Owen

by Barton, Kathi S.

  “Yes. He said that he wanted it to go around the room.” She shook her head. “You don’t like that?”

  “It dates him. People will come into his office and see the progress, and the first thing they’re going to think is, he’s finished. ‘See, he doesn’t have any more room for progress.’” She thought about what would be more productive. “Maybe we can think about his future in whatever it is he does. What is it he does?”

  He told her that he made flour for baking. Bread flour it was called. But they could talk about him and his mural later. She asked him why.

  Caleb laughed. “Mr. Pound, the guy who is an OSU fan, is in the office on the second floor waiting on you.” Clare held her belly when it began to rebel a little. She told him that she didn’t think she could work with him or for him. “You already do. Now, let’s go and talk to Mr. Pound, and we’ll get started on your needs for working here. There is a lot of equipment that I’m still opening up to use, but if you see something else you need, let me know and we’ll get it ordered. All right?”

  “Are you sure about this? I mean, I could be a flop.” Caleb said he didn’t believe that. “Yes, but you don’t know for sure, do you?”

  “This is not the woman that I know. The one that held her boss up by his balls and made him give her back her things. Which, by the way, are in your office. I didn’t put anything away in there, but you have some nice pens. I might have to borrow them to use sometime. Also, I went ahead and hired you a secretary. If you’re anything like me, you don’t want to have to answer the phone when you’re in the middle of something. If you don’t like Beth, then we can—”

  She put her hand over his mouth. “You’re going too fast for me. Slow down, say one thing at a time, and let me absorb that before you hit me with something else.” He grinned. “Look, buster, I’m not used to people being nice to me in the workplace. Straighten up or you’ll be singing the blues in a much higher voice.”

  “There she is, the ball buster.” Clare wanted to punch him right in the mouth. Or the balls. “Now that you’re not all weepy and unsure, let’s go meet with Mr. Pound.”

  The meeting was held in a smallish room, but it was beautiful. The walls were a nice neutral color with the windows uncovered. The floors were a lovely hardwood that looked to be part of the original building and polished to a high gleam. She could work in here, she thought, every day and never get bored. When she sat at the table, she knew too that it had been made especially for this room. There wasn’t any detail that was left untouched by Caleb.

  By the end of the meeting, she had contacted the department at OSU that she needed to get approval from, as well as made a sketch that met with Mr. Pound’s approval. The pool was going to be designed with the logo that the college used, as well as she had incorporated a lot of other designs in the whole backyard landscaping.

  She drew in a large pull-down projection screen that was nearly one hundred inches. The bar was going to blend into the theme as well, with the logo on the front, and the bar stools. She even told him how he could have towels, as well as a cover for the area, that all went with the entire back yard.

  “This way, if you wanted, you could host your own tailgating party and it would be almost like being at the game.” He nodded and told her that he had a smoker and grill that he used already, as well as his wife had purchased him some deck chairs. “You’re all set then. All I need to do is submit this to the department, and it can be started on as soon as we get approval.”

  “Great.” Mr. Pound stood up and took her hand into his. “You have no idea how happy you’ve made me. When we get this done, I expect you and your family to be there for a trial run. My wife, she makes a mean barbeque that’ll burn the hair right off your head.”

  When he left, leaving a check for the entire amount that she’d quoted him, she looked at the check. Her first job. Her first payment, and she was a hit. This time at least. Caleb joined her after showing Mr. Pound out.

  “When word gets out that you did this for him, you’re going to be doing a lot of this sort of work. We’ll need to figure out a landscaping firm that we can work with too. Christ, he didn’t even bat an eye when you told him how much it was going to cost.”

  She laughed too. “I was way over on the price. I was ready to come down for him, to look like I was working with him, but he just whipped out his checkbook and took care of it.” They were both giddy with what had happened. “Do you realize what we just did? We worked together. I didn’t even have to bust you in the face to make it work for us.”

  “I’m so happy that you didn’t have to either.” He laughed harder. “We need to celebrate with lunch. The company is buying.”

  They talked about how she’d had to go about getting the college’s permission to use their logos, and Caleb wondered if they should apply for all the local ones. She was just telling him about the National Football League ones when she saw her parents across the street. Lucky for her, or them—she wasn’t sure of which right now—they didn’t see her.

  ~~~

  Con looked around for anyone that might be able to help them. They’d been here for two days, and all they’d been able to find out was that the Winchesters would know about any newcomers before they did. Who the fuck were these people that seemed to run the town? He looked at his wife and smiled. Now there was a pretty woman.

  The years had been kind to his wife. Also, the reconstructive surgery to her nose, the breast implants, and the stuff she put in her lips to make them look full and lush. She’d had the fat sucked out of her belly too, but he was wise enough not to mention any of these things to her. He’d made that mistake before. She could be very intense when she was upset.

  “Should we try and see these people? The Winchesters?” He told her that he didn’t know but it was worth a shot. “And tell me again how you know that she’s here—with Conrad. When she took him out of that home he was in, I could have hunted her down and slapped the piss right out of her. Damn her.”

  “Yes, well, we were dead to her—remember, darling?” He kind of thought they’d been dead to her for a lot longer but didn’t say anything. “All we need to do is have Conrad go back to the home. Everything is all set up there, and once he is, then we can just have it explode like we were going to in the first place.”

  “I just don’t know why she’d want to have anything to do with him after all this time. He’s a retard. And to think that I carried that thing inside of me for all that time.” He held her when she cried a little. There wouldn’t be any tears from her, however. One of the many things she’d done to her face had taken that ability from her. “Con, we have to get him back there soon. I just want to go back to our nice villa and relax. All right?”

  “Yes, my love. Just as soon as he’s taken care of, we’ll go home.” He loved their new place, with the view of the sea right at their back door and the palm trees that swayed in the breeze. It was a great place to hide out, if he did say so himself. “I just can’t believe that we’ve run short on money already. I thought for sure we’d have enough for the rest of our lives.”

  “I know. And I thank you for my hips.” Con remembered now. Ava had to have them enhanced. Making her happy was expensive, he’d come to realize, but he so loved seeing her happy. “We’ll not spend it on anything but keeping us in bread and milk. All right, love?”

  “Yes, I think that’s a splendid idea.” He wondered how long that would last this time. So far, she’d had three necessary surgeries, and they’d only been gone a few months. “Look. There’s a couple over there. Perhaps we can ask them where we might find them.”

  Con started across the street, and was shocked to see them turn their backs on him and walk into the store behind them. When the man turned the sign from open to closed, he stood there in the middle of the street, just staring. What the hell was that all about? he wondered. Turning back to his wife, he saw that there were others doing the same thing. They were going out of their way to make sure that neither h
e nor Ava was helped. Then it occurred to him.

  “They’re here.” Ava asked him how he knew that. “Clare has soured the entire town against us. And here I was willing to give her a cut of the insurance money that we took out on her brother. She’s told them something, a lie more than likely, that has them running from us.”

  “Why would she do something terrible like that? And I do hope you’re kidding about giving her some of the money. Con, we’re going to need every penny we can save up to keep out of the way of the guys we worked for.” He nodded, distracted for a moment with all the shit that was going on in his head. “We have to talk to someone, tell them our side of whatever story she’s told them.”

  “The problem is, love, that it’s more than likely true.” He laughed as they headed back to the hotel they were staying in. “I’ll just have to give this some thought. We’ll have to take care that she doesn’t mess this thing up with Conrad. All she’d have to do is find out why we want him there and they’d be looking for our bombs. That would be bad for us in so many ways. Then there is the added fact that she could talk to Mr. Boone about us not being dead.”

  “Oh yes, that would be bad. As long as he thinks we’re dead, he won’t send his henchmen after us again. That was close, don’t you think?” He’d been shot the day before they supposedly died. “I don’t want to have to worry about that again, Con. To have you bleeding like that, it scared me to no end.”

  He hadn’t liked it either. When they were back in their hotel room, he sat at the little computer that they’d purchased when they arrived. He looked at the headlines daily to make sure that someone was printing something about them. Con had enjoyed it at first, seeing their name in print in the headlines, but now it was getting old. Like they had nothing better to do than to hound him and his wife to death.

  There was an article about how Norman Crass’s body had washed up on shore in California yesterday morning. He had hated to do that to the man, but there wasn’t any way that he was going to allow him to tell the world where he was. Because that would open up a whole lot of worms that he didn’t want to deal with. It wasn’t his fault that the dental records didn’t match. His and Ava’s had just fine.

  Killing him had been easy, he thought. It was getting his body as far away from them as he could that had cost them. And taking precautions that no one would ever connect him to them had been difficult as well. Stripping him down to nothing had been the only way that he knew of that would not leave any kind of DNA on the man. Norman had been a liability from the very start of their adventure. He told Ava that he’d been found.

  “Good. And good riddance to him as well. The nerve of that man telling me that I needed to spend less on myself and more in making sure that his wife was taken care of. I didn’t marry her. I didn’t make her pregnant five times.” Con said that he’d been stressed. “He’d have been less stressed if he had done what we told him to do and killed them all. No stress whatsoever in that.”

  “We might have taken our own advice on that, I’m thinking, with Clare. She’s going to make us trouble, I just know it.” He thought about the couple that had been across the street and how rude they were. “I wonder how she’d turn an entire town against us. I mean, it’s not like we hurt her in all this. Christ, that girl has always had her head up her ass where we were concerned. Remember how pissy she was when we told her that Conrad had been put away? You’d of thought that we’d had him killed or something.”

  “Well, that was sort of the plan, wasn’t it? I mean, he was such a drag to us. And when he took her from my arms when I was trying to make her listen to me is what got him into trouble. He was protecting her, I know this, but damn it, she wasn’t going to get away with telling me off. I’m her mother, for Christ’s sake.” He nodded. “I think you were very smart to have him put in that place while she was at school. That would have been terrible had she been home when they came to get him. That mark—if you’d not come up with that story when you did, I’m thinking we’d be in jail about now. That was a heck of a bruise you did, pinching her that hard.”

  “Yes, well, I do have a good idea on occasion.” He closed up the computer and sat next to her on the couch, and they got comfy. “I hate that it’s cold here. I know that according to the locals it’s still warm, but when you’re used to nineties with a nice breeze, forty feels like an iceberg.”

  They must have dozed off at some point because the ringing phone woke them both. Answering it, as he always did, just picking up the phone and waiting, he heard noises in the background that made him think of a factory. When he was about to hang up, he heard a voice that sent shivers down to his balls. Randolph Boone had found them.

  “Is this Con Macintosh? Hello, are you there?” He looked at Ava when she asked quietly who it was. “Hello? Mother fuck, I don’t think there was a connection made. Are you sure you saw them there? I mean, how the fuck did they get out of that plane mess?”

  The line went dead, and he put the receiver in the cradle. Stepping back from it, he told Ava what he’d heard and who it had been. They were in deep shit if he knew that they were here. Going to his luggage, he started throwing things into it as he told Ava to do the same. They’d not just be killed over this, but made to suffer in ways that he didn’t want to think about.

  “Hold on a minute, Con. Think about this. You said that he’d not seen us, but a flunky or someone did.” Con told her that he’d come to check it out. “I don’t doubt that he will, but if we can get this taken care of before he gets here, then we’ll have the money and be gone before he gets around to it. You know as well as I do that he’s not one to do things in a hurry. It took him four months to get us on his payroll. Remember? He’s a slow bastard, not someone we have to worry about at this moment.”

  He sat down and thought about what she was saying. Boone was sort of slow in things. Even if you were sitting in his office, waiting for him to answer your question or something, it would take him ten minutes or so. When the phone rang again, she did what he’d done—answered it without saying a word. When he heard Randolph speaking, he knew that the man thought it was on his end, and when he hung up, he thought she might be right on this.

  “What if he comes here before we’re done with this?” She said that the likelihood of that happening was slim to none. “You think he’ll send someone here? That they’ll look for us?”

  “I don’t know. How about this? With all the work I’ve had done on my body, there is no way that they’ll know me. I’ll start going out and about, you know, getting us food and things, and you wait here.” That was a brilliant idea and he told her that. “I do come up with some good ones once in a while. But you have to be in here. I don’t want anything to happen to you again, Con. You’re all I have in the world.”

  He told her that he loved her as well and sat down to read the paper. There was one at their door every day, yet he’d not had any chance to read one until now. When he looked at the headline, he sat there for several minutes, almost ten he’d bet, before what he was seeing came crashing down on his head.

  “Mother fuck, we’re so screwed right now.” He showed Ava the picture and read aloud the article that went with it. “‘Clare Macintosh has married one of the most eligible bachelors in the state yesterday at a private ceremony in the couple’s new home. Her brother, Conrad Macintosh, gave the lovely bride away. Her parents were unable to attend.’ She says right there that we’re alive, Ava. What the hell do we do now?”

  Chapter 5

  Randolph read the paper again as his limo took him to the little town in Ohio. He wasn’t sure if this woman was the one that he wanted to talk to—he’d never known that Con and Ava had any children—but he needed answers and figured that would be as good a place as any to start. He was going to get to the bottom of this, even if he had to come out of hiding himself to do so.

  “I’ve got a man on who we think is the daughter now. They’re still at their home.” Randolph said that they were newlyweds, he’d
not be leaving his home either. “Yes, sir. But I’m still keeping an eye on the houses for you. This isn’t what I think they had come here to do; do you? I mean, a married daughter wouldn’t bring them back, would it?”

  “No, I do not think so. There is something going on here, and I want to get to the bottom of this. How many are in this Winchester family? The picture in the paper, it doesn’t mention names, so I have no way of knowing what I’m dealing with here.” He said that according to his source, there were six sons of Kelley and Sara Winchester. “Good to know. Also, before I get there, find out who the alpha is. I’m going to have to report that I’m in the area. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m making the call as soon as we’re in town.” Randolph had been visiting a member of his team that had gone south on him. Then in the middle of making his point, killing the man, the alpha had shown up demanding a price because he’d not reported himself being around. It had cost him a great deal of cash to get out of that sticky situation. “There is only the one hotel in town, sir. And a bed and breakfast. Both have vacancies. I’d like to suggest you use the B&B. They have only one person on duty all the time, yes, but it’ll be easier for us to keep an eye on you.”

  “B&B then. I want to have some privacy, and there is none in a hotel. Besides, we’re not going to be there that long if this is them.” He knew it was. And Randolph was going to make sure that Ava and Con knew what it was like to fuck with him and his businesses. “Can you contact this daughter? Or the son? I’d like to see what they know as well.”

  Randolph was handed a file. Benson, his aide, was on the phone, and Randolph opened the file to the first page. There was a picture of the daughter. And what a looker she was too. The man standing next to her could have been Con’s double a decade or so ago. And he could tell right away that he was handicapped. Turning to the next page, he began reading about them both.