CHAPTER ONE

PEPPER

“Please don’t leave me, Dad.” 

I could barely see him through my tears but I felt the dry, brittle skin over the bones in his skeletal fingers as I clung to him. 

“Heh. Suck it up, Buttercup.” 

His voice came out weak and wheezing, but somehow just as gruff as always and dripping with his dry sense of humor. I couldn’t help but crack a smile. My dad was still in there, no matter how aggressively the cancer consumed him.

He was still the same man who dragged me out of bed at four in the morning to pick crops before the hot, valley sun burned us to a crisp. The same man who iced my sore, tender muscles from working in the field all day. 

“I’m tough on ya ‘cause I love ya, Pepps,” he always told me. “One day you’ll understand.” 

He never put up with the shit I gave him as a rebellious teenager and I only saw him cry once when my mother left us. 

And now I was about to lose him too. 

He was as comfortable as he could be in hospice care. The doctors and nurses expected this to be my last day with him. 

His fingers squeezed around mine with the little strength he had left. 

“You don’t need my old ass dragging you down anymore, Pepps,” he said weakly. “You’ll be alright.” 

“No, I won’t,” I choked. “I still need you. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” 

“Yes, you fuckin’ do. You’re a goddamn Sage and I sure as fuck raised you right. You’re smarter than me and stronger than your mother ever was.”

“But Dad, I--” 

“Listen, Pepper.” He placed both of his thin hands on top of mine. “That farm is our family legacy. That soil is in our blood. The food we grow sustained us for four generations. It’s part of us. Never sell it. Pass it onto your children. Promise me, Pepps.” 

I got my last good look at my father-- his pale, weak hands that were once strong as talons and bronzed by the sun, and the dark, sharp eyes that never missed a single detail.

“I promise, Dad,” I whispered, never looking away from those eyes that mirrored mine, that still saw everything.

“Good.” His eyelids began to flutter closed. “If you do, I’ll haunt your ungrateful ass.” 

I brought his hands to my lips and pressed them to the wriggling blue veins there as the strong, unbreakable Thomas Sage slipped away from me. My eyes squeezed shut but the tears still escaped. 

“I love you too, Dad.”

When I opened my eyes again they were dry. 

And staring at my bedroom ceiling. 

Dad passed away a year ago but my dreams made it feel as vivid as if it just happened. I didn’t just miss him. Just like I told him, I still needed him. 

With a weary sigh, I swung my legs off the bed and heard the telltale creak as my feet hit one of the many loose floorboards. It was getting ridiculous how many of them needed to be fixed. Honestly, the whole floor probably needed to be ripped up in this ancient house. 

But with just me running Sage Organic Produce Farm, I had neither the time nor the funds.

As soon as the creak reverberated throughout the house, it was followed by an excited clicking and panting noise quickly approaching my bedroom. 

“Morning Bon-bon,” I said and stuck my hand out to my pit bull, Bonny when her big, square head came into view at my doorway. 

A floorboard actually moved under her feet as she approached me, nails clicking, tail wagging, and a big goofy smile on her face.

“You wanna learn how to fix the floors?” I asked her as I scratched her ears. “Or package and sell the crops while I learn to fix them?”

She just rested her chin on my knee and stared up at me adoringly. Bonny looked mean but she was all bark and no bite. Dad grumbled that she was a goddamn bunny rabbit in the body of a bulldog, but that didn’t stop him from cuddling with her on the couch. 

I swore she took losing him just as hard as I did but she was there for me regardless. 

She watched me curiously as I stretched and yawned. My back was horribly stiff from picking produce all week and I still had lots more to do before the Cloverville Farmer’s Market tomorrow.

Yeah, the floorboards would have to wait. 

Watching my step, I rose from the bed and made my way into the kitchen, Bonny following loyally at my side. 

I bumbled through the cabinets and drawers on autopilot, still not fully awake. It took a good five minutes for me to realize the coffee pot wasn’t heating up.

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” I muttered, yanking the cord out of the socket and stabbing into the one directly below. “This one, too?” 

When the machine still failed to come to life, I mumbled a string of curses as I yanked the cord out again. Taking the entire coffee maker precariously into my arms, I began the hunt for the nearest functioning electrical outlet. 

All of the ones in the kitchen stopped working, so I carried the damn thing into the hallway bathroom and plugged it in next to my hair dryer. 

The light came out and my machine started percolating away happily. 

I sighed in relief, which didn’t last long. Bonny chose that time to start barking her head off at something outside. 

“Calm your ass down, dog,” I muttered as I unlocked the front door, dodging around her jumping and scratching. “You should know by now you’ll never catch that damn squirrel.” 

She raced out the front door at high speed like a damn greyhound. I didn’t bother to look for the object of her chase. It was still too early to enjoy the Bonny show and I hadn’t had my coffee yet. 

I just poured my first cup when I heard her nails clicking on the floor outside of the bathroom, followed by a high-pitched whine. 

“Gave up already, Bon-bon?” I asked with a hint of amusement. “That’s not like you.” 

She waited until I made eye contact with her, then promptly turned around to face the front door again. 

And she growled. 

I nearly dropped my coffee. In the five years we had her, I never heard that sound from her before. It was low, threatening and ready to kill. 

“What has gotten into you?” I wondered, creeping toward the front door slowly. 

She walked forward too with her head low and her muzzle pointing straight forward, guarding me against whatever threat she sensed outside. 

I put my coffee cup down on the kitchen counter and reached for my shotgun next to the door. With a quick flick of my thumb, I took the safety off and checked to make sure it was loaded. When I spotted the two shells inside, I snapped the barrel shut and cocked it. 

I gave Bonny a reassuring scratch on the head and stepped out onto the porch, feeling more confident with the gun at my side but still uneasy. She’d never even growled like that at coyotes that wandered through our property. 

At first, nothing seemed amiss as I scanned the landscape. Our long driveway led out to the main road which would lead straight into downtown Cloverville if you followed it all the way. On either side of the driveway flanked our hop vines, which we supplied to small breweries all across California for their beer.

Dad was smart to plant the hops right in front of the house. They looked beautiful growing on intricate trellises and provided lots of shade over the front porch. 

Beyond the hops were our hot peppers, heirloom tomatoes, squash, watermelons, and herbs. All of our fruit trees stretched out for another ten acres behind the house. And hidden between the orchards was a greenhouse where I grew my own projects after Dad got sick. 

I stepped out cautiously past the row of hop vines to better survey our whole property. Bonny, loyally at my side, pointed her muzzle directly to my left and let out that low, threatening growl again. 

With my hand on her head, I looked in the direction she pointed and finally saw the intruder she was protecting me from. 

A white pickup truck drove slowly along the dirt road that circled around the perimeter of our farm and I exhaled a breath of relief. 

“Silly girl,” I told Bonny as I scratched her ears. “That’s gotta be the seasonal workers to help with the harvest. Nice to know they aren’t flakes this time.” 

But Bonny didn’t relax. She followed the truck with her nose and her eyes, hackles raised and on high alert.

The truck took a turn, taking the narrow dirt road between the summer squash patch and the apple orchard. I narrowed my eyes, trying to make out the sign on the door. The driver came dangerously close to running over the squash plants, which sent my blood boiling. Even seasonal farmhands should know better than to drive so close to the produce. 

Another turn and I got a clear look at the logo on the truck door.

R. Sells Construction, Inc.? What the fuck is a construction company doing here?

I then realized the truck was heading through the orchards. Away from me. 

And straight toward my greenhouse. 

“Fuck!” I snapped and took off running toward the truck. 

Questions and confusion floated through my mind but not as loudly as the need to get this trespasser off my property. With my growling pit bull running along my left side and my shotgun at my right, I felt confident we could scare these punks away.

The truck lumbered slowly along the dirt roads through the farm, wisely so with all the rocks and potholes in the way, so Bonny and I were able to catch up quickly.

To my relief, the truck took a sharp turn to the right before reaching the greenhouse. We followed the driver past the last row of apple trees and what I saw made my heart stop. 

Construction equipment. 

Bulldozers, excavators and a construction crew looking like they were getting ready for a work day. 

On my fucking farm. 

“Excuse me, but what the fuck is going on?” I asked the pickup truck driver who just got out with a tray of coffee from Cloverville Roasters. 

“Mornin’ to you too, missy,” he replied in an amused tone. “What’s it look like to you?”

“It looks like you’re fucking trespassing onto my farm,” I shot back. Bonny punctuated my statement with a low growl.

“Yeah, sorry about driving through. I just wanted to take a shorter way to work,” he answered sheepishly. 

I blinked. 

“Okay. What about all this?” I gestured out in front of me to all the equipment coming right up to my trees, and the crew, all of which were now staring at me. 

“Um, it’s our work site, lady.”

“Like hell it is!” I shot back, my face growing hot and my blood pressure rising. “This is still my property!”

“Afraid not, miss,” he answered smugly. “We’ve got all our permits and clearance from the city. This land has been cleared for development.” 

“That can’t be true,” I said through gritted teeth. “My property line extends out to the base of the Solano Hills. I have it clearly laid out in our deed.” 

“Come back with your lawyer then,” he said, turning away flippantly to hand out coffees. “And maybe when you’re not on your period, pumpkin.” 

That got a guffaw of laughter from the rest of the construction crew like it was the funniest thing they ever heard.

I just stood there, humiliated and pissed off, incredulous that people could act this way. Any one of them could walk two feet to one of my apple trees and just pluck the fruit for themselves. 

My mind suddenly flashed to a memory with my dad. I was seven years old and crying because some older boys shoved me to the ground and I skinned my knee. 

“Don’t ever be afraid to defend yourself, Pepps,” Dad told me as he slapped a Barbie band-aid onto my scrape. “You’re a Sage. You’ve got bigger balls than any of those pussy motherfuckers that like to push girls around.”

Every expression on the crew members’ faces turned from laughter to horror as I raised my shotgun in the air. 

And pulled the trigger.