Reapers (Breakers, Book 4)

by Edward W. Robertson

  Quinn tried to make some talk, but Ellie just grunted. She had half a mind to follow the puffed-up duffer down the trail, but just before she'd made up her mind, a shot cracked across the forest. She bolted forward. Quinn's feet splashed mud behind her. A minute later, Hobson appeared on the trail walking back their way.

  "What happened?" Ellie said.

  He tilted his face at the muddy ground, brow creased with equal parts annoyance and embarrassment. "I was shot at."

  "What?" Ellie said. "Are you okay?"

  "I believe it was just a bluff." The sheriff looked over his shoulder. Weak light dribbled through the dwindling leaves. "But it was a crucial mistake. I am the official representative of lakeland law. With shots fired, they have elevated my power to act."

  "Really? I'd say they called your bluff."

  "We shall see. I'll try again—tomorrow. When a pot is boiling, one must let it cool before touching it again."

  "Let me know how that turns out," Ellie said. "And what you'd like on your epitaph."

  "'A man passed, yet his convictions stand immortal,'" Hobson intoned with zero hesitation. "You're too cynical, Miss Colson. If the Franklins reject the law, then they have confessed that the old world is lost forever."

  Hobson was an idiot, but Ellie didn't have the breath to argue. It had been a long day and shots fired in her vicinity tended to make her cranky. Birds twittered back and forth, oblivious to the threat of violence hanging in the air more cloyingly than the earthen, maple scent of newly rotting leaves. At the highway, they biked back toward town. The overcast light dimmed, northern mountains going blue. Ellie's sweaty shirt was clammy on her skin.

  They stopped at the edge of the quiet mountain town. Ellie's throat was so dry it took her two tries to speak. "Do you really intend to go back there?"

  "They shot at me, Miss Colson," Hobson said. "It's my duty. If I refuse, everything I've built falls apart."

  She nodded vaguely. "Still think our evidence is weak?"

  "It's certainly been given a shot in the arm. No pun intended."

  They parted ways, Sheriff Hobson heading downtown, Ellie and Quinn heading west for the Tolberts' farm.

  "What happens if they drive the sheriff off again?" Quinn said once they were on the road. "We need that wheat to get us through the winter."

  Ellie shook her head. "Can't go in guns blazing unless we know they stole it."

  "Why else would they shoot at the sheriff? Do you think he grew a pair of antlers?"

  "Check your assumptions. Mort Franklin is a religious extremist. Paranoid. He doesn't let anyone make deliveries to his home. It could be standing policy to shoot at anyone who comes close."

  "They did it," he said. "I'm sure of it."

  She saved her arguments, wagering she'd have to make them all over again to George. She was right. When they returned to the farm and broke the news, George went nuclear. Stamping around the house. Pulling open drawers. Dee sat on the couch, eyes frightened.

  "What are you doing, George?" Ellie said.

  He yanked open a drawer and shook pencils and paperclips onto the floor. "Finding my ammunition."

  "You don't know where you keep it?"

  "I intend to use a lot of it."

  "Why don't you sit down and have a drink?" Ellie said. "In fact, that's not a question." She fetched a bottle of bourbon from the Tolberts' pantry and poured a glass and cut it with water. "God, I miss ice."

  George wandered in and gazed at the brown bottle. "I had to sell the combine back, Ellie. If I don't retrieve my crop, I doubt we'll make it through the winter."

  "We won't let that happen." She poured a second drink and led him to the coffee table. His couch smelled welcomingly of dogs. "Sheriff Hobson's going back tomorrow."

  George got out two coasters from the drawer and slid one under her glass. "I doubt whether my respect for his office is shared by the Franklins."

  "It's not."

  "Wonderful. My chances of getting back what is mine depends on a charade."

  "We may need the support of the town," Ellie said. "They'll want to know we exhausted our legal means first."

  "Which consist of a trumped-up geriatric who looks like he was shaken from the pages of a Sherlock Holmes novel." George laughed, sputtering. He rolled his eyes at the ceiling and drank. "Then what? Beseech the good people of Lake Placid to write the Franklins a stern letter?"

  "This is uncharted territory. Until now, people have worked it out for themselves, or let the sheriff act as mediator. If that won't work, what do we do instead?"

  "Waco springs to mind."

  Ellie laughed, caught off guard. She'd been expecting a lot more self-pity. There was a new spark in George. Something feral. "We could try sanctions."

  He gave her a look. "They aren't Cuba."

  "They won't be happy about losing trade with town."

  "How long will it be before they care? Where does that leave me this winter?"

  Ellie reached for her glass. She was supposed to be trained to produce unconventional solutions to murky problems, but she didn't have the first idea what to do. "I don't want to confront them on their compound."

  Quinn walked in from the kitchen bearing a glass of his own. He was underage, and Ellie glanced at George, expecting him to say something, and then she understood he didn't give a shit and neither did she.

  "So we don't go back," Quinn said. "Mort sends his boys into town to pick up supplies. Kids got big eyes and bigger mouths. We scoop one of them up, I bet he'll spill the beans."

  "Sounds like kidnapping."

  "Then let them be napped!" George blurted. "We don't have to pull out their toenails. Just put a scare into them."

  "That's not a bad idea," Ellie said, although it carried a definite risk of escalation. "Call it Plan B. With any luck, Sheriff Hobson will save us the trouble."

  But luck was not on her side. Sheriff Hobson arrived on a new bicycle late the following morning. He wore a fresh suit and an aggrieved scowl.

  "The Franklins were not amenable to my approach," he explained.

  "Get shot at again?" Quinn said.

  "Not quite. But given the thicket of rifles brandished at me, it's sheer fortune that none of them went off."

  "We're going to pick up one of the Franklin boys," Ellie said.

  Hobson raised his graying brows. "I assume you will ensure you have his consent."

  "We're just going to ask a few questions. I considered keeping you in the dark, but I thought you had the right to know."

  He closed his eyes and massaged his forehead. "Don't do anything you wouldn't tell your grandchildren about."

  As Ellie watched him go, she noticed the first snows had dressed the peaks of the mountains beyond the lake. She and Quinn rode out to stake out the road leading past the Franklins' trail. Across and just south of the trailhead, they pitched a tent in the pines. While Quinn kept an eye on the road, Ellie covered the tent with a screen of pine branches, as much for insulation as for camouflage. She lay the bikes on their side and covered them with a tarp and old leaves.

  Millie had told her the Franklins didn't visit on a regular schedule—could be days, could be weeks—but Ellie didn't have much else to occupy her. Her farm was in maintenance mode. As long as Dee kept the chickens fed, the land wouldn't miss her.

  She didn't talk much. Quinn blathered some about the wedding; they had resolved to go low-key with it after all, family and a few friends. He asked her about her previous life with the government. She hadn't thought much about it since the plague and revisiting the memories of travel and intrigue gave her a killer case of Split. She had been a globetrotter, shuttling from one country to the next. Over a matter of years, her world had shrunk to a couple of valleys and lakes in an isolated corner of New York State.

  That night, with the cold creeping down from the mountains and each stir of an animal in the brush crackling like the step of a bear, Ellie felt a restlessness she hadn't dealt with in years.

  She was
concerned a snowstorm would drive them out before they snared their quarry, but as it turned out, they only had to wait two days before a teen boy and his younger brother swung onto the road, laughing and cussing, and pedaled toward the highway.

  She swept the tarps off the bikes and hit the road, lagging so they were never in direct line of sight. In town, the two boys enter Millie's general store. Ellie backtracked a mile down the highway to a spot where an old accident blocked one of the lanes, then dragged a bumper across the open lane and crouched behind the smashed-up cars.

  "We're here to scare them," Ellie said. "To get them to talk. If any guns go off, that's a failed mission."

  "Roger," Quinn said. He double-checked the safety on his pistol, which Ellie had allowed him to take.

  Sunshine fought with the clouds for control of the sky. The insects had died in the frosts and there was no sound except the chirp of birds and the rustle of wind. An hour later, the voices of two boys carried down the highway.

  Ellie got out her gun. Quinn did the same.

  Bike tires squeaked as the boys swerved to an abrupt stop in front of the bumper marring the road. "Who the hell put that there?"

  "Oops." Ellie swung from behind the cars, gun in hand, and faced a scruffy-haired twelve-year-old and the older boy who'd menaced them from the trees. "Hello, boys."

  The older boy laughed. "Why don't you put that thing down before I stuff it up your—"

  She fired a round past his shoulder. He flinched, tripping on his bike and skinning his palms on the pavement. The report of the shot echoed from the hills.

  "Your father has taught you certain things about the world," Ellie said. "There's just one problem: he's a fucking moron."

  "He'll kill you," the older boy said from the ground, but the smug light in his eyes had been replaced with anger and fear. "He'll skin you and feed you to the trout."

  Quinn brandished his pistol. "Shut up."

  Ellie lowered her gun but kept it by her hip. "I doubt your dad would just throw the meat away, kid. Given that he's such a bad farmer he has to steal another man's grain."

  "Nuh uh!" The younger brother pushed greasy hair from his eyes. "He didn't take it 'cause he had to. He took it 'cause—"

  The other boy kicked his brother in the back of the knee, bucking him. "Shut up!"

  Ellie laughed. "Go home, boys."

  The older kid stood, sucking on his bleeding palm and glaring into Ellie's eyes. "He will kill you. You and your whole family."

  "Then enjoy watching him get lynched."

  The boy spat on the asphalt between them and picked up his bike, shoulders hunched high. Ellie waited until they swung around the bend before she holstered her pistol.

  "I can't believe we pulled guns on a couple of kids," Quinn said.

  "It was a good plan. Nice work." She gazed in the direction of the Franklins' pond. "Better get back to the farm. I don't entirely trust Mort Franklin to not try to burn the place down."

  On their way through Lake Placid, she detoured to the sheriff's, but he wasn't in. She scribbled a note and slid it under his door and rode back to George's.

  He met them on the porch, bare forearms goosebumped in the frigid air. "Well?"

  "They took it all right," Quinn said. "Ellie tricked them into confessing."

  "Are you okay?" Dee said from the doorway.

  "We're fine," Ellie said. "But we might have kicked a hornet's nest."

  "What else are we to do?" George said, drawling the last word. "A civilized society can not abide rogues. Without enforcement, how can there be law?"

  "We'll see what Sheriff Hobson has to say. It's make-or-break."

  The next few hours passed in quiet tension. Quinn helped Dee with the wash while Ellie watched out the front window and George took the dogs on a long walk around the fields. With daylight to spare, Sheriff Hobson rode down the path to the front door, propped up his bike, and doffed his cap.

  "I received your missive," he told Ellie. "Shall we talk?"

  George invited him inside. The kids came in from the wash room. George offered Hobson a nip of bourbon and hot water to warm him up, which the sheriff accepted gratefully.

  "I've been asking around town." He placed his mug on the coaster and passed his palm over the steam. "There is no love lost for the Franklins in Lake Placid."

  "Meaning?" Ellie said.

  "I won't dance daintily around the truth. I can demand Mr. Franklin allow me to search his grounds, but a letter is only as strong as the hand that delivers it."

  George planted his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. "I am driven by more than principle. I have a hard need for that grain. Can you get it back?"

  "That," Hobson said, lifting his index finger to the air, "is the question. The lakelands stand at a critical juncture. I can't force the Franklins to acquiesce by myself. Here and now, we choose to admit that injustice is the way of the brave new world—or decide we need a central authority stronger than those who'd oppose it."

  "Less talk, more details," Ellie said.

  "A posse comitatus."

  "A posse?"

  "Deputies, militia, whatever you'd like to call it." Hobson waved his hand. "The Franklins are despised. It will be no trouble to gather good people to our cause. A forward-thinking lawman might even seize the opportunity to establish a permanent authority."

  Ellie tipped her head. She didn't like where this was headed. Sounded a lot like mob rule. This time, it might work in her favor, but if the sheriff were able to summon a posse whenever he pleased, sooner or later there would be a mistake. An accident. Or the posse might depose their fussy figurehead and start taking whatever they liked.

  "You're not thinking of pulling a coup, are you, sheriff?"

  "High heavens, no. But we can either accept a future of Hatfields and McCoys, or establish a neutral institution to adjudicate disputes."

  "The only future I care about is this winter," George said. "Gather your men. Me and my boy will march with you."

  Hobson didn't stay to chat. That night, George piled blankets in the kennel and left the dogs outside. He locked the doors. During Ellie's watch, one of the dogs whuffed. A silhouette moved on the fringe of the fields. She reached for her binoculars, but by the time she sighted in on the darkened woods, the figure had gone.

  In the morning, she found no tracks. Hobson returned that afternoon. "Tomorrow at Millie's. Ten AM."

  "I'll be there," George said.

  Over dinner, they agreed George and Quinn would join the posse while Ellie and Dee remained at home. A part of Ellie wanted to go with them—while Sheriff Hobson looked like less of a boob than she'd thought, she didn't trust him or anyone else to handle this right—but it was George's justice to be won, not hers. And she didn't want to leave Dee by herself. Not until this feud had been resolved for good.

  George banked up the fire. Dee had first watch. Ellie forced herself to sleep. She woke to the cold, an hour past the start of her shift. She poked her head through Quinn's door. The kids snored under the down comforter. She rolled her eyes and sat in the chair by the window and watched the moon on the fields.

  She'd gotten a late start, so she didn't bother to wake George to take last watch. He strolled from his room at dawn, hair askew, eyes puffy, and helped himself to a mug of instant coffee with hot water from the stove. As Ellie was starting to think about boiling some oats, Dee emerged and plunked herself at the table.

  "Don't tell me he's still asleep," Ellie said.

  Dee looked up, dull-eyed. "Quinn?"

  "There better not be anyone else in that bed."

  She cast around the room. "How long have you been out here?"

  "Since about three in the morning. Quinn missed his shift, but he'll need more sleep today than I will."

  "He's not asleep." Dee stood up so fast she knocked her chair to the ground. "He's gone."

  9

  The lock rattled on the closet door. Lucy sat up, blinking against the light knifing under the fra
me. She had a line all ready for Kerry, but when the door opened, Nerve gazed back at her.

  "Couldn't wait two days to see my pretty face?" she said.

  He ignored her. "What do you know?"

  "The Earth is round, the sun sets in the west, and Manhattan is much nicer than I was led to believe."

  "I take it you have nothing."

  "When Michelangelo was halfway through carving that man's thing, would you have said he had 'nothing'?"

  He tapped his fingernails on the doorframe. "Did I make a mistake?"

  Before she could answer, he closed and locked the door. Lucy sat on the floor and thought through what she'd turned up the day before, which didn't take long. She had just lain down in her blanket-nest to catch a few more winks when the lock scrabbled again. She shielded her face against the morning light, most of which got blocked by Kerry's hulking frame.

  "There you are." She reached up and pinched his cheek. "I was afraid a crew of whalers had tied off at the pier and harpooned you by mistake."

  He didn't move. "Mighty cheery for someone two days from death."

  "I been ducking the Reaper my whole life, man. Either he's blind or he thinks he already got me." She sat down to pull on her shoes. "The last of yesterday's no-shows come in today?"

  Kerry nodded. "He's not your man."

  "I'll be the judge of that. Like you say, it's my life on the line."

  They walked out the back door to the docks. Kerry strode to the barge, which was now being loaded for departure, and returned with a longhaired dude in his twenties. Lucy's heart sank.

  He walked up to her with a limp, right foot swaddled in a colossal bandage. "You rang?"

  "Where were you yesterday?" Lucy said.

  He lifted his bandaged foot off the dock. "Nursing my hangover. Surgery's a bitch."

  "Don't suppose you got a doctor's note."

  The man looked at Kerry. "You think I had this chopped off for fun?"

  Kerry folded his arms. "Bear with us."

  Lucy wrinkled her nose. "Pretend I'm real dumb and lost your records. What exactly caused you to miss the shipment yesterday?"

  The man sighed. "Mind if I sit down?"

  "Be my guest."