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o tell me.”
“I do,” Boone acknowledged, irritated that he hadn’t waited in the house.
“Spill it.” Max gestured in annoyance at the delay. “Tell me this great news of yours.”
Boone bristled at the ridicule in his father’s voice and flicked an irritated glance at Harold Barnett, his father’s valet and full-time nurse, who now joined them. It galled him to have others hear the way his father spoke to him.
“I wouldn’t call it great news—or even good news,” Boone stated curtly. “But it is news.”
There was a slight pause as Max’s gaze sharpened on him, assessing the meaning of his statement. “You know who the hired man is.”
“You aren’t going to like it,” Boone warned, secretly pleased about that. “It’s Empty Garner.”
“Garner,” Max repeated, bitterness pinching his mouth. “That wiley old bastard. We can forget any thought of buying him off. And there isn’t much chance of scaring him away either.”
“Why would you want to? How much work can an old man like that do? Not much, I’ll bet. Echohawk might as well not have anyone working for him as that old man. And that was the point, wasn’t it?”
“It was originally,” Max agreed, his brow furrowed in heavy thought. “But with Echohawk on the scene, it was time to change tactics.”
“When did you decide that?” Boone frowned in surprise. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know.” The instant he issued the dismissive statement, Max engaged the control stick and sent the wheelchair spinning toward the side entrance to the house.
Boone stood flat-footed for an angry second, then strode after him. But the wheelchair’s speed, the valet’s presence, and the narrow walkway made it impossible for Boone to catch up with his father before he entered the house.
Simmering with resentment, he followed his father into the den and peeled off to the bar where he poured himself a straight shot of bourbon and tossed it down, welcoming the choking fire that closed off his throat. He refilled the glass, diluted the bourbon with water, and threw in some cubes.
After a galvanizing sip of it, Boone glared across the room at his father and challenged, “What about the hay?”
“What about it?” Max countered with annoyance.
“Since you’re changing tactics,” Boone began, his lip curling, “I thought that might go for the hay as well.”
“As usual, you’re wrong.”
“I thought I’d better make sure. After all, the last I heard, you had issued standing orders that no one was to be allowed to work at Cee Bar for long. Since that’s changed, I thought the one about the hay might have, too.”
“It hasn’t.” Max removed some papers from the briefcase that Harold Barnett had placed on the desk, then issued a curt nod of dismissal to the man.
“Then what’s different?” Boone demanded, unable to tolerate being kept in the dark.
“Echohawk. I don’t like it that we’re blind and deaf to what’s going on over there.” The troubled scowl Max wore gave credence to his statement. “The hay is a good example. If we had known who he was getting it from, there was a good chance we could have blocked the purchase. As it is, we’re forced to react. We need somebody on the inside who can let us know Echohawk’s intentions in advance. And there’s only one way to do that—plant one of our own men. But we don’t stand a chance of tricking Echohawk into hiring someone as long as Garner’s in the picture.”
“All you have to do is set back and wait for the old man to work himself to death,” Boone said with a shrug.
“I have no intention of waiting that long,” Max snapped in reply.
“Why not? You said yourself that Echohawk was suspicious,” Boone reminded him. “If we lie low for a while, sooner or later the Calders will pull him out and send in someone else. We’ve waited this long to get that ranch. What’s a few more months?”
“That’s what you’d do, isn’t it?” Max jeered. “You find yourself in a fight and you want to back off and wait until the going gets easier. This is when you have to get tough and clamp down hard.”
“I just thought—”
“You thought,” Max repeated in a voice thick with contempt. “That was your first mistake—thinking.” He closed the briefcase with a snap and sank back in his wheelchair, propping an elbow on the armrest and rubbing a spot just above his eyebrow with three fingers. “Now shut up for a while so I can figure out what to do about Garner.”
Smarting from the stream of insults, Boone retaliated, “As smart as you are I’m surprised you haven’t already figured it out.”
When his taunt failed to draw a response, he bolted down half of his drink and swung around to replenish it, his insides churning and his nerves raw. Needing to blame someone, Boone chose the first one that came to mind—the one who had sparked the heated exchange, that tough old bird Empty Garner.
