New Growth (Spook Hills Trilogy Book 2) (22 page)

“You
want
to re-activate
the Agent Ghosts from Operation Spook Hills last year? Close enough to
Halloween,” Ivy said, her eyes brightening with a devilish gleam.
 
“I stored the costumes out in the barn.”

“Not sure your trick will work twice,” Steve replied.
 
“Let’s put out dummies in the wraithlike garb
along with pumpkins, corn shocks and broomsticks to celebrate the spooky
season.”

Mathew said, “I better alert Moll and Brian.
 
Even though they are only home about half the
time, they need to be vigilant too.
 
Fred
and Federico, if either or both of you are uncomfortable with this, you can
stop working for us.
 
When this siege or
whatever is over, we will take you back on.”

“No man.
 
We’re in
this with you,” Fred said, pointing to himself and his father.
 
“We were never in a
gang
before.
 
Now we’re in
your Spook Hills Gang.”

“Si.
 
You were there
for me.
 
We are with you,” Federico said.

“Be certain of this,” Steve said.
 
“These are big-time gangsters.
 
They are capable of contracting
assassins
if they want to take us down.
 
Time shows they are relentless.”

“Si, but we are amigos.
 
And we are smarter,” Federico said.

“Glad you are with us,” Mathew said with a grim smile.

“We should develop
scena
rios
of what might happen,” Steve said.

“Yeah, my mind’s sluggish – still fuzzy from the forever
journey.”

Steve gave a sharp nod.
 
“Let’s start in half an hour, downstairs.
 
Now whoever does not have their piece – gun,
knife, whatever -- get one.
 
Put
protective vests on and leave them on.”

“Would you print up a list of the offenders we had arrested
or killed in the past and, for those incarcerated, the dates of their release?”
Mathew asked.

“All the facts point to the two Fuentes cousins,” Steve said
in protest.
 
“Raiding the gravesites for
his brothers’ bones, Julio appearing out here, the matches on the passports in
and out of the U.S.”

“Except one thing,” Mathew replied.
 
“If Cruze is alive and he left the drug
business early, why is he risking trouble?
 
This Julio/Annetta cousin, no rap sheet.
 
Are they the sort
to seek retaliation on
federal agents
?
 
I don’t think
so.
 
The Miami office found he/she might
be a gatherer of information.
 
They
discovered no proof of wrongdoing.
 
He is
a man of some means who reports income from his investments on his taxes.
 
They suspect he slinks between the
fashionable
world and the shadows.
 
They reviewed his computer usage.
 
The texts and messages they find are either
encoded or not devious.
 
No signs he is a
hacker.
 
All the people he communicates
with are by code names, like many folks under 40 do.”

“What lured Julio out here then?”
 
Steve asked.

“Likely reconnaissance.
 
Still, I think we should examine other possibilities.”

“Cruze might be the
typical
middle
child,” Ivy said, interrupting the two men.
 
“Often one twin is more dominant than the
other.
 
Middle children tend to be the
peacemakers.
 
I’ll reread the
psychological profile of Cruze to analyze if he might want to exact
revenge.
 
In parallel, you two discuss
these other criminals.
 
Possibly more
than one is after us.
 
Who hates you
enough to want to kill you?”

“You kidding?” Steve said.
 
“
Any
of them.”

“Some will
stand out
more than others.
 
How many would
classify you as personally responsible for their downfall?
 
You two put together a matrix of past
perpetrators, rate the likelihood of each one or a family member coming after
you and why.”

“We’ll brainstorm in the library and document each
possibility as we go,” Steve said.
 

In
Sedona
Callie
sat facing a red sandstone formation at dawn. Scattered around the area, her
classmates and her spirit leader attempted to tap into the curative qualities
of the rocks and reputed energy vortexes.
 
She selected a woman who descended from the Pueblo tribe to help her on
this journey because her syllabus stressed nature as a tool to discover your
true self.
 
They enjoyed daily exercises
with a yoga master who concentrated on stretching, breathing and slowing the
thoughts down to seek the truth amidst the emotional jumble.
 

Each evening she recorded her perceptions,
wanderings
and observations in a spiritual
journal.
 
Every day she spent time with
the head of the program.
 
Sometimes they
sat on the patio without talking, depending on what Callie wanted to explore.
 
The woman honed in on the progress Callie
made within herself, not on discussing her problems.

Having Mathew fly in to talk with her gave her an added
incentive to resolve her issues.
 
Since
he had never opened up before about his childhood home life, the conversation
with him aided her recovery.
 
Taking the
time to fly in to explain his parentage told her how much he cared for
her.
 
With understanding the rejection
and coldness filling his adolescence, her heart warmed to him even more.
 
Sad as she felt hearing about his
dreadful
birth mother, Alisha put them on a
more equal footing since John Henry lurked in her past and present while Alisha
taunted Mathew for money.
 

Callie stood when her hips cramped up from immobility.
 
The dawning lit up the
buttes
in a buttery glow, suffusing their
natural redness with shades of gold and pink.
 
She turned to face the rising sun, closing her eyes.
 
She stretched her arms straight out, letting
the warmth flow into her, then she turned and let her back heat up as well.
 
She was comforted here where the Arizonan
hoodoos welcomed her.
 

Her great-grandmother on her father’s side was a
full-blooded Cherokee.
 
To be accepted in
her tribe, she must prove she was directly descended from one of the Cherokee
peoples listed in the Dawes Rolls, a census taken in the early 1900s.
 
She decided to trace her heritage, explore
how to become a citizen of their Native American Nation and learn more about
their legacy.

Callie moved around, seeking a new angle to concentrate on
the chunky spire.
 
She chose one of the
lesser ones permitting her to walk around and view it from all aspects.
 
While the power of the spiraling energy
ascribed to Sedona left her skeptical, the red rock formations spoke to her
with their rugged beauty.
 
The air skimmed
over her skin, pure and dry, as daylight chased away the dark coolness of night.
 
She loved the Northwest’s greenery and lush
landscapes as a place of home and shelter.
 
This dry region stood out as a place of opening up, of stripping
yourself bare and of letting any badness bake out.
 

When she expressed these percepts to her leader, the woman
regarded her assessingly and said, “The blood of your people flows
strongly
in you.
 
You are gifted with an atavistic awareness
going beyond inheritance. This is a generational quality gliding down on the
feathers of the eagle and on the winds from the forests visited by our
forbearers. You should make a pilgrimage to your people’s lands where your
ancestors will speak to you.”

When Callie sat back down to continue her ponderings, her
attention now centered on making decisions and forming plans for a life
separate from what troubled her.
 
Those
plans were also focused on a life without John Henry.
 
Their life together and its many difficulties
receded.
 

She expected the restorative process to be heralded by a big
bang.
 
Instead
the healing happened with quiet murmurs as the bad times slipped down the
incline of her past to find corners and shelves in memory’s archives.
 
As she turned her face to the prospect of the
opportunities lying ahead of her, the past slid into perspective, becoming more
distant and less
important
.
 

Steve had said to reach back inside herself to find her
goodness.
 
She found her soul returning
to her by reaching forward.
 
She would
have to trust herself to take the slow glide of this walkway to the better
prospects on the next plateau of enlightenment.

When she signed up, three weeks seemed too short for her to
make headway.
 
With this the next to last
day, her self-exploration travels moved far enough to give her the confidence
to rebuild her life when she returned home.
 
Once she shoved the years with John Henry
into the background, her life seemed full of plump buds ready to bloom on
promising new shoots.
 
She had her role
at Lindquist estates and her planned work for a Master’s degree in
viniculture.
 
She was lucky to have her
Uncle Rick’s and Aunt Sassy’s support.
 
In front of her was the promise of an enduring love with Mathew.
 
Most importantly she had Susannah.
 
She breathed in, allowing herself to believe
in the possibility of
building a home
with Mathew where they could give Susannah the happy life she deserved.
 

Her years with John Henry had become a life without
dreams.
 
Now as the fog enveloping her
future lifted, life gleamed as an inviting vision in front of her.
 
She cleared a passageway that now twinkled as
charmed as a trail through a spring-green meadow dotted with white and yellow
wildflowers.

She walked around the towering column,
sometimes stopping
until she circled and
arrived back at her starting place.
 
After tilting her head back to catch sight of the flat pinnacle, she
stepped up, planted a hand on the
gritty
surface and leaned forward, whispering a thank you and brushing the rock face
with her lips.
 
After paying her tribute,
she turned to find her way back to the group with her newfound insights glowing
inside of her like a precious gemstone in her heart.

Late that afternoon back in her casita, Callie called her
attorney to check on progress on her divorce proceedings.

“Callie, John Henry is again making noises about being due more
compensation.
 
He wants to see the offer
terms for the sale of your house.
 
My
guess is that he will want the lion’s share of the capital gains,” Callie’s
attorney said.

“He is already getting 50%, which is more than he
deserves.
 
I paid for the house, all of
the maintenance on it, the taxes and the improvements.”

“He claims his tax situation suffered because you wouldn’t
let him claim a deduction for a home office.
 
Do you want to give me some background here?”

Callie thought back over the preceding years and then said,
“If John Henry actually worked at home for more than an hour a week, I would be
surprised.
 
Whenever I saw him in it, he
was on the internet with a glass of scotch in his hand.
 
From what I understand, the IRS scrutinizes
home office
use,
and I wanted to avoid an
audit.
 
He never kept a log of what he
did at home or how much time he spent on actual work, be it reading student
papers, working on lecture plans or doing research.”

“How
large
was the
office?”

“Not large, maybe 10 by 10.
 
More of a den really.
 
Filled with
books.
 
It was a nice
setup
if he had chosen to use it for work.”

“I’ll translate the size of the office into some numbers to
counter his claim,” her attorney said.
 
“
Otherwise
we will
get into
a debate
about
what
your husband did or did not do while in the office.
 
You are already more that compensating him
for the loss of that deduction.”

“What else?” Callie asked impatiently.

“I talked with the attorney representing the estate of your
friend Mathew’s late father.
 
He confirmed
Mathew’s impressions of the Alisha Turner.
 
So far has she kept quiet?”

“As far as I know.”

“Then all we can do at this point is wait and see.”

“Mathew is
seems to think
she will do something to stir up trouble.
 
I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”