Afew hours later, Sarah set a supper plate in front of Blaze with a vegetable-laden quiche and salad with berries piled high. The sun was falling toward the horizon outside the window, turning the honey-stained wooden table rose gold.
Blaze summarized his day as he dug in. “So, money is not a problem anymore,” he said. “My phone-wallet has several hundred grand deposited from a friend. The house has been reinforced with plywood over the windows and two-by-fours that can be set in place to bar the doors, and firearms will be delivered tomorrow.”
Sarah nodded as she sat around the corner from him and loaded her fork. “That sounds good.”
The salad was cool and crisp in her mouth as she chewed. Her garden grew good food from the Iowa soil.
“The mission objective is your eventual safety on this farm,” he said. “I don’t know how long it’ll take to deter the White Russians or the next stage of our mission, but we don’t have the luxury of time.”
She nodded, her mind filling with military jargon like bees buzzing in her garden.
“After this attack, whether they retreat or are neutralized, this won’t be over. We’ll have to take the fight to them in some form.”
The concepts of neutralizingpeopleadded to the droning in her head, the bees becoming a swarm.
“The ultimate objective is your safety on this farm, and I’ll return to Chicago without further interference or demands. It might take a while. You should be prepared for a war, not a battle.”
The bees in her head condensed around one word,Chicago,their random flights swirling into a dark funnel cloud. “You’re planning on going back to Chicago, then?”
He sighed and impaled salad on his fork like it was a bayonet. “I understand that you have a connection to this farm and the community here, but I don’t. I’ll grant you it’s idyllic, but hiding on a farm is not for me. I have plans for a veterans’ center in Chicago. My lawyer emailed me that a property is available, and I need to look at it. My life mission is to help my brothers-in-arms, not farm corn.”
Roaring wind filled her soul. “So, all those faceless veterans, the ones you talk to on the phone and never hear from again, they’re more important than—”Me.“—the farm.”
“You wanted to come with me,” he said. “Raising funds for the center will involve attending galas and meeting with the rich and powerful. We’ll help a lot of people, and it would be quite a life.”
And nothing like bees, fresh strawberries, corn, horses, and her lifelong friends in Kalona. “I just can’t, Blaze.”
He examined the food on his plate, lifting a piece of her homemade pie crust with his fork as if the answer lay under it. “Can’t, orwon’t?”
“Can’t,” she said, biting down on the word to make it sound firm even though her heart wobbled like a bubble in a breeze.
Blaze ate another bite of her quiche without looking at her, chewed and swallowed, and then said, “You said my veterans could camp out in your cornfield and barn when they arrive.”
So the topic was changed.
Good, because the comfortable farmhouse she’d lived in every day suddenly felt rickety, like even a strong wind would blow it over, let alone the tornado that had just swept across her heart.
But the veterans, and the barn.
The manure hadn’t been shoveled since they’d left. “I can clean out the barn—”
“No need. That stack of hay bales is more than adequate. We’ve all slept rough. They should start arriving after noon tomorrow. Maybe three o’clock.”
“How many people?”
“A dozen, maybe more. Maybe twenty.”
That was a lot of people to be walking around her farm.
Sarah’s measly garden was already getting picked over feeding the burly Navy SEAL, but the early tomatoes should start ripening within the week. “Oh, wow. And should I plan to cook for them?”
He waved as he finished chewing a bite of salad and then said, “Again, no need. The University of Iowa’s catering department will deliver meals, and a truckload of shelf-stable MREs will arrive tomorrow morning. An army travels on its stomach. We have supply lines.”
“Okay.”
An armywas coming.
And the bratva’s killers were coming. They might be driving on the highway or on an airplane right then.
