Gatekeeper's Secret
Copyright© 2026 by Fick Suck
Chapter 42
“Why does your phone keep dinging all those dings?” Christina asked. “It’s annoying.”
“I installed another new camera with a motion detector,” Grady said. “Everyone is arriving for the party. I told them I’m locking the gate at 12:15 with no exceptions. This app is cool though; usually I only get dings a few times a day. With each ding, I get a pic of each vehicle. Wanna see?”
Christina scoffed, as she grabbed a large bowl of potato salad to carry outside. “Boys and their inane toys.”
Grady watched the line of vehicles roll past the camera to the gate. The camera was good enough that he could see faces behind the windshield. Each truck and car passing made him grin wider and wider.
“Back to the fires, you lazy cur,” Linh yelled at him from the back. “The guests are arriving, and you promised to feed them.” He took his orders and for the next hour he greeted people and offered small tasks that involved meat, fire, and serving to willing guests.
Grady dropped the turkey and the sausages on an old wood slab door that someone had sanded and then sealed decades ago. Taking up the cleaver to hack the deliciousness into serving slices, Grady was hailed by Mr. Luke and his wife. Mr. Luke offered him a beer in exchange for a chance to wield the cleaver. Grady handed him the cleaver but declined the beer. He had too many hunks of flesh cooking to track. “As long as you can leave with all your fingers attached and limbs unscathed, you’re welcome to membership in the Brotherhood of the Blade,” Grady said as he laid the cleaver down. “I’d shake your hand ma’am, but my hands are full of grease.”
She pushed his arms aside and gave him a hug, thanking him for inviting them out to the ranch. She explained that in all the years they had known Jedidiah and Henrietta, they had never been out to visit. “I wasn’t even sure the ranch really existed.”
The hamburger duty was handed off to Randy, who acted a bit uncomfortable with all the adults ranging around the barn area. Grady, meaning Linh and company, had invited the law firm and the accounting firm leads and their families. He was not even sure that Mr. Comfrey owned a pair a jeans because he always seemed to be wearing a different suit when Grady was in the offices.
Randy waved his spatula high, and Grady sprinted over. “I need aluminum foil for this mess,” Randy said. Grady offered to run to the kitchen to find another roll. When he glanced over at the turkey, Mrs. Luke or “Becky” was swinging the blade higher than Grady ever did.
As Grady was poking about the pantry, looking for the foil, his phone dinged and then dinged twice more. “The gate’s been locked for over an hour,” he thought to himself. He brought up the app and stared at two white unmarked vans with a black pickup truck coming behind them. As he stared, the original chime on the front gate sounded.
Something was not right.
He charged out of the pantry, yelling for Claire at the top of his lungs. She poked her head out of the office, “Sir, I’m adding up the bills handed in this morning for your barbecue, party, gathering, festivity, bash. Do you need me?”
“Get that piece under your bed. Something ain’t right at the front gate,” he shouted down the hallway. Grady ran to the gun safe and pulled his shotgun and extra shells. Claire met him at the front door with a device that looked like a ball with a pipe emerging from it at one point. Grady did not see a trigger or any sort of port, only a dull almost metallic finish like the fake trinkets from gumball machines.
They jumped into the cab of his truck, and he hauled butt halfway down the drive. He stopped. At the bottom, he caught sight of two men wrapping chains around his gates and attaching them to a winch on the front of one of the vans. Grady counted eight men were milling about and an unknown number in the truck that was hanging back at the road.
“Shoot ‘em” Grady declared.
Claire rested her weapon on the crook of the open door and the frame. She leaned in and a whine filled the air. Grady felt a puff of pressure and six of the eight men went rigid, and then collapsed where they stood. The other two were shaking their heads like they were dizzy and faint. “Keep an eye on the two standing,” Grady said as he walked down the drive towards the gate.
Grady raised his shotgun and fired once. The windshield of the pickup truck was struck with birdshot. While the glass did not shatter, the pockmarks and cracks across the field of vision made the truck hard to drive and easy to spot. He waited, hoping that the fool behind the wheel would give him another reason to shoot.
“Grady,” he heard a male voice call out. “Get down, you moron! Don’t make yourself a target.”
He went down on one knee. The pickup truck driver threw the vehicle in gear and backed up rapidly, only to go off the other side of the road, which had a good-sized drop. The scraping of the metal under-frame on the asphalt was loud. The driver then threw the truck into drive and lurched forward. The two rear tires did not clear, and the front tires smoked. When the driver finally released the gas pedal, the truck slid back into the ditch.
Darla’s father came to where Grady crouched with one of Grady’s largest rifles. Mr. Jenkins raised the rifle and fired one shot. The radiator began to spew hot water across the macadam. As the water struck the surface, steam began rising. “Keep an eye on those two who are still moving,” Mr. Jenkins told Grady. “The sheriff will be here in a bit.”
As they waited, the two men below finally succumbed to gravity and slid to the ground. Mr. Jenkins kept the rifle pointed at the truck that was no longer road worthy. The radiator had emptied. “So, Grady, how long have you been collecting probably illegal and experimental-type weaponry?” Mr. Jenkins asked.
“Not me,” Grady said, looking straight ahead. “Claire collects all sorts of things, and she is extremely knowledgeable. Her collecting is one of the important reasons I hired her. Did she go back to the house?”
“Yeah, I sent her back and told her to put that beast back where she found it. She complained that she only got to fire it once.”
Mr. Luke joined them, and he had a Beretta that Grady did not recognize. “Yours?” Grady asked.
“Of course,” Mr. Luke said, giving the entire scene a good looksee. “Since there are three of us, why don’t two of us go down and remove the weapons from those idiots who aren’t moving. I only heard two shots; how did you get them?”
“Claire,” the other two said simultaneously. Mr. Luke shrugged.