Chapter 9
Crystal and Ashton rode quietly, her mind spinning with the implications.
Khan walked, ran, raced out and back again, as if half enjoying himself and half working.
She’d never seen a working dog, so wasn’t sure what that would look like in action.
So Khan’s antics didn’t look serious enough, except when he would stop, sniff the air, and take off after something.
She looked over at Ashton a couple times to say something but then just didn’t bother.
What was there to say? She could only hope that his suppositions were completely wrong about one of the family doing something to Grandpa.
But Ashton had brought Khan, the tracking War Dog, so something was on Ashton’s mind.
At the same time, she had not gone back over the same ground as her good-for-nothing siblings had, and, for that, she was castigating herself.
“What purpose would they have?” she finally asked. “The cousins, Grandma, to get rid of Grandpa?”
“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “We need to sort that out. The fact of the matter is, if you haven’t checked that property line again, then I don’t know for sure it’s clear. From what you told me, everybody stopped searching for him after a day, a day and a half.”
“I didn’t,” she declared, exasperated, “but I don’t know what else to do. I’ve been out here every day, even yesterday for several hours.”
He nodded. “And now we’re out here looking. I should have been out here earlier,” he muttered, as he swore.
She frowned at him and asked, “When would you have done that? It’s been chaos since you arrived, and you’ve had multiple issues just trying to get to this point.”
He gave a big sigh. “What I needed was this guy,” he said, pointing to the dog on the ground, who was walking ahead, running, jumping, and having a grand old time. It was as if he was aware that he was finally free and was running with unexpected joy.
“And you think he’ll help?” Crystal asked.
“He sure won’t hurt our search,” he noted. “I have a lot of faith in these animals.”
“Yes, but it’s not as if we have anything of Grandpa’s to show Khan to track.”
“I already did that,” Ashton explained. “I had him in the house and went through Grandpa’s bedroom. Thankfully Grandma hasn’t cleared out his stuff yet,” he muttered, with a note of irony.
She winced at that. “God, can you imagine someone doing that at a time like this?”
Khan stopped up ahead and sniffed. Then barked. He looked back at Ashton, then kept going.
She watched as Ashton didn’t say anything, just turned Mirage ever-so-slightly to follow Khan’s lead. She stayed close to Ashton. She had no idea what was up ahead, but nothing in this instilled confidence.
“Unfortunately I can imagine that. I have a feeling that Grandma’s thinking, with Grandpa gone, she’s the lady of the house now and can do whatever she likes.”
“Of course but she doesn’t know any different, does she?”
He smirked at her. “Not really, but that’s an awakening she’ll deal with soon enough.”
“And yet you already phoned the sheriff?”
“I had to,” he said. “We have insurance for embezzlement, and I need to pull on that in order to pay clients the restitution due to them. I don’t want to make a big thing out of this and lose our company name and our family name, much less the Nelson farm and everything on it.
However, if I have to in order to give people their money back and to save the company’s reputation and our reputation—or at least repair those reputations—I will,” he declared.
“And all of Grandpa’s work, his life, goes down the drain because of this, which would be devastating.”
“It will be devastating to him. I don’t know that it’s devastating to anybody else,” he noted.
“And that’s part of the problem here. Does anybody in the family even care about him?
Care that his hard work has been stolen?
Care that he will lose his good name over something Grandma did?
Or, in the minds of our family, does Grandpa already have one foot in the grave?
If that’s the case, what the heck, might as well just—”
“What?” she interrupted. “Just what? Push him, so he’s got both feet in the grave?”
He just stared at her and didn’t say anything.
She sighed. “Okay, the twins are bad, but are they that bad? I’ll accept the fact that it’s not looking all that great at the moment, but I really, really don’t want to think that these people who I’ve known all my life are like that.”
“And yet how much abuse have you endured from them?”
She flushed. “I’ve never thought of it as abuse,” she hedged.
“Well, it is,” he confirmed. “It’s verbal abuse, plain and simple. To me it’s psychological abuse too. Look at what John told you just this morning.”
She nodded. “I was surprised at that,” she admitted. “Most of the time, I don’t have anything to do with him. I’ve always just worked here for my room and board. At least, that is how I’ve always looked at it. But I guess that’s probably not enough.”
“Are you kidding? You’re the only one who takes care of the animals,” he stated. “If it wasn’t for you, would any of these animals even exist on the farm? Of course not. That’s a salary owed to you, not room and board to be collected from you. Crys, if I can make that right, I will. I promise you.”
She looked over and gave him a small smile. “I was hoping you would see it in a more favorable light.”
“Sure, I do. I’ve just got to get to the bottom of what’s going on here. With all the new escapades of Grandma’s popping up, it may take me a couple weeks instead of a couple days. But first, we need to find Grandpa, and I’m really, really hoping he’s alive.”
She stared off into the wilderness and asked, “How could he still be alive?”
Ashton grumbled, shaking his head, “I don’t think he went missing on his own.”
Just then Khan, farther up ahead, turned and let out a sharp loud crisp bark.
Crystal was shocked into silence at Ashton’s words but also didn’t question him as they trotted toward Khan.
The dog was sitting and waiting for them.
At a command from Ashton, Khan took off toward the fence line.
She rode beside Ashton, looked at him occasionally, but he remained quiet, obviously lost in thought.
Finally she asked, “Who do you suspect did this?” He glanced at her, as if surprised that she was still on the same topic. But she stared at him and added, “I have to admit, you’ve shocked me pretty badly over this one.”
He nodded. “That’s a good thing. I would hate to think something like this would have even been on your radar.”
She shook her head. “No way I could ever make that leap to have such a thing make sense or even seem possible. Grandpa has always been there for me.”
“I understand, and the thought that anybody in the family is involved in his going missing is just too horrific to consider, and yet it’s quite plausible, considering the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?” she cried out. “I mean, why would you even think that?” He turned to her, seemed to be weighing the idea of telling her the truth.
“It feels like the family that I thought I knew has been slowly disintegrating. And maybe not even slowly,” she admitted, looking at him.
“You haven’t been here for six years. Now you’ve come back like a thunderbolt and basically blown everything I thought I knew out of the water.
And, even at that, I’m not sure how much of everything you’ve told me is even believable. ”
“Believable?” he repeated, and then he chuckled.
“Well, if you don’t think it’s believable, then you can’t handle the rest either.
Look. I’m not trying to push you into believing anything either way.
It would be nice if you could come to your own conclusion based on the evidence.
But I do realize this is your family, people you absolutely love and want to protect. ”
“But that does not make me blind,” she interjected.
He looked at her approvingly. “No, it doesn’t. Except in this instance, it might make it a little harder to wrap your head around just what’s going on.”
She let her breath out slowly, glancing around, realizing they were still a good couple miles from where they expected to be. “So you think somebody kidnapped Grandpa?”
“Yes, I absolutely do.”
She closed her eyes and asked, “Somebody from our family?”
He nodded. “While I don’t have that evidence yet, I’m not tossing that idea in the meantime. Isn’t that why you keep searching for him?”
She nodded. “I have hope to find him. I was out here last night,” she shared, turning to him briefly. “And I was out here again first thing this morning.”
“I only got in yesterday,” he said, with a note of humor, “and I get it. For an old man in his condition, that could mean everything in terms of his not making it.”
“I don’t even want to think about that,” she muttered. “To think that he might not make it is bad enough, but, if somebody in our family is behind this, it’s absolutely criminal.”
“Oh, it is criminal all right,” he declared. “I have no doubt about that at all. The question is, who is the criminal, and how much involvement have they truly been aware of, and how much have they been a dupe for?”
“What possible reason would there be for anybody to hurt Grandpa?”
“I’m not sure they want to hurt him as much as cause an early demise,” he clarified. “In case you don’t know, he’s had a number of questionable health reports recently, but I haven’t made it to his doctor yet to see if they’re true or false.”
“False?” she repeated in shock. “You’re saying that people are falsifying his medical records now?”
His lips twisted up. “I come from a world where everybody’s a suspect and where everything is suspicious.
You come from a world where nothing is gray,” he explained.
“I understand that, for you, the idea that anything is shady or underhanded about what’s going on here would be really hard to accept. ”