Defiance: A House Divided (The Defending Home Series Book 2) (12 page)

“Zach?”

“Yep. He sure is a loaded pistol, that one.”

Dale shook his head before the words were even out. “I don’t know who did this, but I can assure you it wasn’t any of us. These last few hours we’ve had our own problems to deal with.”

“Oh, I know you weren’t responsible,” Billy told him flat out. “Minute I heard, I figured it was those idiots playing soldier. Think they’re some kind of resistance movement, but I already told you they’re nothing but a bunch of vandals. Apparently, that Ortega fella got so upset he executed a man in cold blood right after it happened. Said he’d do plenty more if those responsible weren’t caught. Seems Sheriff Gaines is gonna have his hands full.”

Following their chat, Dale convinced Billy to trade the wood he needed to help brace the tunnel. It was only after they were done, during that short drive home, that Brooke told him what had really happened at the Keller farm.

“Brooke, I can’t believe you kept that from me,” Dale said, feeling his mood darken even more. The feeling of being so far out of the loop wasn’t a good one.

“I knew you’d only forbid me to set foot off the property again. You’d already convinced yourself Sandy and I couldn’t take care of ourselves. Don’t forget she was a sheriff’s deputy.”

Dale pulled in and then killed the engine. “I’m just thankful neither of you were hurt.”

“Caleb would never do something like that.”

“Caleb? The two of you are on a first-name basis now?”

She smiled. “We went to Encendido High together. He wanted our help, but I told him it was something you’d never want to get mixed up in.”

“And you’d be right,” Dale said, thoughtfully, slowly. “Except things have changed. You heard from Billy how the cartel executed a man. It won’t be long before that isolated incident becomes a daily affair. It was one thing when we were dealing with Randy and Hugh, but now with the cartel killing innocent civilians, the situation’s different.”

“So you’re saying you’re not mad?”

He looked at her, the muscles in his face tense. “I’m saying maybe it’s time you contact Caleb and tell him to set up a meeting with his boss.”

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N
ot long after, Dale was upstairs knocking on the door to Walter and Ann’s room. She opened the door a crack and poked her head out.

“Can I speak with you?” he asked.

Her eyes fell to her hands and hung there for a moment. “Is it about Nicole?”

He didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to because Ann already knew what this was about. She followed him into an empty room down the hall that Brooke and Colton were sharing.

“Have you told Walter yet?” He was referring to the situation with Nicole.

“I just don’t have the heart to,” she explained, her eyes welling up again. She rubbed them, trying to fight away the tears.

“I get that he’s recovering and the timing isn’t great,” Dale began. “But we need to make a decision and I couldn’t imagine doing that without speaking to him first.”

Intellectually, she seemed to understand Dale’s argument. Emotionally, however, the act of sitting down and having that gut-wrenching conversation with her husband was proving too spiny a subject to broach. Much like a rotting molar, the fear of short-term pain often made people endure long-term agony.

When she didn’t say anything, Dale went on. “We should go in and talk to him together.”

“When?” she asked quietly.

“Right now,” he answered.

They left the privacy of that bedroom and headed back to where Walter was recuperating. Both of them entered and stood at the foot of his bed. The night table next to him was littered with rolls of fresh bandages and medical tape. Sitting next to that was a plastic cup with a bendy straw and a dog-eared paperback novel.

Walter opened his eyes and smiled briefly before the corners of his lips dropped into something resembling a frown.

“I’ve only seen that look on Ann’s face one other time,” Walter said. “It was spring of nineteen sixty-two and Doctor Cheevers was trying to tell us we would never have children of our own. I didn’t believe him, not for a damn second, but the look on Ann’s face then—it was like she somehow already knew.”

“I wish we had better news for you, Walter,” Dale said, the fingers of his left hand doing a nervous little dance, perhaps a carryover from a childhood dealing with overbearing parents and disgruntled schoolteachers.

“No one’s dead, I hope,” Walter said, using his elbows to prop himself up in bed.

Ann still wasn’t saying anything and so Dale carried on. He explained what had happened the evening that he had discovered Nicole on the shortwave, speaking with Shane. Predictably, the old man’s face had squished up with acute confusion. Walter sat in stunned silence for several minutes, his gaze drifting toward the window and a striking blue sky outside. Ann remained next to Dale, standing as rigid as a statue, not saying a word.

When he couldn’t take it any longer, Dale finally said, “We’ve discussed what to do about this, but she’s your daughter and I wanted to get both of your opinions before we made a move.”

“Where is she?” Walter asked. “At the very least I’d like to talk to her, get her side of the story.”

“She’s already given it,” Ann said. “Everything Dale told you is true and let me be the first of us to say that I not only disapprove of what Nicole has done, I hate it with all my heart. Dale opened up his house to us and this was how she repaid him. That’s not the way we raised her.”

Across the room, Walter sat, silently agreeing with his wife.

“Zach and the others haven’t been shy about asking for her execution. I know as her mother you’ll expect me to do everything in my power to save her life, but there has to be a way we can make up for this. There are so few of us against so many. It may not look it, but Walter taught both of us how to shoot a gun. Strictly speaking she isn’t our blood, I know, but...”

Hearing Ann beg was making the situation so much harder.

“Doesn’t matter a lick to me if Nicole was adopted or not,” Walter cut in. “She’s our daughter and I love her. But if she did what you’re accusing her of, then she needs to pay for that.”

“What do you recommend?” Dale asked.

“A secret vote,” Walter replied. “Each of us fills out a ballot with one of three options. The highest number wins.”

“And what shall we set as the terms of punishment?”

“Banishment,” he said. “Rehabilitation or...” Walter paused. “Execution.”

Dale nodded. “That sounds fair. And if they pick the last option? What then?”

Walter’s eyes hardened. “Then I’ll do it myself.”

Ann’s knees gave out and Dale caught her. “I’ll get started right away,” he said. “But I can tell you right now I don’t see anyone voting for rehabilitation and for many of us, banishment feels like she’d be getting off easy.”

“It is what it is,” Walter replied stoically. “I fought North Koreans and Chinese forces who wanted nothing more than to put a bullet in my head, and yet this might be one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to face.” He half smiled. “But when is doing the right thing ever easy, right?”

Dale agreed with his friend and left the room, certain he couldn’t have said it better himself.

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D
ale went outside to find Colton and Dannyboy out front, working on the trench nearest the driveway. Further down, Sandy and Brooke were hard at work doing the same while Zach was mending the fence the cartel had knocked over during their attack. He would speak to each of them one at a time, outlining his conversation with Walter as well as the importance of what they were doing. Nicole had conspired against them and they needed to vote their conscience on an appropriate punishment.

Zach was fiddling with a length of barbed wire when Dale finished.

“I don’t need a paper,” he said after the explanation was over. “You know as well I do that she needs to die.”

“That may be so,” Dale replied. “But everyone gets their say.”

“We’re a real democracy, aren’t we?”

Dale didn’t like his tone. “When it comes to making decisions of life and death, we sure are.”

Zach removed his dirty work gloves, took the paper, wrote
death
, folded it over and then slid it into Dale’s shirt pocket.

“We might not see eye to eye,” Dale said, removing the scrap. “But I expect us to get along and respect one another. I won’t put up with any less.”

“Listen, I’m not trying to make a big deal,” Zach replied. “For me, loyalty and trust are key. A person breaks that, they’re as good as dead to me anyhow.”

Dale had finally found something he and Zach could agree on. He clapped him on the shoulder and left to speak with Sandy and Brooke.

Both of them were unsettled by the notion of Nicole being killed.

“It’s not like she actually put a gun to someone’s head and pulled the trigger,” Brooke said, staring down at the blank piece of paper.

“Maybe not,” Dale retorted. “But just think if she’d gotten her way. All of us would either be dead, imprisoned or homeless.”

“What if Shane put her up to it?” Sandy protested. “I mean, would that make her guilt as strong?”

“Shane is a lot of things,” Dale told them. “But a mastermind he isn’t. What they did took planning and determination. Those are not qualities Shane possesses.”

Sandy leaned on her shovel and dabbed the sweat from her forehead. “So you’re saying she manipulated your brother?”

“Even if only by stoking a flame that was already there. She’s always been ambitious. Back when they were only dating, she was always riding Shane for never being successful enough. She was the one who convinced him to open that bar in town and after it failed, to become an electrician, and when that too went nowhere, she begged me to get him a job at Teletech. I did what I could and even that didn’t last. His good looks could get him in the door, but they couldn’t keep him there. Listen, this isn’t a court of law. I don’t have any proof, but I’ve been thinking about it a great deal lately and I’m growing more and more convinced she was the one who first mentioned how Shane had gotten the raw end of the deal after our parents died.”

“You make her sound like some kind of monster,” Brooke said.

“I’m not trying to,” Dale said truthfully. “In a way, Nicole was perfect for my brother. And under different circumstances she might have pushed him to accomplish something great. It’s just too bad they chose the easy way.”

“What did Walter say when you told him?” Sandy asked, saddened by the whole situation.

Dale shook his head. “Said if everyone voted for death, he’d do it himself.”

The image clearly left both women feeling disturbed.

“How are you voting, Dad?” Brooke asked, squinting as she looked up into his eyes.

“I haven’t decided just yet,” he replied and that was also the truth.

He was about to walk away to let them figure it out when Brooke called him back. “You remember those feelers you wanted me to send out?”

“The resistance?”

She nodded. “I did as you said and found this on one of the posts by the road not long ago.”

It was a note which read:

6:00 p.m. The abandoned public works depot. Don’t be late.

Dale folded up the piece of paper and slipped it into his pocket, right beside Zach’s vote.

“The three of us will go together,” he said.

Brooke’s eyes lit up.

Sandy was in the middle of telling them they should be careful, that they didn’t know who these people were, when they heard the distinct sound of a single gunshot coming from around back.

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T
hey raced around the house to find the retractable stairs had been lowered. Ten yards from the barn a body lay sprawled. Pistol in hand, Dale ran to the prone figure, turned it over and saw that it was Nicole. A single high-powered rifle round had torn through her chest, killing her instantly. His eyes traced up to the window next to the staircase and he saw that it was open, but also that it was empty. Dale ran up the steps, taking them two at a time before ducking in through the opening. Inside the southern bedroom he found his Remington 700 discarded on the floor, as though someone had thrown it down right after taking the shot. Three strides later he was in Walter and Ann’s room. It seemed the old man had done what he had promised to do. Dale found the old couple sobbing in each other’s arms.

“Why’d you do it?” Dale asked, still reeling. 

Ann shook her head vigorously. “It was me,” she said, her hands trembling. “I untied her and told her to run. She’s in the Lord’s hands now. Let Him be the one to judge her guilt.”

Slowly, Dale left the room, closing the door behind him so they could have some privacy. A ghostly image of Brooke’s face rose up before him. Dale couldn’t imagine having to make that kind of decision. He hoped he never would.

•••

T
hey laid Nicole to rest—Zach, Dannyboy and Colton conspicuously absent. Dale had to admit, it did seem strange voting on whether to execute someone for treason and then praying over their remains. But he wasn’t doing it for her, he was doing it for Walter and for Ann.

After they were done, Dale, accompanied by Duke and Brooke, returned to the basement and carried on digging the tunnel, setting up braces every few feet and dragging out the loose earth. It would take a while longer, he knew, and when it was done, he would camouflage the entrance so that anyone who used it to escape wouldn’t find themselves being caught like a rat in a hole. Telegraphing its location would defeat the entire purpose.

It was half past five when Sandy came down to get him.

“I’ll give you two a minute,” Brooke said, going upstairs for a drink of water.

“Geez, you’re covered in dirt,” Sandy said, holding him still while she shook dark granules of earth out of his hair. He closed his eyes, for a moment looking like a child being scolded for messing up his Sunday best. Duke snapped playfully at the falling debris.

“I appreciate it,” Dale said, tilting his head to the left and knocking a few flecks from his ear.