Gatekeeper's Secret
Copyright© 2026 by Fick Suck
Chapter 33
“Who left their undies in the dryer?” Grady called out. “I don’t want to be that creep caught pawing women’s panties.” He was pawing through them anyway, fascinated by the different brands and fashion.
“Pervert,” Christina called out. “Why are you still wearing Batman underwear?”
“Because all my Spiderman underwear is too small,” Grady yelled. “These say Kirkland on the label. I see that one of you is trying to kill your sex drive.”
“Enough,” Jessica shouted. “I can’t hear myself think. Christina, go pull the clean laundry from the dryer. You’re both adults and still, the child remains.”
“Sorry to get on your nerves,” Grady said as walked into his kitchen. The ranch was feeling a little cramped for space for a Saturday morning. His friends were coming, making his excitement palpable, but the annoyances were magnified. “You look like a cat on caffeine, Jessica.”
She gave him another look he could not decipher. “Ex in the wind and big, big money decision in front of me.”
“Horse trading will do that to a person,” Grady said. “Honest horse trading is an oxymoron, so I am told.”
“If you didn’t make sense, I would be scolding you to step into the new century and embrace it,” Jessica said. “The deal is real, but the cost is more than I expected. If Burak hadn’t agreed to handle the travel logistics, I would have passed on it already.”
“Fancy horses?” Grady asked, as he searched through the freezer for frozen waffles. Nada.
“Rare and being brought back from the brink, but the opposite of fancy,” Jessica said. “Cavallo Romano della Maremma Laziale, the original war horses of the Roman Empire. There are now eight hundred of them, and the owners are interested in another breeding site that suits the horses’ temperament and needs, like this ranch.”
“I’m not volunteering to go on the warpath against the Ute Nation,” Grady said. “They’re my friends.”
“When you can handle a cavalry charge, we’ll talk,” Jessica said.
“Makes more sense than more American Quarter Horses,” Grady said, contemplating a box of Shredded Wheat™. “Who eats this stuff?”
“People who want to watch their waist, hips, and butt,” Christina said, walking into the kitchen with a basket of unfolded clothes. “Let’s buy some war horses. We can terrorize the peasants and raze their village to ashes. I mean, it would be a fun afternoon.”
“Where’s Claire?” Grady asked.
Christina snorted, “In your office with the door closed. She acts like the most deprived child in the world, as if she has nothing in this world but the clothes on her back. She’s weird.”
“I’ll ask her about that,” Grady said. “In the meantime, Darla and Randy are due in a half hour or so. Linh is coming later this morning.”
“Why?” Christina asked. “Ow, Mom, stop hitting me.”
Grady rolled four slices of deli ham with four slices of provolone, weaving them in an alternating pattern of meat and cheese. He shoved a pickle slice in the middle for crunch before chowing down. He forgot about the pickle juice until it ran down his wrist and wetted his shirt cuff. Both sensations were annoying.
He returned to the hallway, knocking on the office door before opening it. “You okay?”
“The challenge is immense and the more I examine, the larger the task becomes,” Claire said. “I need more clothes, especially with the filth we are encountering. I will need help ordering items online because these retail systems are unintelligent, stupid, duncical, boobish, and asinine.”
“I’ll help you with the ordering later,” Grady said. “We may need help going to town and purchasing certain items directly from the stores. I don’t really know women’s clothing. Putting that issue aside, I have three friends coming this morning. Do you want to meet them?”
“Yes, engagement and cultural immersion are two of my secondary priorities,” Claire said. “Adding a new world to the almanac is a significant, unique achievement; lucrative, too. The more details and precision, the more lucre.”
“Jedidiah would have loved to make your acquaintance,” Grady said. “Everybody appreciates a little lucre in their life.” He changed out of his sweatpants for a clean pair of jeans. Dressed for the day, he returned to the kitchen to use a chair to put on his boots. He was hoping his friends wanted to shoot up a carton of innocent cans. He opened the gun safe, deciding which gun he wanted to start with when the chime on his phone went off.
“A few minutes early,” he said, staring at the start screen without opening it. He was ready to run down there to let them in when on a whim he thought to check out the camera. “O shit,” he exclaimed, before grabbing Jedidiah’s shotgun he used to use to chase away predators.
“Jessica, there’s an idiot with a jeep at the gate trying to jimmy the lock. Call the Sheriff. Idiot, he tried to shoot the lock with a gun, like that’s going to work.”
He texted Randy, <Jessica’s ex is at the front gate with a gun. Get out of harm’s way.>
Grady looked at the camera feed. “He’s back in the car and he’s backing up. Oh, I think he’s going to try and ram the gate. Jessica, get everybody and take them back beyond the bunkhouse into the scrub, just in case. I’m going varmint hunting.”
Claire joined him at his phone. “Why is this man acting so violent. Oo! That must hurt.”
“Yeah, when you try to run your truck through a steel gate with pylons sunk eight feet in the ground, it usually hurts. I’m surprised his airbags didn’t deploy.”
“Sir, another vehicle approaches.”
“That’s Randy in my old truck,” Grady said. “What is he doing? Damn fool, he’s speeding up while the jeep is backing up.”
They heard the crash inside the house. Grady shoved the mobile in his pocket and jogged out the front door. By the time he got to the gate, it was clear that the immediate crisis was over. The front of the jeep was a crunchy mess pressed into the gate, the windshield and the back window were partly shattered but still holding, and the airbag had deployed.
Grady carefully approached and climbed over the gate. Randy had already backed away and pulled back a hundred feet. He waved and called out the window, “Do you need me to hit him again?”
Keeping the shotgun aimed at the driver’s seat, Grady made a slow inspection of the jeep. The entire frame was off kilter and the roof was bent inward. He tried the back door on the left and it did not move. “The doors are jammed shut,” he shouted. “He’s not going anywhere until they get the Jaws of Life to pull his sorry ass out.”
He called the Sheriff’s office and explained that they needed the fire department to extract the idiot out of the car. Randy and Darla pulled up in the meantime. He handed off his shotgun to Darla and asked her to put it away and retrieve the women from the scrub in back. Grady looked at the grill of his old truck and sighed. “I was hoping to keep the plow on the front permanently and use it until the transmission failed.”
Twenty-five minutes later, a Sheriff’s car came screaming up the road.
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