Chapter 9
Colter turned to the twins and dismissed them with another slight nod of his head. The twins stepped back into the woods, though it seemed more like a melding with the surroundings. They were just gone, some kind of hallucination conjured by Colter to confuse and terrify in case his eyes weren’t enough.
“I apologize for Bobby and Billy. They can take their guarding duties too seriously sometimes.”
“What are they guarding? This is a public road.”
“They are here to keep people out for their own good. We have some practice shooting going on up in the hills. You might have heard some of it.”
“I heard. What kind of practice shooting?”
“It’s all perfectly legal. We do have permits.” He came to the gate. “There is always a shooting contest at the Fall Farm Fair. I’m surprised you didn’t remember that.”
“I remember.” She hadn’t.
“When you start work on Monday, you can check your records. It will confirm what I just told you.”
“I’ll do that. How do you know who I am?”
“I had some input in hiring you.”
Did everyone in Dominion have some input in hiring her?
Joan again looked back at Shana, who wasn’t interested in coming to the gate even though the twins were gone.
“As far as the service road goes,” Colter said. “While it’s true that technically it is still government land, there have been many changes since you were last in Dominion. The road and area immediately surrounding it is public, despite what Bobby and Billy might have told you, but this side,” he indicated the land to her left, the north by northwest side, “is now part of my farm. It goes up into the hills where we are holding our shooting practice. That side belongs to Craig Harding now. He’s a veterinarian who runs a research hospital.”
“Did he have some input in hiring me, too?”
Colter chuckled. When he lowered his gaze, the shadow where his eyes should be gave him the appearance of something about to pounce. “I don’t think Dr. Harding takes much interest in anything in Dominion.”
“That’s refreshing,” she muttered before hearing a number of shots coming from higher up in the forest.
“You do start Monday, am I correct?”
“Yes, and on Monday, I might just come back here to see those permits.”
“You will find the original application and permits in your office. If, however, you would like to visit my farm, I would be glad to show you around. Shana can come, too, if she wants to. In the meantime, if you have concerns, feel free to check with Mayor Jones. He’s a good friend. He can put your mind at ease.”
“What if I check with Kate Eiger instead?”
“You may ask anyone you like, Mrs. McGowan, but Kate is no longer in office, is she? She wouldn’t have access to the information that would assuage any concerns you might have.”
This conversation was starting to go in circles.
“Dominion is going to seem very quiet after your stint with the FBI antiterrorism unit. By the way, let me offer my condolences to you for the loss of your colleagues on that truly heroic mission. I have lost good soldiers under my command. And please let me also offer my condolences on the loss of your husband and those two other survivors of that mission to suicide. I don’t mean to sound too forward, but Michael’s loss was quite tragic. I can barely imagine what you and your daughter must have gone through this past year. I’m sure that memento on your cheek is not the only thing you’ve had to contend with.”
Colter was an expert at using information about people against them.
“You may find it too boring to stay long in Dominion, even with Do-Dads and Karyon Research offering such a promising future.”
“What do you know about them?”
“It’s my understanding that Do-Dads has developed a very sophisticated—I believe the correct term these days is high-tech—method called three-dimensional printing using electron beam heating to melt the raw material inside a sealed vacuum chamber and then build whatever they want one layer at a time, perhaps one molecule at a time, using computer assisted design programs to guide the process. But that is the extent of my knowledge of that technology.”
At least he wasn’t claiming to be a know-it-all, though he seemed to understand the process much better than she did. She envisioned a tank being assembled at the end of a red laser beam sweeping back and forth across a platform.
“Karyon is a standard biomedical research company. I believe its main accomplishment so far is a vaccine or retro-virus treatment that can inhibit or cure—I’m not sure which—auto-immune diseases like Lupus, Psoriasis and Crohn’s. I could be wrong about what specific diseases it is used on.”
“You know a lot about them.”
“I had some input in getting them here, too.”
“You must be quite influential.”
“I’m a farmer, Mrs. McGowan, a very successful one. Like any businessperson in Dominion, including Kate, we consult with city council on all major plans for the future. There is a display at city hall that eloquently shows where we all hope to be ten and twenty years from now.”
It was a reasonable explanation. She had to concede that, no matter how vulnerable his dark eyes and knowledge of her and Shana made her feel.
“Do you know either Stanford Wiley or Albert Nguyen?”
“Dominion is a small city. If one is involved in its political and social activities, one is likely to meet almost every resident eventually. I do know both men, though I had little to do with Wiley professionally or personally. Albert came to the farm regularly to purchase produce from us. That is his business.”
“When was the last time you saw Albert?”
“He came by two days before he was reported missing, but then we can’t know exactly when he vanished, can we? Harry Madsen would be the best person to talk to about Wiley and Albert once you are officially Sheriff.”
Deny and deflect; everyone in Dominion seemed to have that technique down pat.
Colter pointed to the west. “I believe it might be for the best if you two excellent athletes headed back. Take it from an old farmer, that’s a small but intense rain storm coming in. They’ve been known to drop heavy loads on this side of the Cascades before moving on, and your bikes appear to be equipped more for racing than foul weather. While there isn’t much traffic out this way, there aren’t any streetlights either. Drivers might have trouble seeing you in a downpour.” He nodded. “Please be careful on your way back.”
He returned to the forest on his side of the service road. Colter wasn’t only an expert at using information about people against them. He also seemed to have the knack for making an expression of concern sound more like a threat.
She returned to Shana and their bikes.
Shana asked, “If that’s his side of the line, why did those two trolls go to the other side?”
“He knows a lot about Do-Dads and Karyon.”
“You mean that stuff on three-D printing and the auto-immune vaccine? He got that off the internet.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I found it there.”
“You were actually researching Dominion?”
“It didn’t take very long.” She nodded west. “We better get going. My bunions are starting to throb.”
“Yes, granny.”
They started back, keeping up a vigorous but sustainable pace to get home as soon as possible. Just before they reached the first hill to leave Colter’s farm behind, they heard an eagle call from above, then more gunshots. It sounded like automatic weapons firing, not controlled target shooting.
At the top of the hill, she took a quick look up when she heard what sounded like a giant, angry hummingbird pass overhead. She saw nothing. Two miles later, as they reached the top of another hill, she heard it again.
“That,” Shana said, “is one angry bumblebee.” She was taking quick looks for it, too. “I thought we would have dropped it
by now.”
They raced down the other side, only returning to their less strenuous pace a mile later. They didn’t hear the buzz again after that, but she couldn’t shake the feeling they were being followed, which wasn’t helped when they passed from the bright sunshine into the dark shadows of the laden clouds. They reached the old house, their new home, just as the rain started pelting Dominion.
They brought the bikes into the house with them.
“Age before beauty,” Shana said. “I’ll bring in our clothes from the car. You take a long enough shower to get rid of all the rust in the pipes for me.”
“Nothing’s too good for my baby.”
The old tank with the puddle at its base did a decent job of providing a warm flow, which was remarkably clear of any brown water even at the start. Two towels and her bathrobe were waiting for her when she slid the shower door aside. Her two navy suitcases sat open on the faded mustard-yellow shag carpet in the master bedroom. As she came out of her bedroom, Shana came out of hers at the front of the house wearing her bath robe and carrying two towels for her own use.
The rain storm was heavy but brief. It left everything soaking wet and glistening when the clouds moved off to let the sunshine return. It provided little relief from the heat.
She and Shana, still in their bath robes, picked at the leftovers in the picnic basket, mostly just vegetables with a ranch dressing dip.
Shana said, “That is not going to do it for me.”
“I didn’t think so.” She went over to the kitchen counter and sorted through the pamphlets Mattie had left behind. “We could get a pizza. They deliver.”
“What kind of pizza? I don’t want grits with headcheese and haggis.”
“When did you become a picky eater?”
“When did we arrive in Dominion?”
“It’s the usual suspects: Hawaiian, pepperoni.”
“Let’s just order cheese. It’s hard to wreck a cheese pizza.”
She ordered a cheese, pepperoni, olives and mushroom pizza against Shana’s protests and threats to not eat it, and two large, caffeine-free diet Cokes. It came in twenty minutes, giving them enough time to get dressed and her enough time to make sure the house was secure. After they ate all they could, they made the decision to sleep in the living room together. They opened their sleeping bags, laid down in them and debated what part of the renovations would likely be the most difficult.
Shana fell asleep first, mumbling as she did, “Dad would have loved this place.”
Constantly reassuring herself that there was no intentional or unintentional accusation in Shana’s sleepy words, she was able to hold on until the sun had finished sinking below the horizon. Then tracer bullets were ricocheting everywhere at the Crowley farm, weaving fiery threads into a net that contracted around them. Travis, Erica, Arnie and Michael lay on the ground staring up at her. TJ’s head came rolling across the approach road to settle at her feet and join with the other stares.
She peeked out from behind the van to see where the shooting was coming from. People were screaming and moaning in the distance. The cornfield was ablaze. Wong and Torres stood amid the flames talking on their phones until they put guns to their temples and simultaneously pulled the triggers. The ground erupted with explosions. Men crawled out of the holes left behind and fired at her before exploding into flaming debris that landed all around her.
Maple trees burst into flames again, illuminating both the road and Shana riding her bike along it. Tracer fire shot across Shana’s path.
She launched herself toward her daughter. A bullet struck her shoulder, knocking her back against the van. Shana waved just as two huge men wearing camouflage hunting vests and wielding machetes lunged from the darkness at her.