Conflict of Interest (The Walker Five Book 1)

by Marie Johnston

  “I really want to encourage you to find someone you’re comfortable with, perhaps attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting to try it out.”

  He scoffed. “Nothing anonymous in this town.”

  “There’s Fargo an hour away. Sioux Falls is two.”

  Again, his phone went off. He growled and pulled it out of his pocket only to scowl at the screen.

  “I’ll think about it. I have to go take this. See ya around?”

  Why did his words sound like he’d asked her on a date? When he walked out, she tossed the clipboard on her desk.

  Well, that was end of her and Dillon Walker.

  ***

  “What’s up?” Dillon kept his voice in check. He was the oldest, the guys still looked to him as the ultimate authority. So if Brock lit up his phone to no end, it had to be something important.

  “First off, what the fuck are you doing with a six pack in the cab?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Dillon hissed to keep his voice from carrying into the other offices.

  “I cleaned out your lunch bag, thinking it had to go in the fridge before the food went bad.”

  “You called me about some completely full cans that I haven’t drunk?”

  “Not one or two. Shit, Dillon. ‘Don’t drink and drive’ goes for tractors, too.”

  Dillon bit down on the inside of his cheek. He was the calm, reasonable one, he had to damn well act like it. “You think I don’t know that? I owe Aaron a sixer and figured I could pay up if he stopped out to talk. I was plowing the quarter by his house, you know.”

  Brock fell silent.

  He pushed on before Brock could question him. “You said first thing, what else?”

  His heart thumped as he waited for Brock. Was he going to turn into an old hen and cluck about the fridge full of beer? Because Dillon didn’t like to make a ton of piddly trips into town. Might as well buy bulk if the stores carried it.

  “I think the coolant tank was punctured.”

  Dillon waved at the receptionist as he walked out. Hopefully, Elle would cancel his appointments. He wasn’t going to sit on the phone while they tried to talk him into rescheduling with someone else. “How?”

  “Exactly. I can’t figure it out. The only thing I can think of is someone tampered with it.”

  Chapter Four

  Grateful the workday was done, Elle drove home. Dillon consumed her thoughts for the few minutes it took to get to her house. She’d messed up. Had there been another way? Could she have kept counseling him and continued to be professional? He’d said himself he’d only come to see her.

  No. She wasn’t responsible for coaxing him into Moore Mental Health. That was up to him. Just like it was up to her to quit thinking about him and move on.

  She would’ve laughed at the unfairness, but life hadn’t been fair to her before, so why would it start now? She approached her little square home and pulled into the garage. Then took a few moments for impromptu meditation. Most days she loved her job. Some days it reminded her of all the reasons why she’d gone into the mental health field, specifically addiction counseling. On those days, she required more self-care than usual before she went in to take care of her original patient, a man who’d danced off the twelve steps more often than he’d followed them. After supper, she’d soak in a warm, sudsy bath.

  Her stomach growled, interrupting her zen. The lasagna she’d asked her dad to throw in the oven sounded heavenly.

  When she entered the house, no delicious scents of cheesy, meaty goodness basking in oregano greeted her. Dinner should’ve been done by now, warmth filling the kitchen from an hour and a half of baking. Her father was nowhere to be seen.

  “Dad?”

  A strangled noise echoed from deep within the house. Elle dropped her purse and followed the sound. Damn it, she’d checked on him at noon and he’d been fine. Assured her he’d be okay to throw the meal in.

  “Dad?”

  He called to her again, sounding tired and in pain. Rushing through the house, she bee-lined for the door to the basement. Her heart bottomed to her toes.

  No, no, no.

  He lay at the bottom. His feet rested higher on a couple of stairs with his body draped onto the floor.

  “Dad!”

  She flew down the steps while digging out her phone.

  “Ellie,” he rasped weakly, “just help me up. I’ll be fine.”

  “How far did you fall? What were you doing down here?” She stepped around him to kneel on the floor.

  “I was,” he stopped to take a wheezy breath, “getting the lasagna to put in the oven.”

  “It was in the fridge, ready to go. Don’t you remember me telling you that?” Why was she chewing him out? He’d been injured badly, his normally weak frame crumpled in a painful heap. ‘“Where do you hurt?” She dialed 9-1-1.

  “I’m fine,” he continued to argue, his wiry form seeking a more comfortable position. His face screwed up in agony.

  “No, you’re not. You probably broke a hip.” Speaking rapidly into the phone, she described her dad’s predicament, where the majority of his pain was, and what she could tell eyeballing his breathing and color.

  After she hung up, time gradually ticked by while they waited for the ambulance to arrive.

  ***

  Sunlight pummeled Dillon’s head. With a deep groan, he rolled over and forced himself to sit up. If he went back to sleep to escape the tortuous light, he’d hear crap from his cousins when he showed up late. He couldn’t deal with the cryptic comments when they found out he’d been working in his shop past midnight because he’d slept in until noon. It was like his grandma’s nosy friends lived around him.

  Dillon rubbed his eyes and scanned the room. No wonder the sun was so damn bright. He’d fallen asleep on the couch again. The curtains covering the large picture window in the living room where he’d fallen asleep were tied to the sides.

  He shoved to his feet, wobbled a little. Plodding his way to the bathroom, he kicked into a pile of empty aluminum cans, sending them clanking across the floor. Around him were more than a half dozen silver beer cans glinting in the light.

  Funny, he thought he’d only had a couple. Maybe a few were from the night before; he didn’t remember cleaning them up.

  As the shower warmed, he rubbed his eyes and recalled Brock’s discovery. Dillon had told him to table the suspicion until they could prove it. He trusted his family and there was no use getting rumors started. They blew through town faster than prairie winds.

  The shower served to help him feel both refreshed and like pounded dog shit, courtesy of his night on the couch. He dressed and went in search of water and nutrition, other than the liquid barley he’d ingested the previous night.

  He rummaged through the fridge and withdrew a baggie of his mom’s meatloaf. Not one for ceremony, he stood over the sink and ate the leftover goodness. It was better than sitting at the table across from nothing, with only the wall to look at. And thanks to Mama, he was never short of quality food. She stocked his freezer with meals since she thought he’d get nothing else if it wasn’t from a can. Each time, he reminded her he manned a mean grill, that ranchers were always stocked with steak, but he didn’t argue too hard. She missed cooking for her family and her meals were fantastic.

  Because he didn’t feel awful enough, his thoughts returned once again to Elle. All night, he’d cursed himself for ever agreeing to counseling.

  Sorry, Dad, gave it a shot, but you were worried for nothing.

  And next time his mom came to visit from Sioux Falls, Dillon could tell her, yep, he’d done it.

  Did he have a chance with Elle, or would she always see him as an off-limits client?

  A question he’d asked himself for hours last night. He gave up on his therapy, but he hadn’t given up on her. A woman like her… She was one of a kind. He admired the hell out of the fact that she’d stuck to a decision that he’d rebelled against, all because she’d been adamant it w
as the right thing to do. Their counselor/client relationship was over, but he didn’t want that to be the end of him and Elle.

  He shook his head. Might as well move onto something he had a little power over.

  His mind rolled through the chores to be done. The ground was wet from a sprinkling of midnight rain that the sun was already evaporating. Good, after Brock fixed the tractor he could get back out plowing.

  He leaned forward. Were those footprints? He squinted. Yes, there were muddy footprints around the door of his shop. Maybe Brock had come early to work on the tractor. He glanced at the clock.

  No, Brock said he had to wait until the parts store opened at nine today so he could pick some items up first. The store only opened five minutes ago. Dillon stared at the concrete flat poured in front of the shop. Meant to catch big chunks of mud and muck before rolling equipment inside, it caught the muddy footprints of Dillon’s mystery visitor.

  Dillon grabbed his hat and jacket and headed to the shop. The footprints went through the door. Dammit, they never locked anything. There’d been no need to. Following the footprints from the building, he determined the returning prints from where they smudged the first set.

  Whoever it was arrived after it rained while Dillon slept on the couch. He examined his lawn and spied the patch his visitor had run through to get his shoes all dirty. The caller must’ve stuck to the squishy greenery that bordered the driveway and stepped in the wet, soggy flowerbed his mother used to grow her petunias in.

  Dillon smiled grimly to himself. Those beds hadn’t seen a flower in two years, but he’d tilled them. Eventually, his mother would get sick of seeing empty black soil when she visited and plant annuals for him. Good thing he hadn’t let it grow over, or there might not have been prints.

  He walked up his drive, staying parallel with the tracks, and reached the main road. In the stretch of gravel, there were a few sets of fresh tire marks, but nothing unusual, until he spotted a grouping of tracks on the side of the road. Either his unexpected visitor didn’t know wet gravel roads held onto their history longer than pavement or didn’t care that when the dirt dried, vehicle impressions lingered.

  He inspected the area. Sure as shit, it looked like a car had been parked there. He walked around the tracks gathering as much information as possible. One set of prints, one visitor. Intruder. A visitor wouldn’t park on the road and break into his shop in the middle of the night.

  Shit. His shop—where all his tools were. All his expensive tools.

  He trotted back, but pulled to a stop before he charged inside. His instinct to radio in information and bring his weapon up to the ready hit him hard.

  He shook his head. This wasn’t fucking Iraq and he didn’t have a group of soldiers to pass orders to. The only radio he had was the standard one in his truck that he listened to music on.

  Still, he couldn’t shake the wish that he had a gun. No, his hunting rifle would stay tucked away in the gun safe. Using that to clear his shop when he was reasonably sure his intruder was long gone fulfilled all the fantasies of the PTSD whisperers.

  He was no longer a soldier, so he’d do what a normal dude would do, like call the cops. First, he texted his cousins and asked if any of them stopped out late last night. Next, he used the camera on his phone to take pictures of the area around the door and the concrete where the prints were the most visible.

  Entering the building, he purposefully strode in like he didn’t have a care in the world. He flipped on all of the overhead lights, ignoring the spike in adrenaline that sent his heart racing. The action of stepping into a dark building with a hint of danger assaulted his brain with memories. The rustle of boots and gear creaking as crouched forms broke off into various rooms. Just like that, he was back in the desert with sweat pouring down his back and his helmet jostling on his head as his team swept through building after building.

  Dillon’s focus blurred. He shook his head and forced his gaze back to the floor. He lost sense of where the tracks led, but squatting down he detected the prints. Inspecting the floor, he worked his way toward the workbench.

  His stuff had been moved. Dillon had mentored under his uptight father all his life. Every gadget had a place. They weren’t thrown back on the bench or tossed into the standing toolbox where he’d have to sift through them to find the one he needed. They were lined up by size and organized by type and he never put away filthy tools.

  He made a mental note of the disrupted tools while he took more pictures. They may not be good for the cops, but he and Brock could determine if something was missing. It didn’t appear anything was stolen, but then why would someone break in?

  Had the tractor really been tampered with?

  He made a quick sweep of the shop. The tractor they used for plowing and haying was parked and waiting for its repairs. Next to it, the smaller tractor with its snow-blower and bucket attachments sat with the riding lawn mower that looked miniature in comparison to the others.

  His phone pinged with text replies of no, but on my way; fuck no, some of us have to work today; and why, miss me? Nothing yet from Cash who was probably extracting himself from a girl’s bed without waking her because then he’d have to pretend he remembered her name.

  The familiar rumble of Brock’s massive truck snatched his attention. Dillon jogged out to meet him. He sidestepped the footprints drying on the concrete and waited for Brock to park and get out.

  “What’s up with the text?” Brock asked, grabbing some boxes from the bed of his truck.

  Dillon motioned for him to follow. “Someone came out here in the middle of the night. They were in here going through my shit.”

  His cousin dumped the boxes by the plowing tractor’s engine. “Anything stolen?”

  Dillon hadn’t expected Brock to get worked up. Brock would be more likely to get worked up because the intruder interfered with his workday.

  “Not that I can tell.”

  Brock took his black Ford racing hat off and scratched his head. It was a move Dillon had watched his uncle, Brock’s dad, do constantly when he was standing over one of his collector Mustangs. “I knew it.”

  “Someone punched a hole in our coolant tank.” Why mess with an old tractor? “I’ll check the equipment while you work on fixing the tractor.”

  Brock put his hat on backward and started emptying the boxes.

  They had no enemies. If this were Cash’s place, he’d suspect a jealous boyfriend or ex of one of his cousin’s many hook-ups. But Dillon spent his time working and any one-night stands were deliberately with the female versions of Cash. And the last one was…it’d been a while, and last he heard, she’d met a new guy and moved in with him. No names of grudge holders came to mind.

  If inconvenience had been the goal, it wouldn’t take a farming genius to figure out which tractor got used the most in the fields. They relied on it in the spring when the snow melted and the ground thawed to work the fields for planting by the middle of May.

  This time of year, they used many of their tractor attachments. Dillon went outside where they were lined up. A quick scan revealed nothing obviously wrong. Dillon checked the plow. He inspected all the bolts and hydraulics carefully. And then he saw it.

  The reality of their situation crashed down on him. “Hey, Brock. C’mere.”

  He heard a clang and a muffled, “Gimme a minute.”

  While waiting, Dillon checked the rest of the equipment, but found nothing else. By the time he finished, Brock waited by the old disc harrow they never used since the no-till method took over.

  “Come here and check out the attachment points for the blades.”

  It didn’t take Brock more than a minute to find the problem. “Son of a bitch. You wouldn’t have known until you got all the way out there and tried to use it. The hydraulics would’ve failed.”

  “Yep. How much do you want to bet whoever did this didn’t know we don’t use it anymore? We only went no-till last year. I’ll call the police to make a report.
Think you can fix the coolant tank and still give me time to get out there and finish the northeast section?”

  “It’ll be a quick fix, but I’ll wait until law enforcement gets what they need.”

  “We’ll need to start locking our houses and all the other buildings.” Brock’s eyes widened in alarm. Dillon surmised why. “Do you know where your keys are at?”

  “I’ll find them,” Brock grumbled. “Nobody’s getting in my shop and touching my ’Stangs.”

  Chapter Five

  Dillon rubbed his aching temples as he walked down the long, stark hallway. It’d been another night on the couch and he was paying for it. Why did the nursing home lights have to be so bright?

  At least Sunday was traditionally a sleep-in day so the clock reading eleven didn’t give him a heart attack when he woke. He blamed the dreams filled with sand, shadows flitting through adobe buildings, and the explosions startling enough to wake him up. Over a week they’d been raging, thanks to the break-in. His head thudded with each step and the two full glasses of water he’d downed did nothing for the cotton mouth he’d woken up with.

  Nodding to one of the CNAs his grandma claimed was her favorite, he stepped into a room. Gram sat in an overstuffed chair, staring out the window.

  “Gram, how ya doing?”

  He relished the change of smells. From blah and sterile, to warm and cinnamon. The scent conjured images of him as a boy, running in for a piece of her scrumptious apple pie.

  “Dillon, what a surprise.”

  His wrinkled, little grandma always said that even though he’d been stopping in every Sunday since he’d been home. He leaned down to kiss her soft forehead before collapsing in a chair.

  “Tough weekend?” She pinned him with a knowing look. Like she knew it wasn’t the work kicking his butt, but the after-work fun. She oughta know, raising five boys.

  “Same as always,” he replied.

  Sad but true. Him and a ton of work he couldn’t get to that left him with too much damn time on his hands. At least they’d gotten cable television out on the farm after he’d left for basic training. It made the quiet nights a little less barren when he could watch something other than his redundant DVD collection. It was a nice change from the hours of the radio while he was in the tractor cab.