Chapter 1: Compromised

I woke to the urgent buzzing on my phone that lay on the bedside table. I had to reach over Jenny’s sleeping body to grab it and pause the buzzing. It wasn’t a call, just a continuously flashing icon with a spinning asterisk. Well, that was new. I sat up and had to move Suzy’s arm from around my waist as I crawled out of the huge bed. Trinity snored like a lumberjack on the other side of the older woman. I swung my feet over the foot of the bed and found Travis sprawled out on the cool laminate floor beneath me.

The message wasn’t a text or email, rather it was a simple icon that brought up an image with words pasted all over it in nearly random sequences. They were animated and seemed to swell and shrink before my eyes in a particular order that I found myself following subconsciously.

I felt a chill creep up my back as I read the moving text again. What the fuck? I began reading it over once more when it abruptly dissolved and vanished from my screen. Once it was gone a popup window appeared with the message: CNTCTS ERSD. BRWS HX PURGED, Y/N to reboot? The Y flashed three times and then my phone went blank.

I bolted to my feet, disturbing Travis, and strode into the kitchen to open my laptop. As soon as it booted up it went through a similar data wipe and restart. I felt something akin to panic as I regarded her message and what it meant. Sam was in trouble! And I had no way of helping her. I felt sick to my stomach as I watched the computer boot up and settle onto its usual home screen. I scrolled through my files and emails ... nothing. There was no trace of her to be found. I rubbed my face with my hands as I tried to calm myself and come to terms with it. For the first time since I could remember I was too unsettled to find my Being automatically. I had to close my eyes and conduct several breathing exercises before I felt my awareness begin to expand and take stock of everything in and around me. Filtering out distractions I tried to analyze what I had to work with. It wasn’t much.

Sam was gone. She said she was going dark, which could mean they found her, and she was now on the run. And she said that I was right. Right about what? I remembered our last conversation and it came to me like a thunderbolt. She had tricked the heads of the Cuban mafia in SW Florida into thinking that MS13 stole six and a half million dollars from them, causing a blood feud that essentially decimated the ranks of both sides. She stole the money and placed it into several offshore accounts somewhere in Grand Cayman. My last words to her were: I hope you covered your tracks well—to which she scoffed.

YOU WERE RIGHT.

FUCK!

Later that morning Jenny and Suzy came out to the kitchen with troubled expressions. Jenny was holding a pregnancy tester and revealed the big red (-) to me. I tucked away my concern for Sam to focus on them. “Does this mean we missed her window?” I asked.

Suzy shrugged her shoulders. “It should have been perfectly timed,” she replied quietly.

“Maybe we need a better fertility test,” Jenny suggested, “if we monitor your hormone levels along with your temps...”

“I have the second part of my GED test today,” Trinity piped up stepping out of the master bathroom with a towel about her waist and one wrapped around her head. She seemed completely oblivious that her naked breasts were on full display as she wandered into the kitchen and opened the large fridge to inspect its contents. When no one replied she turned back to us. “What?”

“Nice titties,” Jenny smirked grabbing them and giving each a squeeze.

Trinity jumped and swatted her hand away. “Damn woman! Warm those mitts up before you go grabbing the tatas ... What test are y’all studying for anyway?”

Suzy held up the pregnancy test.

“Oh,” the precocious teenager said awkwardly, “so that’s a no-go right there, huh?”

The older woman nodded.

“Well, you’ll just have to try again next month, right?” She selected a gallon of milk and grabbed a glass from the rack nearby. “Maybe you two should practice a bit more, just in case.” She winked at us as she replaced the jug in the fridge and took her glass to the bedroom.

Jenny sighed, “She’s right you know. Better luck next time,” she hugged her dejected mate and kissed her cheek, “c’mon let’s get showered and changed and get to work.”

Thirty minutes later Trinity revved up her green dune buggy and flew up the ravine road like her tail was on fire. Suzy asked for a tape measure and began measuring everything in the house, taking meticulous notes on a pad. Jenny took my basic deck design and began enhancing it with rounded curves and corners and adding features like large planter boxes and a sunken hot tub right off the master suite. At first, I thought she was being ostentatious, but when she showed me her concept drawings I was impressed.

I stepped away to call Kevin to see how Rachel was doing and to advise him of Sam’s final message to me.

“At this point, there is nothing we can do for her,” he surmised, “I hope she has her head on a swivel.”

“So, all we can do is wait?” I asked, “What about going down and squeezing a few of those MS13 fuckers or a Cuban crime lord?”

“How would we know where to start?” he asked.

There was that. Sam had provided me with a pretty extensive portfolio of all of the players involved but that was before she dumped a virtual tank of gas on everything and tossed a match. I sighed, “So, we wait.”

“I’m certain she will be okay,” he replied casually, “she is a genius you know.”

His words did little to ease my mind so I resorted to what I knew would distract me from all the negative possibilities that tend to flood my overactive brain. I grabbed a case of dynamite and headed for the soon-to-be tunnel entrance. I intended to blast a mine into the wall of the cliff overshadowing my clearing. The main entrance was less than 100 yards from my new home and I placed an un-modified ISO shipping container before the marked doorway. I kept the metal container back from the cliff face until I began the initial blasting. All the holes were drilled and I marked my sequences and detonator locations.

Because the holes were so close in proximity, I could set a few detonators and blow all the charges. I spent the morning carefully placing my charges and connecting the wires. By noon I was ready and I sent a text to Gil warning him of the imminent blast.

‘Copy,’ he replied.

I stepped over to the house and called Suzy and Jenny who were measuring the interior windows. They came out to watch the show.

“Fire in the Hole!” I yelled then flipped back the cover on my detonator remote, exposing a red button. I stabbed it and was instantly rewarded with a very loud explosion from next to the cliff face. Dust and debris showered the clearing and ISO container for several seconds before settling. Maybe I should’ve used a couple of blast pads to contain the fallout.

“Wow!” Jenny exclaimed, this morning she was wearing cut-off shorts and a vintage-looking Rolling Stones tour shirt. Suzy wore a floral print sun dress.

We heard a bark from further down in the valley and Travis came running up onto the clearing to see what all the fuss was about. He began sniffing excitedly around the blast area and sneezing.

I was surprised by the amount of quartz I found as I inspected the rubble. Gil told me that quartz formations were a favorable indicator of gold, so I called him and asked him to come by and check it out. While I waited, I used a shovel, pick, and wheelbarrow to gather the tailings from the cavity in the cliff face. I was impressed at how close to my original lines I was. The entryway would ultimately measure 6 feet wide and 8 feet high. So far it was just under a yard deep.

An hour later Gil was holding up a fist-sized chunk of dirty red quartz to the light. He inspected it closely and then began pointing out several spots on the surface. “This un here’s got some little spots of free gold right along the surface heh,” he said pointing to several tiny gold spots. Both of the girls leaned in close to try and see, ignoring his discomfort at their violation of his personal space. I grinned as he tried not to glance at both pairs of breasts.

“So how do you get the gold out,” Jenny asked, curiously. She picked up another piece of broken rock and began looking it over intently.

“Ya gotta break it down with a rock crusher which will reduce these big chunks into small gravel. Then you can put it in a ball or hammer mill.” He replied sagely, she nodded agreeably even though she had no idea what he was talking about.

“I think I’m gonna do some research online,” I said off-handed and I began piling all of the leavings to the side.

“You gonna wanna set up a sluice line too,” Gil replied sweeping his arm toward the nearby creek. “Plenty a water right thar. Just set up a process from a crusher to the mill and then into the sluice.”

“What’s a sluice?” Suzy asked. She was squatted down picking through the smaller pieces on the ground around them.

“It’s like a chute that washes away the dirt and rocks and leaves the gold dust behind,” Gil explained, “then you can pan out the rest.”

“I want to pan for gold!” Jenny said excitedly.

Suzy held up a golf ball-sized piece of clear quartz. “Hey, check this out,” she said squinting as she held it up to the sun, “there’s gold inside this one.” She handed it to me and I saw a nugget about the size of a pea, locked within the crystalline structure. I handed it to Gil and he whistled.

“Yup, that’s pretty!” he exclaimed, “It’s rare to find a nugget like this, which makes it even more valuable.” He handed it back to me and I set it back in Suzy’s astonished hand.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

I shrugged. “You found it, keep it.”

Gil reluctantly stayed for lunch once both girls began pleading and pulling on him. I was happy to see Suzy starting to come out of her shell a bit. They teamed up in the kitchen to make tuna sandwiches and I took Gil aside to relate to him Sam’s last message before she went dark.

“Sounds like she got herself in a pickle up there,” he said as I opened my web browser and began checking out rock crushers. “That one’ll do the job,” he pointed at a unit that was mounted on a trailer, “gas-powered too.” I saved the page for later when the girls brought us two sandwiches each and a jug of sweet tea.

“Can I use your computer to organize and itemize my notes for the inside furnishings?” Suzy asked as we ate.

I took a moment to log it off and reopen it in guest mode as Sam had instructed, to prevent anyone from finding the hidden camera feeds and perimeter alarms. I slid it over to her and continued eating.

“I’ve been working through all the runoff from around that pool,” Gil remarked as he finished his lunch, “and I got to exploring the face of that cliff.” He poured another glass of tea. “Right behind that fall, there is an impressive quartz formation that has me piqued.”

I pictured the pool and fall in my mind. It wasn’t a big fall by most standards but it was substantial enough to make standing beneath it awkward. “You think we could blast it?”

He grabbed a handful of chips and munched on them. “I dunno about that,” he shrugged, “I know it can be done, I just don’t know how. That falls into underwater demolition stuff.”

I considered his comment and frowned as I tried to imagine drilling and packing the charges in those conditions. “Maybe we could redirect the waterfall?”

He nodded, “That’s what I was thinking about too. It’s not nearly as high up as that one over yonder,” he indicated the NE ravine where the water fell over 700 feet and was substantially larger.

I helped clear off the table and then fetched my laminated map of the canyon. I unrolled it and set it on the table. Suzy took the laptop and sat on the floor next to Travis and the fireplace. Jenny washed up the dishes and then joined her.

Gil pointed to where the waterfall originated as a creek that wandered away from the Madison reservoir several miles north of my canyon. I pointed to the run-down FS road that meandered around the southwest side of the giant rift. “We could probably get there with the ATV if we followed this trail past where those fools tried to spy on us from,” I was referring to the Mafia stooges who tried to assassinate us with a hit squad a month prior. I dumped them and their truck over the ravine edge and then blasted several tons of rock to bury them forever.

The hermit nodded in agreement. “When you wanna go check it out?”

“I will walk back down there with you today and look it over from below,” I said, “then maybe tomorrow morning we can drive around and inspect it from the top.”

Suzy begged out of going with us down to Gil’s, citing all of the work she had to do deciding on the interior furnishings and decorations. She mumbled about valances and curtains, and such as she entered her measurements into the laptop. So, Jenny and I decided to leave her to it and joined Travis and Gil for a leisurely stroll across the valley and up to the hot springs, to the trail that descended to his claim site.