This Hero for Hire

by Cynthia Thomason

  She carried her half-eaten supper to the sink and rinsed the remainder of the food into the disposal. “I don’t envy you, Boone.” She turned to face him. He had stopped pacing and stood by the back door, looking into the dark yard and beyond. “But I do care for you, and I believe I know you very well. Whatever you decide will come from your heart and your conscience. You’re good, better than either Jared or I could ever be.”

  She walked up beside him, stood on her toes and kissed his cheek. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay? Same time? Same rules?”

  He almost smiled. And she almost cried.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, after a silent drive to the farm, Boone stayed in the barn while Susannah and her friends continued their work as if the future of their project couldn’t change at any moment. He filled water buckets, groomed the horses, gathered the eggs and didn’t realize a car had pulled up until he went outside minutes later.

  He saw his parents’ car but no Jared. His sister-in-law and nieces were in the field with Susannah. Four females crouched in the dirt. He recognized Susannah’s straw hat. Francine wore a visor, and the girls each had wide-brimmed cotton caps to protect their delicate faces from the sun.

  They worked a few feet from each other, each concentrating on a task. Every once in a while one of his nieces would squeal at some new marvel, or perhaps a bug, he didn’t know. Susannah would laugh, sit back and explain some fundamental of the processes she knew so well. This was Susannah’s life, her work, yet his family seemed to fit so well.

  Boone shrugged off a jolt of jealousy. The girls obviously hadn’t come to find him when they arrived at the farm. They seemed content to be in the dirt, digging and learning.

  He sighed. They were beautiful, these women in their sunhats. Boone wasn’t a sexist, but there was something about seeing females as part of the growth cycle, nurturing the soil so they could in turn nurture their families.

  This was a far more beautiful sight than crisscrossed concrete slabs.

  Susannah nodded and tiny Ellen yanked at a plant. She pulled up a fully developed carrot, its leafy green top waving in the morning breeze. Running to the spigot next to the barn, she washed off the vegetable and dried it on her shorts. Then, seeing her uncle, she ran joyfully toward him. “Do you want to share my carrot?” she asked. “Susannah said it’s okay to eat it right from the ground. We don’t have to just get carrots from the supermarket.”

  “Save me some,” he told her. “It looks really good.”

  She ran back to the others. Francine admired the clean carrot before standing, wiping her hands on her jeans and walking toward him. He didn’t know how Francine would treat him this morning.

  “Where’s Jared?” Boone asked.

  “He’s in the motor home at your parents’ house. Said he had some tinkering to do.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Don’t worry about him, Boone. If he’s stewing, let him stew. The girls wanted to come, and I wanted to meet Susannah.”

  “Did Jared tell you about what happened last night?”

  “He did. And he was upset, but Boone, you have to remember something about your brother. He gets an idea and then obsesses over it. Remember the mini golf he wanted to put in behind our church?” She smiled. “And sometimes his schemes are risky. Even so, he wants to move forward at breakneck speed. He’s like a dog with a bone. He won’t let go.”

  “This time I don’t think his idea is necessarily a bad one,” Boone said. “And I know he’s the money guy, but I think this resort could be a huge financial risk.”

  “Of course it could. There are no guarantees. And it would require a lot of work to get it set up. Even if we use the land as collateral and get a loan and hire everything to get it done, which we’d have to do, someone would have to supervise.” She smiled at Boone. “The last I remember, you have a full-time job and so does Jared, one we need to survive.”

  Boone actually saw a path around Francine’s concerns. He was at the farm everyday anyway. What more responsibility would it be for him to oversee daily checks of the building of the resort? It could be managed. Nevertheless, he didn’t say that to his sister-in-law. He just filed it in the back of his mind to consider later.

  “I really like her,” Francine said.

  His thoughts snapped back to the present. “What? Who?”

  “Susannah. She’s made this property look wonderful. It’s been years since the farm was devoted to anything but weed cultivation.”

  “Yeah, though I just wish she’d have picked some other piece of farmland for her experiment.”

  Francine stared at the girls in the field. “I don’t know. She’s managed to convince me that this soil has magical properties. Only she doesn’t call it magic.”

  “She’s a scientist. She has a logical explanation for why everything seems to grow so well here,” Boone said, unable to disguise the pride in his voice. Susannah had made him proud of her knowledge and determination and proud of the land his great-grandfather had purchased all those years ago. “She’s right that there aren’t any other truly level acres in this county.”

  “You know,” Francine continued, “most arguments are solved in the end by compromise. Maybe we should all sit down and see where we might each give and take.”

  Boone chuckled. “You mean see if Susannah will give up some of her acres to Jared, and he’ll give up some of his resort to her?”

  “Could happen.”

  Could it? Or were both these people all-or-nothing-at-all types? He wasn’t sure.

  “I know one thing,” Francine said. “Susannah is concerned about what this decision is costing you.”

  “Is she concerned or is she angry because I didn’t go along with her wishes right away?”

  “No, that’s not it. Whatever you decide will affect her, but she knows the decision won’t be easy on you.”

  He huffed. “Why would she be concerned about the toll this decision will take on me?”

  Her lips curved up in a coy grin. “I’m not a mind reader or a fortune teller, but my woman’s intuition is telling me that she’s invested in your decision primarily because she loves you. Just like you love her.”

  Boone’s eyes cut to Francine’s rather smug expression, but he didn’t refute her theory. “Most of our conversations have been disagreements,” he said.

  “So what? Passion is passion, Boone. And this is the first you’ve looked at me since I walked up here. You’ve been focused on the field the entire time, and I don’t think it’s because of the vegetables out there.” She turned and started back toward her daughters. “Just something you two thickheaded people should think about.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “THEY REALLY ARE great girls,” Susannah said a few days later when Boone was driving her to the campaign headquarters. “And they’re nuts about you.”

  He smiled. “So which one do you think will make the best farmer?”

  “Oh, I could easily convert both of them if I had more time. But right now I’d say Anne. She’s the oldest, so that makes sense. She asked lots of questions. They’ve both enjoyed themselves at the farm, I think, but Ellen just seemed to get a kick out of digging around in the dirt.”

  Susannah hadn’t mentioned Boone’s decision in several days, giving him time to sort through his feelings. Besides, the election was only two days off and Susannah had her mind on other matters. Boone seemed calmer now. Perhaps he was close to an announcement and this trial would be over for him.

  She turned to him when he pulled up at the storefront the Rhodes campaign had temporarily rented. “You don’t need to come in, Boone,” she said, looking in the window. “We’re getting to crunch time here with lots to do and there are easily a dozen volunteers inside. I’ll be fine.”

  “You can tell it’s alm
ost election day,” he said. “Everyone has a phone in their hand. I hope your plan for getting folks to come out and vote is working.”

  “Yep, that’s our goal for the next forty-eight hours, to get people to say they’ll show up at the polls. We might not win the election, but one thing’s for sure—if the citizens don’t vote, we won’t have a chance.”

  She opened the truck door, but before she got out, she said, “Don’t get in any trouble just because you’re on your own now, Officer.”

  “I’ll try not to. I’m going over to the station for a while to see what investigations have been backing up since I’ve been on leave.”

  She hoped he would discover that the force really missed him and needed him. “Maybe you can add a fresh viewpoint,” she suggested.

  “Maybe so. And then I might just go out for a beer to clear my head. I’ve got some thinking to do, as you know.”

  She certainly didn’t want to add any more difficulty to his decision-making process. He knew where she stood on the issue of the land, and haranguing him with more details would only make matters worse. And she knew where he stood—square in the middle of the brother he’d always idolized and the woman who’d turned his life upside down.

  He might think of her in a more flattering light than just a troublemaker, but if he did have deep feelings for her, she wasn’t going to use them to influence him. Until and if something changed between them, they were still two people walking very different paths through life.

  She strolled into an office situation that could only be called controlled chaos. At least six people fired questions at her right away. She dealt with each one.

  “A reporter from the Constitution is calling back in ten minutes,” one volunteer said. “He wants a statement about your father’s chances as the election draws close.”

  “The governor called,” another said. “He wants you to call him back when you can. He’s trying to add another stop to his agenda and needs to know you haven’t booked him for anything else.”

  “I’ll call him,” she said, immediately rushing toward the miniscule room in back that she used as an office. “I’m going to be returning calls for a while,” she told the volunteers.

  Her office wasn’t ideal, but it worked well enough. She barely had room for a desk and chair. Almost all the floor space was taken up with pamphlets and flyers and campaign posters. She had the thought that she should find out where the nearest recycling drop-off was. They’d have a lot of paper to discard once the election was over.

  Sorting through messages that had accumulated since yesterday, she stacked the pink slips in order of importance. She didn’t think her father would want to cut the ribbon on a new convenience store in Libertyville the day after the election. But he probably would make a visit to the local fire hall. She began to dial the first phone number but was interrupted by a knock on the back door.

  Her office had the only exit other than the main front door. She’d managed to keep an aisle clear just in case of emergency, but to her knowledge no one had used that door since the Rhodes headquarters had been established. Occasionally Boone checked the door to make sure it was locked.

  She wanted to shout for the person on the other side of the door to come around to the front but decided it’d be easier and faster to answer it herself. She went to the door, turned the lock and opened it. And took the last normal breath she would take for several long, tense hours.

  “Randy! What are you...? How did you...?”

  Susannah gaped at her former friend and employee. Wearing the same jeans and T-shirt as he’d worn the night of the arrest, Randy stood on the threshold of her office door. His battered old truck was parked a few yards away.

  “We don’t have much time, Susannah,” he said. “You’re coming with me.”

  “What? No, I’m not.”

  He withdrew a hand from his pocket, revealing the glint of a knife blade. “Don’t think I won’t use this,” he said. “I know just the right spot to bleed you dry before you can ever make a sound.”

  “But why? Why do you want me to go with you?”

  “I don’t have time to explain. That stupid cop you’ve had looking over your shoulder for weeks could come back any minute.”

  If only the stupid cop were here now, she thought. He would make short work of this situation. But she couldn’t endanger any of her volunteers. “I don’t understand any of this,” she said. “But I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  He grabbed her wrist and hauled her out of the office and into the blazing afternoon sun before kicking the door closed with his boot. She hollered as pain shot up her arm. In the flash of an eye he had her back to his chest and the knife pressed against her throat. “Don’t make another sound or I’ll have to use this.”

  She nodded, her body suddenly numb.

  “Get in my truck, now!”

  She obeyed, sliding across the driver’s seat to the passenger side. All the time he had the knife positioned to stab down into a vital organ. Randy turned the key in the ignition and peeled out of the alley toward the outskirts of town.

  The knife rested in Randy’s lap as he drove. The absence of immediate danger allowed Susannah to gather her tumbling thoughts. “How did you get out of jail?” she asked as they drove along at a sane speed, probably so the truck wouldn’t draw attention from local law enforcement.

  He shot her a disgusted glare. “A lot you care about that. One visit! That’s all I had from you in all this time. I told you I couldn’t stay in that place, that I would die in there, but what did you do to get me out? Nothing!”

  “I knew you had an attorney,” she argued. “It’s up to him to arrange bond.”

  “Which he finally did after I suffered almost three weeks of sleepless nights waiting for someone to kill me if I closed my eyes.”

  Susannah doubted the sincerity of Randy’s plight. She’d spent enough time in the jail herself to know that hardened criminals were removed quickly to a well-guarded county prison. Randy hadn’t been moved, so she doubted he was with the worst of the worst.

  “Randy, did you paint the graffiti on my father’s house?” Not that his answer mattered so much now. The house had been repainted, and her dad hadn’t seen the damage. But Susannah had to know just how deep Randy’s resentment of her family went.

  “That was nothing,” he said. “Took all of about a half hour and didn’t accomplish anything because you didn’t even tell your father. I had to do something else, something to make this town wake up to the dangers in that fertilizer plant. I thought my good friends, my family, as you liked to call us, would bail me out after my arrest. But no. I had to contact an aunt in Oklahoma to put up collateral for my bail. The folks I joined up with to make the world a better place didn’t offer up a dime.”

  “We don’t have any money,” she said. “You know that as well as anyone. And frankly, Randy, you gave up the right to have us as your family when you violated our trust. You broke the law, and criminal acts have never been part of our agenda. And in doing so, you put the whole program in jeopardy.”

  “What good was the program anyway?” he hollered at her. “All we were doing was planting a few seeds. I’m the one who finally took action against the corporation that was poisoning the ground and water.” He jabbed his finger against his chest. “I’m the one who tried to put a stop to the distribution of harmful chemicals.”

  “But you can’t make your point by destroying someone else’s property,” she said. “That manufacturing plant was operating within the boundaries of the law.”

  “Which means we should just ignore it?”

  “No, it means that we, too, have to effect change within the boundaries of the law. It may take longer than going in with both guns blazing, but that’s how our laws work.”

  A muscle worked in his temple. “Well, sorry, b
ut at least one of us wasn’t willing to sit around and wait for something to happen one day. I wasn’t going to watch the population be slowly poisoned. I thought this group was more committed, more oriented to action instead of just words. I thought I was joining something that would make an immediate and profound difference.”

  She sighed. “Immediate is difficult, Randy. You’ve seen the proof of that. Nothing happens without trial and error. But we are making a difference.”

  “I made a difference! Not any of you. And what did I get for it? Time in jail, an indictment, a trial where I will no doubt be found guilty in this good ol’ boy town.”

  “You are guilty, Randy,” Susannah said. She moved closer to the door when she saw his face contract into menacing lines. “The best thing you can do right now is admit what you’ve done and try for a short sentence based on your good intentions. Do you have a criminal record?”

  He gawked at her. “What? No.”

  “Good. Then get your lawyer to argue for leniency.”

  “Oh, right, Susannah! Then I’d only get five years in prison instead of ten. Thanks!”

  He turned to stare at her. The truck swerved, and she clutched the door handle. Maybe he was insane.

  “I thought you would back me up,” he said. “I believed I would have the governor’s daughter to support me if I needed her. I didn’t even tell you about my plans that night so your lily-white hands would be clean. But I sure expected you to stand beside me if I were caught.” The look he gave her was venomous. “And you know the really pathetic part? I wouldn’t have been caught. It was you and Omar, bumbling around that warehouse, that sealed my fate that night.”

  “We were trying to protect you!” Susannah said. “We wanted to get you out of there before it was too late.”

  “So you set off the alarms, brought the cops and left me to hang.” He shook his head and made a scoffing sound from deep in his throat. “What an idiot I was. I took the blame, the whole blame, thinking you would realize you brought the cops that night, thinking you would hire me a good lawyer, you would get your famous daddy to get me out of this mess.”