Protecting Peggy (4 page)

Rory cocked his head. Although she kept her tone light, he picked up on a personal thread that had him wondering if there was more than just the job between Holly and her boss.

“I could. Problem is, Blake knows some good stories about me, too. I'd better keep my mouth shut.”

“I had to try.” She gave a brisk tap on a door at the end of the hallway. After a muffled “Come in,” she pushed the door open and stepped back for Rory to enter.

“Blake, you have company.”

“I'll be damned.” Smiling, Blake rose from behind a wide expanse of polished desk and strode across the office. Gripping the hand Rory offered, Hopechest Ranch's director delivered a resounding slap to his friend's shoulder. “How many years has it been?”

“Too many to count.”

“I agree.”

Blake Fallon had changed little since their college days, Rory decided. His tall, athletic build evidenced the frequent workouts Blake had stuck to when they'd shared a dorm room. The only difference seemed to be that he now wore his dark, thick hair shorter. His skin carried a healthy, golden tan that told Rory his friend didn't spend all of his time behind the neat-as-a-pin desk where a single file folder lay open.

Rory inclined his head toward the desk. “I see you're still chronically neat, Fallon. You still polish your stapler every day?”

Blake chuckled. “At least I can
find
my stapler. I bet you still keep a desk that looks like an avalanche hit it.”

“Some things never change.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Rory noted that Holly's gaze lingered on her boss for an extra beat before she
shifted her attention. “Can I get you some coffee, Mr. Sinclair? Tea?”

“Call me Rory, and I'll pass. I had breakfast before I left the inn.”

“Let me know if you change your mind. How about you, Blake?”

“Nothing for me, Holly. I'll let you know if we need anything.”

Rory waited until the door clicked shut on Holly's departing form. “Did you tell her I'm FBI?”

“No. You and I are the only ones who know. Until we get to the bottom of things around here, I figured that was best.” All of a sudden, Blake's voice sounded deathly tired.

Rory glanced at the office's far corner where two green leather wing chairs and a matching sofa angled around a low coffee table. “We going to stand the whole time I'm here, or are you going to offer me a place to sit?”

Blake shoved a hand through his dark hair then gestured Rory toward the grouping of furniture. “Sorry. My hosting skills are a little off. I didn't get much sleep last night.”

“More than just last night, I'd say,” Rory observed as he pulled off his leather jacket and tossed it over one of the visitors' chairs that sat in front of the desk. The strain his friend felt showed in the dark circles under his eyes. “You look the same way you did during finals when we crammed a full semester of textbook reading into one week.”

“That, in addition to working in a date or two,” Blake added as he and Rory settled into wing chairs.

“Those were the days.”

Focusing his thoughts on business, Rory rested one ankle on the opposite knee as he leaned back in the chair's leathery softness. “On the phone you gave me an overview of what's happened over the past weeks. I need you to start at the beginning and fill in the details.”

“It all seems like a bad dream.” As he spoke, Blake rubbed a palm over his face. “Like I told you, back in late November a litter of kittens was born dead. A while later another barn cat and a dog dropped dead on the same day. The dog was old, he'd been around for years, so everyone thought it was age that got him. The cat was only about a year old. Neither did it show signs it'd gotten into a fight, no cuts, wounds or anything. One morning it was chasing mice in the stables, that afternoon it was dead. The ranch foreman found it and buried it. He told me he figured the cat had gotten hold of a mouse that carried some disease or had been poisoned, and that's what killed it.”

“Sounds like a logical assumption.”

“Yeah. Shortly after that, two kids woke up sick. They're both younger, smaller in build. They bunk next to each other in the building we call The Homestead. It's a dormitory-style lodge where our temporary residents awaiting fostering or adoption stay. Both kids had the same symptoms—headache, vomiting, high fever, muscle aches, disorientation. It was winter, so we'd assumed they'd come down with the flu. At first, the doctor who treated them thought that, too.”

“I want to talk to that doctor about the symptoms. What's his name?”

“Jason Colton. He's a GP. His office is across the street from Prosperino Medical Center. I'll give him a call and set up a time for you to see him.”

“Good.” Rory lifted a brow. “He any relation to the foster family you lived with after your parents split up?”

“Good memory, pal.”

“Comes in handy in my job.”

“Joe and Meredith Colton are the doc's aunt and uncle.”

Rory nodded. “After those first two kids, how long did it take others to start getting sick?”

Blake furrowed his brow. “Not long. They all lived in The Homestead. The floors used there for the sleeping areas are all open and lined with bunk beds. The living room, dining room and kitchen are communal, so everyone intermingles.”

“I take it you thought the flu was spreading fast, like it always does.”

“Yes. A couple of the counselors got sick, too.” As he spoke, Blake knocked a fist lightly against the chair's arm. “I should have figured out the connection to the water sooner.”

“The doctor thought it was the flu. From the sound of things, everyone else did, too. I don't know why you should have thought any different.”

“I'm director of Hopechest Ranch. That makes me responsible for everyone who steps foot on this property.”

“That's a big responsibility for one man to shoulder.”

“Yeah.” Blake blew out a breath. “Anyway, after
about a week, it dawned on me that the only people getting sick were those who live or work on Hopechest Ranch. Some of my employees live in downtown Prosperino, others on the Crooked Arrow Indian Reservation, which borders the ranch's land. Some of the staff who live here drive into downtown daily to buy supplies. It kept nagging at me that if a rampaging flu was what was making the ranch's people sick, surely it would have spread to the town or the res.”

“One would think.”

“So, since only the people here were sick, it stood to reason that the cause was something on the ranch. I thought maybe it could be low levels of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty heater in one of the lodges. E-coli from contaminated meat. Anthrax. Asbestos. I considered everything but the water.”

“Why?”

“We test it. The last time was two days before the dog and the kittens died. Everything checked out.”

“So, if the contamination was intentional, that gives us close to an exact date when it occurred.” Rory pursed his lips. “What about your water pump? What sort of filter do you have?”

“A gas chlorine injector.”

“So, even if whatever got into the water had a distinctive odor or taste, the injector would have masked that.”

“For a while, anyway. But this stuff is odorless
and
tasteless. Otherwise, with the number of people we've got around here, someone would have noticed a difference in the water.” Blake leaned forward, propped his elbows on his knees and stared at the floor. “One
morning, I got a call from a counselor at Emily's House—that's our dorm for unwed mothers. Five of the girls had woken up deathly ill. One was having premature labor pains. Doc Colton admitted all of them to the hospital for tests. At that point, I knew time was running out. I couldn't wait around until someone died before I got to the bottom of this. I called the health department and the EPA.”

“What happened after that?”

“The health department tested all the food, the heaters and the air inside all the facilities, everything. While they did that, Charlie O'Connell showed up and checked the water. Bingo, we had the source of contamination. I shut down the well. Since then, I've had water trucked onto the ranch.” Blake stared down at his hands dangling between his thighs. “You meet up yet with O'Connell?”

“A couple of times.”

“What's your impression?”

“That his favorite pastime is putting the moves on my landlady.” Rory's brows drew together, the annoyance self-directed that the comment had been the first thought to pop into his head. It sure as hell wasn't what Blake needed to know.

His friend's brows lifted. “O'Connell making any progress?”

“Mrs. Honeywell has threatened to toss him and his belongings out in the street.”

“Good for Peggy.”

“Yeah.” Shifting in his chair, Rory heard again the edge that had settled in her voice, pictured the heat of temper that had sparked in those compelling green
eyes when she laid down the law to O'Connell. Dangerous territory, Rory cautioned himself before steering the conversation back to business. “I talked to O'Connell for a couple of minutes this morning about the ranch's water.”

“He give you any information?”

“Only that the bacteria that causes cholera isn't what put your people in the hospital.”

Blake blinked. “Holy hell, I never thought of cholera.”

“Don't, because the EPA has ruled it out. They've probably ruled out other things, too, but O'Connell isn't forthcoming. The bottom line is, he isn't happy about your hiring a private consultant to do the same testing he's doing.”

“Too bad. I can't shake the feeling he's up to something. And that something doesn't concern the well-being of Hopechest Ranch or its people.”

“You mentioned on the phone you caught O'Connell having some sort of clandestine meetings at one of the ranch's hay sheds.”

“Right, it was late evening when I drove by and saw his rented car parked there.”

“You didn't get a look at who he was with?”

“All I saw was the rear of their car. It was white.”

“Maybe he met a woman there,” Rory pointed out. “O'Connell could have been enjoying a literal roll in the hay.”

“Possible.”

“Since he isn't inclined to share information, I'll have to run duplicate tests that he's already had the EPA's lab run. That'll take time.”

“Dammit, Rory, we may not have time.” Blake clenched his hands into fists. “If someone purposely contaminated the ranch's water, they might have done it to get back at me, at my family. God knows what the hell they might do next.”

Rory's thoughts went back to what Peggy had said in the kitchen that morning when she discovered he knew nothing about the trouble that had befallen Blake the previous year.
I thought you and Blake were friends.

The echo of her words, and the angry frustration he now saw in his friend's face, had guilt balling in Rory's throat. If he had been any kind of friend to Blake, he would already know what that trouble was.

Setting his jaw, Rory shifted his gaze to the far side of the office where a bookcase sat, its shelves lined with obsessively neat rows of leather volumes. Over the years, there had been many times when he could have phoned Blake, just to say hello. Should have phoned him. Rory hadn't, not once. After all, he was a man who shrugged off relationships. He didn't like maintaining ties. He always felt it was pointless to look back toward the past or to give much thought to the future. He lived for the moment. The now.

For the first time in his life, Rory felt the sharp blade of regret for having taken for granted the closest friendship he'd ever had. “I'm sorry, Blake,” he said quietly. “I don't know what happened to you or your family. Or the reason someone might have to get back at you.”

Blake rose, moved to the nearest window and stared out. “We haven't exactly kept in touch, have we?”

“My fault,” Rory said. “I always put the job first.”

Blake slid him a look across his shoulder. “Thanks to your dad, you never learned how to do anything else.”

“True.” Rory eased out a breath. Blake was one of the few people who knew the history between him and his late father. It was a history that Rory had no desire to discuss.

“Look, we're not talking about me right now. If you think someone contaminated the water on this ranch as revenge against you, I need to know about it. Everything.”

Blake ran a palm across the back of his neck. “Christ, you'd think with time, this would get easier to talk about.”

“Some things never get easy.”

“This is one of them.” With a restless move of his shoulders, Blake walked back to his chair. “My dad's gone through three wives—my mother, and the other two left him because of his drinking. I've got three stepsisters I barely know because we all got shuffled from household to household while we were growing up.”

Blake paused, as if collecting his thoughts. Rory waited in silence.

“I don't know if I ever told you any of this, but my dad served in the army with Joe Colton. After their discharge, they went to Wyoming where Joe started Colton Mining. A couple of years after that, Joe branched into oil. Later on, shipping. Dad always considered himself Joe's equal partner, but that's not the
way things were. Joe's brother, Graham, was his legal partner in Colton Enterprises.”

“I take it your dad resented that?”

“Yes. Even when I was little, he felt that Joe and Graham had cheated him out of what was rightfully his. That made him drink more. When my parents' marriage started falling apart, they fought and screamed at each other constantly. Home became a war zone.”

“With you in the middle,” Rory added.

“Right. I still don't know how, but Joe and Meredith Colton figured out what was going on. They insisted I move in with them at Hacienda de Alegria, their ranch in Prosperino. If they hadn't done that, I would have eventually run off and never come back.” Blake shrugged. “Joe took me under his wing, gave me a foundation. He became more of a father to me than Emmett Fallon ever was.”