Chapter 3
The newly built, single-story ranch style house sat close to dead center on the fifteen hundred acres Austin had purchased a couple of months ago under the name of one of his obscure companies.
He knew he couldn’t stay hidden forever, but the first twenty-four hours of solitude rocked.
He just wasn’t of a mindset to let it go easily.
The original plan had been to throw the media off his tracks by flying north to the Cape Cod area after the Academy Awards.
He’d stay a few weeks before secretly making his way back here.
As it turned out, he couldn’t wait to be back home, and came straight to Texas.
He arrived yesterday about noon, and as he’d driven the property, the modernized architecture of his new home blew him away.
He’d sat through plenty of conference calls and planning sessions over the last few months, but to see the structure come to life was more than he ever expected.
Nothing was ready for his arrival. The compact, yet spectacular house he had built was in the final stages of completion.
The touch up work was just now being done.
The house combined a beautiful blend of pine, stone, and brick.
The workers diligently hammered away at the oversized tin roof covering the large wraparound porches on both the front and the back of the house.
Austin instructed his driver to pick up a blow-up mattress for him to sleep on until his furniture began to arrive over the next few days. He planned to have everything delivered on a slow scale, so not to draw too much attention to who might be taking up residence in this small farming community.
Austin opted for a three-bedroom, one-story ranch style house.
The rooms were large and designed to be used, nothing like the showplaces he’d lived in over the last ten years.
The one thing he loved most about his new home was the large floor-to-ceiling windows.
They ran the entire length of the living room along the back of the house.
He could see everything for miles and miles and would never feel caged again.
The icing on his cake was the completely covered, full-length back porch complete with a fireplace. There was a stone walkway leading down to a barely started deck and brand-new swimming pool. Austin loved to swim, but rarely got the time or chance. All that would be changing now.
To the left of the back door, a few hundred feet away from the house, sat a brand-new horse stable about four times the size of his house.
Apparently, in today’s farming world, horses and cattle no longer mixed.
The cattle barn loomed off in the distance, much farther away.
Both had the same design as his home. The place was the most beautiful he’d ever seen.
In his heart, he knew that wasn’t true, but he was so happy to be here, alone in all this quiet.
Yesterday, during his first meeting with his new ranch foreman, Austin learned that several hundred head of mixed breed cattle were currently en route to the farm.
He’d also purchased five purebred Appaloosas scheduled to arrive later next week.
His new ranch foreman, Mike Cisneros, had a plan for the farm, and after he got past the initial shock of finding out the new ranch owner wasn’t actually a rancher from the north, he sat Austin down and explained it all to him.
Mike was young. Newly graduated from Texas A&M and ready to put his new agriculture degree to good use.
To Austin, he seemed to be a kid, but he came highly recommended by the previous landowner.
Mike appeared more than ready to bring his expertise to the farm.
The new foreman took his job seriously and wanted the place to thrive.
To Mike’s credit, he’d only been momentarily startled to see Austin.
From the beginning, Austin gave Mike carte blanche on everything.
All Austin required of Mike was a productive working farm that he could jump in and work when he felt like getting his hands dirty.
Well, he cared about that and the ironclad confidentiality agreement he’d made everyone in his employment sign.
He’d also included the same confidentiality agreement in the contract when he bought this land.
If he ran into the neighbors, the contract prohibited them from talking about who lived here.
Austin installed security cameras around the entire place.
His security guards posed as ranch hands.
Housed in a newly constructed building on the southeast end of the ranch’s property line, they monitored every angle of the farm.
The outside of the building looked very much like every other building on the property, but the inside housed a hi-tech security control panel that rivaled that of NASA’s in its ability to monitor every inch of his land.
No one knew they were here, including Mike, until yesterday.
To help with the oddity of being so fully staffed without much more than a couple of horses on the property, the ranch hands spent their time fencing the place, separating the different pastures.
They also installed more surveillance devices.
Mike unwittingly helped the security team by designing a pasture system perfect for rotating cattle and horses and growing hay.
The fences provided extra surveillance from every angle.
Austin’s persona for the area, what all of his staff were required to say if asked, was that he was a wealthy older Northerner who didn’t plan to live on the ranch, but might visit once or twice a year when he felt like playing cowboy.
His family bought the land as an investment.
Mike ran the show, and that’s all the town needed to know.
Austin hadn’t been back in this part of the world since he’d left right out of high school. It was the biggest reason he’d chosen to come back in the first place. No one would suspect it. He hadn’t ever spoken highly of the years he grew up on a farm.
The backbreaking hard work and hot summer sun had pushed him away to begin with.
Yet, he knew these roads like the back of his hand.
The wide-open range allowed his security team to easily locate and apprehend anyone coming in while letting Austin roam freely within its borders.
They all went out of their way to make Austin fully secure here.
He had checkpoints installed and monitored along the only two routes leading up to his farm.
To get this far back, a person would either have to come through town or come in the back through miles and miles of nothing but rugged terrain.
That would require a trained tracker and none of the soft paparazzi he knew could tough it out in the Texas wilderness.
Yesterday, while Austin drove through the small town, it struck him as funny how things hadn’t changed since he left well over fourteen years ago.
He’d moved his parents to far northern California soon after he’d made some real money, getting them out of the hot desert of Texas that they still called home.
Growing up, Austin had always felt a little stifled here.
When he was young, he resented the hell out of everyone knowing his business, always telling his dad when he’d done wrong.
But now that he’d been on the true side of hateful, mean spirited gossip, he realized these people down here were the salt of the earth and didn’t mean him any harm.
They just tried to keep him from making too many mistakes, even if their interference sometimes caused his father to take it out on his hide.
There was a time Austin knew what it meant to shine in this town.
He’d been the local sports hero, for as much as that said at the time.
Their little Division Two school district bussed in kids from as far as sixty miles away.
Less than forty kids graduated in Austin’s class.
To play football, basketball, as well as baseball was nothing for the boys out here.
To do it well didn’t really mean much except to the older population who took pride in their school sports.
It provided the only real entertainment around.
They considered Austin a star even back in his high school days, betting he’d make it to the pros someday.
It was those accolades that gave Austin a false sense of confidence, making him think he could handle Hollywood.
That he could even belong there. The entire time he grew up, he’d baled his fair share of hay and woken hours before school to help feed the animals.
It taught him the work ethic that made him the movie star he was today.
As he stood out on his back porch breathing in the clean dry air, something from the corner of his eye caught his attention.
He took the steps down two at a time. Yesterday, he found out that he’d apparently bought several four-wheelers, and now, two of his crew drove around from behind the barn toward him.
He planned to ride out today with his foreman to check the property lines.
The one rule he made clear last night, he didn’t want to be treated any different from anyone else on the ranch.
He wanted to be held responsible, and his goal was to work alongside them.
A frown furrowed his brow. If he intended to pull his own weight like everyone else, his ride wasn’t supposed to be made ready and brought to him. He’d do it on his own.
The scowl Austin wore said it all as he stalked toward the two riding up. One of the ranch hands jumped off a four-wheeler, tossing him the helmet and took off running back to the barn.
“Mike, I told you, no special treatment!” Austin yelled over the engine.