Chapter Twenty
Jayce
Jayce had his own obstacles to their marriage to overcome.
They began with the debriefing in the town hall that afternoon. Benny, Mavis, and Huck were also in attendance.
“Twenty-five million dollars,” Benny mourned.
He glared at Jayce. “That’s what this mess is going to cost us if you don’t find a way to make this right with Ali.
We’re already down a million for Butch Cassidy’s adventure, thanks to you and Malika.
We had to refund his money. And those losses don’t include the money we spent on the bank renovations. ”
Huck took exception to the attack on his son.
“Now hold on a second. Ali is to blame for this mess, not Jayce. He set up Malika’s adventure under false pretenses.
He knew she didn’t want to marry Butch Cassidy, and he threw Jayce into her path knowing full well that she’d never be able to resist him. ”
“Jayce really is pretty,” Mavis agreed, tossing her support behind Huck.
Jayce couldn’t decide how he felt about that. Relieved, because Mavis was onside and he wasn’t going to be held accountable for any lost money. Or insulted because he was being judged solely based on his looks.
“I’m more than just a pretty face,” he said, choosing a path in between.
Mavis patted his knee. “Of course you are, dear.”
“What are we going to do about this mess?” Benny demanded, because he cared more about the lost money than Jayce’s good looks.
“I’ll talk to Ali,” Jayce offered. “I’ve got to talk to him, anyway. He and I are going to be family.” He had their full attention, and it was time they all knew. “I’m going to marry Malika.”
The room ceased to breathe—although with Benny, given his age, it was sometimes hard to tell. He was, however, the only one of the three who seemed surprised.
“Your mother is going to be so happy,” Huck said, beaming.
Jayce wanted to believe it, but his dad hadn’t heard the shotgun wedding speech she’d delivered. She did like Malika, however, so at least there was that.
Adam burst into the room. He was covered in dirt, and looked like he’d seen better days, but he was alive. Everyone had begun to have doubts.
“Where have you been?” Benny asked.
“Getting a debrief from Dave about how they relocated the research scientist. All is good on that front,” he said.
He pulled up a chair and recounted his story.
Dave and his friends, dressed in warpaint and buckskins, broke into the researcher’s camp in the middle of the night, tied him to a tree, then danced around the campfire for an hour.
When they were done with that, they blindfolded him and marched him through the woods for a few hours before trussing him to the back of a horse.
Once they had him off the mountain, they drove him to Butte, stripped him down to his underwear, and left him on the front steps of a church just before dawn.
Huck frowned when Adam finished. “What if he goes to the police?”
“Cliff Peterson’s on it. Bottom line, he’s a crazy Canadian who was already found wandering from heatstroke once before.
Now he’s parading around town in his tighty-whities.
He hasn’t had a bath in at least a month, and he’s ranting about bank robbers and hostile Indians in the mountains.
Cliff will see to it that he spends a few days in the hospital for a psych evaluation.
Then he’s headed back to Canada with a recommendation to his university that he shift his studies from grizzlies to field mice. ”
“Nice,” Benny said, nodding approval. “That explains where Dave was this morning. But what was the deal with the Indian raid on the town?”
Adam rubbed the back of his neck. “I haven’t quite figured that one out yet. I mean, Dave and his friends were pretty riled up about the plan to blow up the safe, and they can get carried away when they’re mad. They gave us that raid for free, and that isn’t like them.”
“You don’t think they really meant to burn the town to the ground, do you?”
Everyone thought about that.
“Nah,” Adam said, after a few minutes of silence, but he didn’t sound certain. He turned to Jayce. “Did I hear you say you plan to marry Malika?”
Way to divert attention, Adam.
“Run it past Leon,” Adam advised him. Leon handled the fine print on their contracts. “If she wants to marry you, and she’s happy about it, then by rights we’ve kept her out of trouble, we’ve fulfilled the terms of her adventure, and we won’t have to pay the money back.”
Jayce wasn’t sure they could honestly claim they’d kept her out of trouble, especially considering the town was on fire only that morning, but he’d let Leon quibble about the semantics.
He had to get Malika’s brother’s permission.
And he suspected that the twenty-five million dollars was going to continue being a problem.