Was that Steel and Lance he’d heard talking?
He wanted to turn on his heel and walk away, but Maya and Noah were both married to Coopers. If Lance or Olivia was involved with this somehow, Liam needed to know.
Was Tory a part of it?
He didn’t want to believe it. Then again, this looked like a substantial operation. His father had been a sheriff’s deputy, as had Uncle Jed. He’d heard them talk about busting growers, both one-man quick-cash schemes and more serious criminal elements. Liam thought he could tell the difference.
He held still, searching for the men whose voices he’d heard, but they must have moved away. Should he follow them? He’d taken a step forward when a man Liam didn’t recognize emerged from a track that cut through the hedgerow on the opposite side of the field.
Hell. That was a shotgun in his hands.
Liam ducked among the bushes on his side, getting scraped and punctured by thorns for his trouble. He waited there for a long time until he heard the man remark to someone else, “Must have been seeing things. There’s no one around. Kinda skittish after that girl showed up yesterday.” A few minutes later he heard the door to one of the nearby outbuildings slam.
He needed to get out of here.
Liam pushed through the bushes to the far side of the hedgerow and edged along it until he got close to the boundary between the Ridley property and Thorn Hill, wondering about the girl the man had mentioned. Could he mean Tory? Something had changed her mind about coming to meet him yesterday.
He made a wide loop through the Coopers’ ranch and cut back over to his own downstream. Once on his own land, he broke into a loping run, heading straight across the pasture, not stopping until he reached the barn.
That had been far too close for comfort, and he wasn’t sure what to do next. Call the sheriff? He wished he knew for certain who was growing that crop. He didn’t know the man defending it, but he could be working for anyone, including Steel. Liam doubted it would help his case with Tory if he turned her brother in to the authorities.
What if Tory was involved herself, though? Had she been flirting with him to keep him close so she’d know if he or any of his family stumbled on the operation? Or was it someone else altogether growing the pot? Someone who wouldn’t like it if Tory had discovered the operation?
Liam shook himself, pacing around the barn. One thing was for sure—something had to be done about the man with the shotgun. Anyone could walk onto the Ridley property and get hurt. He needed to take the bull by the horns. Call Steel and confront him with this. Take it from there when he knew the Coopers’ involvement with it.
He pulled out his phone, saw the time and swore—no time for calls right now. The inspectors were due any minute. He’d confront Steel the moment they were gone, he promised himself as he exited the barn and headed up to the house. Meanwhile, he texted Tory, needing to know she was okay.
You around?
Yeah.
That was all she said, but it was all he needed to know right now.
Just checking in.
Reaching the house, he put his phone aside and hurried to get ready.
Fifteen minutes later, after the fastest shower in history, Liam stood on the porch in a clean set of clothes, his paperwork neatly organized in a binder, and tried to look a lot more confident than he felt as a red Honda Civic pulled up the driveway. As much as he tried to focus, he couldn’t stop thinking about the pot crop, the man with the shotgun and the extent of the Coopers’ involvement in the operation.
A man and a woman got out, coughing on the dust stirred up by the Civic’s wheels. Liam had gotten accustomed to living through the drought, but this pair seemed to be having a rough time of it.
The woman introduced herself as Hayley, and she greeted Liam with a smile and a firm handshake. “This is Parker,” she said, indicating her companion. Parker shuffled the clipboard he held to the crook of his arm and shook Liam’s hand, too.
Liam relaxed just a bit. He’d expected the pair to be severe, confrontational even. Instead, they were just… people.
“Lead the way, and we’ll get started,” Hayley said.
Liam gathered himself together and led them to the barn. “We’ve implemented a compost-bedded pack system to help with the comfort and longevity of our cattle,” he explained, showing the inspectors the dry beds and concrete feed alley he had built. Of course the inspectors knew how the alternative housing system worked. The point was to prove he did, too. “We aerate the pack twice daily, and at the end of the season we transfer it to the field where it can compost, and lay down fresh sawdust here to start a new pack.”
“May I take samples?” Parker asked.
“Of course.” Liam stepped aside and allowed the man to collect samples from the pack and from the waterer, then led them out to the herd so they could take hair and blood samples from the animals, as well.
Next Liam showed them around the pasture. The drought had yellowed the grass, but the spread was large enough that the cattle were still managing to find plenty of forage. “We’ve had to supplement grazing with feed more than usual,” Liam explained as they neared Pittance Creek. “We use all-organic feed, though. I have documentation for all of it. The herd drinks straight from the creek while grazing, and the waterers in the barn pull from the creek as well, not the town reservoir.”
As he watched Parker collect a vial of water from Pittance Creek, Liam suddenly felt off-balance. He’d been thorough about the substances used on his own property but hadn’t considered runoff from Thorn Hill.
