Hearing him say he’s scared too gives me more courage than I imagined it would. “We’ve got this, though.”
“That we do. We’re going to go in there and prove to Director Drake that we deserve to have this assignment.” He glances over at me. “Did you tell your family what you’re doing? Like your dad?”
“No,” I shake my head. “I haven’t told anyone, except for Magnolia, and she knows very little. The only reason I said anything to her is because she’s staying with me, so she saw me leave looking like this.” I gesture down at my clothes.
“Are you scared to tell them?”
“A little.” I rub at the couple days growth on my chin. “I think my dad and grandpa would be okay with it, but my mom and Molly? They’d never get it. Hell, knowing Molly she’d probably want to pose as my wife so she could make sure I’m safe. Her being my older sister has been great for most of my life, but when she’s trying to protect me, she’s as bad as a rabid dog.”
Dakota laughs, throwing his head back and letting it end in a giggle. “The amount of shit she’s gotten us out of though, Levi. Like if it hadn’t been for her, we would’ve been screwed so many times in our lives.”
“Yeah, you’re especially lucky,” I grumble. “If she hadn’t done your senior paper for your final grade in English, you would’ve had to repeat another year.”
He doesn’t say anything at first, but nods, and I know he’s thinking about the fact that he had to repeat two grades before we met each other. No one had been prepared to work with a kid who had dyslexia, but once I met him, I wouldn’t let anyone push him around. Following my lead, Molly adopted him as hers too, and she doesn’t let people go.
“You’re right, she’s been by my side through almost as much as you have.”
I don’t miss the tone in his voice, but I dismiss it. Freedom Farms Hunting is up in the distance, and there’s a truck sitting in the gravel lot outside of the barn. The same one we were in last night. We drive up and park, glancing at each other as he turns the truck off. “It’s go time,” I tell him.
“We’ve got this. I’ll follow your lead.”
Getting out, I walk slowly around the front of the truck to where the man stands. “Hey, I’m Tim.” I offer him my hand. “Was it you I texted with?”
The man doesn’t offer a smile, and somehow I expected that, but the coldness in his eyes almost makes me retreat within myself. I’ve been around criminals for most of my life. Sometimes I went to the jail with dad or grandpa. Some of them who were reformed would come up to either one of them in a public setting and thank them for helping. Others, who weren’t exactly ready to change, would be worse about it. This man, I’m pretty sure, has a criminal record, and he isn’t the type of man to thank someone for changing his life.
“Yeah, I’m Randy. What exactly is it the two of you are looking to do?” He looks down at my hand, and then reluctantly takes it.
Dakota gives him an aw shucks smile. “Name’s Wallace, nice to meet you.” Once they let go, Dakota shoves his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “We wanna bring out a couple of friends to do some hunting. And if we like what we see, we have friends up north who are interested in stocking their farm with some white-tail deer.”
Randy hunches his eyebrows together. “That’s illegal.”
“It is, but I heard you might be willing to help.”
The two of them stare at one another for a long time. I’m almost ready to pull the gun I have hidden in the top of my boot. Locked in an epic stare down, neither one of them appears to want to be the one to break the gaze. Eventually, Randy does. He yanks his hand back and sticks it in his pocket. “I guess I could help, but first y’all got to prove you’re capable of keeping your goddamn mouths shut.”
How do we do that? Dakota and I glance at one another, that question bounces between the two of us. I turn to him. “How do you want us to do that?”
He takes off the hat on his head and scratches, pushing his hair back. “First, you’re going to come out and show us that you can hunt. Then we’ll see what comes next.”
Dakota nods. “We’ll do whatever we need to. You’ll text us?” He holds up his phone.
“Yeah, but first let me talk to the bossman. Thanks for coming out.”
He doesn’t watch us as he turns, walking away. Which means he has other people watching his back, and we should be careful, they could fire when we turn ours. “Thank you,” I call out.
Acting like we don’t have a care in the world, we head toward the truck. I get in first, and then watch the horizon for him, nodding when everything seems to be on the up and up. Dakota gets in, and then carefully backs out, before hitting the main road. Once we’re away from the property, we turn to each other.
“What’d you think about that?” I ask, because I respect his opinion almost more than my own family. We’ve been best friends for a long time, and the way we’ve been able to do that is because we’re honest with each other.
“That dude is hiding a whole bunch of shit on that property. Did you feel the guns on us?” He asks, checking his rearview mirror.
“Yeah, my whole body was one goosebump, especially when he turned his back to us. He had zero cares in the world, which means he had people trained on us.” A thought occurs to me, and I hold up my finger, motioning for him to pull off at the boat landing where we met the first day.
“What?” He mouths as we get out of the truck.
“Tracker or listening device,” I mouth back to him. Just because Randy was the only person we saw, doesn’t mean he was the only person who could’ve touched our vehicle. There were a few times we had our backs completely turned to our vehicle as we spoke to him. It’s always better safe than sorry.
He gives me a thumbs up and goes to the back of the truck. In one of the tool boxes there’s a radio frequency detector and magnetic detector that will hopefully let us know if these assholes want to find out where we’ve been and where we’re going. We spend a good thirty minutes going over the vehicle, but nothing shows up.
