Melanie stopped moving and curled her toes into the mud beneath her, feeling a twinge of guilt. “Is there an emergency?”
“No, but Daryl’s been trying to get a hold of you. He’s got a question about those medical supplies you asked him to pick up in town. No sense him making two trips just because you decided to go skinny-dipping.”
Melanie nodded and paddled to the tarnished copper ladder at the edge of the dock. “Okay. I’ll get out as soon as you leave.”
“You got nothin’ I ain’t seen before.” Well, he hadn’t seen hers, and she wasn’t about to show him. Still, she had a feeling that Silas’s reluctance to turn the ATV around and ride away had less to do with her being nearly naked and more to do with his egoistic need to make sure his orders were followed. “Don’t keep Daryl waiting.”
Melanie held on to the ladder until he had gunned the engine and disappeared through the line of trees at the top of the hill. Victory. Albeit a small one. Once his shiny bald head had vanished over the rise, Melanie wasted no time climbing out of the water and hurrying back to her pile of clothes and newly acquired treasure. She was dressed from T-shirt to toes and wringing out her hair in a matter of minutes. Despite the humidity, the air was hot enough that her clothes would dry off soon enough, although her hair would kink up into the kind of snarling mess that only Raggedy Ann fans could appreciate. Funny how she’d grown up without being noticed—she’d always been a little too plump, a little too freckled, a little too into her books to turn heads. Now she was counting on that same anonymity to allow her to return to the farm without drawing any more attention to herself.
Pulling her phone from her lace-up work boot, she verified that she was, indeed, far enough out in the hills, away from the cell tower on the farm, that she had no service. So Silas hadn’t lied about his reason for tracking her down. She’d give Daryl a call as soon as she was in range, and then, even though an internet connection was spottier than cell reception in this part of the state, she’d try to get online and research some images to see if she could identify the object she’d found inside her father’s boat.
Putting off her amateur sleuthing for the time being, Melanie cut across to one of the many paths she and her father had explored when he’d been alive. She followed a dry creek bed around the base of the next hill and climbed toward the county road that bordered the north edge of the property.
As she’d hoped, she was able to get cell reception there, and she contacted her friend Daryl to go over the list of items she needed to restock her medical supplies. But it was taking so long to connect to the internet that she reached the main homestead and had to slip her phone into her hip pocket so that no one would see her trying to contact the outside world.
As the trees gave way to land cleared for farming, buildings, gravel roads and a parking lot, Melanie headed to the two-bedroom cottage she called home. But, instead of finding everyone going about their work for the day, she saw that a crowd had gathered near the front porch of her uncle’s two-story white house. She could hear the tones of an argument, although she couldn’t make out the words. Suddenly the crowd oohed and gasped as if cheering a hit in a softball game, and Melanie stopped. “What the heck?”
She changed course and headed to the main house, looking for a gap where she could get a clear view of whatever they were watching.
She spotted Silas near the bottom of the porch steps, slowly circling to his left, eyeing his unlucky target. What a surprise, discovering him in the vicinity of angry words. It was a fight, another stupid fight because somebody had ticked off Silas. More than likely, her cousin had turned him down for another date, and his opponent was merely the outlet for his wrath. Typically, her uncle didn’t allow the tourists visiting the bakery and craft shop to see any kind of dissension in the ranks of the people who lived and worked on the farm. But the hot day made it easy for tempers to rile, so maybe Henry was letting one of the hands or Silas himself blow off a little steam.
Shaking her head at the testosterone simmering in the air, Melanie turned to leave behind what was sure to be a short brawl. If it even came to fists. The men around here were smart enough to end any argument with Silas with words and walk away before it escalated into something they’d regret. If these folks had gathered for some kind of boxing match, they were going to be disappointed.
Melanie halted in her tracks when Silas’s opponent shifted into view.
He was new.
Her stomach tied itself into a knot of apprehension as she took in the unfortunate soul who’d been foolish enough to stand up to the farm foreman. Only it was pretty hard to think of the narrow-eyed stranger mirroring Silas’s movements step for step as any kind of unfortunate.
The stranger was almost as tall as Silas. The faded army logo T-shirt he wore fit like a second skin over shoulders and biceps that were well muscled and broadly built. With military-short hair and beard stubble the color of tree bark shading his square jaw, he certainly looked tough enough to take on the resident bully, and she felt herself wanting to cheer for him. She caught a glimpse of a navy blue bandanna in his back jeans pocket, and her gaze lingered there long enough to realize she was gawking like a hungry woman eyeing a new batch of cupcakes in the bakery window.
Feeling suddenly warmer than the summer weather could account for, she forced herself to move away from the circle. She didn’t want to watch a fight and she didn’t want to be interested in any man who’d shown up here, especially since her goal was to find out about her father and then get away from this pastoral prison.
“This is how you welcome somebody to your place, Fiske?”
Melanie stopped at the stranger’s deep, growly voice. Welcome? The apprehension left her stomach and siphoned into her veins. But she wasn’t feeling pity over a pending beat down—this trepidation was all about her. If Henry had hired this guy to work on the farm, then he’d be one more Silas-sized obstacle she’d have to outmaneuver in order to keep digging for answers about her father.
Duff spit the blood from his mouth where the bruiser with the shaved head had punched him in the jaw, scraping the inside of his cheek across his teeth. He eyed the older man who’d invited him here for this so-called interview standing up on the porch watching the scuffle in the grass with a look of indifference. “Forget it. I don’t need a job that badly.”
He wanted to get hired on at the Fiske Family Farm. If this undercover op was going to be a success, he needed to get hired here. But he couldn’t seem too eager, too willing to kowtow to the owner’s authority or to the bruiser with the iron fist’s intimidation tactics. Otherwise, nobody here in the crowd of farmhands, shopkeepers and tourists—along with a man in a khaki uniform shirt sipping coffee and noshing on a Danish—would buy his big-badass-mercenary-for-hire persona. He’d spent the past few weeks cultivating his world-weary Duff Maynard identity in the nearby town of Falls City. Portraying a messed-up former soldier looking for a job off the grid, he’d even slept several nights in his truck, solidifying his lone-drifter status so that he could infiltrate the suspected illegal arms business being run behind the bucolic tranquility of this tree-lined farming and tourist commune. Playing his part convincingly was vital to any undercover op.
So he scooped up the army-issue duffel bag that had been taken from him and strode over to the porch, where Baldy had retreated to stand in front of his boss, Henry Fiske. Duff nodded toward the keys, wallet, gun and sheathed hunting knife lying on the gray planks, where the man with the shaved head sat in front of the railing, panting through his smug grin. Removing the weapons from his bag and identification from his pockets when the big man had patted him down and gone through his things had given Duff reason to start the fight in the first place, solidifying his tough-guy character in front of a lot of witnesses. “I’ll be taking those.”
Baldy rose to his feet, looking ready, willing and eager to go another round with him. “I don’t think so, Sergeant Loser,” he taunted.
He