Chapter 15
Levi
Dakota and I are driving out to the property we staked out last night. My stomach rumbles with nerves as we get closer. “Are you as nervous as I am?” He’s driving, so at least he has something to keep his hands busy. I don’t, so I’m tapping along to the beat on the radio.
Dakota blows out a breath. “Yeah, but I’m doing my best not to show it. What if we do something wrong? What if they can see right through us. I mean we’re fucking rookies, honestly. We’re more likely to get killed than anyone else who walks into this situation.”
He’s right, and I’m doing my best not to think about it. “At least we’ll be together?”
He laughs sharply. “We’ve been best friends since Middle School. Of course I’m going to be right there next to you. There’s no one I trust more to be with me than you. But yeah, I’m fucking scared as hell.”
Hearing him say he’s scared too gives me more courage than I imagined it would. “We’ve got this, though.”
“That we do. We’re going to go in there and prove to Director Drake that we deserve to have this assignment.” He glances over at me. “Did you tell your family what you’re doing? Like your dad?”
“No,” I shake my head. “I haven’t told anyone, except for Magnolia, and she knows very little. The only reason I said anything to her is because she’s staying with me, so she saw me leave looking like this.” I gesture down at my clothes.
“Are you scared to tell them?”
“A little.” I rub at the couple days growth on my chin.
“I think my dad and grandpa would be okay with it, but my mom and Molly? They’d never get it.
Hell, knowing Molly she’d probably want to pose as my wife so she could make sure I’m safe.
Her being my older sister has been great for most of my life, but when she’s trying to protect me, she’s as bad as a rabid dog. ”
Dakota laughs, throwing his head back and letting it end in a giggle. “The amount of shit she’s gotten us out of though, Levi. Like if it hadn’t been for her, we would’ve been screwed so many times in our lives.”
“Yeah, you’re especially lucky,” I grumble. “If she hadn’t done your senior paper for your final grade in English, you would’ve had to repeat another year.”
He doesn’t say anything at first, but nods, and I know he’s thinking about the fact that he had to repeat two grades before we met each other.
No one had been prepared to work with a kid who had dyslexia, but once I met him, I wouldn’t let anyone push him around.
Following my lead, Molly adopted him as hers too, and she doesn’t let people go.
“You’re right, she’s been by my side through almost as much as you have.”
I don’t miss the tone in his voice, but I dismiss it.
Freedom Farms Hunting is up in the distance, and there’s a truck sitting in the gravel lot outside of the barn.
The same one we were in last night. We drive up and park, glancing at each other as he turns the truck off. “It’s go time,” I tell him.
“We’ve got this. I’ll follow your lead.”
Getting out, I walk slowly around the front of the truck to where the man stands. “Hey, I’m Tim.” I offer him my hand. “Was it you I texted with?”
The man doesn’t offer a smile, and somehow I expected that, but the coldness in his eyes almost makes me retreat within myself.
I’ve been around criminals for most of my life.
Sometimes I went to the jail with dad or grandpa.
Some of them who were reformed would come up to either one of them in a public setting and thank them for helping.
Others, who weren’t exactly ready to change, would be worse about it.
This man, I’m pretty sure, has a criminal record, and he isn’t the type of man to thank someone for changing his life.
“Yeah, I’m Randy. What exactly is it the two of you are looking to do?” He looks down at my hand, and then reluctantly takes it.
Dakota gives him an aw shucks smile. “Name’s Wallace, nice to meet you.
” Once they let go, Dakota shoves his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels.
“We wanna bring out a couple of friends to do some hunting. And if we like what we see, we have friends up north who are interested in stocking their farm with some white-tail deer.”
Randy hunches his eyebrows together. “That’s illegal.”
“It is, but I heard you might be willing to help.”
The two of them stare at one another for a long time.
I’m almost ready to pull the gun I have hidden in the top of my boot.
Locked in an epic stare down, neither one of them appears to want to be the one to break the gaze.
Eventually, Randy does. He yanks his hand back and sticks it in his pocket.
“I guess I could help, but first y’all got to prove you’re capable of keeping your goddamn mouths shut. ”
How do we do that? Dakota and I glance at one another, that question bounces between the two of us. I turn to him. “How do you want us to do that?”
He takes off the hat on his head and scratches, pushing his hair back. “First, you’re going to come out and show us that you can hunt. Then we’ll see what comes next.”
Dakota nods. “We’ll do whatever we need to. You’ll text us?” He holds up his phone.
“Yeah, but first let me talk to the bossman. Thanks for coming out.”
He doesn’t watch us as he turns, walking away. Which means he has other people watching his back, and we should be careful, they could fire when we turn ours. “Thank you,” I call out.
Acting like we don’t have a care in the world, we head toward the truck.
I get in first, and then watch the horizon for him, nodding when everything seems to be on the up and up.
Dakota gets in, and then carefully backs out, before hitting the main road.
Once we’re away from the property, we turn to each other.
“What’d you think about that?” I ask, because I respect his opinion almost more than my own family. We’ve been best friends for a long time, and the way we’ve been able to do that is because we’re honest with each other.
“That dude is hiding a whole bunch of shit on that property. Did you feel the guns on us?” He asks, checking his rearview mirror.
“Yeah, my whole body was one goosebump, especially when he turned his back to us. He had zero cares in the world, which means he had people trained on us.” A thought occurs to me, and I hold up my finger, motioning for him to pull off at the boat landing where we met the first day.
“What?” He mouths as we get out of the truck.
“Tracker or listening device,” I mouth back to him. Just because Randy was the only person we saw, doesn’t mean he was the only person who could’ve touched our vehicle. There were a few times we had our backs completely turned to our vehicle as we spoke to him. It’s always better safe than sorry.
He gives me a thumbs up and goes to the back of the truck.
In one of the tool boxes there’s a radio frequency detector and magnetic detector that will hopefully let us know if these assholes want to find out where we’ve been and where we’re going.
We spend a good thirty minutes going over the vehicle, but nothing shows up.
“So anyway,” I say as I get back in the truck. “What do you think they’re really doing over there at Freedom Farms? Who do you think is the bossman? I assumed it was Randy, but someone else must be controlling the purse strings.”
“I’m not sure.” He shrugs. “There are a lot of different things they can be doing with that much land. Add the barns on, and they could be hiding shit. I think we’ve got to let it play out.”
This isn’t what I want to hear, but more than likely he’s right. “Alright, let’s head to the station and brief Director Drake on it.”
“Do you think he’s going to have us patrolling while we’re undercover?” He asks. “I’m wondering if we should be doing more to disguise ourselves.”
“I’ve wondered too, it’s definitely something we’ll need to ask him.”
We’re quiet as we take off toward the station, both of us lost in thought about what we’ve gotten ourselves into.
Fifteen minutes later, when we park at the station, he turns the truck off and we look at each other. “This is going to be more intense than I thought it was,” he says, gripping the steering wheel.
“Yeah, me too,” I agree with him. Maybe we were both naive to think it would just be a couple of planned meetings, and we’d figure out what the hell was going on. Then we’d be able to go back to our regular lives. “But I think this is going to be more dangerous than we thought it would, too.”
“Yeah,” he echoes, the knuckles turning white where he’s still got his hands wrapped around the steering wheel. “It might be time to tell the people in our lives what we’re doing.”
My mind flashes to both my dad and my grandfather.
Both of them could more than likely give me some good tips, but I’d also have to listen to them go on and on about how dangerous this is.
How I’m not old enough to be doing this, and how inexperienced I am.
It’ll just mean i have to weigh the pros and cons.
Regardless, I’ll have to approach it, and this shit is going to be a fuckin’ headache.
With my fingers, I rub my eyes vigorously and hope for the best.
“We’ve got to be in this together,” I tell him. “If either of us has doubts about this, we need to talk about it with Director Drake now.”
“No doubts here. You’re my best friend and I’d walk through hell with you. Nothing about that has changed. You good?”
“I’m good.”
Then we get out of the truck and walk toward the station. When we enter, I feel as if I’m entering a changed man. Things are more serious than I imagined they would be, but I also know it’s time for me to be the adult I’ve been asking others to treat me as.
Director Drake opens his door, and ushers us in.
This meeting I know, is going to change our lives.