“What are you trying to tell me, sir?”
“You and I both know this is all connected in some way with ecoterrorism. Somebody is sitting on those materials that were stolen from Global Research. Those materials have got to get back into the right hands—either the government’s or the owner’s. Are my words getting through here, Billy Bob? Talk to Johnny’s wife. She’ll listen to you.”
“No, she won’t.”
He crossed his legs and pulled at one knee, as though it were injured, his eyes lifting toward the ceiling. “Once in a while you have to make a concession. You make the concession and you move on. That’s how the world works. This is a good community. We don’t need all this trouble,” he said.
“My wife and I didn’t cause it. But somebody is doing his best to destroy us.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that. I guess people fight with the weapons that are available to them.”
“So do I.”
“I’ve heard about your history in Texas. I don’t think that’s going to work here, my friend. Believe it or not, I’m on your side,” he said.
“I think in your way you probably are. So tha
nk you for coming in, Brendan. Tell the man you work for I’ll kill him if he tries to hurt my family.”
He shook his finger back and forth. “This conversation is one in which we didn’t communicate very well. That’s the only memory I’ll have of it. If Johnny gets in touch with you, tell him to surrender himself or to call me. I don’t want that boy hurt. God’s truth on that,” he said.
He left my office, shaking his head profoundly.
THAT AFTERNOON, as I pulled into the dirt drive at Johnny’s house, I saw Amber unloading boxes of groceries from her Dakota. I followed her into the back of the house without being invited. She had swept the floors clean of splintered wood and broken glass and had placed a throw rug over the stain where Seth Masterson had died.
“That’s a lot of food,” I said.
“Not in the mood for it, Billy Bob,” she replied.
“Brendan Merwood was in my office this morning. He knows you have the records that were stolen out of Global Research. He wants you to give them up.”
“The day Global gets its goods back is the day Johnny gets his death warrant signed. What a life, huh, boss?”
One sack on the table was filled with first-aid supplies.
“You don’t think you’re being watched or followed?” I said.
“They try. I don’t think they do a very good job of it. Did you see those telephone workers by the crossroads? I wonder why they all have the same haircut.”
“I wouldn’t underestimate them,” I said.
But my words were useless. I leaned against the doorjamb and watched her sort out the canned and dried food and medical purchases that she was obviously taking to Johnny. I wondered how long it would be before she was in the crosshairs of a telescopic lens.
“How badly is he hurt?” I asked.
“Bad enough.”
“Amber, you need to be aware Temple and I are about to lose our home. Johnny’s tribal bondsmen double-crossed him and us.”
Her back was turned to me. She paused in her work a moment, as though she were about to speak. Then she wrapped a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in a towel and placed it deep in a cardboard box.
“Did you hear me? Others are being hurt as well as you and Johnny. Seth Masterson got set up and blown into a pile of bloody rags because he tried to save Johnny and you from yourselves.”
This time she turned on me. “How serious do you think anthrax is? Or bubonic plague or the Ebola virus? Forget about the fact it’s down in the Bitterroot Valley. How do you feel about this stuff being used on human beings?” she said.
“That’s what they’re messing with at Global?”
“They’re the bastards who gave Saddam Hussein part of his biological warfare program.”