The Chance (Thunder Point #4)(53)

“Tell you?” Al repeated. “What good is telling you going to do?”

“The breaks on the van are slow and sometimes they cry. I’m going to have to do something.”

“You’re the only one who drives the van, right?”

“Yeah—the boys are too young and my mom can’t drive anymore. But I drive everyone everywhere.”

“At seven, when the place slows down, go get the van and bring it to the garage. We’re gonna do brakes. We’ll call it on-the-job training.”

“I need to do it myself,” Justin said. “We’re on a tight budget. I can get parts cheaper somewhere else....”

Al put a hand on his shoulder. “Kid, we’re gonna do it here. We’re gonna do it on the house. Now go home and get the van. Tell the boys you could be a little late tonight. We’re gonna service that vehicle, check everything, change the oil, give it a lube, go down the checklist, make sure you have first-rate transportation....”

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t do that. If Eric finds out and thinks I’m taking freebies from the station...”

“If you asked Eric he would be glad to help. You asked me and I’m glad to help. We’re not going to cover it up—I’m going to tell Eric we worked on your van. We’re going to document it. I’m going to train you and Lucky’s will be glad to eat the cost of parts because Eric is good to his employees. I work on my truck right here, Manny takes care of his vehicles here.”

“You sure he won’t get mad? Because I need this job, man.”

“I’m sure,” Al said. “Go get the van. If it’s not busy tonight, we’ll be done by eleven. Otherwise, we’ll work till the van is perfect. Safe and dependable. How does that sound?”

Justin’s lips got a little pink around the edges. His eyes might’ve gotten a little glassy. But all he said was, “That’d be real good, Al. You ever need a favor, all you have to do is ask.”

“Hey, friends take care of each other. Friends can count on each other.”

Twelve

Laine asked Eric if he could take an afternoon off to go somewhere with her and of course he arranged it. He’d do anything she asked and she knew it. She drove him a little over an hour away to a river in Douglas County, down a lonely, tree-lined road. He kept asking where they were going and she told him to be patient.

She finally pulled up to a closed gate. A county sheriff’s car was parked outside the gate and Laine jumped out, flashed her badge, chatted with him for a moment. They laughed together over something, then she got back in the car while the deputy opened the gate.

Eric was catching on—there was yellow crime-scene tape on the fencing. And an armed officer. “Is this place being guarded?” he asked her.

“Not exactly,” she said. “It’s under routine surveillance. We still have two suspects at large, although I’m sure they’re nowhere near here. Police do regular inventory of the contents of the buildings on the property to be sure nothing is missing or disturbed. Everything that amounts to evidence has been taken out of here and we don’t expect our suspects to return, but one never knows.”

“So, this is the place,” he said. “This is where it all happened.”

She took a deep breath. She nodded. “The commune. The place. This is the second time I’ve been back. The first was not long after my injury and surgery. Agents brought me back to walk through the property, go over the events and give them a tour. It wasn’t easy—I couldn’t document things while I was here. I did pass information through the fence behind the chicken coop, but that was infrequent. It really smelled back there—Jacob’s ‘soldiers’ didn’t like to go back there to check the security of the place and the brush and trees grew up against the fence so it was a very unlikely place for anyone to break in...or out. When I came back with agents I was still taking some pain medication so I did my best, but I didn’t really register what I was seeing or remembering. Want to see the place?”

“Want to show me?” he asked.

“I wanted to see it again. I wanted to look at it with some objectivity. The women and children lived over there, in the big house. There were only six women when I got here but the place was built for twenty, plus children. When the women began to thin out, there was more space.”

“At first glance, it looks like such a safe place,” he said.

“I know. The entire estate is beautiful. On this side of the river there were livestock, massive organic gardens, chicken coops, the house and barn, corral, playground. The animals have been removed for their welfare. There’s a bridge across the river—on the other side were the men’s bunkhouse, Jacob’s house and two warehouses that Jacob said held supplies, equipment and some of his experimental organic plants. They were warehouses dedicated to marijuana plants.”

“A big federal crime,” he said.

“We thought it was a big federal case before I saw the pot,” she said. “He was bringing these poor, destitute women here, from out of state in some cases. We were afraid he was going to wage war on the establishment. It’s possible that was his endgame, but at the time he was getting rich illegally and holding captive women and children.” She looked around. “If people had had the freedom to come and go as they pleased and if he didn’t have an impressive drug farm on the property, this could have been an amazing little commune. Of course, it would’ve been very poor. And there was the little matter of being led by an ego-driven lunatic, but merely being crazy is not against the law.”