Page 89 of Pain in the Axe
“You okay?”
She turned, her red-rimmed eyes locking on me. Fuck. Why did knowing she’d been crying gut me so much? My every instinct was screaming to make everything better for her. But I couldn’t.
I reached down and offered her a hand, and when she slid her palm against mine, I gently pulled her to her feet.
“What the fuck, Gus?” she asked, back to surveying the mountains. “I was willing to overlook the vandalism and thefts. That’s not so out of the ordinary and relatively tame in the grand scheme of things. Especially when some of it was your own brother.”
I blanched. Cole’s downward spiral wasn’t a topic we tended to mention. He was doing better now, getting help, but he’d only been arrested a few months ago.
“And then the assault.”
She paced a few feet away, then turned and stomped back.
“What kind of business is this? Why is this happening?”
She threw her arms out.
“They’re just fucking trees!” she shouted into the void, her voice echoing through the forest.
“I wish I knew,” I said softly. “I wish I had answers for you. Did you call the FBI?”
She nodded. “Yes. Spoke to Agent Portnoy. Damn, I hate that man, but he’ll be here this afternoon to take a look. What did I get myself into?” she asked, pressing the heel of her hand into one eye. “What the fuck was your dad doing?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, tucking my chin and roughing a hand over the back of my neck. “We’ll deal with this. We’ve gotthe FBI now, and while that will make operating difficult, giving them access protects us and the business.”
She nodded. “When does it end, though? Do we really have any hope of getting criminals out of these woods?”
No. Unfortunately. This was the largest undeveloped forest in the eastern US. Over ten million acres in the northern part of Maine, and no one, least of all a small, family-owned logging company, could control everything that happened there.
But I couldn’t tell her that. And I couldn’t let her down. I had to believe that we could get through this and rebuild the company.
With a long breath in, I racked my brain for a way to soothe her, but before I could speak, a shout rang out, echoing off the buildings.
Officer Fielder stood down the hill near one of the storage buildings, waving.
With a look at one another, Chloe and I headed down there.
“Didn’t see this until the sun came up,” he said, holding up a small item. “There are easily a hundred of them.”
As I got closer, the item came into focus. A camera. I took it from his hand and studied it. It was the same make and model as the one Chloe and I had removed from the woods a couple of weeks ago. The same type of cameras the FBI had found when Chloe gave them permission to access that sector. Shit.
We followed him around the shed, and sure enough, there was a large pile of the game cameras. And taped to the one on top was a folded piece of paper.
Chloe picked it up and unfolded it.
One word.
Large black letters.
Stop.
We locked eyes, and as my stomach dropped, her face went ashen. This was a message. Someone knew what we’d found. And they were not happy about it.
Chapter 25
Chloe
Heart pounding and mind racing, I paced around my house. Why was it so big? It was strange and empty and eerie. Outside, rain had begun to fall. The storm was going to be a big one. They were predicting supercells, and a good part of the state was under a tornado warning. Thunderstorms were no big deal, but I was alone in my house on the side of a lake. JJ and Karl had flown down to New York for the weekend to meet up with friends, so I was on my own. For the last few days, I’d been dealing with the fallout from the fire and had barely slept.
