“Seriously? You’re angry because I don’t want to open a restaurant?”
He stopped and turned around. “No.” There was a long pause. “Okay, I’m angry. But it’s not because of the restaurant. I don’t know why I’m angry, but I am. I’m going home to figure it out. I’ll call you later.”
She watched him follow the creek at a brisk pace, then started back to her own cabin. Halfway there, her phone vibrated inside her messenger bag. She’d turned it to silent during the meeting.
By the time she wrenched it loose from its compartment, the call had gone to voicemail, where it was markedurgent. Gina found a tree to stand under while she listened. Cell service on the ranch could be spotty but today her manager’s voice came through loud and clear.
“I’ve tried calling you three times,” she said in the message. “Call me as soon as you can. It’s not good news.”
Gina squeezed the bridge of her nose, feeling a headache coming on, then hit thereturnbutton on the phone.
Chapter 16
Sawyer found Cash sitting in his living room with the AC turned up when he got home.
“I let myself in when I realized no one was home. Your truck was still here, so I figured you were either taking your time walking home or you were with Gina.” His mouth quirked to show that he knew that Sawyer had been spending a lot of time over at her place. It was impossible to keep anything a secret on the ranch. Or in all of Dry Creek, for that matter.
“What’s up?”
“I’m not sure.” Cash lost the grin and his expression turned sharp. “My buddy, Ken, got squirrelly all of a sudden.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s not returning my calls, which isn’t like him. The guy’s solid, not flaky. Initially, I feared he had some kind of family emergency…something that took precedence over sending me a quick text that he was still working on tracing the email, or whatever. But I checked with another friend who says Ken’s been at work every day this week. That everything seems fine.”
“So what do you think’s going on?”
“Don’t know.” Cash shook his head. “It isn’t like him to say he’s going to do something and then not do it. Even stranger is the radio silence. He knows Angela is my cousin. We worked cases together when she first went missing. Knew the toll it took on me. On our family. This isn’t something he’d blow off.”
“Maybe his supervisors told him he couldn’t use Bureau resources.”
“There’s so much going on in that lab, no one knows what anyone else is doing. Ken spends his day in a cubicle the size of a shoebox, doing cyber searches. Most of it sleep-inducing. That’s not it.”
“Sounds like you might have a vague idea.”
“Yeah, I think he found out something he doesn’t want to share. Why? That right there is the million-dollar question.”
“Or are you reading way too much into it? The guy could’ve just gotten busy.”
“Maybe.” But Cash wasn’t buying it, Sawyer could tell. “If I don’t hear anything in the next day or two, I’m taking a little trip. A little face-to-face time with Ken.”
“You have time for that?” Sawyer walked to the fridge and grabbed two bottled waters and tossed one to Cash. His cousin spent the good part of the day driving across Northern California, investigating livestock thefts.
“I’ll make time.” Cash took a swig of the water and put the bottle down on Sawyer’s coffee table.
“Speaking of…Aren’t you working today?” It was after ten.
“Yep. I left the morning clear for the meeting with Tuff. At noon I have a cattlemen’s lunch in Placer County.” Placer was just next door to Mill County. When Grandpa Dalton was alive he sometimes went to the Placer cattlemen’s lunches at the Auburn Fairgrounds. A few of those times, he’d taken his grandsons with him.
Sawyer took a sip of his water and eyed Cash over the rim of the bottle. “What are some of the things your friend Ken could’ve found that he wouldn’t want to pass on to you?” Sawyer couldn’t let it go.
He had his own ideas, like maybe Angie had been the victim of someone on the FBI’s radar and agents didn’t want to blow their case. Hell, for all he knew, Angie was involved in something illegal and was under investigation. But that didn’t sound like his sister. She’d been caught up in some wacky causes but none of them were criminal. Perhaps Ken’s reticence had something to do with the New Mexico commune. The timing was certainly suspect. Sawyer had gotten the email about the same time he’d been trying to unearth information about the farm. Or whatever the hell it was. Could be that the FBI was interested in the commune too. For all Sawyer knew the Bureau was dealing with another Branch Davidian situation.
“Why speculate?” Cash let out a sigh. “There’s dozens of reasons. Let’s see what I can find out.”
It was a fancy way of Cash saying he didn’t want to go there right now. But Sawyer was pretty sure they’d come up with the same possibilities.
None of them good.
