“What do you want from me?”
Any listener would interpret the question in their own way, but Ms. Stockton was quick on the uptake. Like her life depended on it.
“Help,” she said simply, then continued after a beat. “We can do these counts quickly, but I’ll need someone to guide me to the different animal pens.”
“Are you willing to get your hands dirty?” I asked with some emotion leaking into my voice, pausing like she had just a few seconds before. “Some of these pens have gotten pretty sloppy with all the rain we’ve had.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m willing to do whatever is necessary,” Madeline Stockton replied, her voice going a bit hoarse as she spoke.
I couldn’t just ask her captors to release her into our custody. I then knew, without a doubt, there would be blood, and I still wasn’t sure I was willing to shed it for the sake of a stranger. Sure, being a do-gooder is all nice in theory, and we’d already helped out where we could. However, with the only people I gave a shit about in the whole world gathered at this farm, she’d better be willing to go all-in, or I’d let her find another alternative. Even if it meant giving these meatheads a close look at our operation here, I wasn’t going to risk my family for her.
“All right,” I huffed, “this goes against everything I believe in, ma’am. The government is there to lend a helping hand, not a grasping claw,” I bitched, purely for show now, “but this is one of those times where fighting the system just isn’t worth the candle. So…you can do your survey, count my pitiful herd, and I can get back to work.”
“What kind of work can you do out here? And why do you and your family all have guns?”
“As I told you before, I’m an attorney. I have a practice in town, updating wills and handling real estate transactions. And we have these amazing devices called computers…”
To my surprise, Ms. Stockton managed a laugh at my sarcasm.
“Okay, I get it, I get it. But still, why the guns?”
“Did you miss the part where I mentioned getting shot at by three desperate killers right on the street there in New Albany? I also confronted a thieving lowlife before that, trying to infiltrate past the front gate who pointed a pistol at me, too. So, everyone goes armed around here at all times.”
I spoke louder than before, but I made no special emphasis in what I’d said. I just wanted the deputies to hear, and file that tidbit away for later. Maybe that would dissuade them, I thought as we went about the job that’d ostensibly brought her to our farm. Funny, she hadn’t even mentioned the Bonner property, and I idly wondered if the County Records Office had even updated that transaction yet.
Madeline Stockton had her notebook out now, having stowed her briefcase in the Suburban once we started the inspection. The three deputies moved in lockstep, shadowing Ms. Stockton as she squelched from one barn to another, pausing at the paddock to get a count of the horses. I tried to maintain a pleasant but slightly sarcastic banter with the inspector, but my attention and peripheral vision stayed busy keeping an eye on the trio of deputies. For their part, the three supposed lawmen did little to disguise their covetous expressions as they traipsed behind us, and I heard more than one muffled comment about all the ‘stuff’ on display.
Their mutterings made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, but I tried to maintain my cool. I wondered when we would see Wade and his brothers show up, and I wanted to look for some sign that my ass wasn’t hanging out here in the breeze all alone. I had little doubt these men intended to appropriate our farm at some point, and I began to feel like they weren’t going to wait for their opportunity.
Heading into the hog enclosure, I felt even more uncomfortable. Here, with the walls in the way, I knew any of our snipers would have a difficult shot trying to cover me. So I paused, hoping Wade and some of his brothers might show up and dissuade any hostile action.
“Uh, that stinks. Mz. Stockton, I believe I’ll leave you to your work and let you count the hogs on your own. Michael usually handles them, anyway. That man has no sense of smell.”
“I think we’ve heard enough from you, Farmer Bill.”
I had my back mostly angled to Sergeant Bailey so he didn’t see me lower the zipper on my rain jacket when Miss Stockton and I halted just shy of the hog barn. The chest rig for the Sig Sauer P365 differed from the traditional shoulder rig many plainclothes police officers preferred, and it was Pat who first clued me in on the utility of having a chest rig set up with the pistol riding over my sternum. In addition to the Springfield on my hip, I’d taken to wearing a backup pistol as well, and I’d opted for this setup because I knew I would be wearing a rain jacket, and that caused the shoulder holster to chafe.
As I pivoted left at the sergeant’s ominous statement, I saw Bailey already had his Glock out of its holster, but he was distracted, screwing a suppressor onto the threaded barrel of his pistol. The other two men had their rifles again at low ready, but they must have been watching my waist, where I had the Springfield still holstered.
None of them saw the Sig in my hand until it was too late. The barrel cleared the holster before I had the first shot lined up, one-handed with the weapon still close to my body, and the unexpected bark of the 9mm round made everyone but me flinch. Well, Krueger flinched from the impact of the bullet striking him in the face, an ugly pucker erupting from the bridge of his nose. I continued in my spin, firing methodically as the pistol came to bear on Bailey and finally, Baines. Baines had his rifle coming up, finger in the trigger guard, when my third bullet arrived in a dead heat with what had to be a thirty caliber round fired by one of our snipers.
Baines convulsed as he dropped, his dead finger on the trigger causing a spray of bullets that missed clipping my right leg by a few inches. Reflex had me diving away even as the last bullet slammed into the ground and certainly got the hogs stirred up. I rolled, like one of the hogs, then came up to a knee and double-tapped Bailey with a pair of shots to the head. He was likely already dying from where the first 9mm pulped his throat, but he was still moving, so he was still a potential threat, and a valid target.
I became aware of a high-pitched screaming in the background, and I swiveled to check Miss Stockton. She was still standing, holding her notebook out in front of her as if it might stop a bullet.
“Are you hit?!”
No response.
“God Almighty, woman, are you shot?!”
With the three deputies down hard, I made myself focus on the young woman, who apparently was undergoing a bit of a breakdown, while still standing here in the rain. I looked her over carefully, checking for hidden weapons and any wounds I might have missed earlier. Miss Stockton flinched away from my overt gaze, but I was past giving fucks about her concerns. She continued with this whining cry that had me just on the verge of tossing her in the hog pen when Nikki showed up, puffing a bit and carrying a first aid kit. She visually checked me, then went to running her hands over Madeline Stockton’s blouse and skirt and setting her purse on a wooden shelf behind her. Miss Stockton didn’t protest and at least her hollering had stopped.
“Shouldn’t your husband be doing that?” I said stupidly, only realizing what I’d said after the words left my mouth.
“Not if he wants to keep his teeth in his mouth, or his jaw still working,” Nikki shot back, her tone sugar sweet and totally at odds with her words.
“Sorry, I meant checking for wounds, not feeling up with hostage,” I retorted with a touch of pique in my voice to give away my nervous state. When this happened before, I thought it was just me being my typical jerk self, but some research into the physiological changes brought on by stress had shown a different answer.
The shooting had been so sudden, despite the rising levels of tension that accompanied the inspection. I now knew the secret. When the shooting started, I’d experienced a burst of adrenaline fired into my system which left me with no way to burn it off, and the effect had me more than a little agitated. Others might experience a period
of giddiness or euphoria, but I just got a bit aggravated by the mess that followed a quick, sharp gunfight. That tracked my earlier feelings when everything ended quickly. In a more protracted gunfight, like what Mike and I endured at the Wilson Feed Store, in the aftermath I just felt tired and wanted a nap.
“Pat’s coming. He asked me to check the girl. He’s going over the Suburban for tracking devices. Outside, anyway.”
“Oh, right, and Mike’s still covering from up top. Got it,” I replied, more to myself than my sister. Going over to Bailey, I grabbed the limp form under his arms and dragged him into the hog barn. Despite my macabre joke before, we weren’t prepared to feed the dead deputies to the hogs, but I wanted to preserve the bodies as best we could for now. I repeated the process with Krueger, and then Baines. Baines had the keys to the Department ride, and I was just about to hand them to Nikki when I heard a call from the other side of the building.
“Hello, the barn! Can we come in?!”
“Come on, Wade!” I yelled back, finishing my transfer of the Suburban’s keys to Nikki. “Shooting’s over. Fair warning, though. Don’t come in unless you got a strong stomach.”
Wade came around the corner of the wooden building with his M4 held across his arms, and I saw he had his brother Ethan and another young man I couldn’t place.
“Hey, Wade. Hey, Ethan,” I said quickly, then looked at the newcomer. “Hey, you must not be a Husband, so that must make you a husband.”
The three men chuckled at my low wit, but it was true. For her part, Ms. Stockton stopped crying long enough to sniff in surprise.
“How can you laugh at something like this?”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry. I know it’s hard, but Bryan so obviously spent days coming up with that smartass comment, we had to respond with at least polite laughter. I know he’s not funny, but Bryan doesn’t understand. I just didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”
Wade was so sincere that the poor girl didn’t know what to do, so I finally took pity on her and gave her a serious response.
“Please, Ms. Stockton, I’m sorry. This all must be terrible for you. We’re not laughing at your distress, I promise. This is just a stress-relieving mechanism. None of us are accustomed to killing people, and I hope that never becomes the case. If you want a better explanation, you can ask Nikki’s husband, Patrick. He was in the Army for years and has much more experience. I’m just so happy we’re all still alive, and happy that I have such good neighbors willing to come to our aid.”
That true praise made Wade blush, I noticed.
Miss Stockton had the presence of mind to give me an acknowledging nod, followed by what sounded like a sincere apology.
“I’m sorry, too. I’m just not used to this. First, the shooting of that poor old man earlier, and now this. And I thought they were going to kill me this time,” she started sobbing again at this juncture, “and then, you just started shooting and I didn’t even see where the gun came from.”
I paused to absorb what the young woman had revealed.
“So this wasn’t the first place you stopped? Bailey lied about that too?”
Miss Stockton wiped at her eyes with a tissue provided by Nikki as she struggled to regain her composure. Then she started telling us her story.
“Oh, no, we went to the county agriculture extension agent when Cecelia and I first got to town, and he sent us to see the sheriff. He wasn’t in, but we saw that horrible Deputy Haines was in the office, and he took us out to the sheriff’s house.”
I held up my hand to slow her down, as she was gathering steam in her narration.
“Uh, who’s Cecelia?”
“She’s my partner with the Department of Agriculture. Cecelia Robinson. Our new boss with the Department thought he should send us out in pairs to do our surveys. The sheriff has Cecelia as a hostage at his house, and I’m really worried about her. At least she didn’t see Sergeant Bailey when he and his men killed the old man up the road. Mr. Fitts seemed like such a nice man, and I don’t even want to think about what they did to poor Wally.”
As Miss Stockton rambled, tears falling again, I exchanged a look with Wade. Yes, this was bad. If the sheriff was already raiding his own people in daylight and taking hostages, then he must be willing to do just about anything.
“Call Dorothy and suggest she spend the night in the hospital,” I said with a ragged voice. “I’ll get Mike to call Marta as soon as we get to the house to stress the need.”
“We’ll come with you,” Wade replied, and I figured he meant more than joining us on a stroll home. Our families were our pressure points, and if Landshire wanted to run us off our lands, then kidnapping those two women would give him major leverage.
Turning to Nikki, I gave her a hard nod before speaking.
“I think the wheels just officially fell off the wagon, sister dear. Get ready, but understand. We’re going to need Pat.”
“To go rescue some stranger? Why? I’m sympathetic, but it’s not our fight,” Nikki reasoned, but I could hear the doubt in her voice.
“No, that’s not the reason. Just trust me on this and escort our guest back to the house.”
There. Maybe that would get the crying to go away long enough for me to properly loot the dead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I moved with a sense of urgency that was hampered by my overloaded state as I waddled back to the house and stumbled into the mudroom. In addition to their rifles and spare ammunition, I’d removed the duty belts from all three and slung them, pistols and all, over one shoulder. I found Mike, Pat, and Nikki seated at the kitchen table along with Wade, Ethan, and the new guy, with Madeline Stockton claiming a chair at the end of the table. She’d managed to pull herself together in the ten minutes since I’d sent them to the house.
I stripped off the rifles, unloaded and with magazines removed, and leaned them against the table. The coiled duty belts and wallets, I piled up in the middle of the table in a disorganized mess. There would be time to check them later. No one commented on the blue nitrile gloves I had taken from Nikki’s first aid kit, and I left them on my hands for now.
“Where’s Charles and Mary?” I asked, claiming the last chair.
“Over at the new place,” Nikki explained. “We figured they didn’t need to get pulled into this. Whatever this turns out to be.”
I turned to Mike and he answered without me asking.
“Marta, Dorothy, and Sally are bunking down at the hospital tonight,” Mike reported. “Wade and I had to team up on them to get an agreement, though. We didn’t say anything about what happened today, but I know Marta can read between the lines.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty much resigned to sleeping on the sofa for the next few days,” Wade interjected, and I could see Dorothy imposing that edict for keeping her in the dark. I thought about it though, and agreed we shouldn’t say anything over the telephone that we didn’t want coming back to haunt us.
“Knowing Dorothy, she’ll at least let you have a blanket. Maybe even a pillow,” I teased, trying to lift the mood.
“I know it’s not my place, Mr. Hardin, but can you tell us what happened?”
This was from the man who’d come with Wade. I guessed he was in his late twenties or early thirties, tall and slender but not skinny, and while he looked familiar from Husband family get-togethers, I didn’t have a name to go with the face.
“Sure, I think all of you need to know, and I’m sorry about my smart remark earlier. I know you’re married to one of Wade’s sisters, but I couldn’t come up with your name. And please, call me Bryan.”
“No problem, Bryan. I’m Wil Huckabee, and you nailed it. Susanne is my wife, and we’ve been staying with Wade after our house flooded.”
“Sorry for your situation, Wil, but I’m glad Wade had room for you guys,” I said, pausing to regard Ms. Stockton before continuing.
“When those three deputies showed up, I first thought this was just something cooked up by the sheriff to get a lo
ok at our setup here. I think he tried before when he had one of the Sherwoods try to disable the gate, so I can’t say I was totally surprised. What happened next, did catch me by surprise.”
“Not totally,” Wade interjected, looking at me with a new expression. “You got to all three of them before they got you.”
“First, before I get into that,” I deflected, “we need to hear what Ms. Stockton told me earlier. Can you tell us how you came to be working with these men? And what happened at Mr. Fitts’ place?”
I heard gasps around the table from those not present earlier at the hog barn to hear Ms. Stockton’s nervous declaration.
Haltingly, Ms. Stockton began her story, starting with her evacuation from Houston along with her roommate and coworker, Cecilia Robinson. They’d been luckier than some, as their employer made provisions for a bus to pick them up, with the rest of their office, for transport to Austin. They’d even received temporary housing at a National Guard barracks near Austin. It was just bunks in an open bay, all female, and lukewarm showers, but Maddy, as she asked to be called, and Cece quickly came to realized they were some of the lucky ones. They not only had a roof over their heads, they also found themselves still gainfully employed.
She spent a few minutes describing the madhouse in Austin as various state departments scrambled to perform their normal duties on top of new assignments well outside their normal purview. She reported working out of a satellite office on base just a few buildings down from their barracks, so she was insulated from the violence outside, but everybody heard the stories and she was unashamed to say that sometimes she and Cece shared their bunk for comfort when the shooting in the distance became too much.
She related how the orders came down for a county by county survey, but the stated purpose sounded fairly benign despite what I’d intimated. Governor Hicks, whether he knew about the meteorite strike or not, worried about the weather changes being seen and felt throughout his state. Areas that were traditionally relied upon to produce everything from lima beans to watermelons, rice to onions, now sat under threat from wind, rain, and storm. He gave a speech to a gathering of hundreds of state workers sheltered at the base, explaining he wanted boots on the ground to make reports about the real scope and depth of the damage. She quoted some of the more memorable parts of the speech, but Maddy swore she heard nothing about plans to seize crops or slaughter livestock for the common good. Either the governor was a leader worthy of the mantle of Cincinnatus, or he really did understand the mentality of his constituency.
Tertiary Effects Series | Book 2 | Storm Warning Page 27