by J. D. German
Chapter 2 – The Farm
Lynn was asleep in the backseat when Rick and Harriet pulled up to the gate and entered the lock code. Rick drove up the long winding driveway and parked in the garage. “Should we wake her up?” Rick asked.
“She hasn’t been sleeping much. I guess the motion of the car lulled her to sleep. It’s like when our kids were little and wouldn’t go to sleep, so we would put them in their car seat and drive around the neighborhood. They would be out in a few minutes.”
Rick looked back at Lynn and said “She sure seems comfortable. Can we just leave her here and go inside?”
“I don’t know. What if she wakes up and panics? I think I’ll stay in the car with her until she wakes up.”
“You want me to bring you anything? A snack, or a drink?”
“No. I’ll just doze in the seat until I hear her making noises.”
Rick went into the kitchen, pulled a beer out of the refrigerator, and settled into his recliner to watch a game. Twenty minutes later he heard screaming from the garage. He grabbed his pistol from the kitchen drawer and dashed out the door. Lynn was in the backseat of the SUV screaming and thrashing around. Harriet climbed back there with her and took her in her arms to calm her down.
“Shhh. It’s Okay now. Harriet’s here. Try to calm down.”
Lynn stopped screaming and opened her eyes. “Oh . . . it was another one of my dreams. Jack was there again . . . He was trapped in a fire in my Colorado home. His clothes were on fire and I couldn’t get to him. His skin turned to black ashes as I watched. It was awful.”
Rick and Harriet looked at each other. It was too early to tell her how Jack died. That would come when she wasn’t so fragile. She was still in some kind of mental state that blocked it all from her mind. It would take time for her to come back from there.
Harriet helped her out of the back seat and led her into the living room. It was like leading a robot by the hand. She sat down stiffly on the couch and looked around. A puzzled look crossed her face for a few seconds, then she recognized her surroundings.
“We’re at the Farm, aren’t we. I recognize some of the furniture. I’ve been here before . . . and Jack was with us. Oh, Jack! Where are you. Why did you leave me? I miss you so much. I want to be with you.” With that, she laid down on the couch and started crying softly.
Harriet motioned for Rick to follow her into the kitchen. “We need to leave her alone for now. Maybe she’ll go back to sleep. I’ll sleep in the guest bedroom with the door open so I can hear her when she wakes up.”
Harriet woke up in the morning to sounds from the kitchen. She thought Rick must be making coffee. He’s up early. She put her robe on and went in to give him a good morning kiss, but it wasn’t Rick, it was Lynn making the coffee.
“Good morning! I’m glad to see you’re up and around. Did you sleep well?”
“Yeah, after I cried for a couple of hours. Maybe I cried some of the pain out, because I feel a lot better.”
“Crying is one of the best therapies around – for women anyway. For men, not so much. It’s just not manly. It shows their vulnerability.”
“Jack could cry when he got too emotional. It didn’t embarrass him to cry in front of me.” Lynn froze in the middle of her coffee making.
Harriet mentally kicked herself for bringing up something that made her think of Jack. I’ve ruined her good mood.
After several seconds Lynn re-animated herself and went on with her task. “That brought back a good memory of Jack. I felt so close to him when he shared his emotions. I need to keep bringing up the good memories to overpower the bad ones.”
“Have you thought about getting some grief counseling, Lynn? When my sister lost her husband she was really depressed. I talked her into seeing someone and after a couple of months, with the help of anti-depressants, she was functioning again.”
“No! I don’t want to share my hurt with anyone – especially a stranger.”
“So you just want to wallow in your pain, huh.”
Lynn shot Harriet an angry look and said sharply, “and I don’t need your advice either.”
“Someone needs to be honest with you, dear. I’m your best friend and even if you get mad at me when I try to help, it won’t stop me. You have to talk about your pain, your memories, the joy you and Jack shared.”
Lynn paused for a minute. “Yes, you’re right. You’re my BFF and if I can’t share it with you it will kill me.”
“Rick and I are there for you now, but think about seeing a therapist later on.”
Lynn set two cups on the counter and poured their coffee, then gave Harriet a hug. They sat there quietly as they sipped and privately pondered the situation, each from their own perspective. Their thoughts were interrupted when Rick came in with a jovial “Good morning, Ladies. Up early I see.”
They both returned the greeting as Lynn poured a cup for Rick. “So what’s the plan, girls? Are you two going shopping today?”
Harriet answered “There is no plan, Rick. We take this one day at a time.”
“You have to have a plan! Otherwise you’re just drifting on the sea of . . . of life.”
Lynn answered. “Drifting is all I can do right now, Rick. It took all the motivation I could pull together just to get up this morning. Depression sucks your motivation out of you. You know you need get up and do things, but just thinking about them tires you out.”
“Well, I can’t drift. I need to be doing something . . . moving toward a goal.”
“Fine, Rick. You go after your goals like fixing the sink faucet, or cleaning out the garage. Lynn and I will drift wherever our thoughts and conversation take us. When you finish those goals, let me know and I’ll get out my Honey Do List.”
“I stepped right into that one, didn’t I dear. You two let me know if I can help in any way. I’m going to go to my study and check out the latest financial news.”
Rick turned on his state of the art, top of the line laptop – the same kind Lynn and Harriet . . . and Jack had. Less then a year ago they had come together as an informal group and named themselves the Forsetians, after the Norse god of justice. The four of them, along with Tom Gutierrez, tried to stop an unbalanced billionaire from buying the presidency of the United States. The man, Charles Winston, stopped at nothing to defeat his opponents. He started putting his hand-picked ultra-conservative people in Congress six years before the presidential election, using blackmail, lies, and even murder to get them there. In spite of the Forsetians attempts to expose Winston’s crimes, he won the Republican primary and then the Presidency. If Winston hadn’t been killed by a Chinese sniper, the country would be well on its way to self-destruction by now. Fortunately his successor, Marcus Tyler, has different plans for the country.
Jack Preston was the unofficial leader of the Forseti group. He first uncovered Winston’s plot and, in trying to gather more information, drew in Lynn, Harriet, Rick, and Tom. Jack, with a Ph.D. in computers and electronics and several years of field work as an agent of the Federal Remediation Agency, was one of the best hackers in the world. Winston had hired a young Russian computer genius to stop Jack’s hacking attacks, but in the end he was no match for Jack.
After Jack was killed and the Winston threat taken care of, the Forseti group went their separate ways. Their mission to save the country was finished. They still communicated with each other, but as friends rather that crusaders. While they were fighting the dark forces, Jack had bought them each the best laptop computers available. He installed his own encryption and firewall software so they could hack into government and corporate computer systems with no concern about a counter-attack getting through Jack’s digital mirror, as he called it. When the firewall detected anything suspicious coming in, it turned into a digital mirror and reflected it back into the computer that sent it. As soon as it got there it did its nasty work on that computer.
With that protection Rick had no worries as he logged on to the internet using one of the false identities
Jack created for them. He checked on the financial markets for the latest news, and then to the financial underground internet where he could find out everything that might affect the investment market before it became public. He saw no surprises there, so he moved onto the numbered offshore bank account where the Forseti funds were kept. As part of their investigation into Winston’s finances, Rick had found six million dollars stashed in a numbered account that Winston used to frame his political opponents with embezzlement charges. With Jack’s hacking skills they transferred the money to a new account to fund their activities against Winston.
After Winston was eliminated, the group decided to divide up the money among the five of them. Rick would act as the banker for the account, and whenever one of them needed money they would contact him. So far no one except Tom had withdrawn money. He was going through a nasty divorce with a psychotic wife who was trying to deny him visitation rights with their two girls. Lawyers were expensive and Tom’s personal funds had been frozen pending the outcome of the divorce. Rick was a real estate millionaire before he joined the group, so he and Harriet didn’t need their share for now. Jack had money of his own because of several inventions he had sold to the Government. Lynn had inherited that, so she could support herself for a few years.
Rick typed in the code word for the account and saw the balance sheet appear. The fund was doing well; its present value was over five and a half million. Rick had invested some of the total in several mutual funds specializing in treasury notes, government and corporate bonds, and energy futures – all rock solid triple-A rated investments.
In the living room Harriet and Lynn sat side by side on the couch with their second cup of coffee. Harriet wanted to get Lynn talking about the good times with Jack, but knew she would be walking into an emotional mine field. She started at the beginning.
“I’ve only heard bits and pieces of how you and Jack first met. Fill me in on the details.”
Lynn sat still for a couple of minutes as Harriet waited apprehensively. Then she nodded her head and opened up. “Well, it all started with an email I sent Jack . . . no, wait a minute. Let me go back to the real beginning. Jack and I grew up in a small town in the West Virginia coal country. We had eighth grade science class together and when he came into the room I was captivated. Tall – over six feet – well built, and good looking. And as I would soon find out, smarter than anyone else I knew. He knew more about physics and chemistry than the teachers. I was still shy around boys and didn’t go out with them yet, so I just admired him from a distance.”
“Wait a minute! You two knew each other back in eighth grade?”
“Well, I didn’t really know him yet. But I noticed him stealing glances at me in class and in the hallway. I don’t remember how it came about, but he asked me to go to a movie with him. I said I would have to check with my mother first. But there we were the next Saturday sitting in the small local theater watching, of all things, Love is a Many Splendored Thing. I didn’t realize it until a few years later, but that movie wasn’t appropriate for kids our age. It was about a married newspaper correspondent having an affair with a woman doctor in China. Just before he had to leave she told him that he had knocked her up.”
Harriet laughed.
“Well that’s what they called it in our part of the country. Anyway, I don’t think either of us paid much attention to the plot. I was sitting there wondering if he would try to hold my hand and wiping my palms on my skirt every couple of minutes so they wouldn’t be sweaty just in case he did. He was probably trying to get up the courage to hold my hand and wondering what to do about his own sweaty hands.”
“Where did it go from there? Were you high school sweethearts?”
“No. My sister in Florida died so I had to move down there to raise her children.”
“When was the next time you saw him?”
“Forty years later. I was divorced and living in Telluride, Colorado. I spent a lot of time with my granddaughter, Selena . . .” Lynn choked back a sob at that point.
Harriet had forgotten that Selena and Jack were both killed in the same attack at Lynn’s mountain home. She took the coffee cups into the kitchen and fiddled around for a few minutes until Lynn got her composure back.
“Do you want any more coffee, Lynn?”
“No, I’m wired enough as it is. It’s been awhile since I could get up to make any for myself. Come on back. I can talk some more.
“Okay. If you are sure. I don’t want to upset you.”
“Actually, reminiscing about the old days makes me feel better. Let’s see . . . where was I. Oh, Yes. Me and my granddaughter. Anyway, she liked science projects and I remembered a demonstration Jack did back in science class. I thought she would like it, so I searched for his name on the internet. The first thing that popped up were several patents by Jackson Joshua Preston. The middle name is what tipped me off.’
“I knew Jack was smart, but he actually has some patents? What for?”
“Mostly stuff for military use. I saw that the last couple of patents listed an address in the Washington D.C. area, so I went to Whitepages.com to find a phone number, but it didn’t come up with a match. There was a listing for Jackson Joshua Preston, Jr. out in California though, so I called him up and explained I was an old friend of his father’s and wanted to get his telephone number. He was hesitant about that, but I did manage to get an email address out of him. That’s when we started exchanging emails.”
“Were they romantic? Did you have an online flirtation with him?”
“No, nothing like that. He sent me instructions for the science project, and we summarized our lives for each other. After half-hearted invitations to visit if we were ever in the other’s neighborhood the emails stopped. I found out later that he had more important things to do.”
“So when did he first show up at your place?”
“A month or so later he calls me from Grand Junction and asks if I would like to meet him for lunch. I, of course, say ‘There aren’t any good restaurants in Telluride. Why don’t you come to my place and I’ll fix us something.’ So an hour later Jack shows up at my door, we eat lunch and talk over old times for the rest of the afternoon. He says he wants to get down into town before dark to find a motel room and I say ‘Stay here. I have extra bedrooms and we’re both adults. So we had dinner and a few glasses of wine and went to bed.”
“You slept with him the first night?”
“No, we went off to separate bedrooms and met again at breakfast.”
“Wow, what a story!”
“Just wait ‘til you hear the rest of it. It gets better – much better. So there we were, ham and scrambled eggs and I ask him what kind of work he did before he retired. He starts in with a line of bull about . . .”
“Hi, girls. What’s for breakfast? I’m starved.”
“You must be telepathic. Lynn was just talking about breakfast. Let me whip up something. How do you like your eggs, Lynn?”
As they finished the last of their breakfast Rick said “I need to talk with you two about the Forseti fund. I just checked on our account and it’s doing nicely. After Winston was killed we decided to divide the $6 million five ways, with each of us getting $1.2 million – that’s grown to about $1.3 million since then. Now that Jack is no longer with us, I moved his $1.3 million over into Lynn’s account, leaving her with $2.6 million.”
Lynn spoke up immediately. “No, that’s not right. Jack’s share should be equally divided among the rest of us. I don’t want any special favors.”
“There’s no special favors involved here, Lynn. Jack worked harder than any of us to get Winston out, so he earned that money fair and square. I manage the account and I have made the decision. No argument allowed.”
“He’s right Lynn. I know you don’t have any use for it now, but it will be there whenever you need it. Maybe you can start a new career with it.”
“Not likely.”
“Okay, that’s settled. Go
on with your story about how you and Jack got together. Rick will enjoy hearing it.”
“You mean I missed some of it? You have to go back to the beginning so I can hear it all.”
“Another time, Rick. Go ahead Lynn. You and Jack were at you place in Colorado and he was answering your question about what he did for a living.”
“Right. He told me that after college and graduate school he spent the rest of his career working for the Government as an engineer on several different projects that took him all over the world. When I asked him what kind of projects he got evasive and changed the subject. I learned later that he was a secret agent for the FRA – sort of like the FBI but with different letters. I thought maybe he wasn’t really retired because he spent a lot of time on his computer and telephone, but he wouldn’t talk about it.”
“I think that’s when he called us, Rick. I was in the hospital recovering from an attempted murder by motor vehicle when he called and asked about some work I had done when I was with the FRA that hadn’t been closed out properly. He found a total of six cases like, that and eventually discovered the agents involved in three of them had died recently under suspicious circumstances.”
“Yeah, he told me about that later. He eventually opened up to me a little and told me some of what was going on. What he didn’t tell me was that he was being chased by some people who were trying to kill him, but I wouldn’t find that out for a few more days. It was during those days that we started to grow close to each other. But that’s when the two men showed up at my door and all hell broke loose. We had to leave at night in a snowstorm over some mountain roads with them hot on our tail. After we finally got clear we met up with you two.”
“When are you going to write a book about all your adventures, Lynn? It would be a bestseller for sure.”
“I have already lived through it once. I don’t want to relive it.”
They spent the rest of the day discussing the adventures they all had after Jack and Lynn showed up at Rick and Harriet’s mini mansion they called The Farmhouse. They pursued their quest to discredit Winston from there for six weeks until Winston’s men ran them the four of them out. Jack took a shot in the butt during their escape, but other than that they got away clean.
After a late dinner they were all ready for bed. Harriet offered to sleep in the guest room with Lynn, but she said it wasn’t necessary. However, she didn’t refuse the sleeping pills Harriet offered her.