Seeds of Trust

by Cynthia Reese

  Ryan stared at Becca for a moment. “You want to break in to his barn? His outbuildings? How is that going to help you get evidence?”

  “Well…it won’t, not anything that would stand up in court,” Becca admitted, “but if I found something for the police to get a search warrant on, I could, ahem, fib a bit and say an informant gave me the heads-up. Ag-Sure would press criminal charges, but I can’t go to them without confirming it first, though. If they went in and didn’t find anything, it would be a PR nightmare.”

  “Becca, I don’t know…” He hated his indecision, but this was breaking and entering.

  “If I were ten years younger, I’d load up and go,” Mee-Maw told Becca. “In a New York minute. Too bad I’m an old broke-down woman.”

  Mee-Maw looked meaningfully at him. “But Ryan here…”

  Ryan put his hand to his face to shut out the I-mean-business light in Mee-Maw’s eyes—and the pleading one in Becca’s.

  “Oh, all right,” he groused. “I can’t fight you both. Tag-team effort. What am I getting myself into?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  TWO HOURS LATER, Ryan’s agreeing to go with Becca looked like a moot point. Though the worst of the thunder and lightning had passed, the rain still came down in sheets and the lights still weren’t on.

  Becca thought she’d go stir-crazy cooped up in the house. She could hear the ticking of the clock in her head: one day almost all gone. She kicked herself for not tackling the Martin farm head-on earlier in the day, but she had wanted to scope it out first, then ambush Martin with whatever she’d found out.

  Finally she gave in, closed her laptop with its perilously low battery and slipped outside on the front porch with a crocheted throw.

  Becca stopped short when she saw Ryan stretched out on the front porch swing. He cracked one eye open, the screen door’s squeaky hinge obviously heralding her arrival.

  “Hey.” Ryan’s sleepy smile stretched wide. “Want to join me?”

  He’d changed out of the jeans he’d worn earlier in the day, and now had on a pair of shorts.

  “I didn’t know you were out here. I just—”

  “Brought a blanket, too. C’mere.” He sat up then, the swing rocking under his weight. “There’s room. I don’t bite.”

  He smiled again, teeth flashing in the dimness.

  Get hold of yourself. You don’t need to do this now. You have an investigation to finish.

  “C’mon. You’re not disturbing me.”

  Ah, but you’re disturbing me. Another little battle played out in her head. You are all grown up. Responsible. Professional. Surely you can sit on a swing beside an attractive man without losing it.

  Ryan stood up, crossed the wide porch planks and took her hand in his. He led her to the swing. “See? You have your side. I have mine.”

  But it was a snug fit and she was keenly aware of him. She remembered the kiss the night before—and the assurance she’d made to her dad earlier that she was not involved with Ryan.

  Okay, so she’d fibbed. But what was one little kiss in the scope of things?

  To fill the silence and avoid looking like a complete twit, Becca asked, “Does the sky look any lighter?”

  “Wishful thinking. If anything, it’s getting darker.”

  “But the storm’s passed.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ryan lay back against the corner of the swing and stretched out his arm across the back of it. “You look tired. Put your head on my shoulder. You can prop your feet on the arm of the swing there.”

  Without thinking, she did—and then realized that the feel of his muscled bicep along her nape was not sleep-inducing in the slightest.

  Then he moved and the throw whooshed above her as Ryan spread it over her. His fingers tucked the crocheted cotton around her.

  Keep things professional, remember? she told herself.

  He leaned back so that she could settle once again against him. The swing swayed to and fro, and she closed her eyes and listened to the drumming of the rain on the tin roof.

  Becca could almost persuade herself that nothing existed beyond this front porch, no investigation, no dodder vine. And if those obstacles weren’t in her way, she’d reach up and give Ryan a—

  And then, as if reading her thoughts, he kissed her, slow and sweet.

  Just as suddenly they were showered in the blue-white fluorescent light of the yard’s security light. They broke apart, startled, the spell broken.

  “Well. Looks like our linemen have got us juiced,” Ryan commented, running a hand that she was glad to see trembled through his hair.

  “The rain—it’s slowed down to a drizzle.”

  Ryan chuckled. “Honey, just now, the whole world slowed to a crawl.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. An emotional connection crackled between them.

  Sudden bumps and bangs drifted through the screen door—sounds of Mee-Maw up from her own nap and starting preparations for supper.

  Becca felt suddenly shy and sheepish about what the kiss meant. She stood up and busied herself folding the blanket.

  “So—” Ryan joined her and grabbed one end of the throw “—you still fired up about spying on Martin’s chemical stash?”

  The sudden change of topic made her hesitate for a moment. “Yes. If you’ll go with me. Do you know where he keeps his herbicides?”

  “Sure. In his back barn. I’ve helped him prep the containers for recycling.”

  “Is there a back way in?”

  “Yeah…if you don’t mind tramping through muddy grain sorghum. He grows it for food for the chickens he has.”

  “I’m game if you are. Mud will wash off.”

  “So why the 007 approach? Why not just go ask him?”

  “He’s under no obligation to show them to me. I’m a private investigator, so I’m supposed to have permission to inspect. He can stall, delay, and all I can do is back off and give him time to dispose of whatever it is he’s hiding. I probably won’t find anything, but it’s worth a shot.”

  “And if you find something interesting, you call up Ag-Sure, tell ’em you’ve…”

  “I’d embroider the truth a bit. I’d tell them I had an informant who says there’s evidence of fraud, Ag-Sure files charges, the local boys in blue execute a search warrant.”

  “You do this sort of thing often?”

  She bit her lip as she laid the blanket down on the swing. “No. I don’t usually break the law to close a case. My dad…now he’s really more the 007 type.”

  Ryan looked doubtful. “I admit I’m not thrilled about this. At the best, we could get shot at with a double-barreled shotgun. At the worst, we might both end up in the clink.”

  “But you’ll do it? You’ll go with me?”

  “I’ll do it. We’re outta there, though, at the first sign of trouble.”

  * * *

  “UH…I FORGOT TO ASK,” Becca started in a nervous voice. “He doesn’t have guard dogs, does he?”

  They had paused at Martin’s back fence, which they’d accessed by using a dirt track that ran along the edge of Jake Wilkes’s property and alongside Martin’s.

  “What?” Ryan teased. “You afraid of a little ol’ Rottweiler?”

  “Are you kidding?” She froze, then made a decisive turn for Ryan’s truck.

  “Yes, I’m kidding. The only dog he’s got is one that makes Wilbur look like he needs Ritalin. I would have talked you out of it if he’d had a dog like that.”

  “Okay. This is the field of sorghum you talked about? Where’s the barn from here?”

  “See that glint of light?” He pointed. “There. It’s right between two fields. He uses it to store his chemicals so he doesn’t have to
haul ’em so far on his tractor.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  Ryan helped her over the fence, then walked beside her. “We could go a lot faster on the edge of the field,” he said.

  “Well, yes, but with all this rain, we’d leave tracks. They’re not going to find footprints as easily in this sorghum.”

  “True enough. Shall we?” He offered his arm, and off they went, high-stepping it through the tall, grassy sorghum.

  The kiss was still fresh in her mind. His touch still had the power to fluster her. For a moment it seemed as if they were two kids, bent on a little mischief, maybe a little kissing…

  But then they came closer to the barn and Becca sobered. This was it. Right now she was only trespassing, but if the barn were locked, she’d commit breaking and entering.

  Ryan halted her, put a finger to his lips. He leaned over and breathed in her ear, “I hear voices.”

  She strained to hear what he did. Scraps of a quarrel floated back to her. “Can we get closer?” she whispered.

  They eased slowly through the grain. Once they’d cleared the slight rise in the middle of the field, Becca could see lights on in the barn and a truck backed up to the open double doors.

  How close could she and Ryan get and not be seen? They had little cover in the sorghum field. The inky darkness had been their best camouflage so far.

  She dared to go a couple of rows closer. Ryan tugged at her with an insistent hand and pointed to an outcropping of chinaberry trees along the fence bordering the field. She followed him, hoping that if they left tracks, later showers might erase their trail.

  Here, they were close enough to make out more of the squabble—especially when a tall, lanky man came stomping out of the barn, followed by the unmistakable potbellied profile of Murphy.

  “That’s Martin,” Ryan whispered.

  Becca nodded and concentrated on the argument.

  “I still don’t know why we have to do this ourselves—and tonight,” Martin was protesting. “I could have a couple of them Mexicans do it for me tomorrow. They ain’t gonna tell anybody.”

  “No, they’ve screwed up enough already—they planted the vines too regular. It was fine with just the adjustor—I had him paid off and now he’s retired. But then that Reynolds woman came sniffing around—it won’t take her long to start checking everybody’s backstock of herbicide. You’re the only fool who bragged that nothing could kill the mess.”

  “Well, what was I supposed to say? MacIntosh was wanting to borrow from my supply—he’d seen my men spraying it. I knew plain water in those jugs wouldn’t fool Ryan a minute if he got close to them—he used to sell the stuff.”

  Becca could feel Ryan stiffen beside her. His anger was palpable. He’d been played a fool, and he was mad about it. She lay a hand on his arm.

  Her warning served its purpose. He nodded, though his jaw was hard and tight.

  “It don’t matter,” Murphy was telling Martin. “What matters is that we’ve got to pour out every bit of water in these jugs and stack ’em up like you didn’t get around to recyclin’ ’em. Why’d you fill so many jugs anyway?”

  “Because!” Martin shook his fist. “Because it seemed like a pretty good idea at the time—the water was free and I was using last year’s jugs and I didn’t want to run out and have somebody go hightailing it off to the feed store and ordering more of the real stuff. And you make all this talk about ‘we’ got to pour all the water out of the jugs, but I don’t see you breaking a sweat. What’s the big deal if someone finds water in last year’s jugs anyway?”

  “It looks suspicious. Just do it. I want to go home and go to bed. I don’t dare leave until you get this mess cleaned up because you’re liable to say forget it. And then tomorrow she’ll waltz right in here.”

  “I thought Tate said he’d taken care of her.”

  “Tate! I told him to let me handle her. She ain’t left yet. She’s holed up at MacIntosh’s farm. Found that out this morning.”

  Just then, something moved at Becca’s feet. She tried to suppress a yelp of surprise as she jumped away from whatever it was. She reached up to steady herself on a low tree branch.

  Raindrops showered down on them, and the wet leaves rat-a-tatted off one another in a louder than expected spatter.

  Ryan put his finger to his lips and pointed. It was a scared little rabbit hopping off into the rows of grain that had startled her.

  Becca’s heart settled into a more sedate rhythm. But then Murphy said in a sharp voice, “Quiet! You hear that?”

  He strode from the truck to the edge of the field, coming straight toward Becca and Ryan.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MURPHY STOOD silhouetted on the edge of the field, watching, waiting. He shifted something in one hand that, Ryan saw, gleamed in the light streaming from the barn.

  A gun.

  Ryan’s fingers ached to wrap around the trigger of a nice, comfy double-barrel shotgun. Here he and Becca were, spying on someone who had a million-plus bucks to lose—and they were caught without any cover between them and the truck.

  Stupid. The whole escapade had been stupid—enlightening, sure. At least now Becca knew pretty much the whole score without Ryan having to tell her.

  Well, not quite the whole score, but enough to get Mee-Maw out of hot water.

  So, if they could get out of here alive, maybe this venture hadn’t been so stupid after all.

  The rabbit that had started the whole mess long-legged it across a couple of tufts of weeds. Ryan eased down to the ground. He scooped up a pebble or two and skipped them through the ankle-deep grass, just close enough to the rabbit to startle him.

  It had the desired effect. The bunny bounced off, leaving behind him a shower of spattering raindrops off the sorghums.

  To Ryan’s relief, the tension in Murphy’s frame dissipated.

  “Rabbit or some other critter, I guess,” Murphy hollered back.

  But, apparently ever the cautious type, Murphy fired a warning shot off into the night sky. “That’ll scare off whatever’s out there.” Then he turned and headed back to the barn. “C’mon. Let’s get this show on the road. I want to get home.”

  Martin still grumbling, the two men disappeared into the barn. Ryan tapped Becca’s shoulder.

  “They won’t stay out of sight forever. Let’s get outta here.”

  * * *

  HE DIDN’T FEEL SAFE until he had Becca over the fence and in the truck. The pickup bounced over potholes he couldn’t see in the dark, but there was no way he was going to risk using headlights until he was well down the dirt road.

  Once he flicked the lights on, it seemed to signal the same feeling of relief to Becca. She let out a huge sigh.

  “Whew! That was a close one!”

  “But you learned a lot, right?”

  Becca grinned at him. “And I thought you’d fuss at me for dragging us out there. I was all set for a scolding.”

  “It was an incredibly dumb thing to do.”

  She became serious. “You’re right. And it was pretty much in vain.”

  “What?”

  “No way I can get Ag-Sure to move quickly enough to stop them from draining those herbicide containers. I didn’t expect them to be here tonight. I was crossing my fingers that getting rid of the empty containers wouldn’t occur to them for another couple of days. My intent was to scope out the place, get enough info to get a warrant and then go in there the right way.”

  “But we were there. We saw them—we could testify—”

  “Yeah. And we were trespassing, too, something the defendant’s counsel will be only too glad to point out. Fruit of the poisoned tree and all that.”

  Ryan slammed his fist down on the stee
ring wheel in frustration. “But you know now that—” he ground out. “You’re right. What was the point?”

  She shook her head. “It was useful for me. It confirmed my theory, and that does a world of good for my confidence. I agree, it’s frustrating to know they’ve already guessed my next move. I’d hoped to use Martin as leverage.”

  “Can’t you still do that?”

  “With the right pry bar and the perfect spot, I can move the world. But I’m fresh out of pry bars.” Becca lolled her head back on the seat and closed her eyes. “Don’t worry. I’m not giving up. They haven’t emptied my entire bag of tricks. That was just the easiest one, the one most likely to work.”

  Ryan eased onto the paved road and turned the truck in the direction of home.

  “Hey.” Becca spoke up from the passenger side. “Where are you headed?”

  “Home. Why? Is there some other mad dash you want to make through a sorghum patch?”

  She laughed. “No. I, uh, just thought you and I could talk for a little. In private.”

  Ryan couldn’t suppress the thrill that coursed through him at the prospect of having Becca all to himself. Juvenile of him, he knew, but still…

  “Talk, huh?”

  Again Becca laughed. This time, he was gratified to hear it had a nervous edge to it. “Yeah. Talk. Just talk. Although I have to admit I was enjoying our rain-delay activities.”

  “Did you now? It so happens—” Ryan turned the wheel of the truck and left the paved road “—that I know of a little place.”

  He parked the truck on the far edge of one of his fields, careful not to stop in any mud. He switched off the ignition and twisted in the seat to face her. Enough moonlight streamed through the windshield to illuminate her small, nervous smile.

  “Come here often?” she asked.

  “Not been since, let’s see…high school? Maybe college.”

  “With a girl.”

  “Several different ones…at different times, of course. You?”

  “Different field,” she bantered. “If I’d known what a great kisser you were, I would have ditched the Hayseed Hank I had and moved over here.”