Hidden Path

by Melissa F. Miller

  The other sister had a place in the Pacific Northwest, perched on rugged, beautiful landscape on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, a rugged, handsome husband, and a pack of barefoot, tangle-haired children who climbed apples trees and looked up at their own night sky.

  And she had at least one murderer, at least one arsonist, and some unknown quantity of international spies running around her corner of the world.

  On a happier night, she would also count her blessings: Her quiet deck; the view of the sun rising over golden fields as far as the eye could see; and friendly, honest citizens she’d sworn to protect and serve. But this was not a happy night.

  She drained her glass and closed her eyes as the sharp burn of alcohol swam down her throat to her belly.

  She looked back up at the Pleiades. Someone had told her once that Native American farmers called the constellation the Seeds because it resembled a heap of seeds. They also used it as a planting calendar. When the star cluster became visible in the pre-dawn sky in June, the Native Americans planted the last of their seeds, and when it was visible in the fall’s morning sky, they harvested their plants. All without the benefit of crop management software, geolocated one-time passwords, deadly pesticides, or specialized corn lines kept under lock and key.

  She laughed again, bitterly this time, and her thoughts turned from girlhood dreams and traditional farming cultures to Jason Durbin and Mark Olson.

  Despite the lima bean seeds stuck to the bottoms of Jason’s boots, she didn’t believe he’d set fire to Mark’s field on Wednesday morning. If he’d tromped through the leased lima bean field on Monday evening when he confronted Mark about the pesticide, those seeds could have been clinging to his soles all week.

  But she didn’t think so. The lima bean farmer said the Durbins didn’t make a habit of cutting through his field to reach Olson’s place. And she’d seen the proof of that herself. Dolly, Jason’s wife, had walked the long way around, following the drainage ditch along the road frontage, when she’d brought over coffee and water for the firefighters.

  Aside from it being country commonsense not to trespass on another man’s land in a county where chickens outnumbered people and guns outnumbered chickens, Jason would have had his own reasons for not walking through his neighbors’ fields. They all sprayed. He didn’t. He was committed to organic farming and dead set against using chemicals on his crops. He wouldn’t have risked tracking something back and contaminating his own land. That was just business sense. Principled, yes. But also pragmatic.

  The same combination of principle and pragmatism also meant there was no way on the Lord’s great green earth that Jason Durbin would set fire to fields that were within a quarter mile of his own land. Everyone in rural Illinois knew how fast a field could burn. The risk to the Durbins’ farm had been real during that blaze. In fact, the only reason Jason hadn’t put on his volunteer firefighter gear and joined the effort at Mark’s was because he’d been standing guard over his own crops with a hose in hand.

  Aided just a bit by the vodka, which she’d poured with a more generous than usual hand, she voiced her conviction out loud in the dark. “Jason didn’t set that fire.”

  But someone had. Olson’s attorney had hammered that point home more than once in their brief call. There was an arsonist in Onatah.

  Of course, there was also a killer.

  Her thoughts turned to Mark Olson. The lima bean farmer said that Mark did cut across the fields he leased to get to the Durbin farm. Which was fair, he owned them after all. Mark had confronted Jason, to accuse him of setting the fire—he admitted as much. But he’d cooled down fast. Mark wasn’t the hothead of that pair; that had been Jason.

  And, from a purely logical standpoint, Mark lived to the west of Jason. He wouldn’t have walked right past Jason’s property to the abandoned homestead to the east of Jason’s to shoot him, which was where the shot had come from.

  No, Mark was a hard-nosed sonofabitch, but he wasn’t an assassin. He was a businessman, calculating and always acting in his financial self-interest. He’d probably been busy getting his papers together to file an insurance claim for the fire when Jason had been shot.

  “Mark didn’t kill anybody.” Her words rang out in the still night again.

  An owl stirred, hooted in protest, and flew out of her big oak tree.

  She needed to find the woman who called in the shooting. She needed to talk to the farmers planning to file the class action lawsuit against Supra Seed. She needed … to sleep.

  She looked up one last time to say good night to the Seven Sisters in the sky then turned and went inside. She snicked the lock into place, put her glass in the sink, and trudged upstairs to collapse into bed.

  Chapter Twenty

  Hannah checked the deadbolt. It was locked, just as it had been when she’d checked it twenty minutes earlier.

  Calm down, she ordered herself.

  But as the darkness had gathered outside her window, her nerves had slowly ratcheted up. She’d grown more anxious with each passing hour.

  Now it was midnight. The witching hour.

  Twenty-four hours had passed since she’d nearly died—and a farmer named Durbin had died, she reminded herself.

  When she’d first read the article on her computer, she’d steeled herself to talk to the police chief. But then she’d seen Bodhi King’s picture. A seed of hope had bloomed, and she’d decided to speak to him instead. Maybe it was stupid to base her decision on one brief interaction, but she felt as if she knew him. She could trust him to help her see her way through this mess.

  The decision made, she’d pulled on her shoes hours ago, while it was still daylight, fading—but not yet dark. She’d hurried down the stairs to her car in the attached garage accessible from the basement, the keys jangling in her hand.

  But she’d stopped three-quarters of the way down and gripped the steel handrail, overcome with doubt.

  She couldn’t just show up at The Prairie Center. What if he was still there? She didn’t expect him to be—he would have contacted her by now if he’d seen her office blinds set at the prearranged height. A signal. I need to talk. I left you a note.

  He’d never ignored the signal before. So he must have left—must have been recalled to Beijing by the Ministry of State Security. She imagined the missive: You and your American contact have done well. We have what we need. Come back now. No, don’t contact her. It’s for her safety, and yours.

  Surely that’s what had happened. Surely there was no harm in her knocking on the wide front door of The Prairie Center and asking the kindly monk who answered if she could see Bodhi King.

  But what if she was wrong. If he was still there. If she somehow blew his cover, and her own. It was too great a risk.

  She’d turned and jogged back up the stairs, run into her apartment, and slammed the door behind her. Had secured the lock and deadbolt. And had paced while her worry grew to a frenzy.

  She had to think of a way to see Bodhi without showing her face at The Prairie Center. But how? Her ability to problem solve was clouded by fear. Frozen, even.

  She reminded herself she was a scientist. A woman of reason and fact. She would get the sleep that had eluded her last night and wake refreshed. Then she could form a plan.

  All she needed to do right now was to quiet the primordial part of her brain that was silently screaming messages about danger and darkness.

  She took several slow, deep breaths. Tried to chase out the boogeymen with fresh oxygen. Her heart slowed, but only marginally.

  So she stood in the center of her small, spare apartment and worked through her Wushu talou, the unarmed fighting forms she knew by heart.

  She wished for a weapon—her sword or spear or staff—but she had none. She’d paused her training when she’d moved to Illinois.

  Instead, she kicked and punched and stretched, again and again and again, until she was slick with sweat and her muscles trembled with fatigue.

  Then she w
ashed her face, brushed her teeth, and checked the lock one final time. She collapsed into bed. And, finally, she slept.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Bodhi was surprised to see Feng sitting in the dark and quiet parlor when he turned out the kitchen lights to go upstairs to bed. It was very late, after midnight. Which was perhaps only somewhat late for most adults—but not for adults who would be awoken by a singing bowl at five a.m.

  The monk sat in the alcove that protruded from the westward-facing side of the house. A window seat was built into the space, and a bay window with three angled panes of glass was set into the dark wood wall. During the day, it made an inviting spot to read.

  Feng was not reading. He sat with his back against the front window and his feet pointing toward the back window. His knees were pulled up near his chest and his arms were wrapped around his shins. It was a protective, almost furtive posture. He was staring out into the night.

  When Bodhi padded into the dark room on bare feet, Feng flicked his eyes away from the window for no more than a half-second to glance at Bodhi. Then he went right back to looking outside.

  “Are you okay?”

  Bodhi crossed the room to the alcove.

  Feng kept his eyes glued on the window. “I think so.”

  His voice held a note of uncertainty. Bodhi hesitated. He would have asked to join the man on the window seat, but the only spot available would be impeding Feng’s view of … whatever it was he was looking at.

  Bodhi tried to track his gaze. He seemed to be staring toward—but not at—the barn. “Are you waiting for someone?”

  At the question, he snapped his eyes away and locked them on Bodhi. “No. Are you?”

  “No. But you seem to be looking for someone or something specific.”

  Feng frowned and gestured toward the window. “When I was watering the garden earlier while you and Roshi Matsuo were in the kitchen, I thought I saw movement near the trees. It could have been a deer or fox, but, I thought we should be very cautious—considering what happened to our Chinese guest. So I walked up the path to the barn just to check, and I know I heard an engine in the woods behind the shed.”

  He heard Thurman and Clausen moving their car into the barn.

  “Did you see anything?”

  He shook his head. “No. I thought perhaps someone had gotten in and taken the tractor, but the shed was locked up tight.”

  Bodhi felt his brow wrinkle, and he smoothed it. “That’s good. But, Feng, a man was murdered in the field. I don’t think it’s safe to go wandering alone back there after dark.”

  The worry in Feng’s eyes dissipated and a fire took its place. He held Bodhi’s gaze. “Fear is just misplaced attachment.”

  “Okay. Good night.” He dropped a hand briefly on the man’s shoulder then turned to go.

  Bodhi left him sitting there, watching the barn from which Clausen and Thurman were watching the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was after midnight.

  Gavriil sat under a starry, moonless sky on the same stump where he’d left the garrote days earlier. Aside from the yellow police tape draped across the stump—which he’d simply pushed out of his way—there was no hint that he’d killed a man here. No blood, no signs of struggle. Of course, San hadn’t had time to react. Gavriil had come up behind him like a cat.

  He would have preferred to stake out the doctor from the barn he’d moved into on the other side of the organic farm. He felt safer there now, but he needed to be close enough to move on the doctor when the federal agents hiding in the barn left.

  He’d watched through his binoculars as the dark sedan had arrived on the property. The two law enforcement agents and the doctor climbed out of the car and walked together through the front doors of The Prairie Center. The doctor wore San’s knapsack on his back.

  Eighteen minutes later the agents exited through the same doors. No doctor. He’d watched them get back into their sedan and drive down the long driveway to the road. He kept his attention trained on the house.

  Four minutes later the car reappeared on a dirt path that wound through The Prairie Center’s property. For a moment, he was confused. Then he realized they must have taken an access road—a relic left over from an earlier incarnation of the farm. He’d slipped behind a tree to watch from a concealed position.

  The car bumped slowly through the woods, then out into the clearing, and came to rest behind the barn. The male agent got out of the car then ran up and opened the wide back doors into the barn. The female agent guided the car inside. Her partner ran through behind the sedan then pulled the doors shut.

  From the time the sedan emerged out of the wooded section of the farm, the entire operation took a minute, maybe a minute and a half. The smoothness and speed with which they feigned leaving the property and then managed to secrete themselves away inside the barn displayed practiced teamwork, good communication, and competence. Gavriil was impressed and more than a little worried.

  He stayed in the trees while the monk called Feng left his work in the garden to come investigate.

  Some sound or blur of motion must have caught the monk’s attention. He followed the footpath from the garden to the barn then detoured away from the barn on a diagonal to check the door to a large shed set several yards away from the barn. He yanked on the padlock that secured the shed door. It held.

  Check the barn, Gavriil urged silently.

  Feng did not check the barn. He skirted to the left and returned to the house.

  Gavriil returned to his stump. He’d been sitting on the rough, uneven stub of an oak tree for hours now. He checked his watch—four hours. Two hundred and forty minutes. There’d been no movement from within the barn in all that time. Nobody slipped out and into the woods to relieve himself or herself. Nobody got tired and called it a day. Nobody sneezed or passed gas loudly.

  He sat, silent and patient, and watched the barn while the agents inside the barn sat, equally silent and infinitely patient, and watched the house.

  Finally, at two o’clock in the morning, Gavriil powered on his cell phone and sent a text to a cell phone number registered to a restaurant in Kyrgyzstan:

  Needed: Backup for an operation on behalf of our mutual former employer. Will pay market rate + 12.5 %. Need someone versed in wet work, fluent in English. Will pay premium for someone with decrypting experiencing and familiarity with Chinese language. Qualified candidate will have physical ability and mental willingness to perform wet work.

  He scanned over the help wanted ad and gave a satisfied nod. Then he powered his phone off again so as to prevent anyone from triangulating his location using cell phone tower registration.

  He looked up at the stars bunched up overhead and wondered what their names were. His work hadn’t left much time for hobbies, but he’d always imagined he’d retire someday to a house on a high peak where he could build a powerful telescope and spend his nights on a virtual journey throughout the galaxy.

  If he saw this mission through to completion, he would finally have the funds to make his retirement dream a reality. He just needed a hired killer or two to lend him a hand.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Friday morning

  Feng was already—or still—awake when Bodhi wandered down from the second floor. He had lit the candles and was preparing to strike the standing bell to wake the others.

  “Did you sleep well?” he asked, the wooden block poised above the lip of the bowl-shaped, inverted bell. The bell rested on a fat round pillow.

  Bodhi considered the question. “Under the circumstances, I’d say so. And you?”

  Feng glanced at the bay window, an involuntary but telling gesture. Then he shrugged. “Well enough, I suppose. I need to run outside for a moment. Would you strike the bell to wake the house and signal the beginning of noble silence?”

  “Of course.”

  Feng handed him the block and hurried into the kitchen. Bodhi watched through the doorway while the monk
pulled on his shoes and removed a jacket from a hook set into the wall near the door. He grabbed the small basket and the gardening shears and unlocked the kitchen door.

  Bodhi resisted the urge to caution him to stay in the garden. The man was an adult, after all. And if he was being honest, he didn’t want to give Feng any ideas.

  He tapped the stick hard against the bell and listened as one long note filled the air. Some people hit the bell as he had, and others preferred to run their sticks around the outside of a bell’s rim, which caused a continuous vibration. Bodhi had always preferred to strike the bell. He raised the stick and hit the bell a second time just as the ringing from the first strike faded into nothingness.

  Operating under the near certainty that he’d once again miss most—if not all—of the day’s meditation sessions, he lowered himself to the bare floor beside the bell to take advantage of the silence. He could squeeze in a short mindfulness practice before Feng returned or any of the others came downstairs.

  He cleared his mind, closed his eyes, and centered his attention on his breath.

  He wasn’t sure how long he sat—it could have been three minutes or it could have been thirty. But when he heard the door to the kitchen opening, he opened his eyes and stood.

  He walked out to the kitchen.

  Feng was filling a tea kettle. “I picked some fresh rosemary and mint for tea, if you’d like to join me.”

  “Thank you.”

  While Feng prepared the tea, Bodhi swept the floor. They worked in companionable silence. The only sounds were the roiling and bubbling of the water, working its way up to a boil, and the swish, swish, swish of the broom’s bristles, brushing across the floorboards.

  Bodhi finished his task and returned the broom to the tall, narrow closet built into the wall. Feng took mugs down from the cabinet and arranged a tray. Bodhi picked up the woven doormat in front of the kitchen door and stepped outside to shake out the debris trapped in its weave-mostly clods of dirt and grass, a few pebbles.