"Yes." Cami said, ignoring the other woman’s blatant attempt at fishing for information. When Cami refused to offer any more information, Harriet sighed loudly.
"Anyway, I was just stopping by to see if you knew offhand of any houses that were currently vacant. But since you don't really know, I can report that back to the committee and…I suppose I’ll try someone else." She offered the barest of waves, halfhearted and limp. "Toodles!”
Cami stood there with her hands on her hips and watched Harriet sashay her way around the side of the house and disappear toward the road. The woman was at least as old as Cami—probably a little older—but her husband's money had paid for whatever enhancements she chose to perform on herself. As a result, Harriet Spalding looked like a 30-year-old.
Cami shook her head. “You were right, Marty," she muttered to herself. She bent over and picked up a basket of zucchini, placed Amber and Mitch's handguns on top, and carried it into the house. If Harriet had seen the firearms, she would've blown a gasket.
"That woman is going to be trouble…” Cami said as she placed the basket of zucchini and weapons on the kitchen table. She went to the fridge and pulled out a cold bottle of water, cracked the seal and drained half of it in one gulp.
Cami stared at the bottle of water in her dusty, grimy hands. She realized they'd have to remember to refill the bottles. "Not like we’re going to just hop down to the corner and buy more…”
The timer on her smart watch went off, so she stood and unplugged the fridge from the cable that ran out to the shed where the solar battery system had been set up. It was time to let the solar panels absorb most of the midday sun and refresh the batteries. The fridge would keep cool until sundown, then she would give it electricity for another couple hours to keep things cool through the night.
Cami looked down and stopped fidgeting with the power cord. Fear for Amber and Mitch bubbled up in her stomach, setting off a case of butterflies. She glanced at the pistols on the table. "I should've made them take those…”
Not wanting to fall down the rabbit hole of self-doubt, Cami firmly placed the power cord on the counter, and began to wash off the vegetables. If she could force herself to stay busy, she wouldn't worry as much. At least, that’s what she hoped.
A half hour later, she had all the vegetables they'd harvested that morning piled up on the kitchen table, cleaned and ready to be processed. She stretched her back and dried off her hands.
Before she began to prep the veggies for the dehydrator, she found Amber's notebook on the counter, tore out a page, and scratched out a plan. She planned to chop up one quarter of all the vegetables and keep them in the fridge for immediate consumption. Another quarter would be chopped up and tossed in the freezer. That left fully half of the harvest for dehydration.
In order to dehydrate the vegetables, though, she needed containers to store the end product in when the process was finished. What started out as a simple project—harvest the vegetables—had quickly turned into an all-day event. She glanced at her watch. Amber and Mitch had been gone over thirty minutes. With any luck, they’d be home soon.
"This mess will go a lot easier with three of us…” Cami checked her watch again. “Where are you guys?”
Chapter 3
Belfast, Maine
Reese Lavelle sighed as he stretched his back. “Let’s just wait here a minute, huh?” he asked, as he loosened the strap on his sling. His wounded right shoulder throbbed, and the over-stuffed hiking pack on his back hadn’t done him any favors over the past three days.
“Why are we stopping?” asked Jo as she lifted the wide-brimmed park ranger’s campaign hat from her brow. She mopped at her forehead with a red bandana and squinted up at the sky. “That’s got to be Belfast right there, ain’t it? Let’s get a move on—I’m bakin’ to a crisp over here.”
“And you call yourself a Texan?” quipped Reese. “It’s a little warm, I’ll grant you that,” he said in his Low Country accent, “but it’s not that hot.”
“August is August,” Jo muttered. “What’s the holdup? Your shoulder bothering you again?”
Reese kept his eyes on the movement he’d first spotted down the road. The town of Belfast lay in the hazy distance, tops of houses and a few church spires poked up over the trees that lined the road they walked. And just at the edge of town, several men were busy constructing what looked to Reese like a roadblock.
“I just want to make sure we give them plenty of time to see us and recognize that we’re not a threat.”
“A threat?” Jo laughed, and her voice echoed across the empty road. “Have you looked at us lately? An old woman and a guy with one good arm…”
“Both of us carrying pistols and you with a shotgun on your back, loaded down with backpacks full of who knows what, lookin’ like we just climbed out of a swamp—”
“We did,” she insisted, “or have you forgotten the foot-thick mud we went through yesterday…all day?” She looked down at her legs. “I was embarrassed to wear these hiking shorts they gave us back in Ellsworth, my legs were so white. Now look at me, I’m so covered in dried mud, looks like I’m wearing pants again!”
Reese nodded. “I’m not arguing—we’re a hot mess, no doubt about it. But those guys are carrying long guns. See?”
“No,
