“He should be home soon,” Ruth said as she set a bowl filled to the brim with a green salad on the table. “He’s been working late these last few weeks, trying to find out who’s been pulling the strings behind the Guardians.”

“Has he learned anything?”

Ruth shrugged. “He doesn’t talk to me about it if he can help it.” She pressed her hands into her back and stretched, like her back was hurting her. She wasn’t quite showing yet, but the promise of a baby bump was beginning to become visible under her loose blouse. “He doesn’t want to worry me.”

I picked up a piece of lettuce from the bowl and popped it into my mouth. “He hasn’t been talking about it at the briefings lately, either. I guess he doesn’t have much to report.”

Ruth nodded, but she seemed concerned. I decided a change in subject might help take her mind off things.

“You’ll never guess who I ran into today.”

“Who?”

“Whit Ellington.”

Her eyebrows rose. “No kidding! Didn’t you have a crush on her once?”

I tilted my head slightly, willing myself not to blush. “She’s in town on business.”

“What kind of business?”

I shrugged. We’d never gotten around to talking about it.

“How does she look? The same?”

“Pretty much.”

I thought about her in the dim light of the bar as she walked in. To me, she’d looked just as she had when she was fifteen and walking the narrow aisle of the bus toward my seat. The way she’d felt in my arms when we danced was still with me, my hands still aware of the roughness of her jeans, the softness of her curves. I regretted having to leave her, but I was pretty sure neither of us was ready to take things further than that shared, nostalgic dance.

“We’re meeting for drinks tomorrow night.”

Ruth’s face brightened. “No kidding? Does my brother actually have a date?”

I laughed, picking up another piece of lettuce and tossing it at her. “You say that like I’ve never had a date.”

“Not in recent history.”

“Maybe I was waiting for Whit to come back.”

She nodded. “Maybe. Maybe she’s your Jack.”

I groaned, the image she’d conjured in my mind less than pleasant. But a part of me stood up and applauded because I knew that she’d hit on exactly what I was hoping for.

There were intense feelings still hiding somewhere inside of me for Whit. Ten years was a long time to have passed between us, but we’d certainly hit it off today. I was hoping that would continue.

“I’m really happy for you, Matthew.”

“For what?”

Jack strolled into the kitchen and slipped his arm around my sister’s waist, tugging her hard against his side as he peppered her jaw with kisses. She giggled. I looked away. No man wants to watch some guy manhandle his sister even if it is her husband.

“What’s going on with you, Matt?”

“He has a date tomorrow night with an old friend.”

Jack’s eyebrows rose as he regarded his wife and then me. “Congrats!”

I shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Of course it’s a big deal!” Ruth interjected. “She was your crush all through high school.”

“Just the last two years.”

“Still!”

I turned away, embarrassed by the attention. Jack was watching me too closely, too curiously. But then he turned back to his wife, the sound of him kissing her jaw again, and her giggling, making me wish I’d stayed with Whit instead of coming over for dinner like I’d promised him I would.

“Well, your day seems to have mine beat. We had a long afternoon.”

“Why?” Ruth asked, suddenly concerned for her husband.

“You know there’s been some media interest in the fire in California?” He took a seat at the table across from me. “I thought it’d died down. We weren’t getting as many calls as we were. But now there’s a reporter from Texas who managed to put two and two together. She’s come to town, trying to stir up something.”

“About what?” I asked.

Jack sighed. “She’s figured out that the fire in California is related to the shooting in Yuma, somehow. And the shooting victim was a resident of Ellaville, so she thinks she’s on the trail of a good story despite the fact that the police in both Yuma and California have issued press releases that indicate both were isolated incidents.”

“How does the fire in Joshua Tree connect to the shooting in Yuma?”

Jack glanced at me as Ruth busied herself setting the dinner, which she’d had warming in the oven, on the table. “She somehow got a hold of a witness list and compared it to the names of patients in the hospital at the time of the shooting. This girl…if she wasn’t a reporter, I’d hire her for her investigative skills.”

“She connected Quentin to both.”

He nodded. “And the fact that I paid his mother’s hospital bills and arranged for her transfer to Massachusetts brought her to our doorstep this afternoon.”

“The office?” Ruth asked.

“Yeah.” Jack picked up the knife and fork she’d set in front of him so that he could carve the roast. “She marched right up to my office door, not bothering to stop at the receptionist’s desk—I don’t even know why I hired that girl if she can’t pay attention!—and demanded to speak to Quentin. When I explained that he wasn’t in the office today, she starts shooting questions at me, asking why I paid for his mother’s care, why I moved her to Massachusetts, what I was covering up in the shooting in Yuma. Why Quentin was at my house in Joshua Tree. How she put that together, I still don’t understand, because that house wasn’t in my name. It was still in my father’s name. I never got around to having the deed transferred after he died.”

Jack shook his head as he sank the fork in the roast and began carving. “She never asked about the Guardians, but she danced around the topic. I’m not sure how close she is to putting that together, but when she does, this could get really interesting.”

Ruth settled in a chair beside Jack with a heavy sigh. “Did you tell her anything?”

“No. But I think my refusal to answer her questions only made things worse.” Jack glanced at me as he continued to slice the roast. “If a reporter approaches you, you keep your mouth shut.”

“Don’t I always?”

“The last thing we need is some reporter warning off this guy behind all the Guardian bullshit before we can get to him.”

“Have you made any headway on that?” Ruth wanted to know.

Jack nodded, his dark eyes shining a little. “I think we have. Malaika Gray came to my office today with a name that she’s pretty sure is the one we’ve been looking for. I sent it to the investigators back in Memphis to be checked out a little more thoroughly. But if this is it, it could be the break we’ve been looking for.”

“You know who’s behind the Guardians?”

“I think I might.” Jack studied my face for a long second. “I’m taking you off the oil execs. I have a bigger job for you.”

That ignited my curiosity. “Oh? What might that be?”

Jack glanced at Ruth. “We’ll talk about it later. I think we’ve bored your sister with business long enough.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Now is the time for family.”

 

 

Ruth went to bed not long after dinner, leaving Jack and me to wash the dishes. We stood side by side in silence, him washing, me drying. I felt like I should know Jack better, like I should be able to look at him and know if I hated or liked him. But I didn’t really have that strong of an opinion of him. I disliked him for stealing my sister away from the family, but liked that he made her so deliriously happy. I disliked him for causing so much trouble with the Guardians, but liked him for helping me get out of that situation. Grateful for the job he offered me and the always generous welcome in his home. But I didn’t know him, the man behind the actions, well enough to have a real opinion of him.

“I think the Guardians are just getting started.”

I glanced at him. The Guardians had formed more than two years ago, coming to town and building support at church meetings. I was one of the first to join, one of the first to go into the poorer neighborhoods of town—neighborhoods where I had once had friends—and help clear out the trash that made it unsafe for good people to travel through that part of town after dark. But Jack ran the raid on their compound almost six months ago, and had the state police come in and arrest their leader and most of their ranks, including Tyler. And then Patrick went up against them again almost two months ago, when he took out their new leader. And Quentin’s scuffle with them a few weeks ago had ended, and things were back to the status quo.

“I don’t understand.”

Jack set a dish in the sink in front of me and picked up a new one. “I don’t think cleaning up this town was their only mission. I think that was the beginning, the public part. But I think there’s a lot more coming.”

“Like what?”

Jack was quiet for a long moment, concentrating on the meat stuck in the bottom of the roasting pan. When he looked up, his brow was wrinkled.

“Malaika Gray has been gracious enough to explain a lot of things she found in the bank records when she took over as manager. It appears that the Guardians were making a lot of transactions that were hidden in real estate deals, in credit offers to church members, in foreclosures that never should have taken place. She says that it looks like someone has secretly been trying to buy up a hell of a lot of land around the area. She wants to know why.” He was quiet for a second. “So do I.”

“I thought the working theory was that the Guardians were trying to build some sort of religious utopia.”

“It was. But now I’m wondering if there is something more basic, less religious, going on here. I’m wondering if someone was using the church to hide a nefarious business deal.”

“Like what?”

Jack shook his head. “That’s what we haven’t quite figured out yet.”

“Who is the man behind all this?”

“That’s a good question.” Jack sighed. “We have a name, a guy from Oregon. But I’m not sure this is the real guy. It was too easy to find his name—despite the whole fire and whatever, Malaika said it was right there under her nose the whole time. She didn’t even have to decipher everything in Truesdale’s ledgers to find it. Once she knew what she was looking at, she saw it. Which tells me that this is probably a front, someone doing the deals for the real guy. Finding him will probably be a little more complicated.”

“What’s the plan?”

“We need someone inside the Guardians, someone who might be able to find out more about their plans and be able to give us some insight.”

“A mole.”

“Exactly.”

Jack handed me the roasting pan and released the greasy water from his sink, drying his hands on a dish towel before wiping down the counters. I watched him even as I dried the pan and slid it into the cabinet where it belonged. He was trying to formulate some plan. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head.

“Even though I think this has nothing to do with the church, I think the Guardians play a big role in the whole thing. I think the harassment, the big talk, the violence is all just a distraction. I think someone is trying to keep us occupied so that we won’t see what’s happening right under our noses.”

“Who?”

“Good question.”

“Why here?”

“That’s another good question. We’ve checked land records, mineral reports, everything we could think of. There aren’t any big developers interested in the area, no hidden oil under the ground, nothing that anyone could make big money off of. All I can figure is that the person behind all this is doing it because he’s the big developer. He wants to bring something big to the area.”

“Like what?”

“Another good question. Ellaville isn’t exactly a hub of excitement. And we’re not close enough to Tucson or Palm Springs to bring in a lot of tourism. Hell, the closest thing to us is Tombstone, and that’s still over a hundred miles to the east.”

“We don’t even have a mall.”

Jack smiled, genuinely amused. “Don’t I know it. Ruth’s been complaining about having to buy all the baby things off the internet.” He tossed his dish rag into the sink. “But I think whatever this is, it’s bigger than a mall. Or it’s personal.”

“Like Quentin and his family ranch?”

“Something like that.”

It made sense. I supposed.

“Do you think it’s someone in the church?”

Jack shook his head. “I had all the members of the church thoroughly investigated back when Harry first told me about the Guardians. None of them have the kind of money it would take to do what’s been happening here.”

“Is it some drug guy laundering money?”

“Malaika Gray says there’s no evidence of that.”

I leaned back against the counter and crossed my arms over my chest. “Then I’m out of clues.”

“Us too. That’s why I want you to go undercover.”

My eyebrows rose. “What do you mean?”

“I want you to go back to the Guardians. Spin whatever story you have to, but I want you to get back in. And I want you to report back to us, tell us whatever you can find out.”

I frowned, remembering what had started the argument with my father that morning.

“Todd Lawson called me this morning. He says the Guardians have decided to forgive you for your transgressions. He says they see now that Smythe and his band were corrupted by their power, and that you did them a favor by exposing it.”

“Did he?”

“He said they’d like to welcome you back among their ranks. All you have to do is repent.”

Repent. Like I was the one who’d done something wrong.

“I’m not comfortable with the idea of going back.”

“I realize it could be difficult.”

“My father thinks the Guardians are God’s army. He thinks they’re going to pave the way to heaven for the true believers.”

“Is that what happened?” Jack gestured toward the front of the house, indicating, I supposed, the door, just like the door that my father had thrown me out of.

“It’s part of it.”

I wasn’t going to stand there and discuss my crisis of faith with a brother-in-law whom I barely knew and who was never a part of something like the church I grew up in.

Jack nodded. “I know this is asking a lot. I know it will force you to lie to people you love. And I know it’ll make an enemy of people you’ve been trying to befriend. But, if things go the way I think they will, it’ll also put you in a prime position to end whatever it is the Guardians are up to.” He paused for a long moment, giving me a second to consider his words. “These people have turned this town into a war zone. People who go to your church, and people who don’t, have drawn battle lines. Even without the Guardians actively patrolling the streets and harassing innocent people, there’s tension. It has to end.”

“I agree.”

“And we’re the only ones who can stop them. We’re the only ones who see what’s happening, the only ones who have the means to stop them.”

“Then what? What happens after you stop them?”

“We help rebuild this community, turn it into something better than what it was before the Guardians.”

“You’re going to stay? You and Ruth?”

“That’s the plan.”

Thoughts of the night Harry Cravits died floated through my mind, the craziness in Tyler’s eyes, the fear in Harry’s. The memory of Jack and Alli grieving in the hospital waiting room.

I owed him for that. Harry was his friend, and I was part of the plan that had ended in his death. I could never take that stain from my soul, but I could make a small effort toward amends.

“What do I have to do?”