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Vi looked stricken. “Poor Phoebe,” she said softly. “I knew she wasn’t happy at home after her mom died. She wanted to work as many hours at the bakery as she could. What’s going to happen to her now?”
“I’m hoping to become her legal guardian,” Lainey said. “We’ll talk to DCFS on Monday.”
“I hope that works out,” Vi said. “She’s been really happy here.”
“We hope so, too,” Brody answered. He glanced at Lainey. Would both Phoebe and Lainey be happy here? Or was Lainey going to move back to her own house with Phoebe, now that Larsen was locked up?
His heart twisted painfully at the idea. But he couldn’t stop Lainey if she wanted to move out.
After a moment of awkward silence -- clearly no one knew how to move to another topic of conversation, Vi brushed her hands over her thighs. “I have to toss you out of my kitchen so I can get dinner on the table,” she said. She smiled, as if to take the sting out of the words. “Should be ready in twenty minutes or so.”
As they filed through the dining room, Brody nodded at the bar. “Anyone like a glass of wine? A beer? A cocktail?”
“I’ll have a glass of wine with dinner,” Mel said easily.
“I’ll have a beer,” Devlin said. “But I’ll wait for dinner, too.”
So they wanted clear heads, too. Brody nodded. “Will do.”
Once they were seated, Mel spoke first. “Beautiful property you have here, Brody. But I bet it’s lots of work.”
“Yeah, we keep busy,” he said cautiously, wondering where Mel was going with this. “We run an average of two thousand head most years. Beef cattle. They’re strictly grass-fed, and we’ve been around for a long time, so we have buyers lined up to purchase them. My father worked this land before me. He died in an auto accident some years back. Way too young.”
After answering questions about what life was like here in the winter, Mel took a deep breath. “You and your hands looking for some work on the side this winter?”
Brody studied her for a moment. “Might be. It’s hard to find enough work to keep them busy all winter. What’d you have in mind?”
“Construction work, mostly,” Mel said. “Rebuilding the two structures that burned down, and remodeling the existing barracks into individual apartments, to start. We need a working kitchen and mess hall before anyone can move in.”
“Brett and my other three hands are all good with construction work. We do a lot of it here.” He leaned forward, determined to get a sense of what they were going to do with the property. “What did you have in mind for that compound?”
Mel studied him for a long moment, her eyes wary. Cautious. “That make a difference in whether you and your men are available to work?”
“It might,” Brody said. He gazed at Mel, then at Devlin, but they’d be good poker players. Brody had no idea what they were thinking. “I’m going to lay my cards on the table,” he said after a long moment. “I didn’t care for the group that built that compound. They were a secretive paramilitary organization. Never knew what they called themselves or exactly what they were doing there, but bad things happened in town while they were part of the community. Art Larsen and Ron Martin worked for them. The sheriff said someone discovered mass graves between the compound and Helena. Larsen and Martin were the men responsible for those graves.
“So, yeah. I don’t want to get involved in anything that isn’t strictly legitimate. Open about what they do.”
Mel pursed her lips, then smiled. “I admire your standards, Brody. And I can assure you we’ll be completely legitimate.”
“What will you be legitimately doing?” Brody pressed.
Mel took a deep breath. Glanced at Devlin, and some unspoken decision flew between them. “We’re opening a security service,” she said. “I have a background in computers, encryption and coding. I worked for a government agency before I found out my boss was stealing my work and passing it off as his. When I confronted him, he tried to have me arrested for stealing government information. Fortunately, I had recorded him talking about what he’d done and what he’d do to me if I ever took that information to his superiors.”
She smiled, and Brody realized she was a smart, strong woman. But was she an honest one? “So what did you do?”
“I quit, with a very generous severance package.” She smiled, but there was no humor in it -- only satisfaction and retribution. Brody felt a twinge of pity for her old boss. “I was heading to Seattle to visit my sister when I went off the road into the mud.” She nodded at Brody. “The day I met you. That compound intrigued me. I could see so many possibilities. So many uses for those abandoned buildings.”
Brody studied her for a long moment. “Looks like you have some ideas.”
Mel nodded once. “I do. After I left the… my job, I swore I’d never work for someone else again. I wanted my own business.”
“And you think that compound is the place to start it?” Brody asked.
“I do. I’m starting a security company, with Dev as my partner.” She flashed him a glance, and Brody wondered whether they were more than business partners. “Dev has a background in spec ops.”
She must have seen his confusion, because she laughed. “Special Operations. Dev was a SEAL. We’ve recruited men and women from the SEALs, the FBI and Delta Force so far. We’ll do investigations and protection work initially, and when we have more associates, and more experience, we might branch out into operations. We’ll be Blackhawk Security. We even have our first case -- a chef in Seattle having suspicious accidents. Spyware on her computer.”
Brody leaned back in his chair. “That compound would be a good location for a business like that,” he said slowly. “Easy access to the Helena airport, and lots of room for training and housing your people.” He frowned. “Are you part of the government?”
