“Yes,” Wyatt says. “Don’t worry. You will be compensated. Just don’t gamble all of it away on football.”
I don’t bet on football anymore, but I bite my tongue. I heard the magic words.You will be compensated.That’s just about all it takes for me to surrender to Wyatt’s demands for me. I prepare myself to ghost the girls I’ve been talking to backin Missouri and I verbally submit my two weeks notice to Kelsey Shaw, who happens to be in the room with me.
“Compensation would be nice.”
“$400,000 if you can spend the entire year without letting her escape,” Wyatt says. “$300,000 if she escapes once… If she escapes twice, the deal is off and it will be your job to put her down.”
I don’t have to think, to be honest. Won’t come to shooting Tylee in the head. The words come out of my mouth quickly.
“I accept.”
Montana. Timbuktu. Wherever the fuck they want to send me.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Cody
A Few Months Later
Oske Returns From Canada
I’m ready to start life as a married man. Oske told me that she met somebody during her travels who desperately needs my help. The situation with all the immigrants in our country appears to have crossed into real problem territory. I gotta be honest, we don’t pay much attention to politics out on the ranch. A couple guys got really into all that defending the homeland bullshit in 2020 but they left the rest of us pot smoking horse wranglers behind to chase glory by beating up Mexicans or whatever fucked up shit these bastards get up to. I don’t see how making life hell on earth for other people helps me spend more time under the open sky. Or with the horses.
Unfortunately, for the next few months I’m going to miss them. I don’t expect Oske to keep our arrangement a secret, so I made plans for myself. Once I get my new wife, I’ll be dragging her out to a safe house in the middle of the desert, abouttwenty miles away from Deacon Hollingsworth’s house – and he’ll be our closest neighbor, houses connected by a thick patch of hunting land shared between the two of us.
He doesn’t talk enough to anyone to tell my secrets. I’ll need a few months to get my wife used to our arrangement before I drag her back to the ranch, and I’ve made all the necessary preparations to the point where waiting for Oske to justbring her to megets more anxious than waiting for a part to my motorcycle. Deacon sold me his old Ducati when he upgraded andoldis relative since it’s a 2017 fire engine red model and nicer than any bike I ever owned.
Oske: I’m here with her.
I step outside the ranch house to meet them. I don’t want them coming to the door and feeling like refugees…Although, that’s what they are apparently.The sun brutalizes my concrete driveway as I walk towards Oske’s borrowed slate grey Jeep Grand Cherokee. I can’t see the passenger in the tinted backseat at all. Oske hops out of the car, leaving the air conditioning running as she comes to talk to me.
“She’s inside?” I ask her.
She nods and looks at me sternly. “Promise me I won’t regret this.”
“You won’t.”
“I’m not looking to make a woman’s life harder, Oske. I promise.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
She means “the catch” to our little agreement. Therealrisk in this situation is hardly meeting a strange woman and agreeingto marry her. It’s the baggage she comes with that brings the real risk.
“I’m helping her stay here, aren’t I? Is that what she wants?”
Oske nods, looking at me with a grave expression. “Don’t give them over to anyone, Cody. Okay? Promise me you won’t let anything happen to her.”
“How did you find her?”
“Brinley has a bleeding heart and I can’t stop her from following it.”
“I never took you for the type to put anybody else first.”
“We all have our weaknesses, Cody,” she says. “I’ll get the last of the paperwork and… try to look less like a grumpy feral rancher.”
“I don’t look–
“You didn’t even shave that wild red beard,” Oske complains. “She’s probably scared to death looking at your ugly face through that window.”