As Leroy got out of his vehicle, he shivered at the chill in the air. He could even see his breath when he exhaled. Who in their right minds would live in a place where it started snowing in October and didn’t quit til May? His Southern blood congealed at the prospect.
He walked up the wooden front steps and knocked on the door which looked like it hadn’t seen a paintbrush in half a century. The cowboy guessed nobody but ghosts inhabited this house on a regular basis. It was a stage set like all the other places he’d visited lately. Also like the others, this particular stage set came complete with an actor—an old man in a flannel shirt and overalls who answered the door.
“Can I help you?” He squinted at Leroy in disbelief as if a visitor was an outlandish sight.
“Yes sir, I hope you can.” Leroy went into his own act. “I’m tryin’ to track down a friend of mine. Her name’s Rhonda. I hear tell that her daughter Hannah is stayin’ with you folks. Is that right?”
Old Macdonald scratched his head. “Well, she was here.”
Leroy pretended to look disappointed though that reply was exactly what he’d expected to hear. “But she ain’t here now?”
“Nope.”
The cowboy realized he was going to need to drag information out of the old coot, one fact at a time. “Do you know where she went?”
“Yup.”
Hunt ground his teeth. “Where exactly might that be?”
The man in flannel crossed his arms and looked up at the ceiling. “Her aunt and uncle took her out west to get her signed up for school. Musta been last week sometime.”
“So you ain’t her uncle?” Leroy felt compelled to ask the question even though he already knew the answer.
“Nope.”
Before Leroy could continue, the man volunteered a fact all on his own.
“I’m watching the place til they get back. Cows still need to be milked, you know.”
“Yessir,” Leroy agreed. “They surely do. So how come Hannah’s people didn’t sign her up for school here?”
“Cause her mother wanted it that way,” the man replied. “She called and told them to bring the girl to a private school in Montana. Said she’d be safe there. I don’t know what that was all about. It’s already safe enough around here. This isn’t New York,” he huffed.
“Sure as shootin’ nobody would make that mistake,” the cowboy observed. “You happen to have the address of this Montana school? I might as well try to catch up with Hannah and her momma there.”
“Just a minute.” The old man left him waiting on the porch.
Leroy shook his head at the elaborate charade. The pair of them were doing a proper job of shining each other on. He comforted himself with the fact that the seventy-mile drive and this sham of a cross-examination weren’t wasted efforts. Before he left, he would get what he’d really come here for. The next address.
Old Macdonald returned and thrust a crumpled piece of paper into his hand. “The school’s in Billings. You want me to call ahead and let them know to expect you?”
“No sir,” Leroy protested. “I already put you to enough trouble. I can take it from here.”
“Alright then.” Without so much as a goodbye, the farmer turned his back and shut the door.
Now Leroy’s real investigation could begin.
***
Several hours later, Hunt sat on the bed in his airport motel room reviewing what he’d learned. He’d had to conduct his inquiries at close quarters. The hamlet where he was staying had more cows than people. He didn’t want to move about on foot and get noticed. As a result, he’d holed up in the motel and spent the afternoon calling various county offices on his burner phone in order to track down the real estate records of the farm he’d just visited. It came as no surprise to learn that the farm was a rental, just like the moving company office and the bungalow in Phoenix. It had only been leased a week before he showed up. Also like the other two properties, the tenant was a corporation. Because each of the three places had been rented under a different corporate name, it would take a little digging to figure out how they were all connected. More paper-shuffling. Leroy grimaced at the thought of the documents he’d need to comb through once he got back to Chicago.
He jumped slightly at the sound of his phone ringing. It was his tapped line. The preacher was calling.
“Mr. Hunt?”
“Howdie, Mr. Metcalf.”
“Well?” the old man demanded eagerly. “Did you find her?”
“It’s this way, boss. I got some good news and some bad news for you. The bad news is she ain’t in Maine. The good news is I only missed her by a week which means I’m closin’ in. It seems somebody bundled her off to Montana to go to school there. No need to fret. I got the address.”
“A school!” Metcalf echoed in a shocked tone. “The people who have her are trying to indoctrinate her in the ways of the Fallen?”
“Meanin’ no disrespect, boss, but unless the gal’s been holed up in a cave or some such, she’s been knee-deep in the ways of the Fallen for a while. Hard to imagine some of it not rubbin’ off on her by now.”
Hunt could hear a sharp gasp on the other end of the line. His comment had knocked the breath clean out of the old man. Apparently, it hadn’t occurred to the preacher that his Hannah had been polluted by the big, bad world for months now.
“You want me to fly out to Montana next?” Leroy asked half-heartedly. The prospect of frostbite in Billings didn’t appeal to him especially since he knew it was a fool’s errand and he already had
