Page 19 of Caleb's Cause
She looked up when several people entered the back door of the main house, and Erin nodded as she pointed to the kitchen, and all the sandwich fixings still on the counter. “Help yourself, then we’ll sit down and talk.” It didn’t take long, roughly fifteen minutes before they were all sitting around the table.
“Thank you for coming,” Erin began. “I’m going to apologize here and throw Duane under the bus.”
“Why?” Laurie asked in confusion.
“Because I’m the boss and can,” she laughed. “No, sorry we had a situation earlier, and he had all the men come to assess it. He never gave a thought to contacting you women. In my humble opinion, the women would be more suited to be in the day-to-day, than the overall big picture.”
“What are we looking at?” Marcia asked before she took a bite of her sandwich. That was when she noticed a new person sitting beside Caleb. “Hello.”
“Hi,” Katherine said in a small voice, then sat up straighter, cleared her throat, and nodded once. “Hello, I’m Katherine Miller, and I was told to come here to look for a woman named Emily Riceman. I’ve been traveling for the last two or three weeks, I’m not sure, I lost track of time.”
“I do that sometimes,” Pru said, and just tapped the side of her head.
“Well, I don’t know about that, but I lost track of time because I didn’t know if I was being followed. I took a bus from Los Angeles to Denver. We were about six hours outside of LA when the bus broke down, and it took three days to get a new one. When we got to Denver, I still didn’t know if I was being followed, so I bought a paper map, made sure I had campingsupplies, and walked the back roads to here. I stayed in Fool’s Gold last night, did my laundry this morning, then walked here.” She shrugged, then sighed heavily. “I told my story to the guys out in the barn, now I’m here, and I’m assuming I’m about to tell you ladies my story.” She looked around the table and when her eyes landed on Erin, she only nodded. Katherine took the next thirty minutes to tell them what she had told the others earlier, and when she was done, she sat back with a heavy sigh, and waited for the questions. The first one she never expected, and ended up laughing when she answered.
“Do you ever go by Kate or Katie?” one of the women asked. She didn’t know who it was.
“No, I prefer Katherine.”
“Thank god,” everyone said, and again, explained about the horse named Katie. It actually shocked her that the women hadn’t asked as many questions as the men did, and she looked at Caleb in confusion.
“What’s wrong?”
“The ladies didn’t ask as many questions as the men.”
“That because we can put ourselves in your shoes at every part of your story. I’m Naomi, by the way. Besides Erin, Laurie, Lorissa, and Lois, I’m the only one not military, however, I grew up on a ranch over in Wyoming, and I was a barrel racer in the rodeo. There was an accident, I got hurt, and then was lied to by a man. My father. I was in a wheelchair for the last six years, but now I’m not. So, everyone here can put themselves in your shoes, and I’m not dissing the men, but they can’t. And these men are more particular than most.”
“Why? What makes them different?”
“Because,” came a male voice from behind them, and everyone turned to see all the men standing there, wearing some sort of amused expression by Naomi’s comment. “We are Navy SEALs and we want to know everything we can before we go ona mission. With what you’ve told us, we believe we have a cause for a mission here.”
“But?” Erin asked with a raised brow. “I feel there’s a but there.”
“There is, if you agree, I think Katherine needs to go to one of the cabins over on Broken Two.” Clark shook his head and held up his hand as he looked between Caleb and Katherine. “Would you feel comfortable having her near you? And are you weapons trained?”
“I am.”
“Why?” Ryan blurted out. “I know for a fact that Karen would have flipped the fuck out on that.”
“That’s why Dad taught me,” he said with a smirk, then turned to Katherine. “I’m his nephew. My mother, his sister’s name really is Karen, and she is an entitled bitch. I won’t get into it all, but that entitlement caused her to be sentenced to eighteen to twenty years in prison. She was only sentenced a few months ago. My father is a police officer, and he thought that I needed to protect myself. Not that Karen would have harmed me, but he didn’t want to take any chances.”
Everyone looked at Katherine and she only shrugged and held her hands away from her body. “I have no clue what you’re talking about. I’m putting my life in your hands, so I’ll have to trust you to keep me safe. Mom told me that when I reach Emily Riceman and tell her my story, then she will help me.”
“Well,” Erin said on a heavy sigh as she opened the box she’d gone to the attic to get. She took out several items and laid them on the table. “I’m not Emily, and I don’t know who this is, but this is Clark’s and my mother from when she was younger.” As she talked, Clark had come to stand beside her and looked at the photos before she passed them across the table to Katherine.
Kathrine frowned as she leaned in to look at them. She didn’t want to touch in case she ruined them, but the second she sawthe top one, she reached in and grabbed it. “Oh my gosh, this is Mom.” She looked at Erin and Clark. “She has this exact same photo on our wall at home. Every time I ask her about it, she said that the other girl is her best friend.” She quickly looked at the others, and by the time she was done, she and Erin both had tears running down their faces. No one said a word when Clark grabbed a napkin and wiped the corner of his eyes, then blew his nose hard. It took several attempts to clear his throat before he could talk.
“Well, I think that established that you knew Mom, or at least your mother did Do you know if any of your mother’s family is still in this area?”
“No,” Virgil answered before Katherine had a chance to answer. He looked at Katherine with a raised brow. “You said your mother’s last name was Smith?” He pointed to the photos still in the middle of the table. He looked at the two older men that had been on Erin’s Way for decades, and while looking at them, to see if they could gauge where he was going with his questioning, he talked to Katherine. “Do you have any grandparents on your mother’s side.”
“No.”
“Oh, shit,” Wendell said in shock, and whipped around to see if Floyd caught on. He looked directly at Katherine. “Does your mother talk about her parents?”
“No, whenever I asked, she’d get all quiet and say they were no longer alive. What’s going on?”
“Damn,” Floyd finally understood and the three older men exchanged looks. Wendell went to refill their coffee cups, and when Katherine started to say something, Erin gently laid her hand on her forearm and shook her head at her. She mouthed, “Wait.”
