Page 71 of Brother In Arms

“I don’t follow,” Dragon said, “real estate ain’t never been my thing.”

Cue a bunch of long explanations about loans, and flipping properties, and budget overages, and a bunch of contractor mumbo jumbo that I could barely follow. It seemed that my brother owed this development group a lot of money and in exchange for some forgiveness on some of those loans, they wanted his help in acquiring Blue Hills for their development plans for the area. My mother looked crushed, meanwhile, I was just mad. I shook my head and scrubbed my face with my hands.

“There’s more, and I’m not sure what y’all are going to want to do with this…” Data trailed off and looked like he really regretted what he was about to say.

“Out with it, dude,” Rush told him, tone encouraging rather than impatient.

“I managed to hack into some emails that went back and forth between your brother and the lead developer. They already know his attempts to sway you into their corner didn’t work. They sent back a one line email that’s concerning. It reads: ‘Fine, I’ll handle it.’”

“Shit,” Dray swore and my mother looked at me pointedly.

“Your meeting with Marion Cranston, how did that go?” she asked.

I swallowed and said, “I went to her home just yesterday… or was it the day before?” It was the reason why Rush had had the time to play in his woodshop. I’d completely forgotten about the results of that meeting given everything that’d happened since. I also had completely lost all track of time.

“And?” my mother pressed.

“And I think that I need to call her and that I definitely need to do what she suggested.”

“Which was?” Dray demanded, arching a brow.

I shook my head and looked pointedly around the room. Data looked startled and said, “Oh, yeah!” He reached into his pocket and tossed a handful of small circuit boards and bits of wire onto the table.

“What are those?” my mother demanded.

“Bugs,” Dragon told her.

“What?”

“Listening devices, Mom.”

“I know what a bug is, Bailey… I just never thought –“

“That’s why Marion Cranston wanted me to go to her place to discuss business,” I said.

I told them what she’d told me. One, that she was sick of the way the south treated it’s women in regards to business and horses, and two, that her informational sources had told her that things weren’t going well at Blue Hills and that she’d like to help. Up to and including housing the horses kept here in case of an emergency. I was sure this qualified at this point.

“You and Rush can do it on yer own?” Dragon asked.

“Yes, shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Need to do it by cover of night and you need to start tonight; there’s no tellin’ when these fellas are going to show.”

“How do we know they aren’t watching?” Rush asked.

“We don’t,” Trig said.

“Right, tag Reave in. Go find ‘em and do what you do,” Dragon said.

“On it, P.” Trigger got up from the table and opened up the front door, he said to Reaver outside, “Nice work, you’ve been tagged in. Let’s go.”

“Woo hoo!” Reaver responded and the door shut on the rest of their conversation.

“You okay, Bailey?” I startled and looked at Rush who was looking at me, concern written all over his face.

“I, uh, yeah?”

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Dragon asked.

I shook my head and said, “This stuff just doesn’t happen in the real world… this is the kind of thing that happens in movies and on TV. This isn’t life.”

The men around the table shared a laugh and I frowned, perplexed. Data leaned forward and said, “Where do you think they get the idea to put this shit in movies and on TV?”

I thought about that, and the answer came from Dray, “Its art imitating life more often than not, Bales.”

I sat there and spent the rest of the conversation quiet, not knowing what to say after that. Not realizing how naïve I’d really been until the veil had been unceremoniously snatched off my eyes. I guess I now really understood the phrase ignorance is bliss. It really was. I mean, I didn’t know what to do with myself now that I could really see.

Rush reached over and took my hand under the table and threaded his fingers through mine, giving it a reassuring squeeze. I looked to him, and sighed and he gave me a warm smile that said “We’ve got this.”

Yeah. It was overwhelming, sure, but I’m sure he was right… we had this.

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