be bringing in to work the ranch as well as his housekeeper. I don’t even have to move out of the house.”

“Please tell me you didn’t sleep in the same house as the man,” he insisted. “I’m not sure such a thing would be safe.”

“Roy spent the night in one of the guest bedrooms, but it wasn’t necessary. Mr. Turlow stayed in the apartment above the stable.”

It was then that Roy Nelson came through with a man in tow. “Reverend Thompson, let me introduce you to John Turlow. He’s the man you just bad mouthed from the pulpit. Now, I don’t know if I trust him any more than the next man yet, but I don’t think it was a good idea to lambast him like that. That kind of thing is why I don’t come here that often. I think you take to many verses out of context.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be coming back,” Sarah agreed.

“I know I won’t,” Lisa finally spoke.

The preacher was dismayed. He had been trying to show support for the Nelsons, and instead he had ended up ostracizing them. “I’m sorry,” he bemoaned. “It wasn’t my intention to bring you pain.”

“That may be,” Sarah replied before she walked off.

The preacher looked at the people that had been milling around and realized that they all had heard what was being said. He wasn’t sure if he could salvage this situation.

“My name is John Turlow,” John spoke to the crowd. “I’m not a developer, I’m a rancher. I grew up on a ranch, and now I own one. And my intentions are to run that ranch to the best of my ability as a ranch. I hope that puts you all at ease about the situation. If not, we’ll all have to deal with it as needed.” He walked away with the Nelson family.

They went to the All Season’s Cafe for dinner then the G and I Feed and Grain to get the sugar cubes before heading back to the ranch. Once there, John broke off from the rest of the group and made his way to his own apartment to grab his over boots. Then he went into the stable with the bag of cubes. He gave Charger a few before leading him out of the stall to another one. He was in the process of mucking out the stall when Lisa came in.

“You’re mucking out his stall?” she asked.

“They need it,” he answered.

She left quickly. Maybe he did know what he was doing. He had his own muck boots.

John woke again at six-o-clock on Monday. He went through his morning ablutions before heading to the stable with more sugar cubes. He had spent the afternoon mucking out the stables, brushing down the horses, and giving Charger more sugar cubes. He wanted to be sure that he and the horse would be on good terms. Charger met him with a flick of his head and accepted the treat easily. He gave him another brushing before deciding to have breakfast.

He knocked on the door and it wasn’t long before it was opened. The morning went about the same as the day before, Roy having once again spent the night in one of the spare bedrooms not trusting John to remain a gentleman. Lisa, on the other hand, had begun to trust him to be what he said he was, and not have some ulterior motive. It was a quiet breakfast with scrambled eggs again being the main dish.

After that, he returned to his apartment and took a shower. He wanted to present a clean, professional appearance for his next task. He made sure his boots were clean as well as they could be, and put on a nice shirt with his usual jeans and western hat. There was plenty that he needed to get done yet, and he hadn’t explored much of the town. Before leaving, he let Sarah know that he was going to be gone and would be back in the afternoon

It was after two-thirty when he returned to the ranch. He noticed that another truck was there with a Coachman trailer behind it. The truck was a dark red Dodge Ram 2500 Power Wagon. John looked for its driver, but saw no sign of him. He looked at the trailer and wondered how much it cost. As he was studying the thing, the front door opened and a black man walked out of it.

“Hey, boss,” the man said. “How’s it going?”

“I guess you didn’t have any trouble finding the place, Jake.”

“Yeah. Mrs. Nelson was nice enough to allow me in to have some of her lemonade. That’s some really good stuff.”

“Yes, it is. Did you get the stuff I wanted?”

“Not all of it, yet. It will take a while to get all of the data. Twenty-five years is a long time to check on. But I do have the file on the fire.”

“We’ll talk about it all later. What about the trailers? You’re not putting everyone in the same trailer, are you?”

“Of course not. This one is the Coachman Catalina Legacy 323. It sleeps nine. We’ll put the men in this one. We’ve got another one, a 303, that Huey will be bringing in at the end of the week that the women will be in. That one sleeps five.”

“That ought to work,” John agreed. “Grab that data and let’s go to my room.”

Jake opened the door of his vehicle and grabbed a briefcase. “You said you’re taking quarters above the stable,” he said as he closed the door. “Quite sensible considering we need a place to talk privately on a regular basis.”

“It also provided the family a measure of security since trust would be an issue,” John added as they climbed the stairs. Once inside, they would discuss what had been found in the report on the fire. Jake took the report from his briefcase and handed it to him. He took a few minutes to read through the file then turned to the investigator’s notes. Reading everything took nearly an hour, but once he was done, he had a pretty clear picture of what went on that night, at least from the different witness’s stories.

For the most part, everything was as Sarrah Nelson had reported. Jeremiah Nelson had gone straight from the school to Richard Bailey’s house to work on the school project. Mrs. Evalynn Bailey confirmed that he did not leave there until around eight-thirty when he left to pick up his sister at the Wright’s house. They reported his arrival time to be eight-forty. The distance between the two was eight miles, leading the local law enforcement officers to consider giving him a ticket for speeding. At the same time, it clearly exonerated him from suspicion of the crime. Lamar Westfall was the witness to verify the time of the rest of the Nelson family leaving the ranch, with several giving evidence of their arrival after dropping Lisa off at the Wright household. What Sarah Nelson hadn’t told him was that there was a body found in the fire. John wondered if she wasn’t told and therefore didn’t know, or was she hiding the fact that the man who raped her had been killed by a 5.56 MM slug and his body set on fire in the Nelson stable. She and her husband had been cleared of the arson charges, but they could have been the ones to kill the man and have someone else set the stable afire.

If they had killed him, then they would have had to have been working with people that he had good evidence of there being completely hostile feelings between. That didn’t make sense. It was possible that she didn’t want to muddy the waters of their relationship by divulging the information, but then again, he hadn’t offered her the job yet. It was possible that Mark was working with them and not letting her know, but then he wouldn’t have had the time to take care of his blackmailing operation. There seemed to be many questions and very few answers. All of them would have to wait. Things had to be done to keep everything looking as if it was on the up and up.

John helped Jake move the trailer in place on the side of the drive area before the two of them entering the house for dinner. “Mrs. Nelson,” he began.

“You should probably call me Sarah,” she interrupted.

“Very well. Sarah, tomorrow I need you to go into town. You will need to go to the bank where you will sign a signature card. You will have access to two accounts dealing with the ranch. The first is the household account. You will use this account to buy groceries and other supplies needed for the house and the apartment. The other is the main ranch account. I don’t have an accountant to run the books, so for now, I would like you to take on that responsibility.”

‘Alright. I can do that.”

“I think that will help your brother-in-law know that he can trust me. Also, I will be away from the buildings for the next few days. I’m going to ride the line and check on the fencing. It will give me an idea of how much needs to be done. Jake will be here to take care of anything you need him to.”

The next morning, John prepared to leave on horseback. He didn’t think anything about what he was doing, but saddled Charger. When he realized it, he wondered if the horse would accept him as his rider. He led him out of the stable and with everything he needed tied down to the horse, mounted the beast. There was no bucking off, no laying down. Charger stood waiting for the order of which way to go. He began walking the animal towards the road and then along the fence line to note where there might be breaks in the fence.

He wasn’t moving very fast. He didn’t have a need to. So, it wasn’t a surprise that Lisa could catch up to him. It was a surprise that she would want to.

She found him just before noon sitting in an area where there was a small break in the fence. Someone may have climbed over it or it could have been just a spot where it broke down naturally. Either way, it would have to be fixed to make the ranch workable again. He had just written down the details of its location and the calculated materials needed for it when he heard the hoof beats of her horse. He instinctively reached for the Sig Sauer P226 at his hip as he looked around. Although still some ways off, he had no trouble ascertaining her identity. He relaxed a little and let her approach.

“It seems you really do have a way with horses, Mr. Turlow,” she said as she came to a halt. “I never would have thought you could get Charger to let you ride him.”

“We’re on good enough terms. What are you doing out here?”

“You’ll need a guide. You aren’t familiar with the property.”

“No. but I do know how to read a map,” he returned.

“Perhaps. But it is still good to have someone with you who knows the area. I have lived here all my life.”

“Yes. You made that pretty clear to the realtor Saturday.,” he interrupted. “Someone named Nancy?”

“Nancy Bailey.” Lisa smiled slightly at his retort. That surprised John. Nancy Wright had been Lisa’s friend. Had she married someone in the Bailey household? Perhaps Jeremiah’s friend Richard? He quietly chastised himself for failing to take notice of the name before. “Anyway, I know the land, sir. You will need me on this little venture you’re undertaking.”

“I wish you wouldn’t have put it that way.”

“What way?”

“Undertaking,” he answered. “I’m not too fond of using that word for such a task. There’s lots of things that can get a person killed out here,” he said thinking not only of the Timberlake Rattlesnake he had in one of his saddlebags that he had killed earlier that day.

“All the more reason to have me along. I’m not going away, Mr. Turlow. You may as well accept that fact.”

“I’m surprised the sheriff let you come out to do this. I didn’t think he trusted me.”

“He didn’t. And he doesn’t.”

“But you do?”

“I don’t know if I trust you completely yet, but I am sure that you are who you say you are.”

“Why’s that?”

“You mucked out the stalls on Sunday. Most people would have let it go until the next day. You always take care of the animals before you take care of yourself. I mean you made sure that they were fed and had water before eating breakfast. That says rancher.”

After a little thought, he decided to give in. “Miss Nelson, if you do this, you will follow my orders, got that?”

“As long as you understand I’m not some submissive little pet for you to play with.”

“Believe me. I wouldn’t dream of doing anything like that with you. Did you bring stuff for yourself to eat or do I have to share?”

“I thought we would survive on what’s out here to eat.”

He gave a short chuckle and continued his way forward along the fence.

A half hour later, he found another small break in the fence. He dismounted, plotted the location on a map, measured, looked for the fence post, determined the materials needed and recorded everything in a notebook. Then, he opened one of his saddle bags. “Hungry?” he asked as he reached inside.

“Haven’t found anything to eat yet,” she answered.

He pulled two MRE’s from his bag and threw one to her. “Not always something around. That’s why you need to be prepared.”

Lisa had never seen such a thing before, but found it easy to figure out. “Interesting.”

“I take it you have not eaten an MRE before?”

“No”

“I imagine you won’t have any trouble. Some of them have items that you can reconstitute with water, but you don’t necessarily have to. And you’ll find a packet that you can add water to that will cause the water to heat up, thus providing a way to heat up things in the meal.” He looked at what he had. Tuna and noodles. It was not a bad choice. “Some of them are better than others. What one did you get?”

“Ham.”

“That one’s not too bad. At least it’s not the corned beef hash.”

The rest of the day went by normally. There were three more places John found with small broken-down fences, and when he finally called for a stop for the night and set up camp, he was grateful that Lisa had remembered a sleeping bag at least. They would have to share the pup tent he brought though. Once the tent was up, he grabbed a green case from his pack. It was shaped like a rectangle except at the bottom which came to a point. From it, he withdrew a small folded shovel and after unfolding it set about digging down about half a foot in a circle for a fire pit. There wasn’t much to use for firewood, but they found enough.

Once the fire was going, he pulled the snake he had killed earlier from his pack and began to skin it. Lisa saw what he was doing and got a grill rack out of her own pack to lay the snake on to cook it. He let her do that while he dug a trench around the tent to direct water away from it if it happened to rain. It was a quiet night from that time on, as he avoided answering questions and asked none of his own. There were things he wanted to know. Things that he thought he would need to know. But those would have to wait.

It was midday the next day when they came along a large break in the fence. John dismounted as soon as they got near.

“What the heck?” Lisa questioned. “This looks as if a truck has gone through here. John, has someone been driving across our land?”

He didn’t answer as he pulled things from his pack. He looked in the distance and found a communication tower. Opening his notebook, he looked at the map that was inside. He picked two more things that he recognized on the map and held a compass in his hand against his belly as he faced each thing, then wrote down a number after each time. He drew lines on the map from each of those and marked where they crossed. Then he faced along the path that looked like someone had driven through and wrote that number down. He marked another line across the map straight across what he knew would be his property and looked where it ended up. What he had suspected was true. The path would have led straight to the warehouse property that was situated next to the ranch. The one owned and operated by Britney Evans and her son Julien.

“What did you just do?” Lisa asked.

“Tell me something, Lisa. Do you know anything about how your father kept ahold of this ranch after your brother was sent away?”

“Mom told you about that?”

He just looked at her not saying anything.

“Well, no. I never even thought about it. Until mom had to sell it, I really didn’t care how the bills were paid. I was just trying to make it where I could survive on my own.”

“Why were you so mad at Nancy if you were planning on leaving anyway? She used to be your friend, didn’t she?”

“Yes, she was my friend. But that was before she sold you the ranch. I always thought I would still be able to come back here to see mom. It was my home even though poppa made it miserable at times.”

“Do you get along well with the Evans family?”

“I don’t go anywhere near them. Mom told me to stay away from them when I was first starting school and she made sure that I knew to stay away ever since. Mrs. Evans comes into the diner once in a while, but that’s as much interaction I have with them. Why?”

John thought for I bit before deciding to answer. “This path that cuts across the property goes straight towards the warehouse the Evans’ operate. I wonder if your father knew about it and was helping them move something through here.”

“Not poppa,” she declared emphatically. “He hated them for some reason, so he would never have done any business with them.”

He let it go. It was probable that she was right. There would have been a lot of bad blood between the two families. After all, one of the Evans’ had raped one of the Nelson’s, although she wasn’t yet a Nelson at the time, and then that Nelson had seen to it that he went to jail. He reminded himself that Lisa didn’t know that part of the story.

They continued on then set up camp again when it was time to stop. John was plagued by the questions that he didn’t have answers to and when it was time to bed down, his sleep was not restful.

The two men were running. They could hear the small arms fire behind them and even caught the whizz of passing bullets once in a while. It seemed that the enemy was determined to not let them reach the bunker where they had left their other gear. But it was only a few meters ahead and they both sprinted for it, pouring on more speed to reach the window in the small building. The dark-haired man got there first and dove through the window followed immediately by the blonde, though with their helmets on no one could see their hair color.

“Henderson! two forty!” said the first.

“On it, Sarge,” the other answered as his partner began shooting out the window.

He was careful of their ammo and refrained from using fully automatic on the M16A3 that he was firing. His rounds left the barrel one at a time and each found a target in the advancing troops. After a couple of minutes during which Henderson was retrieving the weapon, he heard the clank of the cover being lowered in place over the belt of 7.62 mm rounds loaded in the M240 machine gun then the scrapping click as the charging handle was pulled back and then locked into place. He lowered himself from the window as the weapon began to spew forth rounds and grabbed the mic for the radio.

He forced himself to calm down before keying the mic. “Stingray zero six this Turlow one niner, fire for effect, over.” He took up aim again and fired a couple more rounds as he listened to the response, then grabbed up the mic again. He added a description (troops in the open) and the grid coordinates of the target to the person on the other end. When they answered again, he added “Danger close,” to the message, then went back to firing at the enemy.

He heard Henderson grunt for a second then the machinegun continued firing. Within five minutes, the battle field outside the small building became a field of explosions as artillery rounds landed. The two in the bunker threw themselves to the ground below the window as the whistle of the incoming rounds was heard, praying that the rounds would land where they needed them and not on the building itself.

When the Sargent looked back out, the area was riddled with bodies, but a small group was running away in the distance. Those would live to see another day. He then looked at the other man and gasped. “Alex, you’re hit!” he exclaimed.

“I know, Sarge. I can feel it.” He was still laying on the floor and the blood was pouring from his wound.

The Sargent grabbed the pressure bandage from what the Army laughably called a first aid kit and tried to wrap it around his body, desperate to keep the blood inside the body. “Don’t you die on me, man. I need you here.”

“Can’t help you there, Sarge,” Henderson replied. “But I can give you the information you really want.”

“What?”

“Everyone knows that you are CID, Sarge. Most don’t know what’s going on or why you’re here. I do. The man you want is Sargent Phillips. He has a contact in the states for the guns. You chase him down for me, will you? Some of those weapons that were being used by those insurgents were ours.” The man groaned and closed his eyes.

“Alex?” pleaded the Sargent. “Alex!”

“Alex! Alex!!”

The scream woke Lisa and she sat up quickly. “John?” she queried. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

His head turned in her direction, but it was obvious that he wasn’t really seeing her. His eyes were just slightly glazed over.

“Sis? What are you doing here? You have to leave. Afghanistan is too volatile right now. You must leave.” His eyes closed again and he laid his head back down, once more fully asleep.

The incident left Lisa with many questions. Who was Alex? What had happened to him? And Afghanistan? That would explain some of what she had seen in the past couple of days. He was too good with setting up a temporary campsite. But his eyes were what really threw her for a loop. She knew those eyes. She knew the haunted look of them. She had grown up seeing that look all her life. She knew those eyes very well. If her suspicions were correct, that, too, would explain some things. But it left a lot more questions than they answered. She didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

John woke at six o’ clock as usual. Once they had eaten and had the camp broke down, they started out again along the fence line. Lisa wanted to ask, but couldn’t. She wanted to know who Alex was. She had concluded that he had been either badly wounded or killed in Afghanistan. Or perhaps she. Alex could be short for Alexandria. While women were not assigned jobs in combat arms, that didn’t mean that they didn’t get into combat. She could remember reading about a female helicopter pilot flying a med evac chopper that was shot down just after picking up the man she was supposed to fly to safety. She’d had to fight her way back to friendly territory while dragging the patient with her. Fortunately, they both survived.

“Your mother said that your father was rather strict in his punishment of your brother,” John started. “Did he try to use such tactics on you as well?”

“Only twice after y-, um, Jeremiah left,” she answered. The first time, I could barely move the next day. Uncle Roy told him he should remember that it was considered child abuse to treat me so harshly and he could go to jail. The second time, Uncle Roy was there and he stopped him. He told him if he ever tried to hit me again, he wouldn’t have to worry about jailtime because he would be dead. After that, he never touched me again and even avoided me. Uncle Roy was over a lot after that. I think that may have contributed to his divorce.”

“The sheriff was married?”

“Yeah. Aunt Marie ran off about a year after the fire. I think she hooked up with someone in Des Moines.”

“So, how do you know it was a factor in the divorce?”

“It seemed that way. Aunt Marie complained that he was never home, and she said something about him dealing with another family. We are the only family in the area that he was dealing with on a daily basis.”

John was quiet for quite a while after she said that, turning facts over in his head. Why had Roy Nelson bothered to get so protective with her when he had not done so with Jeremiah? It was a question that he didn’t have an immediate answer for. But he made a mental note to send someone to talk to this Marie as soon as possible to find out what she might know that could help him figure out what was going on.

It was another day of riding along the fence and finding breaks that needed to be fixed. John calculated that there was only one night left that they would have to be out and he was very happy about that. When they got back, he would be able to find out what had been going on. He wished he had his cell phone, but had left it in the apartment since he had no way of recharging it out here in the field. Then he thought that even if he had had it, he couldn’t have used it with Lisa being right there to listen in.

John moved his horse behind a small grove of trees with Lisa following. Furtively, he looked toward the area where the fence was torn down. A space wide enough to drive through and signs of a path told him that this was probably the other end of the path that they had found days earlier.

What he didn’t understand was why nobody was around to watch the opening. At the other end, it was obvious that no one would sit around it when it opened out onto the road, but here, it crossed from the ranch property to the next property: the Evans’ warehouse complex. He withdrew a small set of binoculars and searched the trees on the other side for any sign of a place to hide and watch the opening. He looked for camaras that might be monitoring the area, watching for anyone that might come across their operations path. He could see nothing that told him of anyone or anything watching.

“Stay here,” he told Lisa before dismounting and slowly walking out of the trees toward the break. He had grabbed his Browning BL-22 rifle as he left and hoped he wouldn’t be using it at that moment. Nothing stirred. He quickly took measurements, calculating the spot on the map and the direction of the path. His calculations confirmed what he already knew: this was where that path came out that they had found earlier in the week. Once he had the measurements of the break, he darted back behind the cover of the trees and remounted Charger. He took a last look before moving off towards the homestead that was still some hours ride away.

If Jeremiah had been there at the ranch instead of being sent away, would that break have been there? He thought not. If the old foreman had been allowed to make a go of the ranch, he thought it probably wouldn’t have been there. But they were both gone.

“Your mother said there was a foreman for the ranch, some guy named Westfield?”

“Westfall,” Lisa corrected automatically. “Lamar Westfall.”

“Is he still around the area?”

“Sure. He works for the Evans’ in their warehouse.”

That was a surprise. If the Nelson’s were on as hostile terms as was indicated, why would their foreman go there after leaving the ranch? More questions without any answers, he complained inwardly.

It was after four-o’ clock when the two rode into the homestead area. Lisa was surprised by what she saw. When they had left, they only thing there were her vehicle, an old Dodge Dart that had been bought when she was seventeen, her mother’s Dodge Durango, John and Jake’s trucks, the Haulmark trailer and the Coachman 323. Now, the yard seemed full of vehicles. There was a second coachman, the 303 that Jake had told John about but she was unaware of, a Travalong gooseneck horse trailer able to transport five horses, and two bumper pull trailers that would hold two horses each. There were also several cars and pick-up trucks present, and a lot more people.

A woman with brunette hair falling to just below her shoulders was washing down a horse as they approached the stable. “Hey, Matthews,” John announced their presence. “How’s it going?”

The startled woman jumped and the horse gave a short nicker as it moved away from her then let out a snort. “Sar-,” she began. “You startled me, boss. It’s alright Daisy. I’m sorry, girl. I didn’t mean to make you jumpy. Come here, you wonderful girl.” Matthews began petting and hugging the horse and even leaned in and kissed its neck. In return the horse wrapped his neck around the torso of the woman before calmly standing again for the wash down.

“You sure seem to love your horse,” Lisa interrupted.

“She and I have been together for quite a while.”

“I can tell that you are very skilled with her.”

John didn’t address that issue. He knew that Mathews was skilled in all sorts of things, including being an expert in quite a few firearms, as well as being a technical whiz, and communication devices. “Matthews, this is Lisa Nelson. Lisa, Susan Matthews,” he finally introduced the two.

“Nice to meet you Miss Matthews,” Lisa greeted.

“You can call me Susan,” Came the reply. “Can I call you Lisa?”

“Sure.”

“Where’s Reynolds at?” asked John.

“He’s in the storage area in the stable with Huey,” Susan said without thinking. John winced at the nickname that had been given to Ryan Jackman. It wasn’t something he wanted the Nelson family to know about. “He’s trying to get it cleaned up and everything sorted. He said he would have had it finished by now except he had some kind of building project he had to do first.”

“Yes,” John agreed. “The new corral does look nice.”

“Except for the posts,” Susan complained. “They stick up way too far.”

“Did he say why he did that?”

“Gas lines, water lines, electrical lines. He didn’t want to go very deep until he knew for sure where everything is. Those poles won’t hold if there is something really mean going on, but they’re okay far now.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Lisa remarked. “It’s in the same place the old corral was.”

“I’ll talk to him about it and see when we might be able to get them in proper,” John said. He started moving his horse towards the stable. The first thing he had to do was get Charger in a stall and brushed down, then leave him some food and water before he took care of any of his own needs. Lisa followed in order to do the same with Demon.

After telling Jake Reynolds that he was going to get a shower and that he would want to see him once he was done, John left the stable and made his way to the apartment. Lisa also left and headed to the main house. As she walked across the yard, she looked around her at all the activity. She had met Susan Matthews and she could see that there was a second woman out where the old bunkhouse used to be with four guys piling up the old wood and materials in a couple of neat piles. She hadn’t seen the place this active since before the fire seven years earlier. And it was obvious that all of the people, including the woman, a blond with long hair, could hold up their end in any given situation. She was going to have to apologize to Nancy sometime later, but she was sure that she needed to wait until whatever else was going on with John Turlow and company was finished before she did so.

It was an hour later when Jake entered the apartment to face his boss. The two sat down and John handed him a cola from his fridge. “The corral,” John began. “Any idea when you can sink those poles to the right depth?”

“Electrical has been out here and approved everything, but gas and water still has to make an appearance. They should be here sometime this week.”

“Good. It shouldn’t be anything to worry about. The old corral was set up in the same place. I wonder why they tore it down.”

“Don’t know,” Jake replied. “I gotta admit I didn’t ask, either. Sarah didn’t say anything about it.”

“Oh, it’s Sarah, now, is it?”

“She asked me to call her that on Wednesday.”

“What about Roy? Has he been out here?”

“Every day. He sure is ticked at you, Sarge.”

“Boss,” John reminded him.

“Sorry. Right, boss. Anyway, he’s ready to tear you a new one after you taking Lisa along for that little adventure.”

“First, I didn’t take her along; I rode out by myself. Second, nothing untoward was going to happen between us, so there wasn’t anything to worry about. And three, I’m sure I can take him if it ever came down to it.” Jake chuckled. He knew his boss very well and he, too, was certain that Roy would end up with the short end of the stick in a fight. “Tomorrow is Sunday. I don’t know if the Nelson family will be going back to church or not after what happened last weekend. But I’m sure that Sarah will want to do something.”

“I’m pretty sure she isn’t, boss. That preacher you told me about came out here on Tuesday trying to apologize and Sarah lit in to him like lightning. I thought I was going to have to rescue the poor soul the way she was going. You might be able to hold your own against the sheriff, but I think that woman would beat you to a pulp.”

“I think so to.”

“Boss,” Jake finally was ready to broach the subject that had been on his mind all week. “I don’t mean to be critical, but, you know, the ranch isn’t our job here.”

“No,” John answered him. “But we have to seem like it is and that means doing the work that we would be doing if it was.”

“Once this is over, we’re all going to be gone. That’s going to cause a lot of heartache when we leave and this place goes back on the market.”

“It isn’t going back on the market.”

“What?”

“I actually bought the place, Jake. I mean for real. This is my last case for CID. I’m getting out after it’s over and coming back here to run the ranch.”

“So, in the meantime, why not use us all as cheap labor. Is that it?”

“No. While it is nice of all of you to help out with what has to be done to get this place operational again, it really is a matter of fact that we have to look the part that we’re playing.”

“When do we get down to the real job?”

“We do that at the same time, Jake. But we still have to look real and we have to be careful not to get anyone hurt.”

“Alright, boss. I’ll go along.”

“Good! Now about that other job, did Johnson get in?”

“Yeah. Steve reported in yesterday that they accepted him into their little gang. In fact, he already made a run with them. He got some pictures, too.”

“I’ll bet the run was on Thursday, wasn’t it?’

“How’d you know?”

“If it was any other time, we probably would have been close enough to hear them as they passed over our land.”

“They’re using your land to get the guns out?”

“It would seem so. We found a path that trucks could drive through the field to get from the warehouse to the road on the other side of our property.”

“Steve did mention that they started out going over land instead of roads. I hadn’t thought of them using the ranch property, though. That’s messed up. Anyway, he also said that there is a problem. It seems that the gang has someone on the inside at the sheriff’s office. They know that the feds got all the evidence and files on the fire.”

“Great!” John exclaimed. “We’ll have to be extra careful until we know who it is. Or at least until we know for sure that it isn’t Roy.”

“You really think the sheriff would be caught up with them?”

“No. But we don’t assume anything. We might conjecture, but we always confirm before we act to be sure we got the right person.”

“You’re right, boss.”

“Did the files come in yet on the background checks?”

Jake whipped a sheet that had been covering the table off. Now no longer hidden, there were three piles of files on it.

“That’s a lot of files,” John said.

“Yes, it is. You said anyone associated with the people you mentioned. I’ve arranged the files in three different sets. Pile one is the Nelson family and all known associates. Pile two is the Evans’ and all known associates. Pile three includes files on persons known by both.”

“Lamar Westfall,” John decided where to start.

Jake went through the third pile and found the file. “Once the foreman for the ranch, he now works at the warehouse for the Evans’ family. Before working there, he seemed to be a good guy. Nothing in his records to suggest any criminal behavior. But since going to the warehouse, he has had a few run-ins with the law. Most of it is inconsequential, but there were a couple of charges of assault with intent. And they weren’t just incidents of things getting out of hand at a bar. He seems to have targeted the persons that he got in trouble over. Boss, one of them was Mark Nelson.”

“I was afraid you would say something like that. Was he around anywhere near when the old man ran off the road?”

“No. He was out of town at the time. Do you suspect foul play in that accident?”

“I do now,” John answered. “According to Lisa, there is no way that he would have cooperated with the Evans gang and let them use his property. The old man wouldn’t have bothered checking on any of the land, but everything seems awful neat. It could also be that one of the people he was blackmailing took him out. There’re just too many questions to rule anything out, yet. Get us a copy of the police report on it and see what it says.”

“Sure thing. You want the feds to handle getting it again?”

“Yes. We need to maintain our anonymity. Do you have anything on Marie Nelson?”

“It’s Marie Garner now,” Jake answered while selecting the file. “My understanding is that she was born Marie Cox, and married Roy, but divorced him about six years ago and she has since married a guy named Samuel Garner. Get this, boss. She married the guy just three months after leaving Roy.”

“You’re making a conjecture that she was seeing her present husband while she was still married to Roy?”

“Yes, but that has not been confirmed.”

John chuckled at his response. “What was the reason given in the divorce?”

“Irreconcilable differences.”

“That’s not very helpful. Lisa said that she lives in Des Moines now. We need to send someone to talk to her. Send Shelby. She’ll be more likely to get information out of her. We need to know what her true reasons were for the divorce. We need to know what her perspective was on Sarah Nelson, Roy Nelson and Lisa Nelson. What was her feelings about the Evans family? I told you the story about the rape. Did she know about it? What did she think of it if she did? I should have had you get the report on that while you were at it. My fault that I didn’t think of it.”

“But I did. When you told me about it Monday, I added it to the list of things we needed.”

“Good. Anything in there that would help?”

“It was pretty cut and dry. Sarah was using a recorder at the time to take notes on a homework assignment, and she actually got the whole thing on tape. Sean Evans definitely raped her and was pulled off her by Britney Evans. With that tape in evidence, it didn’t take the jury long to convict.”

“It’s nice to have something confirmed. Let’s find out what else we can. Give me some time to read through all these files and we’ll talk more.”

“You got it, boss. Should be about time for dinner,” Jake announced as he got up to leave.

“Wait a minute,” John interrupted. “Did we get any confirmation on who is in those photos that Johnson took?”

“Yeah. The Evans’ were there, of course and a man named Akbar Solvina. He’s from Egypt, but was buying for someone in Afghanistan. There was also a woman there. Senator Sabrina Myers. It seems the deal was taking place on her property. She seems to have offered it as some kind of thank you, although they also gave her money. Perhaps a finder’s fee? But nothing confirmed on all of that except the identifications. There were several other guys there that came with the Evans’, and a truck driver that came with Solvina and Myers.”

John sighed. He had read through the ledger of Mark’s blackmail payments and knew that the Senator was one of the people on the list.

It was Tuesday before the report on Mark Nelson’s accident got to the ranch. By then, John had read all the files and had an idea about what was what. As he thought, there was no evidence that Sarah Nelson had any idea about the body in the fire. It seemed equally obvious that she didn’t know of her husband’s blackmailing activities. If so, she would have continued doing so and would not have been in trouble financially for the ranch. Lisa was as in the dark about everything as her mother. She didn’t have any signs of extra money showing up anywhere. The big question then became who killed Sean Evans. Neither Jeremiah nor Lisa had had the opportunity. Mark was at the bar and just as drunk as ever. It was certain that if he had tried to do such a thing, he couldn’t have got the job done in such a state. Sarah was unavailable for the task as she had been at the country club all afternoon decorating for the fundraiser. She left there at three-thirty to go home, picking up Mark on the way, clean up and get dressed for the fundraiser itself, leaving there, as she said about five-o’ clock to take Lisa to her friend, Nancy Wright’s house. Roy Nelson had also been at the club all day preparing for the fundraiser, as was Marie Nelson.

Sean’s record showed that there were quite a few that might want revenge. His exit from prison had happened eight years earlier. But none of those individuals in the area where he was killed had opportunity. John was confused as to a motive for anyone else.

Then the report came of Mark Nelson’s accident. He read it carefully and was almost as confused as with the Evans’ killing. It hadn’t been an accident. He was sure that Roy would know about the fact that Sean had been killed and his body left in the stable to be burnt up in the fire. He was just as sure that he would have the knowledge of the holes in the car Mark had been driving that showed he had been shot at several times. There were even a few rounds recovered. The comparison of the rounds was what was confusing. They were the same 5.56 rounds that had killed Sean Evans and had been fired from the same weapon. Who would want both men dead?

It wasn’t until Wednesday that SPC. Diane Shelby returned to the ranch. It had taken her two days to get the ex-Mrs. Nelson to trust her and talk to her. She had the interview on tape for John to listen to so he could draw his own conclusions.

“What was your sense of her, Shelby?” John asked as she handed him the tape.

“She still loves the sheriff. It took me two days to convince her that I was who I said I was and not some reporter trying to ruin the sheriff. But she was very forthcoming when we got down to it. I gotta admit, sarge. I feel sorry for this family. They’ve had more than their fair share of hardship.”

“We’re not here to coddle them, Specialist.”

“I know sarge. It’s just, well, this last generation has had it pretty bad.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” John said as he set up the player.

“Sarge, do you know about the row that happened between Lisa and her uncle?”

“What row?”

“He didn’t like her going off with you on that field trip.”

“I would expect not. He seems to be rather protective of her.”

“He was really giving it to her. It was all about how she shouldn’t trust you. But she gave it back too.”

“Oh?”

“He was trying to say that you would want to have your way with her, if you know what I mean.”

“I do understand the old euphemism.”

“She started off reminding him that she’s twenty-one years old and then asked if he really thought she was still a virgin. Then she admitted that she has had sex, although only with a couple of guys and not very often.”

“I bet that didn’t go over too well.”

“He seemed to be flabbergasted. He couldn’t even think what to say. She continued that she knows how to take care of herself and stop a guy from doing anything when she doesn’t want to do so.”

“That’s probably true,” John agreed. “But there are exceptions. Some just won’t take no for an answer. That leads to rape, and you can’t always beat back the perpetrator.”

“Anyway, she told Roy that it wasn’t necessary since you weren’t about to try to do anything with her. Then Roy found his voice and asked if you were gay.”

John eyes went wide, then he broke out laughing. “What did she say?”

“She said that she didn’t know. But it got me to thinking. I’ve never seen you go out with anyone. Neither has Susan and she’s been here longer than anyone other than Sargent Reynolds and Huey.”

“Are you asking if I’m gay or not?”

“I know we’re not supposed to, but I can’t help but wonder.”

After some thought John finally spoke. “If you are asking because of some interest in me, you need to realize that nothing will happen between us. You are a good person, Specialist Shelby, but I don’t have those kinds of feelings for you.”

“I didn’t mean that, Sargent. I was just curious. I won’t ask again.” She started to leave.

“Specialist. I most definitely am not gay. Just so you know. I simply choose not to compromise my position as NCOIC of this squad by making stupid mistakes.”

Shelby left having the answer to the question that had been on not just her mind. John hit the play button on the recorder.

“This is specialist Diane Shelby, U.S. Army Criminal Investigations Division. The date is two four April two zero one eight and I am interviewing Mrs. Marie Garner. Mrs. Garner, please introduce yourself and acknowledge the fact that this is being recorded with your consent.

“This is Marie Garner and I am aware that this conversation is being recorded. I have given my consent for this.”

“Would you reiterate what you said earlier when I told you what I was here for?”

“You said that you wanted to ask me about Roy Nelson. I told you that Roy is a good man and you better not try to get rid of him.”

“You used to be married to him. It sounds as if you still have some strong feelings for him.”

“Well, yes. I guess it would be fair to say that.”

“Do you still love him?”

“Not as I once did, but yes. He’s a decent man and a good sheriff. I don’t want you hurting him.”

“You trust him as sheriff?”

“Of course. You see all these movies that talk about cops that are on the take. Not Roy. He wouldn’t let that happen. If there was something going on that would cause him to be compromised, he’d resign first. That’s the thing about him. He has a job to do, and he’ll do it, and do it right. The only place I could find any fault with him is in the area of love. He’s good in law enforcement, but he’s not so good at love. At least not in loving the right woman.”

“What do you mean? Did he cheat on you?”

“It’s not exactly like that, Specialist Shelby. I just mean he was in love with someone other than me. He wouldn’t let it get out of hand, though. At least not more than maybe the one time.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“I don’t think I should.”

“Your divorce decree declared that you had irreconcilable differences. What was the real reason that you divorced?”

“I don’t think that needs to be discussed.”

“Was it because you caught him cheating with someone?”

“No! I told you he wasn’t like that.”

“But he was in love with someone else. Who was that?”

“It doesn’t matter who. And I won’t have you saying bad things about her either. She’s had a bad time of it herself.”

“Mrs. Garner, I need to know the answer to these questions. I need to know if he has done something that could cause him trouble. I need to know because my boss needs to know.”

“Why? What does the Army have to do with anything in Ringgold County?”

“Because there’s something going on there, and we need to know who we can trust and who we can’t. There’s a lot more to it than that, but that’s at the heart of it. Please answer the question.”

“I can tell you right now that you can trust Roy.”

“I understand how you feel. But we still have to ask the hard questions and investigate everything. Please?”

“Alright,” Marie submitted. “But I don’t like it.”

“That, too, is obvious. Did he cheat on you and that’s the reason for your divorce?”

“That’s not exactly why I divorced him. He wasn’t cheating on me at the time. But there had been a time in the past when things got out of control for him and a woman. He wasn’t actively seeing her at the time of the divorce, but he did love her.

“Who was she?”

Marie hesitated before answering. “Please be kind,” she finally pleaded. “She has had a rough time. She was raped when she was younger, and it affected the way a lot of people treated her. That includes her husband who she wasn’t married to at the time of the rape.”

There was a pause as Diane most likely stared at Mrs., Garner waiting for more. John could imagine it as he had seen her use that stare a number of times in other interviews

“Her name was Sarah Michaels,” Marie began again. “When she was seventeen, she was asked to babysit Julien Evans by his mother Britney. Britney’s husband, Sean, raped her, taking her virginity and getting her pregnant all at the same time. The whole town knew about the event. How could they not? Many speculated that it was possible that Sarah wasn’t really raped, but was having it off with the guy. He and Britney had an open relationship, so it was a possibility. But Sarah was working on schoolwork and using a tape recorder to take notes. The whole episode was caught on tape. The gossips stopped their caterwauling when that fact came out. It was Roy who had to make the arrest, of course. And there has been bad blood between the two families ever since.

“Sarah was dating Mark Nelson, Roy’s brother at the time, and there were plans to marry in the future. So, he stepped up and Sarah Michaels became Sarah Nelson before she was even showing that she was pregnant. The child she was carrying could have been Mark’s and come early, but people knew. Jeremiah was sired by Sean Evans and was being raised as the son of Mark Nelson. They never told the boy about his true heritage, either.

“But Mark was certainly no angel. At the start of their marriage, it was already noticeable that he harbored some resentment towards the boy. He started drinking and it only got worse later on. Two years after Jeremiah was born, Sarah gave birth to a girl. Lisa. If anyone were to check, DNA would verify that Mark is related to the girl, but it was Roy who was her real father.”

“You know this for a fact?” Diane queried.

“Yes.”

“Roy told you about it?”

“No. His mother did. I don’t know why, but she took a great dislike to Sarah. Just about every night, Roy was picking Mark up at the Desperado bar and driving him home. One night, he and Sarah got the drunk fool into bed and left him passed out. As she walked Roy out, she started crying. She had lost her virginity by having it ripped from her by being raped, and the man she loved could only cope with it by getting drunk every night. It was a real mess. Roy stayed awhile to comfort her and one thing led to another and they ended up having sex. Neither one of them knew that Sylvia was home and saw them. She came to me and tried to tell me that Sarah was after Roy like, quote, the hussy she was, unquote, and it was all her fault. I knew better. I didn’t have any trouble believing that the event would have happened, but I knew that Sarah wasn’t like my mother-in-law described. She wasn’t the bad person that Sylvia wanted to make her out to be.”

“That’s what led to the divorce?”

“Indirectly,” Marie answered then paused. “There was a fire.”

“Yes. We have the records about that. In fact, we have quite a few questions about it.”

“Roy wasn’t allowed to investigate it himself because he was too close. But he was kept in the loop. He always said that he thought the fire was a decoy. He suggested that someone was trying to frame his brother for something and the way they were doing it was to burn down the stable. I never understood that. Anyway, after the fire, Mark sent Jeremiah away and Roy spent a lot more time at the ranch seeing to it that Mark wasn’t going to treat Lisa the way he had been treating Jeremiah. He wanted to be sure his daughter wasn’t a punching bag like Jeremiah was. And I’m sure he was still in love with Sarah, too. He just wasn’t acting on it. I, on the other hand, was not getting any of his attention. That’s what led to the divorce.”

“You said the fire was a way to frame Mark. Who would have wanted to frame him?”

“The only ones I can think of that would want that was the Evans’. But I don’t understand how burning down the stable could frame Mark for anything.”

John hit the stop button. The Evans’? Would Julien kill his own father? Would Britney have killed him? She had divorced him after the trial but she had kept his name. Would she kill him years later? If so, why? He needed more information. And the only way to get it was to somehow make them talk about it. He needed more evidence of the arms deal anyway, so it was easy to decide to put a bug on them. He picked up his phone and called Jake.

“What’s up, boss,” Jake said as he entered the apartment.

“Do we have a judge we can talk to about getting approval for listening devices to be used? It should be someone federal.”

“That would be Judge Dell. He’s in Des Moines.”

“You have his FAX number?”

“Sure.”

John handed him the request he had filled out asking for permission to put listening devices in the warehouse. The request said it was for gathering information on the illegal weapons sales that the Evans’ were a part of. But he hoped it would also turn up something on the other issues: especially if he could talk Johnson into trying to get them to brag about it.

Steve Johnson sat in the office listening to Julien and his mother outside the door. He had just managed to finish putting the bug in the phone receiver when they could be heard outside. “I’m telling you, Ma. Something is going on,” he heard Julien saying as he screwed the cap back on the earpiece of the phone. “This is the second time that someone has been checking up on something that we really want to stay buried.”

“You worry too much, Julien,” Britney answered. “What is it this time? Some unknown man in black?”

“Don’t sell Skinner’s information short, Ma. You know he’s right.”

“It should be as much as we’re paying him,” she answered. “It’s just that he can get a little over excited.”

“The feds have requested everything on the case of the Nelson fire seven years ago, and now they came back to get the report on old man Nelson’s car wreck. I don’t think he’s overexcited.”

“Sweety. There is nothing that ties us into ether of those two events. Calm down. We have another delivery to make tonight, and I don’t want you saying anything to Sabrina about this. There’s no need to worry her about it.”

With that the door opened and they found Johnson sitting on the couch across from the big desk. “There you are,” Johnson said. “I was beginning to think I had missed you somewhere.”

“What do you want Johnson?” Britney asked suspiciously

“Money,” he answered.

“Excuse me?”

“What I want is money. You can’t live without it and I plan to live very well.”

“So, you’re trying to blackmail us? That’s not very smart.”

“I didn’t say anything about blackmail. I just said that I want money.”

“Well, you’re not getting it from us. That way is a dead end around here as a couple of people could attest to if they were still around,” Julien laughed.

“Julien!” his mother admonished.

“I done said I don’t want to blackmail you. But I do mean to be paid for my services. When do we go again?”

“Tonight,” Britney answered. “And I’ll be watching you. If you think you can try to get extra from me, it won’t go well, if you catch my drift.”

“A dead end like Julie was talking about?”

“Hey! No name calling.”

“That’s exactly what I mean, Johnson.”

“So, how many have you had to kill to keep this operation going? I’ve had to kill five people before.”

“Looks like he’s got you beat, mom.”

“Enough, Julien! Get out of here and find something to do. Go get tonight’s shipment ready.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The younger Evans went out the door leaving Britney Evans alone with Johnson.

“You should do well enough to leave things alone, Mr. Johnson. I don’t want to spread around what has had to happen in the pass.”

“So, you have had to kill?”

“Let’s just say that a couple of people are no longer causing difficulty.”

“Yeah? Who were they? One of mine was my old man. He tried to beat me one time too many.”

“Mr. Johnson, I don’t need to know that about yours. And you don’t need to know about mine.”

“I bet Julie couldn’t have done it, could he?”

“I think you better stop calling him that. He did get you this job, after all. And as to whether he could or not doesn’t matter. One of them was his father, and I couldn’t ask him to do that.”

“His father? Jees! What’d the guy do?”

“He got out of prison and tried to take over my operation. And just so you know, Julien did have the balls to get rid of the body. Now, I suggest you get off this subject and get ready for tonight.”

John couldn’t believe it had worked so well. It had taken two days to get the approval for the listening devices, and on the first day, Specialist Steve Johnson had engineered a secret confession out of Britney Evans for killing her ex-husband. He only needed two more things and he would be ready to reel in the fish. He hoped he would get the first during that night’s delivery, but the other he was unsure of.

Johnson was wired for both sound and video. John coordinated with the FBI office in Des Moines to have surveillance vehicles in place where the truck, or trucks as the case may be, would come out of the pastureland of the Nelson ranch. The mission was observance only. He wanted to be sure that he had everything in place when the time came to round everyone up. The vehicle the FBI was using came with three persons. Special Agent Halsey and Agent Kendall who was the communication technician and a third to drive. If it all went smoothly, Britney Evans and her group were going to have a bad day in another week or so. And John wanted to be sure that the right people were in on it.

Johnson wasn’t in the first truck. He wasn’t in the second truck. He was relegated to a space on the third truck with a last one following to be sure that they were not followed. The fourth truck would have quite a space between them and the third. It was a tactic that had worked before for Britney, and she needed to be sure tonight as well.

The trucks pulled onto the road from the break in the fence and made their way towards the Senator’s cabin in the woods. Steve looked behind him and noticed that the fourth truck wasn’t there. “What happened to the fourth truck?” he asked the driver. The man looked at him and smiled.

John was in the surveillance vehicle. It was just getting ready to follow the convoy when Johnson asked his question. “Hold up,” he ordered.

“Three trucks in convoy,” the driver answered. “The fourth will make it in due time.”

“There’s a fourth truck,” John told Agent Halsey. “We’ll have to wait on him to come out or we’ll miss our chance.”

“If we delay, we could lose them,” Halsey said. “Those wires are only good for a short distance.”

“We wait,” John ordered emphatically. Fifteen minutes later, the last truck pulled onto the road and turned on its lights. John gave a nod and Halsey told the driver to move out.

Halsey was nervous. The fourth truck didn’t seem to be in any hurry and they were already out of range of the audio/video wire that they had placed on Johnson. It took half an hour for the last truck to get to where the deal was taking place, and the agent was concerned that they would miss the sale to whatever buyer they had set up.

Finally, they began to hear the crackling of the equipment as they were on the edge of the wire’s range. Once they had a good picture and sound, they pulled off the road and hid.

“Bring that crate over here, Johnson,” they heard Julien order. The video feed showed a few men milling about moving crates into place while some provided security around the perimeter. There was the sound of another truck pulling into the area and Johnson turned towards it, the camara showing the last truck coming to a stop. The mic picked up Julien asking the driver if there were any problems before Johnson had to move on. The answer to the question was not heard.

“No problems,” Johnson muttered. “There can’t be.” His was the most dangerous part of the mission, and he really wanted there to not be any problems. If the FBI van had been spotted, his position would be perilous.

He plopped the crate that he was carrying down and looked at Britney as she talked with the Senator and the Egyptian buyer Akbar Solvina. “They’re all good, Akbar,” Britney said. “Just like the last batch.”

“How do you get these things out of the states?” Johnson asked suddenly.

“Shut it Johnson,” Britney ordered.

“Sorry. Just curious.”

“Remember what I said about those other two people?”

“Yeah. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just curious. Believe me, I don’t want to end up like them. Is that the piece you used on your husband?”

“You talk too much. Get back to the truck!”

“What’s he mean, Britney?” the Senator asked.

“You didn’t know?” Johnson piped up. “The fool tried to take over her operation and she got rid of him.”

“Shut! Up! You damn fool!”

“You killed Sean?” the Senator went pale.

“What do you care, Sabrina? You didn’t seem to mind when Mark Nelson went away.”

“But that was an accident.”

“Believe what you will, bitch. He’s not blackmailing you anymore, is he?”

“This Nelson guy. Is he the other one you had to kill?”

“Britney. Did you really kill him?”

“Yes! If you could keep your damn hands to yourself instead of letting them roam all over the bodies of those young girls you hire to act as pages, I wouldn’t have had to, would I? so don’t go getting all moral and high class on me. We got a job to do.”

That was the last piece that John wanted. The only thing that they didn’t have was the question Johnson had asked. But the soldier had moved around the area and got video of the crates being loaded on another, bigger truck and he had gotten a view of the license plate. The FBI could handle that part of the case. He only had to wait for the time of the final showdown.

A man sat in a blue Chevy Cruze at the fast-food place. He was actually no more than twenty at most, and in fact had had to borrow the car for his mission. He had been there for about five minutes when a man rode up on a motorcycle. The man got out of the car and walked towards the entrance. He didn’t pay any attention to the man on the bike, but just entered the restaurant. He took his place in line, looking at the menu boards above the ordering stations.

The man on the bike entered the place and took his own spot in the line right behind the youngster. He, too, looked at the menu boards. As he did so he leaned forward just slightly. Without moving his lips, he muttered two words towards the man in front of him, then fell back onto his feet properly. The man said nothing and didn’t react to the intrusion. It was if he hadn’t said anything at all.

When the first one got to the front of the line, he placed his order and paid for it. Once it got his food, he found an empty table and sat down to eat the burger and fries he had. The biker did much the same, sitting at another table two away from the first. Neither man talked to the other. Once finished, each took care of their trash and left. The one got in his car and exited onto the road heading right. The other started his bike and exited the place turning left.

John stood in the yard looking around at all the work that had been completed. It had been more than a week since the recon mission with the FBI and still he waited for the right message from Steve Johnson. In the meantime, he was pleased with the work on the ranch. The corral was now finished, the poles sunk to the proper depth, the wreckage of the bunkhouse had been carted away and the place for the new one that was going to be built had been staked out. The construction people declared that it would be several weeks yet before they could start as they had to wait on permits. There were three other building sites marked off as well: one for a small motel, one for a dining facility, and a third to house staff that would work the motel and dining facility if they didn’t have a place in town. It had been an epiphany to think of letting people pay to do the work on the ranch. It would provide cheap labor, and also add to the jobs as staff would be needed for the motel.

He watched as the Cruze pulled into the parking spot it had been in earlier and the young man got out. “Well?” he asked.

“He said ‘tomorrow night,'” the man answered.

“Thank you, Donaldson. Don’t forget to give Cross her keys back.”

“Yes, Sargent.”

John stopped himself from wincing. The Private First Class was young. He would learn. At least there hadn’t been anyone within hearing distance. He took out his cellphone used speed dial to connect to the person he wanted. “Agent Halsey. Would you meet with me for lunch tomorrow? You do know where the ranch is, right?” There was a pause as a reply came through. “Meet me here at eleven-thirty?” Another short pause. “Good. See you then.” He hung up. It was nearly time to close the net.

The next morning, it was a chore to keep everyone looking busy. They still had to look like they were doing the work of the ranch to the Nelsons. The new tractor arrived at ten-o’ clock and that made things seem more like they should be for a while. John had the idea to plant oats for the horses as well as feed corn for the cattle, though most of the cattle could do with the grass from the pasture. He was happy for the distraction but was also glad that the representative was gone by ten-thirty as he had to have Susan Matthews cut his hair before the FBI agent showed up

The agent sat in the small apartment that Jake left him in. John was in the bathroom situated along one of the walls. A loud buzzing sound was all he could hear. Once it stopped, the agent announced his presence. “What’s going on, Sargent?”

“We need to wait a bit, agent Halsey. There is still one more person to arrive for this meeting,” John called. Fifteen minutes later, Jake ushered Sheriff Nelson into the room. John was still in the bathroom and they could hear splashing every few seconds.

“Sheriff,” Halsey nodded towards the man recognizing the uniform and the rank.

“How do you do?” Roy responded not knowing who this man was.

“I’ll be out in just few seconds, gentlemen,” John called from the bathroom. “Please have a seat and make yourselves comfortable.” With that there was a lot of splashing, a banging noise, then silence. Within a minute, the man came out of the bathroom, looking nothing like what he had going into it. The jeans were replaced with camouflage pants. He wore no shirt but had on a brownish looking t-shirt, and the beard that had been prevalent for the last few weeks was missing. He walked to the closet and withdrew a camouflage shirt that he had hung there earlier that morning and pulled it on before turning to greet his guests.

As soon as he turned around, Roy gasped. If he had not already been sitting, he probably would have fallen. “J..J..Jeremiah!” he finally spouted.

“Nice to see you, Uncle Roy.” Jeremiah Nelson acknowledged.

“You’ve been here this whole time and didn’t say anything?” The anger was noticeable in the sheriff’s voice. “Your mother has been beside herself wondering about you. You should have more respect than that for she who gave you life. And what’s this get up you’re wearing?”