by Kate Morris
“Is that why you’re drawing like you used to?”
This cuts hard. It is a low blow and extremely unusual for Simon. Sam’s eyes narrow, and her mouth turns down, too.
“Sorry,” he immediately states. “I didn’t mean that. Forgive me. I…”
He takes her hand in his, but Sam pulls away. Shouting near the house alerts them that the men are back, and they jog there to find out what happened.
The first thing she notices is that Cory is not with them.
“Where’s Cory!” she asks Henry frantically.
“Scouting,” he replies.
“What happened?” Simon asks next.
“Attack. Couple miles from here,” he tells them. “They set a trap, killed some people. Car was on fire when we got there. I’m assuming that was the explosion we heard.”
“The highwaymen,” Sam says, getting a nod from Henry, although she doesn’t need one to figure this out.
“And Cory is going after them?” she repeats.
“Don’t worry,” Simon reassures her, placing his hand on her shoulder. “He’ll be fine.”
“Your friend wanted to see if he could get a track on them. He’s not going to attack them if he finds them,” Henry explains.
“They’re getting closer,” she remarks and watches the faces of Henry and his men fall. Simon simply nods.
“Spread out,” Henry tells his men. “Take up a position or get with our guards on a patrol until Sergeant Winters returns later. Sam, you take Simon to the medical building and continue to work on organizing the supplies for the new clinic. We’ll keep the place locked down and secure.”
“Sure, Henry,” she agrees. She doesn’t want to naysay her host, so she goes along with his request. Also, he rarely asks her to do anything, so he must feel this task is important. However, she doesn’t miss the look that passes between him and Simon. “Ready, Simon? I’ll show you where we’ll be working.”
They walk away from the crowd as Henry and a few of his men continue to shout orders and scramble.
“I feel like I should be out there with Cor,” Simon complains as they walk to a long building.
“I’m glad you’re not,” she confesses. “I wish Cory wasn’t, either,” Sam adds for good measure, although, truth be told, Cory will be fine.
“It would help if I were with him. He should’ve come back to get me.”
“I understand how you feel,” she says. “That’s exactly how I feel, or how I used to feel, every single time you guys left the farm.”
“The farm is the safest place for you, or was,” he says as they enter the dark barn.
Sam flicks on the lights and leads him to a storage room where she and her uncle have been working on organizing the meds, supplies, and equipment for their new clinic.
“Sam,” he says quietly, gaining her attention, “you should move back to the farm.”
“Don’t start with that.”
“No, I mean because of the highwaymen. Do you realize how close this attack was today? There’s even a possibility that they drove past here and saw the place. They could come back.”
“This place is called a compound for a reason, Simon.”
He sighs with frustration and continues, “But no place is completely impenetrable. Come back to the farm, even just for a while. Then you could move back here again. Just let us catch these men and deal with that situation first.”
“No, I’m safe here, too.”
“Damn it, Samantha,” he swears and drags a hand through his auburn hair, quickly replacing the ball cap after. “Why do you have to be so stubborn?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
His blue gaze drops to his feet for a second before looking at her again. “I’ll move into town. I’ll stay at the practice. You won’t even have to see me.”
“Sure,” she scoffs and turns to retrieve a box that has yet to be rummaged. “I thought I had that all worked out before, and every time I turn around, there you are again.”
“I’m sorry,” he apologizes. “I don’t mean to hurt you with my presence. It wasn’t my idea to come here, and I didn’t have a choice.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “We’re both adults. Let’s just work on this project and try to avoid each other for the next few weeks.”
He doesn’t respond, so Sam turns to look at him. Simon’s expression is one of acute sadness mixed with disappointment. She goes back to her work, and he soon joins in and helps. They pull box after box from the shelving units, and he retrieves others from the main room. Just being near Simon in the same tight quarters causes her pain. Why had the family suggested this?
“Dinner’s ready,” Courtney says as she enters the room, startling Sam. “Oh, and your cute friend’s back.”
“We’ll be right there, Court. Thanks,” Sam returns with a patient smile.
“Good,” Simon tells her as soon as Courtney leaves. He places a heavy box on a bottom shelf and stands erect again. “I can’t wait to see what he found out.”
“You’ll have to drag the girls off him first,” she jokes.
“Lord, help us,” he teases in return, turns off the lights and closes the door.
The night air has turned chilly and cool she notices as they walk toward the mess hall.
“I think you should consider coming back to the farm, ok?” he presses again. “Especially in light of what’s gone on here in the last week. First, your friend, now the highwaymen being so close. It might be good to come home for a while.”
“This is my home now,” she reminds him and picks up the pace, hoping to leave Simon behind. It doesn’t work. He sticks with her, and she can hear him grinding his teeth.
Chapter Six
Reagan
“Nothing?” Reagan asks her husband as she stroke’s Cory’s mutt on the head. It wasn’t really a choice. She’s a pest. “He didn’t get anything? Not even a tire print in the mud?”
“No,” John answers. “Cory said he couldn’t track them more than a mile from the attack site. These people either know what they’re doing or know short-cuts and back roads or something.”
“Is he safe? Is Simon safe?” Paige asks with nervous gray eyes.
“Yeah, they’re cool, Paige,” Kelly assures her.
They are all sitting on the picnic table in the yard, enjoying the morning sunshine. Cory talked to John last night from Dave’s compound. Her father recently sent a runner with information from Fort Knox and a ham radio by which to communicate better with him. Reagan would rather he hadn’t. Dave’s compound already had a similar setup, so now they can use the same form of communication in a more efficient manner with their strongest ally in the area. Derek knows how to use one, so he’s been in charge of showing everyone, herself included, how to operate it. She just doesn’t like owing her father anything.
“These people know what they’re doing, or they’re getting really damn lucky,” Kelly remarks, expanding on John’s thought.
“Language,” Hannah warns, although her sister is holding her husband’s hand and hardly seems angry with him. The children are playing out by the barn, so Reagan knows they can’t hear them.
“I’ve started an algorithm,” Lucas states, surprising her because her new brother is usually so quiet.
“For what?” Derek asks.
“I’ve tracked the first known attack and the location and every one after. They seem to be moving west to east and then back again on the same roads.”
“Interesting,” John says.
“Yes, I thought so, as well,” Luke says. He pulls a wrinkled piece of paper from his pants pocket and spreads it out on the table.
“What do you have, Lucas?” Grandpa asks, leaning toward the notes.
“See here? The first attack that we knew of was northwest of here. Then the next one after that was even farther west. Then they move east. I have the dates beside the locations.”
“Nerd,” Reagan comments.
“You’d k
now,” G comes back at her.
This makes Reagan smile broadly at her half-sister. She likes her spunk. The kid is a survivor, that’s for sure. And the more Reagan gets to know both of them, the more she understands how close they are and that Luke looks after Gretchen with an intensity that can only be described as fierce.
“Touché,” Sue agrees with G, adding a smile aimed at Reagan, who returns it.
Luke doesn’t offer a comeback but continues explaining his scientific study. Perhaps they are more alike than she’d first thought when he’d arrived on the farm as an unknown stranger to them all.
“It seems sequential. They’re moving in this east-west corridor. Mostly they hit the same freeways over and over. They may have to change the routes now that we’ve put up signs. I’m quite sure they’ve seen them.”
“I’d be very surprised if they haven’t,” Grandpa says and rubs the beard stubble on his chin. “They could be raiding areas even farther out than what we know. We just have no way of verifying it other than searching.”
John agrees with her grandfather. “These people must have a camp in the tri-county area somewhere, possibly further out but not too far.”
“Maybe,” Derek adds. “Or maybe they have an unlimited amount of gas that they can come in from far.”
“No, they can’t,” Kelly argues. “They’ve siphoned gas from every attack. They don’t have unlimited fuel.”
“Right,” Derek changes his mind. “What about the compound at the golf course? We should go back there again and check it out.”
“I agree,” John says. “And soon. We have to know who they are. Cory and Simon checked on it again when they went the other day and said those people were still there. He said they still seemed harmless, but who knows? We need more intel on them.”
Kelly says, “And if they aren’t our highwaymen, then we should warn them about those ass…jerks.”
Reagan grins. He is smart to correct his swear.
“And those young people at Fort Campbell,” Grandpa adds. “We really need to know more about them. Perhaps they need our help.”
Reagan smiles gently. Of course, he wants to help them. His good will toward his fellow man, especially children is one of his most endearing qualities and why she loves him so dearly.
“They definitely need a warning, as well,” Sue agrees with worry.
“Right,” John agrees. “We should run over there as soon as Cory gets back. Unless you think I could go with maybe Chet.”
Derek shakes his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave the farm right now. If Luke’s right, then they’ll be making their next attack heading this way.”
“Yes, I think they will,” Luke says, pushing his dark hair off of his forehead.
“Seems like he’s right,” Kelly says with a nod, examining Luke’s paperwork.
Lucas breaks in to say, “I was thinking if we set out more signs on these roads here,” he points with a pen on the map, “that we could start changing their routes. Then we could narrow them down, bottleneck them until we’ve got them moving on the roads that we want them to use.”
“Smart,” Kelly comments.
John says, “Then we set a trap.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” Lucas says.
“You sure you weren’t going into the Army?” Derek jokes, earning a crooked grin from her shy brother.
“A salt lick operation,” John says.
Derek bumps fists with her husband.
Hannah frowns and asks, “What does that mean?”
“Bait,” John explains.
“Oh, no,” Hannah frets. “This sounds dangerous.”
Kelly chuckles and rubs her back, “This is what we do, baby. Don’t worry.”
“But one of you would have to be bait?” Hannie asks.
“This is our area of expertise, if you will,” Derek adds.
Reagan knows they have experience with this sort of thing. It doesn’t make her want them to go on the offensive, though.
“Long-range reconnaissance, anti-terrorism activities, that’s the stuff we used to do, Hannie,” John explains. “Don’t worry. We’ve got this.”
Kelly says, “Remember that time in Djibouti?”
“Yeah, the Djibouti-call in Africa?” John jokes, earning laughter that mostly nobody but Derek and Kelly understands.
“You know it, brother,” Kelly answers.
“What do you mean?” Reagan asks.
John turns to look at her, his blue eyes lit with humor, “Dumpy country, Muslims who hated Americans. We got sent in to retrieve a person of interest, when low and behold, it turned into a city of people who all wanted to play the kill-John-and-Kelly-and-their-friends game.”
“That sounds awful,” Sue says.
“And highly classified,” Derek says with a grimace of disapproval.
“I just declassified it,” John says with a grin of ornery intent. “It was important. I was making a point and needed a reference.” Derek just shakes his head, and John laughs. Kelly smirks, too. “What we’re getting at, Hannie, is that we’re used to it. Kelly and I were outnumbered about a thousand to one, and we made it out just fine.”
“Evac pickup was late, too,” Kelly complains.
“Yep, had to stop for a Starbucks or something that time if I remember correctly,” John jokes.
“We don’t always make the evac spot, either,” Kelly reminds him.
“Yeah, for a different kind of booty call,” John says, to which Reagan punches his arm. “Kidding, babe.
“Hannah,” Kelly says, turning to his wife, “we’re always outnumbered. Always. The American military is and always has been outnumbered. We’re expected to take and hold a position, follow our orders, complete the mission without faltering, without failing. I don’t ever remember fighting one on one. It’s always some large group of idiots against just a few of us. We’re unconventional warriors, and that’s what we’re good at.”
“What about Simon and Cory?” Paige asks. “What about them? They don’t have the experience you guys do.”
Derek chuckles softly and says, “Oh, yes, they do. You just weren’t here for the years of training they went through. They are more than capable of handling themselves in a bad situation. Look at that camp in Nashville we took care of. They were an integral part of that raid.”
Reagan doesn’t like to remember that night when they went to the sex camp. She was so worried about the men. This is going to be worse. She has a terrible feeling about these highwaymen.
“Look, guys,” John says to them, “this is what we’ve been trained to do. We can handle this.”
“I’d rather you didn’t, though,” Reagan argues softly, holding her hand over her stomach.
Derek says, “We’re fighting them. It’s either gonna be here on this farm at their time of choosing or out there where the terrain and the element of surprise are on our terms.”
John wraps an arm around her waist.
“Hannah,” Kelly says, “you make the best biscuits on earth, baby. That’s your specialty. If I tried to make a biscuit, it’d taste like sawdust and charcoal. My job is this. I protect you and Mary. I take care of the bad people. I’m better at this job than any other on earth.”
“And if you’re grossly outnumbered?” Sue asks.
“We’ll handle it,” John simply states.
“I don’t like this,” Sue reiterates.
“We’ve got scores to settle,” John adds. “This isn’t just about persecuting a bunch of jerks who are harming innocent people on the road. This has affected us, too. I know it was the highwaymen who hit Derek and killed two of Dave’s best soldiers. They shot Cory. This isn’t going to stand.”
“I spoke with my father…our father last night,” Lucas states, pausing their arguing. Everyone turns to look at him.
“About what?” Reagan asks.
“I discussed the highwaymen,” he explains. “He’s concerned. He doesn’t want them showing up in his
area, either. He’s already worried enough about the President doing that.”
“And?” Sue prompts when he pauses for too long.
Luke sighs, “Well, he’s going to send some men on patrols to look for any signs of these people, as well. If they find them, he’ll contact us immediately.”
“Good,” Grandpa says. “That’s good news. We could use all the help we can get.”
Reagan tries not to be negative, but she’s quite sure her frown is not very well hidden. If Robert helps them, she’s positive he’ll want something in return. He’s nothing like Grandpa. She wonders if Grams got him mixed up at the hospital with another baby.
“We’ll wait until Cory returns from Dave’s,” Derek says. “Then you can go and take one of the neighbors or even Cory could go to check on the golf course compound in Clarksville.”
“And make contact with the young people,” Grandpa adds.
“Right,” John agrees. “We’ll make sure to, Herb.”
Grandpa nods and smiles.
“Ready to work on the barn roof?” Kelly asks Luke.
“Yes, sir,” her brother answers.
John helps Derek to the house, but the younger people head to the barns for chores. The kids have taken off somewhere, probably to play in the barns. Ari is no doubt leading the mission.
Reagan goes inside to use the bathroom, but she overhears her husband speaking with his brother in Grandpa’s old bedroom where Sue and he now sleep. She stops in the hall to listen. It sounds heated, which concerns her.
“No way,” John says impatiently. “Not gonna happen, brother.”
“Just go, man,” Derek states. “This is bullshit. I’m not getting any better. Just leave me alone.”
“Nope,” her husband says in his usual tone when he’s being stubborn. “You and I have got a workout waiting for us. So, you either come with me, or I’m getting the Hulk and we’re draggin’ you outta’ here.”
“Don’t be an asshole, John,” Derek says with open hostility. “I’m worthless now. Fucking worthless.”
Reagan frowns hard, swallows harder, and her gaze drops to her shoes. This is painful to hear.
“Hey, so you’ve got a paperweight for a leg instead of a leg that works the way you want it to. So what?” John says. “Crap happens, bro. You know this. It’s war. This is what happens in war.”
