Sadie blinks at him and then leans back in her chair. Damn! I really thought my angle was right, and I convinced her of it too.
“What exactly was he doing then?” I take a sip of my coffee, which is now cold. I grimace at how bitter and awful it is. “What the hell is this?”
“I should’ve warned you.” Sadie stares down at the table. “The coffee here is shit.”
I raise my eyebrow at her. Shit? It tastes like the industrial waste my father dumped illegally.
“It’s not that bad.” Austin pushes his cup away from him. “Compared to diesel fuel, anyway.”
“Are you going to answer my question?” I push. “What was Sadie’s brother doing if he wasn’t working for the EPA?”
Shankle clears his throat once more. I swear to God the man is about to lose a lung.
He leans forward, sets his forearms on the table and scans Chance, Austin, and me. “He was actually working for your father.”
Sadie’s cheeks go white. “Holy shit.”
I squeeze her hand. “Baby, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation.”
“There must be,” she says. “Joey was good. He would never do anything against the law.”
I squeeze her hand again. She wants to believe the best of her big brother. But Sadie has said herself that she hadn’t seen him in forever. Had little to no contact with him since she was eight years old. And I’ve seen what her old man is like. Joey could easily be the apple that didn't fall far from the tree.
God, I hope he wasn’t. For Sadie’s sake.
“Apparently your brother was working for a business called Racehorse Hauling,” Shankle says, “a freight company based out of Helena.”
That matches the paperwork we found in the old garage.
“A couple of your father’s companies hired them to haul what turned out to be barrels of hazardous chemicals across the border into Canada.”
“So hewashauling freight into Canada,” Sadie murmurs.
“Why?” Chance asks. “Are the laws for hazardous chemical disposal less stringent in Canada?”
“I’m not an environmental lawyer,” Shankle says. “But according to my associate who looked into this matter, the United States and Canada have an agreement regarding the transboundary movement of hazardous materials.”
“Then why was our father transporting the stuff to Canada?” Austin asks.
“Because Canada has something the US doesn’t,” Shankle says. “Lots of vast vacant land. From what I understand, Ms. Hopkins, your brother didn’t know he was transporting hazardous chemicals across international lines. But he was given explicit instructions about where to cross the border and which border agent to deal with.”
I shake my head. “A border agent who had been paid off.”
“Give the boy a—”
Austin’s cheeks burn red. “If you say give the boy a silver dollar, I’m going to fly across the table and pound on you, Shankle.”
I can handle Shankle, but after what went down with Carly, Austin has zero patience for the guy. I have to admit, he is a patronizing fucker.
“So my brother’s innocent.” Sadie heaves a sigh of relief. “Although in the eyes of the law, he was the one committing the crime.”
“That’s true. As far as we know, he didn’t know what he was hauling.” Shankle makes some notes on his yellow legal pad.
“This doesn’t explain how he ended up on our property,” Chance says.
“There will still be an investigation,” Shankle says. “Apparently Racehorse Hauling was shut down a few years back. Your father was never implicated in anything, until recently.”
“The whistleblower who came forward after he died.” Austin glares at Shankle.