Chapter 8 Not So Neighborly #2
The cheerful sound of clucking filled her ears, but she wasn’t in the mood to stop and soak up the dynamic beauty in motion of the chickens.
The breeze pouring off the mountains and whipping at her hair was a better match to her mood.
It blew back the flaps of her olive-green cardigan, making it fly behind her like a cape.
Before boarding her flight, she’d slung it around the white sleeveless blouse tucked into her white linen pants—just in case she got cold enroute, which she had.
Since she was no longer cold, she pulled it off and tied the sleeves around her waist, tipping her face into the wind to dry her tears.
She walked and wept across the rugged fields, bending over now and then to climb between the slats of fences.
The hem of her pant legs grew dusty, but she plowed onward.
She arrived at a gravel road that led to a tiny cottage.
The surrounding trees needed pruning. A few branches were scratching against the dingy siding that had once been white.
Other than that, the structure of the home looked sturdy.
Her favorite home improvement show hostess would’ve declared it had good bones.
Like me. Jen’s sturdy bones had been propping up others for years. Just for once, though, she longed to know what it felt like to be the one doing the leaning. Just for once, she’d like to meet a set of shoulders emotionally broad enough to rest her head on.
She marched up to the dusty front porch, still sniffling and feeling sorry for herself.
It wasn’t difficult to imagine a new metal roof replacing the sunbaked, faded shingles.
If someone power-washed the siding and added a coat of creamy paint, the home would look as good as new.
She wouldn’t stop there, though. The horticulturist in her would insist on adding flower boxes spilling with blooms and window shutters painted robin-egg blue.
She might even hang a porch swing piled with throw pillows.
Assuming the interior of the home needed as much of an overhaul as the exterior, she dragged her feet across the porch to peek through the window. The shadowy figure of a man stepped up to the glass, nearly making her jump out of her leather loafers.
She yelped and whirled around, preparing to take off running.
The door to the cottage popped open, and a man’s urgent voice begged, “Please don’t go! I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She froze in her tracks, trembling so badly that it was difficult to speak. “Who are you?”
“Rex Turner, one of the farmhands.”
It was a name she recognized. Owen had told her all about the man. She turned around to have a look at him and received her second shock of the evening.
When her brother had described Rex Turner, she’d pictured a much older employee.
However, the sandy-haired, hard-jawed man standing in the doorway wasn’t old.
He was in his mid-to-late thirties—right about her age.
He was taller than her brother, well-built, and wearing a brutally capable expression beneath the brim of his Stetson.
Farm work had a way of doing that to a person.
On a scale of one to ten, he was a solid twelve.
“According to Owen Tolliver, you’re more than a farmhand.” She didn’t intend for her voice to come out so sharp.
“Your brother is right.” A faint smile eased the tightness in Rex Turner’s jawline. “Most people are more than one thing, ma’am.”
She infused as much suspicion into her tone and expression as she could muster for someone who’d been weeping her brains out only minutes earlier. “I never said Owen was my brother.”
His smile widened. “You didn’t have to. The family resemblance is indisputable.” His gaze briefly swept over her, glinting with more admiration than she’d ever received from a member of the opposite sex.
It was unexpected and unsettling. It was also ridiculously flattering—a balm to her festering soul. She tried not to let it rattle her. “He also told me you used to be a flight instructor.”
Her words didn’t spark even the mildest twinge of emotion in his gaze, which struck her as odd for a man who’d left his last job to nurse a broken heart. He inclined his head respectfully at her without commenting on her brother’s claim. “What about you, ma’am? What do you do for a living?”
Smooth. She couldn’t help but admire how easily he’d transformed her from the interrogator into the one being interrogated.
Though she didn’t owe her life story to a man she’d just met, it more or less spilled out of her.
“I started off as a horticulturist, gave it up to become a nanny to my nephews, and now I’m trying to figure out what comes next.
” The tears she’d been holding back rose to the surface again, blurring his features into something less chiseled.
Rex pointed at the porch steps. “If you’d like to take a load off, I’ve been accused of being a good listener.”
“You’ve clearly never been accused of having fashion sense, Mr. Turner. Dusty porch steps do not pair well with white linen pants.” She moved closer to the picture window to peek inside while dabbing at the corners of her eyes.
“Rex,” he corrected, sounding more amused than offended by her scalding rejoinder. “It’s what everyone else calls me, Miss Tolliver.”
She hadn’t told him her last name or that she was single, for that matter. How had he known? “Most people call me Jen, but something tells me you already knew that. You seem to know a lot about me and my family. I’m at a clear disadvantage.”
He opened the door for her and ushered her inside. “Ask me anything you want, and I’ll answer you as honestly as I can.”
It was immediately apparent to her that Rex Turner hadn’t been doing farmhand things inside the cozy little cottage.
A long-range rifle with a scope was mounted on a tripod at the window above the kitchen sink.
It was aimed at Brooke Aspen’s ranch. From the water bottles and empty to-go cups of coffee strewn across the countertops, it wasn’t his first stakeout inside the dusty little cottage.
“There are only one or two conclusions to draw from this setup.” Jen turned her head and caught his eye. “Are you interfering with a federal investigation?”
He gravely held her gaze. “No, I am not.”
“Then you’re assisting with it.” She’d watched enough movies to know he probably wasn’t allowed to confirm or deny his involvement with the Feds, so she didn’t bother asking him to.
According to Owen, the FBI had taken over the case, and Rex’s stakeout certainly lent credence to the claim.
He appeared to be working alone, though.
The spareness of his equipment suggested he was a freelancer.
“My brother was right about you.” That she was still breathing was proof of it.
“You’re more than a farmhand.” If Rex had been operating on the wrong side of the law, logic told her she’d already be dead.
Instead, he’d welcomed her inside the cottage and allowed her to lay eyes on the equipment he’d set up there.
“That I am, Jen.” He strode her way to stand on the other side of the long-range rifle. “It’s dinnertime. Are you hungry?”
Was he asking her out on a date? She wasn’t accustomed to men giving her that sort of attention. They usually passed right over her—preferring to flirt with younger, cuter, less brainy women. “Yes, but I thought you agreed to let me ask the questions.”
“Then I yield the floor back to you.” The warmth in his voice chased away the melancholy she’d been wrestling with. “I can only hope your next question will involve a dinner for two.”
“How about we circle back to that?” She caught his gaze again, feeling deliciously self-conscious and inexplicably shy. “Right after you explain how you lost control and nearly crashed my brother’s crop duster. That doesn’t strike me as the performance of a seasoned flight instructor.”
He clenched his jaw. “My best guess is I was targeted by a GPS jamming device. It made the navigation screen flicker, then go blank. I had to land using the manual controls, which is harder than it sounds in the mountain winds and the dust they kick up.”
He wasn’t bragging. He was simply stating facts.
Jen stared at him in growing horror. “Who would do such a thing to you?” According to her brother, Rex’s near crash hadn’t been the first tragic incident on that corner of his property. Halle’s parents had lost their lives in a similar crash.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” Rex gestured at the scope on his rifle. “Would you like to take a look?”
She eagerly accepted his offer, moving closer to squint through the lens.
What she saw on the other side of Brooke Aspen’s fence line made her mouth go dry.
A long, paved runway rested beyond the tree line, partially hidden by craggy boulders.
Without Rex’s scope, she never would have been able to make out the crates on wooden pallets lining both sides of the runway.
It looked like they were waiting to be loaded.
“That’s a lot of cargo,” she murmured. “It’s not refrigerated, so it can’t be a shipment of Aspen beef.” She straightened and met Rex’s gaze again. “What else would my brother’s neighbor be shipping?”
“That’s a good question, Jen.”
She narrowed her gaze at him, realizing he wasn’t going to connect the dots for her.
He must be working under a kahuna-sized gag order.
“Since they may be using a GPS jamming device to keep other aircraft from flying too close to the landing strip, whatever they’re shipping might not be legal.
” Her mind skittered over the possibilities.
None of them were good. “Which would explain why they tried so hard to purchase Garrett Farm.” Where Garrett Farm adjoined Aspen Ranch was dangerously close to the airfield in question.
“I like how your mind works,” Rex drawled.