The Payback Man. Carolyn McSparren
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trying to take me away from all this. Girl, I so have nothing to do this Saturday except unpack your stuff. Now, go get some sleep.”
She moved to the door. “I’ll let myself out.”
Eleanor listened for the closing door without opening her eyes.
Not since the long nights and days nursing Jerry had she felt this completely depleted nor this close to despair. She roused herself long enough to call Raoul Torres. When he answered, she said, “Raoul, were you serious when you offered to give me some help understanding this place if I needed it?”
“Absolutely. You feeling overwhelmed on your first day? Want me to come over? I can be there in five minutes.”
“Thanks, but it’s not that urgent.” In the background, Eleanor heard the sound of at least two children, one of whom was screaming something in Spanish.
“Pipe down!” Raoul shouted. “Lupe, tell my children I will chain them to the whipping post and flog them as soon as I’m off the telephone.”
A woman’s voice said something indistinguishable, and the screaming children began to laugh.
“Okay, if not tonight, when would you like to get together? Tomorrow sometime?”
“What?” Eleanor had lost track of the conversation momentarily. “Oh, how about I buy you lunch tomorrow? Someplace close to the farm. I shouldn’t be as dirty as I was today.”
“You got it. I’ll pick you up at the barn about eleven-thirty.”
“Thanks, Raoul. I really need to talk about the men. If I’m going to work with them, I need to understand them.”
“Don’t worry about everything so much. It will work out.”
“I hope God’s listening to you on that one.”
She crawled into bed certain that she’d fall asleep instantly, but found she was too tired and ached in too many places to get comfortable.
How many nights after Jerry died had she slept rolled in a comforter in his old leather recliner, hoping to capture a fleeting scent of the man he had been before he got sick? How many days did she try to remember his face, his smile, the way his laughter crinkled the corners of his eyes?
Since his death no other man had stirred her blood. Her friends told her she was still young, still attractive. She didn’t feel either young or attractive. Until today she’d have sworn that the juices had all dried up. Until today when she’d felt Steve Chadwick’s strong arms around her waist.
Raoul would undoubtedly tell her she was attracted to Steve because he was completely out of her reach and therefore safe. But there was nothing safe about him. It was insane to feel attracted to him. He was a criminal, for God’s sake. A man who had done something dishonorable, and that made him unworthy to be Jerry’s successor.
That sounded priggish even to Eleanor, but it was true. Jerry had been the kindest, the most generous and honorable of men. He had devoted his relatively short life to saving the lives of animals, even though he could have gone to medical school and possibly made a lot more money.
Even more important, after Jerry died she’d sworn never to invest herself so completely again in any man or any relationship. No one should have to endure losing a true love even once, much less twice. She didn’t dare love that way again.
She would devote herself to her goal—saving enough money to buy a decent veterinary partnership. She had enough problems without Steve Chadwick.
Getting even slightly involved with any of the men she worked with would be a fatal error. Whatever crime Steve Chadwick committed probably had to do either with drugs or with money. He could never be considered a love interest.
She’d been wrong not to check her team members out. She did need to know what these men had done to land in prison. If it colored her opinion of them, so be it. She’d discovered that not knowing was much worse than knowing.
“MORNING, EVERYBODY,” Eleanor said with a cheeriness that made her want to throw up. So obviously phony, but then, no matter what she said or did outside of actual work seemed to sound phony. She climbed out of her truck, locked the doors and pocketed the keys, although the only people around were her crew and the new guard.
“Where’s La—uh—Mr. Newman?”
The new CO, a fiftyish woman who could probably have held her own in a fight with Big or Gil, grinned at her. “Mr. Newman is off today. I’m Officer Selma Maddox.” She turned to the men standing in a ragged line behind her. “And I do not want to hear one word about my ass or any other part of my anatomy, you got that?” No response. “I said,” Selma repeated patiently, “you got that?”
Heads nodded.
“Good, we understand each other. Now, Doc, what say we put these lazy bums to work? What you got for ’em to do?”
Eleanor motioned for Selma to follow her as she moved out of earshot. She didn’t want to put Selma on the spot, particularly since, unlike Mike Newman, she seemed to be a reasonable person.
“The painting crew should be here any minute,” Eleanor told her. “They have their own team leader, and I’ve already discussed with him what they need to do. I have a suspicion you don’t want my guys spreading out to check fence lines alone, do you?”
Selma laughed. “This may be minimum security, but it’s still a prison. Outside the compound the fences are intended only to keep the herd animals we’re going to be raising in separate pastures. Four-foot-high barbed wire will not keep your average inmate from climbing over and taking off. Then we have to go after them with bloodhounds. The bloodhounds enjoy it, but I don’t.”
“I take it that’s a no?”
“Right.”
“Okay, so we’ll put them to work helping the painters. They can start painting the one-by-six pine boards for the stall enclosures—they’re easier to paint flat before they’re nailed up. Tomorrow we can go do the fence lines as a group. I doubt anyone but Slow Rise knows how to tension a wire fence, so he can teach the others. It’ll be slow going, but we’ll get it done.” She leaned against the building. “Will you be back tomorrow?”
Selma snickered. “Maybe. I think Mike Newman is angling for a cushy job indoors. He’s not much into the great outdoors, ’specially when it’s still so warm.”
“I’ll ask the warden if we can keep you. You seem pretty relaxed around the men. They don’t tense up around you the way they did with Newman.”
“That’s because even the nastiest con usually has a soft spot for his mother. In some cases I can’t understand why they would, but they do. Anyway, that’s how they see me. I have kids and grandkids, and I try to keep my temper. But a couple of them already know I can come down on them hard if I have to.”
Eleanor raised her eyes as a truck labored up the rise toward the barn. In the back were a dozen prisoners. “The painters have arrived. Let’s get started.”
She walked back to her own team and told them what they’d be doing. She met the painters’ team leader, asked him to give her guys paint and brushes, and followed them to the piles of wood.
She knew immediately that something was wrong with Steve. He moved like an old man, carefully keeping his torso erect and shuffling his feet slowly, keeping his knees straight with obvious effort. She started to say something to him, then shut her mouth. She watched the men set up makeshift sawhorses and saw him bend to pick up one end of the first board.
He nearly fell on his face. Slow Rise caught the end of the board, hefted it easily and put a hand in the center of Steve’s back to help him straighten up. Something was very wrong, but the men apparently didn’t want anyone to know.
She went back to her truck, unlocked it, picked up her laptop computer and carried it back with her.
“Hey,