Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16
“NEW GUY!” A bellow came from Philip Firth in Ryan’s general direction, and he winced when he heard the man’s voice. Since the second he’d laid eyes on the other man, Ryan had an instant hatred for him.
It had taken two weeks to get Royal to see him, and another two before he had been hired. Hanging out at the feed store had been in his favor. Luckily, Jake had told the owners what he was doing, and they talked, but basically ignored him. It turned out that everyone in the area hated Rudolph Royal.
“Yeah?” Ryan said slowly. When Royal had questioned him when he’d been interviewed, Ryan had played up that he had a mild case of TBI from his ordeal while in the service. Because of that, it was hard for him to find a job. There was nothing wrong with Ryan, but Royal didn’t need to know that. The one thing he refused to talk about was his eye patch. When questioned, Ryan only said that the people who had done that to him were dead. He also refused to tell the others that he had been a SEAL, he’d only mentioned he’d served in the Navy. It took Royal a week to get back to him about hiring him. He had now been on the job for a week, and Philip Firth was calling him.
“Boss wants to speak with you!” Philip yelled, then turned on his heel and left.
“Be right there!”
“You’ll come now!” Firth turned around and bellowed at Ryan.
“What do I tell the boss if he finds his precious mare standing in her own shit?” Ryan barked back. Since being there, he realized both Firths and Miller were lazy as fuck and refused to take care of the horses. However, Royal wanted only the best for his mares, so that left the care of them to Ryan. He couldn’t wait to get the horses over to Broken after Royal was taken down.
“Whatever,” Philip growled. “Just come to the office when you’re done.”
Ryan shook his head as the man walked away from him. He took his time to finish cleaning the stall, and made sure the water, feed, and hay bins were full for when the horse returned to its stall in the evening. He washed his hands, went to the bathroom, then slowly made his way up to the main house. Instead of walking in, he knocked on the door, and nodded to the woman who answered.
“Mr. Royal is expecting me.”
“Yes, go on back,” the housekeeper said, and stepped back to allow Ryan to walk past her. This was only the second time he’d been in the home, and he wasn’t very impressed with the furnishings. The only thing that kept going through his head was the old saying, A fool and his money is soon parted. Everything Ryan saw was over the top in lavishness, but who was he to tell the man of the house that a six-foot crystal vase was worthless, no matter how much money had been spent on it. Shaking his head, he continued down the hall and knocked on the doorjamb to the office. He didn’t enter until told to and when he did, he saw both Firths and Miller sitting there.
“You wanted to see me, Boss?” Ryan asked, trying to sound like a simpleton, but wanting to bash the heads of all four of them together.
“Yes, have a seat,” Rudolph Royal said as he pointed to the two chairs before his desk.
Ryan stayed where he was and only raised a brow at the other man, because both seats were occupied by the Firth brothers.
“Get the fuck off your ass,” Royal barked out, and the two brothers acted like a comedy routine trying to get out of the chairs at his demand. Once they were empty, Royal looked at Ryan, who stepped into the office. He took a seat in one of the freshly empty chairs and only looked at Royal. He hoped his face portrayed curiosity, and not outright hatred.
“Where are you staying?” Royal asked, not doing any pleasantries, but got right to the point. He liked that about the other man, but that was it, and it didn’t happen often. Royal normally had his nose too high in the air to talk to his help.
“I have a room at Gunny’s bed and breakfast.”
“How would you like to stay here?”
Ryan paused before he flat-out refused, then cocked his head to the side, trying to figure out what the other man was up to.
“Why?” Ryan asked slowly.
“I thought it would be better that you lived here on the ranch,” Royal began. It took everything Ryan had not to snort out a laugh, because a ninety-eight-acre spread was a farm, not a ranch. And he only had two horses, his prize mare and its foal, which was almost a year old.
“Well,” Ryan drawled. “I’ve got at least a week left on my bill at Gunny’s, and there’s no refunds.” That wasn’t true, but Royal didn’t need to know that.
“Okay, I can see where a man like you would want to get what he could out of his money.” The way he said it, in that condescending tone, Ryan had to grit his teeth not to put his fist through the man’s face.
“May I ask why you need me to stay here on the ranch?”
“I have a project coming up, and I want you to partake in it. Having you here on the ranch will allow you to be available at a moment’s notice.”
“May I ask what the project is?”
“We’re going to teach a bitch a lesson,” Paul Miller spoke for the first time. When no one corrected him, he continued, “There’s a certain person in these parts that is getting too big for her britches. She sent my parents to jail, as well as both Phil and Ernie. We’ve come up with a plan to take her down. It will take some time, but it’s doable, and she won’t see it coming or know what hits her.” He laughed evilly, as did the other three men in the room.
Ryan played dumb and confused. “How can you take someone that big down? I’m assuming she’s a big person around here.”
“She thinks she is,” Royal literally turned his head to the side and spat on the floor. Ryan turned up his nose at the action, but schooled his features when Royal turned back to look at Ryan. “There’s a ranch that borders hers and the old man that lives there doesn’t know that he doesn’t own it anymore. Miller here does, thanks to his parents.”
“I don’t understand, what does my living here on your ranch have to do with Miller moving to a property his parents own?” Ryan was genuinely confused, and wanted clarification. Though he thought he knew what they were talking about. He would continue to play dumb until their plans were laid out.
“Well, my parents don’t really own it, but they were able to take this ranch away from the old man, and it’s sitting there empty,” Miller began. “I got word the old man is in a home, and he has no heirs. No one’s going to want a run-down ranch where the house is inhabitable. The good thing is that it borders this bitch’s property, and we can slowly work our way onto her property and take it over. You know, squatters’ rights.”
Ryan sat there dumbfounded that they would think they could get away with what Miller said, but he had to play dumb. “Who will be living on the property.”
“I just told you, Old Man Donaldson is in a nursing home, no one’s there.”
“I heard that,” Ryan said as he tried not to punch the man. “What I’m asking is that if we take over this property, who will be living there to take the property away from the bitch.” He sent up a silent prayer that Erin wouldn’t get offended if she ever found out he referred to her by that name.
“Oh,” Miller said, and shook his head. “Sorry.”
“You will,” Royal said. “Along with these three. Since I couldn’t count on my other men, and they were attacked and subsequently arrested, I fired them, and now it will be up to the four of you to move into that old man’s ranch and slowly take over Riceman’s ranch.” Royal stood up from behind his desk, walked around and went over to a map tacked on the wall. He looked at Ryan before he pointed. “The property used to belong to a man by the name of Donald Donaldson, I won’t get into the details of what Miller’s parents did, but it’s now sitting empty. With no heirs, no one will be coming to check out the property until the old man kicks it. Only then, the town or county will step in.”
Ryan stood and walked over to the map and noted the area Royal was pointing to had been highlighted in blue on the map on Erin’s wall. “What’s this?” Ryan pointed to the property he knew belonged to Erin and Clark, still playing dumb.
“That’s the bitch’s property. We’re going to slowly move in and take it over.” Royal spent the next twenty minutes outlining his entire plan, and Ryan sighed in relief that he had taken the extra time to stop by his truck and put in a button camera before he’d come to see Royal. Ryan knew he needed to get as much information as he could before he turned his recording over to Jake, or if he saw someone from Broken before Monday.
“How?”
“How what, New Guy?” Philip asked.
Ryan gritted his teeth, and looked at the other man and he must have had a mean look on his face because both Philip Firth and Paul Miller, who stood next to him, backed away.
“My name is Ryan Carter. Either call me Ryan, or Carter.”
“Why?” Philip asked. “You’re the new guy to me.”
“Maybe, but the last new guy I worked with was captured along with me and half my SEAL team. We were captured for twenty days and tortured. Those assholes were the ones that relieved me of my eye. The new guy on the team was disemboweled before us.”
“What’s that mean?” Ernie Firth asked.
“It means,” Royal spoke and grabbed his glass of amber liquid and downed it in one swallow. “The insides of the man were dug out of him.” He looked at Ryan with a wince. “Was he alive while it was done?”
“Yes, and conscious, same as me when they relieved me of my eye.”
“What happened to them?”
“When we were rescued, their corpses were being eaten by the local animals. I hope to hell there bones are nothing but dust now, and the rest of them is a pile of shit in the streets of their home.” He used his good eye to glare at the four men in the room, and didn’t back down until they all swallowed hard and were the first ones to look away.
“You were a SEAL?” Royal asked.
Ryan swore in his head, because he didn’t want to reveal what he had done for the Navy.
“Yeah, does it matter?”
“No, it just means that you might be more valuable than we first anticipated. What did you do on your team?”
“Medic, and sniper.” Ryan didn’t want to embellish what he did while he served his country, but in the long run, if it helped him get in deeper with Royal, he’d reveal what he could.
“That should come in handy for what we have planned.” Royal turned his chair around and refilled his glass with the amber liquid. He looked directly at Ryan as he turned back around. “How long are you paid up over at Gunny’s?”
“Until Sunday. I either have to pay for a new week starting Monday, or get out.”
“Then you’ll stay there and continue as if nothing is wrong, then come Monday morning, you’ll move in here.”
“When will you be moving in on that guy that’s in the old folks home?”
“We’ll have to plan first, but you’ll be here at this house for a week, while the Firths and Miller go in and make sure the coast is clear. I have to be in Los Angeles starting Tuesday, so you’ll be doing the regular work here on this ranch while the guys procure the Donalson property. When I return, we will move forward with our plan to take that bitch Riceman out. If all goes as planned, we will be the new owners of Riceman Ranch by Memorial Day.”
“That’s six weeks away.”
“Yep, with you and your experience of being a SEAL, there shouldn’t be a problem.”
“How many guns do you have?”
“I have a few, but that’s what my trip to LA is about. I’m going there to pick up the firepower we’re going to need.”
“What about the animals on her ranch?”
“They are not to be hurt at all. One of the reasons why I’m taking what that bitch owes me is because those stallions of hers are some good horseflesh and can bring me just as much money as they do her.” Rudolph Royal turned to look at the other three men sternly. “The animals are not to be harmed in any way. If you so much as shoot in their direction, I’ll shoot you.”
They nodded in agreement, and shortly after that the meeting broke up. Ryan was told he could leave for the day, and he couldn’t get out of there fast enough. He left, but halfway back to Gunny’s, he pulled over at a scenic lookout, pulled out his notebook from the glovebox, and wrote up his notes in his special language while it was still fresh in his mind. Satisfied he had everything, he removed the button camera, and put that, along with the notebook in an envelope. He shoved the package beneath the passenger seat in the truck, then continued on toward Gunny’s.
As soon as he walked in the back door of the B&B, the first person he saw was Pru standing next to RJ, who was mixing something on the counter.
“Hey,” Ryan said, and smiled when Pru and RJ looked up, and he held his arms out to Pru, sighing in relief when she ran to him and wrapped her arms around him. He didn’t let her say anything as he quickly took her lips in his. It was several minutes before he lifted his head.
“Not that I’m not happy to see you, but what are you doing here on a Monday?”
“I called her earlier to see if she had any extra eggs,” RJ spoke from the counter. “I’ve been doing a lot of extra baking, and hadn’t figured the egg count into the regular egg run.”
“Ah, got it. Can you stay long?”
“I don’t know, Clark came with me.”
“He’s here?” Ryan asked in shock and as he looked around, the man in question walked into the kitchen with Jake behind them.
“Hey,” Clark said as he walked over and shook Ryan’s hand. “How’s it going?”
“It was boring as hell, but I got a breakthrough today. You have someplace we can talk?”
“Downstairs,” Jake said.
“I’ll be right back,” Ryan said as he left the house and went to retrieve the package from beneath the seat. Back inside, he took the cup of coffee and bottle of water from Pru, and looked at her. “Will you join us?”
“Sure.” She followed them with her own cup of coffee, and ten minutes later they were in the offices of Brotherhood Protectors with several of the men that worked there looking at him in anticipation of what he had to say.