“I just wanted to make sure there was nothing in here to worry about,” he said.
“Not that I know of,” she replied.
“Shit, you’re right. Come with me.”
Bradley grabbed her hand and practically tugged her out the front door.
“Bradley, my groceries,” she protested.
“We’ll be right back.”
Kay followed him off the front porch and along the long drive that extended to the highway where they could talk without risking being overheard.
“We have too many secrets to just let the FBI go prowling around the place however they want. I’ve got to find a way to clear us of this before it gets to the point of them getting a warrant.”
“But if there is no probable cause they can’t get one anyway, can they?”
“Maybe not for that, but they have their ways. If they can’t get one for that, they’ll just use something else. I lost my head in there. I may have given them what they needed just by admitting I burned off those fields.”
“How, if it’s all gone?”
“Remnants, fields I might have missed, possibility of additional drugs on premises. I don’t know.”
“Maybe we need to talk to a lawyer?”
“Maybe. Let me sort it out in my head a bit. God, Kay. I don’t want to imagine that what they are saying might be true, but what if it is? What if one of my clan has done what they say.”
“We need to find out who planted those fields, Bradley. It wasn’t just one person that did all that. They’d never have time for their own work if they were also trying to tend that many hidden crops. They even took the time to seal out the top view from flyovers.”
“You’re right and that’s a good point. I can tackle who put them there from the perspective of having discovered and destroyed them. Maybe it’ll turn up someone or several someones. I’m going to put out the word for an all hands meeting.”
“What will you say to them? How do you flush them out?”
“I don’t know, but I will have to figure it out, that’s for sure.”
“Why did you want to walk? Do you think they might have bugged the house?”
“It’s possible. If they tapped you to try to help them, then there is the possibility that they also tapped someone else. I don’t think anyone would have wired the house, because we all have the same secret and they are risking that getting out by accident, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone in there walking around with a bug on them just like you had.”
With nothing resolved, they returned to the house, existing mostly in silence the rest of the evening. Each of them was lost in thought about how they were going to get through the days ahead of them. Kay was coming up empty. This wasn’t her world. Her previous clan had been full of violent, self-serving men, but drugs and what sounded a lot like sex slavery weren’t something she knew anything about.
Plus, this wasn’t her clan. She’d only recently made any serious effort to get to know any of them. There was so much history here between all of them and she knew very little of it. She had not even made friends among the women, no more than just passing conversation, anyway. Now, she regretted it. Maybe she could help figure it out if she was better informed about the people here.
Finally, they settled down for bed, only then discussing anything further. The bedroom was like their safe zone, where no one could overhear them and there was no chance of being listened in on. Still, they were no closer than they were before to coming up with a plan to nip this investigation in the bud and still cooperate in finding justice for the missing girls.
They settled down in bed, snuggled up against one another in an attempt to find enough solace that they could sleep. It didn’t come quickly, but they finally managed to ease into it, a light snore coming from Bradley that eventually lulled Kay into her own oblivion.
It was short lived as Bradley suddenly bolted upright in bed, from a dead sleep to being fully awake. Kay jumped up, prepared for the worst, looking around in the darkness for whatever threat it was they faced.
“Bradley, what is it? What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“The caves. I can’t believe I forgot about the caves,” he replied in a normal voice.
Kay took it that they weren’t in any danger that required quiet, so she responded in kind. “What caves?”
“When I was younger, there was a series of caves. We used to play in them all the time, but they became dangerous to navigate. They are close to the steam and the water seeping through them made the walls weak. They were sealed off. No one has been down there for years.”