“OK, now, Spike. Here we go,” she whispered soothingly as she gently mounted the gray quarter horse. As usual, the four-year-old gelding had been a little skittish about getting saddled, but once they got on the trail, she knew they’d get along fine.
It took the better part of half an hour to get up the range to her favorite spot. Spike knew it by heart by now, slowing by the high ridge’s edge even before she pulled the reins.
“You get me, Spike, don’t you?” she said, patting his scruffy head. “Now if only you were a man, all my dreams would come true.”
She watched in silence as the sun came up over the distant Sierra Nevada. As it did every morning, it literally put a chill down her spine. All that land. All that sky. The holy whistling of the cold wind as light split shadow and spilled down the rutted slopes.
It was the America right out of a children’s book, she thought. Any moment now, down from the mountain, she’d see some cowboys chasing Indians alongside a steam locomotive with a little red caboose.
As she took out the thermos she’d brought, she wondered what the daft, ever-wisecracking boyos in her hometown back in Ireland would say if they could see their skinny Mary Catherine all grown up and drinking her tea high in the saddle out here in the Wild West.
Nothing was the answer to that one, she thought, taking a sip, since every one of those ragamuffins would be struck speechless for once in their miserable lives.
Who was she kidding? She could hardly believe it herself, the way her life was turning out.
When she’d heard about the nanny job in New York City, she’d originally envisioned taking care of some megawealthy power couple’s two children, wheeling them in an expensive stroller through Central Park when she wasn’t taking them to art museums or helping them with their French. The gig she got instead, of course, couldn’t have been further from her expectations. Instead of the power couple, her boss was the NYPD’s busiest detective, and he didn’t have two kids but two kids multiplied by five.
But she’d done it. That was the funny part. By hook or by crook, over the last several years, she’d learned to effectively manage the rambunctious Bennett clan. Not only had she kept them mostly fed (those teens were bottomless pits), cleanly clothed, and educated, but what filled her with the most pride was that she was actually making strides in teaching them to take care of each other and themselves.
Though her work was at times quite painful and sometimes seemed hopeless, she was managing to accomplish the hardest, most important, and most unsung job on the face of the earth-raising a large crop of good human beings.
And just when she was cruising, just when she had achieved the mammoth task of getting down everyone’s schedules and tics in New York City, what happens? A criminal from one of Mike’s cases targets them all for assassination, and they’re ripped from their lives and deposited three thousand miles away, on a California cattle farm.
It was the most recent events that seemed the most impossible. That someone was actually out to kill her and the kids, someone she had never met, had never done anything to-she just couldn’t understand how any human being could actually be that inhuman.
But she knew it was true, of course. It certainly terrified her. Her dreams these days were mostly nightmares where she woke up expecting figures to be standing in the dark beside her bed. It had gotten so bad that she’d taken to loading one of the shotguns and laying it on the floor next to the bed, under a blanket. That helped, at least a little.
She flung the dregs of her tea on the ground and tightened the cap on the thermos. She let out a sigh as she tucked the thermos back into the saddlebag. Sleeping with one eye open, with a shotgun under the bed, she thought, shaking her head. She was out in the Wild West, all right.
As if reading her thoughts, Spike suddenly snorted out a kind of sigh himself.
Mary Catherine laughed as she scratched Spike between his ears.
“C’mon, old friend,” she said. “It’s getting late. I guess it’s time for us poor workhorses to get going. Time to head them off at the pass.”
CHAPTER 39
Mary Catherine got lost on her way back to Cody’s farm.
It was her own dumb fault. As she led Spike through a stand of cypress and black oak, she’d spotted a smaller trail off the main one that she thought looked like a shortcut. But it wasn’t. After a while, the path started going up instead of down and turning in the wrong direction, north instead of south.
She was just about to give up on it, about half a mile in, when there was a rustle on her right and a man stepped out onto the trail behind her. Spike, startled, wheeled around, rearing back on his hind legs, almost throwing her.
Mary Catherine managed to calm the horse and get him completely turned around. She sat there, blinking at the figure. He was a scraggly, thin, young white guy in jeans and a plaid shirt with the sleeves cut off. Beneath his khaki bush hat, long brown hair fell to his shoulders.
There was also an olive-colored strap over his arm, and then she saw the black barrel of the rifle sticking up over his back.
Gun! she thought, freaking out. The cartel! They were here! We’ve been found out!
“Can I help you?” the young man said, something sharp in his voice.
Not the cartel? Some maniac, then? Mary Catherine thought, still round eyed and frozen in the saddle. An off-the-reservation militia person?
Then she realized it. Why he seemed angry. She actually clapped a hand to her forehead.
“Oh, no. I rode onto your property, didn’t I?” Mary Catherine said. “I’m so sorry. I’m staying at Aaron Cody’s place, and I went out for a morning ride. I thought this was a shortcut back. I’m such an idiot. I didn’t mean to trespass.”
“Oh, Mr. Cody’s. I see,” the guy said, the tension in his voice immediately gone.
He tipped back his hat and smiled, and Mary Catherine suddenly noticed how young he was. He was just a cute sixteen- or seventeen-year-old kid.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “I’m Kevin. Kevin Norberg, Mr. Cody’s neighbor. You did wander onto our property, but don’t worry about it. The property lines are tricky. There actually is a shortcut back to Mr. Cody’s ranch, through our farm. I’ll show it to you if you want.”
Mary Catherine paused for a beat, then took a breath.
“OK,” she said. “Thanks.”
She followed the kid off the path. She stared at the gun. It looked like a deer rifle. Was he out hunting? Spike hesitated once as the dirt trail descended through a gap in an outcropping of rocks, but she finally encouraged him to go through.
When they came out on the other side, Mary Catherine saw what at first she thought was a grove of tightly grown baby evergreen trees. But as she got closer, she could see that the long, neat rows of green weren’t trees at all but plants. Plants about nine feet high, with leaves that had long, thin light-green fingers and purplish buds with a strong, sweet smell, almost fruity.
It was marijuana, Mary Catherine realized when she took a breath. Acres upon acres of pungent marijuana.
She remembered then what Brian had told her about the encounter at the food bank. The kids there claiming that marijuana was the area’s largest crop. She looked out at the green sea of pot they were skirting. She knew that California’s Central Valley grew a huge amount of the country’s food, but that wasn’t the only thing the valley was supplying to the nation, apparently.
Is it actually legal? she wondered. A medical-marijuana farm?
Kevin, leading the way ahead of her, certainly didn’t act like his family farm had anything to hide. He couldn’t have been calmer if they had been strolling through Central Park. Or was that because of the rifle on his back?