Frank Kurns Boxed Set

by Natalie Grey

  “I keep thinking that I understand greed,” he said finally. “I saw it enough with the others.” He looked at her then, his eyes jarringly old in his young face. “I saw what they did to Michael.”

  Bethany Anne swallowed and looked away.

  “I should not have—”

  “Not speaking of it won’t change anything,” she said simply. She took a moment to steady herself, and looked back at him. “What were you going to say?”

  “Just that… I think I understand greed, and that I will be able to recognize it and anticipate it. But greed wears so many faces.” Stephen’s mouth twisted. “I never recognize it when I see it, and I am always surprised. I am like a child… I am shocked when I should simply expect such things now.”

  Bethany Anne could feel TOM’s interest, and she had the sense that ADAM was waiting silently for more information. It was clear to all of them that Stephen’s experiences with the torture facilities in Europe were haunting him in more ways than one.

  “Hugo made himself believe that what he did was right,” Stephen said quietly. “I am sure that with enough…pain and time, one could have stripped away the lies and he would admit that he simply wanted power, and he couldn’t bear to have people defy him. But on every real level during every interaction, in every thought, Hugo believed that what he was doing was right and necessary.”

  Bethany Anne nodded quietly. She was beginning to see what was troubling Stephen.

  “If he could convince himself that such horrific things were right,” Stephen asked quietly, “what could I convince myself of? What have I convinced myself of?”

  “You know you are nothing like Hugo,” Bethany Anne said quietly.

  “I don’t know that,” Stephen said bluntly.

  “In the pursuit of all moral causes, there are those who become extremists,” ADAM said.

  Both Bethany Anne and Stephen looked up in surprise. Neither would have expected ADAM to weigh in on such a matter.

  “It is said by some that the pursuit of specific social change is an inherently selfish endeavor,” ADAM continued. “The cause resonates strongly with those who follow it, so they seek satisfaction within themselves by pursuing change.”

  Stephen considered this. “Do you believe this?”

  He was interested to hear the AI’s conclusions on the matter.

  “I believe it is a correct interpretation of the data, but not necessarily an important one,” ADAM said after a moment. “If an injustice has occurred and it is righted, is the happiness of the one who righted it the important thing, or is the most important thing the fact that justice has been served?”

  Stephen smiled. “An interesting conclusion. So how would you answer my question, then?”

  “I think you are aware that an organic mind can create delusions, and I think you have surrounded yourself with those who would tell you if you engaged in harmful delusions like Hugo did. Consider the fact that Hugo punished those who contradicted him. You do not do this. Therefore, I think you have arranged your life—whether on purpose or not—so that you pursue good social endeavors, and you will not be allowed to slide into extremism.” ADAM sounded proud of himself.

  There was a pause.

  “It takes a great deal of processing power to examine organic minds,” the AI admitted a moment later. “And I never know if I am correct.”

  “Sounds exactly correct to me,” Bethany Anne said. She nodded at Stephen. “What do you think?”

  Stephen was smiling slightly. “I think that was a very good analysis, ADAM. I would like to talk more about this at some point, if it would not be too tiring for you.”

  “I would also like that very much.”

  Bethany Anne smiled at the conversation as she spread blueprints out on the table. “Count me in. I’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts. Now, I’ve had a few ideas on building materials. Is the call connected? Good. Bobcat, tell me what you think of this...”

  Romania

  Over lunch in town, Alexi and Ecaterina shared their findings with the others.

  At Alexi’s insistence the dogs had been brought along. Alexi enjoyed much the same reputation in his town that Yelena had in hers. He was known to have a somewhat innate understanding of animals, although there were a lot of jokes about how livestock seemed to hate him.

  People were only too eager to tell Yelena how so-and-so’s horse had taken an immediate dislike to Alexi, or how so-and-so’s chickens fled the yard, squawking whenever he arrived. It was clear that everyone in the town considered this hilarious.

  Yelena, who knew there was more to the story, only smiled.

  Ashur and Bellatrix, brought along under stern instructions from Yelena that they were to be on their best behavior, were making a big show of being dainty. Ashur fairly pranced, and Bellatrix preened whenever someone complimented her coat.

  Alexi had insisted on sitting next to Christina, and she was presently clambering onto his shoulders and his head with an expression of dogged persistence, heedless of the fact that they were in a restaurant.

  No one seemed to care. This was hardly a formal place, and children were woven into the life of the town here.

  Nathan smiled at her before looking at Ecaterina, “So, what did you find out?”

  “They’re rich,” Ecaterina said at once.

  “How do you know?” Nathan asked her in confusion.

  “The traps are very good quality.” Ecaterina nodded to her pack. “I’ll show you when we’re back home, but they’re coated so that they won’t rust, they’re very sharp, and they’re complex, not just a simple trip.”

  “They’re powerful.” Alexi looked grim, or as grim as it was possible to look with a small child climbing on his head. “They can shatter bones.”

  “And there are a lot of them,” Ecaterina added. “We picked up as many as we could, and disabled others.”

  “Is it worth letting them know that you are on to them?” Yelena asked worriedly. “If they see that someone has been taking or disabling traps, maybe your hand will be tipped.”

  Ecaterina smiled. It was not a nice smile, and Yelena had the sudden motivation never to do anything that would annoy her.

  “I don’t think we need to worry about that,” Ecaterina explained. Her smile turned almost conspiratorial. “We want them to notice. Whoever they are, we’ve just undone a lot of their work. There’s going to be a flurry of activity, and as soon as we have one of them, I’m fairly sure we can persuade him to tell us who they work for.”

  Alexi laughed, shaking his head at his niece. “Wasn’t so long ago that you were making mud pies and skinning your knees, and now here you are, making plans like that. Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that husband of yours was a bad influence.”

  Nathan laughed. There was too much fondness in Alexi’s tone for it to be anything but a joke…and he knew enough to know that Alexi valued Ecaterina’s rather unconventional style of solving problems.

  Their laughter was interrupted by a sudden spate of barking.

  “Bellatrix!” Yelena was up and to the dog in a moment. “Don’t bark like that. You—”

  She stopped suddenly. Having worked in a kennel, she had been taught to value good manners in a dog, but she had also been taught to trust a dog’s instincts.

  And right now Bellatrix was on high alert.

  Bellatrix, who up until now had hated no one in the world except Cipriano, Yelena’s ex-boyfriend.

  Yelena followed the dog’s gaze. A man across the street was watching her. His eyes met hers briefly, but it was Bellatrix he was watching.

  And Bellatrix was watching him, a low growl building in her throat.

  He disappeared around a corner a moment later, but not before Nathan got a glimpse. Yelena had crouched next to Bellatrix and was apologizing for doubting her reaction, whispering over and over that she would never let that man hurt her.

  She looked up at Nathan. “Was that…”

  “One of the men who was sta
ring this morning?” Nathan finished. “Yes.” He looked over his shoulder at Ecaterina. “You said you were looking for people who might be trading wolf furs, right? Well, we might just have brought the perfect bait to lure them into the open.”

  Chapter 5

  Bobcat turned the truck up an unpaved road and savored the heavy chug of the engine. Dust was rising behind him in the heavy midafternoon air. Though it was turning to autumn and the chill was evident in the mornings and the evenings, the days still had that hot, dreamy quality to them.

  Bobcat hadn’t spent much time in the Midwest in his life, but he was finding that it suited him.

  Outside the major cities the land turned quickly to a dotted landscape of fields and tiny stands of trees, houses set far apart, and barns with silos. Cows grazed peaceably, horses swatted flies with their tails, and the lines of crops about to be harvested curved hypnotically over the swells of the hills.

  This, Bobcat thought, was the sort of place a man could lose himself peacefully for a few decades.

  He wondered if Yelena would like it here.

  Maybe, he decided. He could easily picture her striding through dew-soaked tall grass in a heavy sweater and knee-high rain boots, surrounded by an adoring pack of German Shepherds.

  The thought was so distracting that he missed his next turn and had to back the truck up. His face heated. It wasn’t shame, exactly, he just found that he felt more alive when he was with Yelena or even when he thought about her. His heart was going faster than normal.

  He guided the truck up a low hill surrounded by trees and emerged into a broad clearing. A couple of battered trucks sat outside a garage with peeling paint. One of the truck beds held a wealth of vegetables, perhaps to be taken to a farmers’ market, and the other was filled with a huge crush of tools.

  The farmhouse itself was old and stately, and the trees had been cleared on one side of the hill to allow a clear view of the fields below. Sheep and horses grazed on the land between, and Bobcat took a minute to soak in the view.

  He’d forgotten how big a sky could be.

  The sound of the door opening recalled him, and he turned to see an older man heading down the walk from the house. The man wore weathered jeans, stained from heavy use but recently washed, a flannel shirt tucked in, and work boots that looked well broken-in.

  He stopped and gave Bobcat a onceover, but it wasn’t clear from the look on his face if he liked what he saw or not.

  He turned his gaze to the truck, but spoke to Bobcat. “You’re the one my son talked to, huh?”

  “Your son is Jim McHugh?” Bobcat asked. The man on the phone had sounded old and gruff. How old was this man?

  “Yep, that’s him.” The man nodded decisively. “I’m Dick. Wasn’t plannin’ to give you the time of day, but Jim liked the sound of you.”

  Abruptly Bobcat felt guilty.

  When he had called around to the farms in the area he’d told them that he’d never been to the Midwest, but had come into a little bit of money and was hoping to buy some land, maybe start a small farm.

  Jim had been suspicious—and rightly so—but Bobcat had pressed onwards. He wanted to know how the crops worked together, he said. It wouldn’t be a large-scale farming operation since he didn’t have that much money, but he wanted to know all about the pests and what depleted the land and what fed it. He asked about livestock. He mentioned being interested in reviving some of the old varieties of crops, and asked about curing meats.

  It seemed that he’d managed to convince the man, and now he felt guilty for lying.

  But what could he say? I’m a representative of TQB—yeah, that TQB—and the Queen Bitch wants a lot of seeds just in case?

  “Let’s walk down to the fields,” Dick suggested. He started walking without waiting to see if Bobcat would follow. Like many patriarchs before him he just assumed others would obey, and he had the gruff, commanding air that ensured they would.

  Bobcat fell in beside him and climbed up over a stile into the field.

  “Watch the muck,” Dick suggested pragmatically.

  Then he fixed Bobcat with a stare.

  “So what’s your story?”

  “I told Jim—”

  “Yeah, I know what you told Jim. You want t’learn about seeds. Why?”

  In his pocket, Bobcat’s phone buzzed and he struggled not to pull it out. It might be a shipping confirmation on the myrcene oil. Once again, he saw happy visions of Yelena laughing and cheering as he won the beer competition…

  He cleared his throat hastily.

  And whether it was something in the view or the air or Dick McHugh’s weathered face, he found himself speaking as honestly as he could. He talked about living life with a purpose, and how he felt when he’d watched the sun rise over the fields this morning as he drove. He talked about wanting to give Yelena a farmhouse in the country and a place for her dogs to run. He mentioned the feel of dirt under his fingernails, and how he’d always worked best in the mornings when everyone else was asleep—and how, when he got an idea in his head, he was stubborn as all get-out.

  He could tell Dick was intrigued. Somehow—Bobcat would never later be sure exactly how—the farmer got the story out of him about piloting helicopters, working on his own machines, and even a bit about the mysterious employer who had given Bobcat the money to buy seeds with.

  “She a farmer?” he asked in surprise, and Bobcat laughed.

  He pictured Bethany Anne’s couture and her sudden ferocious violence. She was as far from being a Midwestern farmer as he could imagine, and yet he thought Bethany Anne and Dick would get on very well.

  “No,” he said. “Just practical.”

  Dick McHugh nodded. They had reached the dirt road that ran alongside the fields and were staring contemplatively at the corn. It was nearly ripe for harvest, and Bobcat, to his surprise, could smell it. His mouth watered.

  “Yeah,” Dick said finally. He nodded and looped his thumbs through his belt buckles. “Don’t know if you’d make a good farmer, t’be honest, but I like the look of you so I’ll help you figure out which seeds you need. I can make sure you get ‘em, too.”

  Bobcat grinned and held out his hand to shake. “Thank you. You have no idea how much this means to me.”

  To his surprise, he wasn’t telling even a bit of a lie.

  The more he saw places like this and was surrounded by things growing and the smell of rich tilled earth, the more he thought there was really something to this seed-vault plan.

  Romania

  Ecaterina’s phone rang that evening, and she strained to reach it without dislodging Christina. Her daughter had fallen asleep nestled against her, seemingly totally untroubled by the noises around her, but Ecaterina knew that as soon as she moved, the girl would wake up and be grumpy.

  To her great surprise, she found she didn’t mind very much.

  “Hi,” she answered.

  Bethany Anne’s voice was cautious, “Is everything okay? You’re talking very softly.”

  “Christina is asleep,” Ecaterina explained. “I really don’t need to be quiet, but it’s just an instinct around sleeping kids, you know?”

  “I do the same thing,” Bethany Anne laughed, “but that kid could sleep through a hurricane.”

  “Yeah.” Ecaterina kissed the top of her daughter’s head. “Yeah, she could. Funny how she can’t put up with broccoli, though.”

  “Still having the broccoli fight? Better you than me.” Bethany Anne, a woman of iron will, nonetheless knew when she had met her match—and Christina, faced with a request to eat broccoli, was a match for anyone. “So how are things going down there?”

  “Well, actually, it’s good for Alexi to see Christina, and I can’t wait to start looking for seeds. In fact, I have Nathan and Yelena off cataloguing plants.” Ecaterina chewed her lip. “There’s just, uh…something I have to do before that.”

  Back on the Meredith Reynolds, Bethany Anne propped her feet up on a footrest and grinned.
The deep, deep blue of the shoes winked back at her, visible only briefly as the shoes caught the light. She took a moment to admire her new footwear and then returned to the matter at hand.

  “I know that tone of voice. Someone did something bad.”

  Ecaterina was trying not to laugh too loudly. “Since when do I have a tone of voice for that?”

  “You learned it from your husband,” Bethany Anne explained. “It was always a lurking tendency, and he definitely brought it out in you.”

  “A lurking tendency… Good Lord, woman.” Ecaterina snorted.

  “You’re very justice-minded. Everyone who works for me is.” Bethany Anne settled into her chair with a pleased grin. “So what’s going on?”

  “Someone’s trapping wolves for fur,” Ecaterina told her. “I don’t know if I can explain to someone who didn’t grow up hunting for food, but—”

  “That is the most cowardly, dishonorable, useless thing!” Bethany Anne exploded. “Those raccoon-humping shit-guzzlers had better hope their dicks rot off before I find them or I’m going to make them eat them.”

  Ecaterina stared down the phone and wondered vaguely if she should have covered her child’s ears.

  “So what I’m hearing is, you don’t mind me taking some time to mess them up before I head back?” She kept her voice calm, but there was a laugh threatening.

  “No, I fucking do not.” Bethany Anne was still heated. “What’s your plan?”

  “Well,” Ecaterina grinned, “Alexi and I came up with one this morning, and Nathan put the finishing touches on it. Did you know my husband is an evil genius, by the way?”

  “I did. It’s one of his best qualities.”

  “Indeed. So…” Ecaterina detailed the plan, grinning as she did.

  By the end, Bethany Anne was back to her good humor. “That’s amazing,” she told Ecaterina. “They aren’t going to know what hit them. Let me know how it goes, and say hi to everyone for me.”

  Marcus and Barnabas strolled along a country lane. The smell of lavender hung in the air, and Marcus gave a disbelieving laugh.