Reapers (16 page)

"I can see you are a canny man, so I will confess it is a sad truth that the velvet glove of justice must be fitted around an iron fist." Hobson smiled, self-deprecating. "I won't waste words. George's boy Quinn has gone missing."

The old doomsayer narrowed his eyes, wrinkles spiderwebbing his skin. "Don't know a thing about that."

"The hell you don't!" George strode forward. Ellie cursed and followed. George stopped six feet from the Franklin patriarch and jabbed a finger toward the old man. "This crime has your stink all over it. You stole my wheat, and when I got ready to take it back, you stole my son to get me to back off."

Mort let his shotgun droop further. A deep frown etched his mouth. "Sir, I am a family man. I would no more hurt your son than I would my own."

"Your lordly morals didn't stop you from taking what's mine!"

"I sought compensation for the fraud
you
perpetrated against
me
. Took you long enough to come up with something worth taking." He swept a hand toward his home and fields. "I will grant the Lord blessed me with a bumper crop this season. But I don't have your son."

"Then you won't mind if I have a look around," Ellie said.

"This is private property."

Hobson stepped forward. "Then perhaps I, a disinterested third party, representative of the law, may do the looking."

Mort snorted. "You're no more 'disinterested' than I am the devil. But if you won't take my word, then have a look at whatever you want. Perhaps that will convince you my prayers for Quinn are sincere."

Hobson raised his eyebrows at George. "Agreed?"

George folded his arms. "We'll be right here."

Hobson nodded and strode after Mort Franklin. They disappeared inside the house. Upstairs, a curtain riffled.

Hobson's search was thorough. The house. The outbuildings. The fields and the boathouse. By the time he finished, more than one member of the posse was sitting in the grass. Behind the clouds, the sun marched to its peak. At last, the sheriff returned across the fields side by side with Mort.

"I didn't see any sign of captivity," Hobson said.

George's lips curled. He pointed at Mort. "So he's got him locked in a box! Or they saw us coming and took Quinn away. I want him arrested until his family gives up my boy!"

Mort stalked forward until his breastbone bumped into George's outstretched finger. The old man's blue eyes blazed like polished gems. "I did not take your son, sir. If I lie, may God burn the flesh from my bones."

"I looked everywhere," Hobson said. "Perhaps our efforts would be best spent combing the woods. Canvassing your neighbors."

Tears brimmed from George's eyelids. He took a ragged breath and stared down Mort, unashamed. "If I find you've hurt him, I'll come back for your head."

"And I would do the same." Mort bowed his head, climbed his steps, and closed the door.

"I believe him," Hobson said. "And that he purloined your wheat."

George shook his head vaguely. "All I want is to find Quinn safe and sound."

"I understand." He turned to the posse. "I consider your duties honorably discharged, but would welcome any further aid you'd like to give the search."

To Ellie's mild surprise, when they got back to Lake Placid, only one member of Hobson's ad hoc crew peeled off. Three said they'd ask around town while two others volunteered to help search the wilderness around George's farm. Ellie intended to ask around Lake Placid, but she wanted to break the news of their mission to Dee herself.

Back at the farm, Dee took one look at the arrivals and her face crumpled. "How could you leave without him? Who knows what that old son of a bitch—"

Ellie grabbed her arm. "Hey. I don't think the Franklins took him. Mort didn't try to use him. He even confessed to taking George's wheat. If Mort does have him, the game he's playing is so dark we'll wish we found him in the lake instead."

Dee's jaw hung open. "Mom!"

"I thought you were tough. That you'd rather swallow bitter medicine than sugary placebos. Was I wrong?"

The outrage faded from Dee's eyes. She stood straight. "What do we have to do to find him?"

Ellie smiled inwardly. "Do you remember anything more from last night? Anything unusual?"

"When my shift was over, I shook Quinn awake. He swatted at me like you do when you're so sleepy you'll hit anyone who tries to wake you. But he finally got up and I went to bed. That was the last time I saw him."

Ellie gestured at the woods and hills. "Try looking anywhere you two go together. Maybe he went there and got hurt and can't get back."

"Why would he run off to Mulehead Rock at one in the morning?"

"Why would he go missing at all? A search is the ruling out of possibilities, starting with the most likely." She gazed down the shore. "Speaking of, I've got other avenues to explore. I'll be back by dinner."

She was thirty feet toward the shore before she thought she should have hugged Dee. She considered turning back, but it was too late.

Pine needles brushed her jacket. She imagined the previous night. Quinn sitting by the window in the darkness with binoculars and a rifle. And then what? The bark of a dog? The shifting of a silhouette by the trees? Quinn was young, still had a lot of bad brains. He'd pick up the rifle and go outside. Verbally challenge whatever stranger had stepped onto his land. And then—

But that's where the story broke down. Did he take a shot at the figure?
Get
shot? No one had heard a gun go off. There had been no sign of blood spatter or dragging. It was as if he'd walked off. Followed someone. Vanished.

Been abducted by aliens.

A man stepped onto the trail ten feet away. Ellie hissed air through her teeth, lunging for her pistol. The man smiled and raised his hands to show they were empty.

She swore and folded her arms. "Hey Sam."

"Heard Quinn went missing," he said. "Thought I'd come see you and save you the trip."

She laughed wryly. "Just ruling out possibilities."

"Believe me, you've taught me how it is."

"So you won't be offended when I ask whether you had anything to do with this."

"Depends. If I don't yell at you, will that make me look guilty?"

"Did you see anything unusual last night? Hear any gunshots?"

"Last night? No." He spit in the grass. "But you might want to ask George about the men in the black fedoras."

Her eyebrows shot up. "Which men?"

"The ones who've been coming by the house. I got the sense he knew them. And they weren't friends."

She tipped her head. "Have you been watching the house?"

He drew back his shoulders. "Just since this started going down. To make sure Dee's safe. You want me to stop?"

"No." She sighed. "Thanks, Sam."

She strode back to the farm. Hobson's newly minted bodyguard Harold stood on the porch, watching the fields. He informed her George was up in the woods with the dogs. Ellie jogged across the cut wheat and entered the scraggly, bare-leafed branches. The forest stretched all the way into the mountains, but after a couple minutes she heard George calling Quinn's name. She homed in on him, letting the leaves crunch beneath her feet so she wouldn't take him by surprise.

"Who are the men in the black fedoras, George?"

He stopped cold. His golden retriever plunked its butt next to him and licked his hand. He ignored it. "What are you talking about?"

"The men you only bring to your house when I'm not around."

"That's just business."

"What kind of business?"

He met her eyes with a hard glare. "The kind I was reduced to when I needed a combine."

She planted her feet. "I let you borrow the tractor. Who are these people? What have you gotten yourself into?"

"Wait just a minute. They've got nothing to do with this."

"How did you pay for the combine?"

"The only things they were interested in taking are things I need to run the farm."

"You mortgaged the harvest. Which was patchy to begin with. And then it went missing."

"Hold on." George closed on her, glancing to the sides, as if afraid someone else might hear his shame. "They can't think I tried to hide it from them, to back out of the deal. That's crazy."

"Why is that?"

"Because those are the type of men..."

"Who would take your firstborn son if you screwed them over?" Ellie said. "Where can I find them?"

He swung his jaw to the side. "Ellie, I've had enough of you meddling in my affairs. He's my boy. This is my business."

"And your bone-deep investment in it means you're probably not the best choice to handle it. I used to be an agent for the federal government. I was the one they sent to the frontlines. Sometimes to regions no more civilized than what we live with now. That's why I've been throwing myself into this thing: I'm the best person for the job."

"Is that what you tell yourself? I think you miss the thrill."

She made a fist beside her hip. "How much longer would it have taken you to piece this together? If they lie to you, will you know it? Have you ever fired a gun at another person?"

"You have?"

"If you haven't, I wouldn't start now."

He pulled a red leaf from a branch and shredded it, casting the bits into the pile on the trail. "The big farm south of Lake Placid. You know it?"

"Off Bear Cub Road?"

"Kessler and Winston. Kessler's thin as a birch and Winston looks like a barrel of beer. Round black mole under his eye. Like you said, they wear black fedoras." George rubbed his mouth. "He's not my son, you know. Not biologically. But I promised to protect him as my own. What does it say about me that I have to send someone else in my place?"

"That you know the right tool for the job." Ellie touched her gun. "If I'm not back by sundown, tell the sheriff to bring the posse."

She jogged back toward the farm and got her bike and rode to town for the third time that day. The mountains hung to the north, blue-green and outlined with white snow. She cut past the cul-de-sacs on the developments on the south end of town, then turned down an up-and-down road through the pines.

A part of her screamed for more intel. You never go in blind. She was more than willing to let George believe she'd been some despot-sniping CIA ghost, but the truth of the matter was she'd worked for the DAA. Her job had been to study the situation on the ground, then recommend how
others
could impact it.

But there weren't a lot of people around these days. And the disappearance seemed to have caught George completely off guard. Under normal circumstances, men looking to recoup on George's debt would use the
threat
of harm first, and then, perhaps, take Quinn to ransom. But they would make sure George knew about it. If he didn't, he wouldn't know to get his ass in gear and pay up.

So if the men in the black hats had taken him, that meant they valued Quinn for reasons beyond leverage against George.

The road fed into a broad farm. Most of the fields were tilled under, coffee-brown dirt mulched with dry yellow stalks. Two tall silos jutted from the fields. A farmhouse watched the entrance, surrounded by metal-roofed barns and outbuildings.

She knew of this farm, but if it was being run by post-apocalyptic loan sharks, that was news to her. The world may have shrunk, but its secrets had grown.

She stopped her bike on the long driveway to the farmhouse. While she was deciding which building to try first, a tall, thin man in a black fedora emerged from the nearest of the metal-roofed structures.

"Can I help you?"

"I heard you help people in trouble," Ellie said.

"We're humanitarians like that."

"Any day now, the ground will freeze. If I don't get my seed down before then, I'll miss the winter crop."

He pushed his hat up his head. "What are you looking to get?"

"I've been doing it by hand, but I ran out of time this year. I need a tractor. With a cultipacker."

"Step inside."

He held the door for her. The building was half stable, half office: the back half was blocked out with horse stalls, most empty, while the front half had been cleared for filing cabinets and two desks furnished with antique wooden chairs that had clearly been looted from one of the old Northeastern homes. A burly man sat with his boots up on one of the desks, careless for the dirt his soles had sprinkled on its surface. He had a round black mole under one eye.

"Tractor, cultipacker," the tall man said. He glanced at Ellie. "One-time lease, or rent-to-own?"

She stood beside the chair opposite the burly man. "Terms on rent-to-own?"

The man pulled his boots off his desk and folded his arms on its surface. "Thirty percent of gross yield on your next ten harvests. Ten percent after that."

"Steep."

"Seventy percent of something is more than one hundred percent of nothing."

"What if I miss a payment?"

He sniffed and leaned back in his chair. "Don't."

"That's too vague," Ellie said. "I can't enter a deal in good faith when I don't know the exact consequences for failing to uphold it."

"We take back what's ours," said the thin man.

"And enough to make up the difference," the burly man finished.

She nodded. "How's that calculated?"

"By some pinhead in Albany."

"Is that where you're based?"

The man scratched his ear. His forearm was covered in thick black hair and he wore a plaid shirt under his overalls. "You don't have to worry about that. Anything crops up, the buck stops here."

Ellie nodded more, as if mulling this over. The room was chilly and smelled like manure and dusty fur. "Do you have a contract?"

"Too good for a handshake?"

"If the consequences for nonpayment are 'Don't ask,' I prefer to be very clear about what does and doesn't satisfy payment."

The burly man drummed the desk, then gestured at the thin man, who slid open a cabinet with a metal rumble, paged through the documents inside, and handed Ellie three stapled pages. The letterhead was handwritten calligraphy. Including an Albany address. She wanted to laugh.