Chapter 30

FROM THE END OF THE LAST CHAPTER:

Dave seemed to wake up. “Baby, you’re beautiful,” he managed to croak.

Evie felt the thump, but Dave didn’t seem to be aware of it. “Come on Big Man, we need to have a talk,” she said, taking his hand and gently pulling until he belatedly figured out what she wanted and stood. Arm in arm they left with her doing the steering. He just looked down at her and walked where she directed.

“I don’t know whether those two will make it for breakfast in the morning or not,” Jeff laughed. Turning to his first wife, he quietly said, as Fred had said to him, earlier, “Well done, Darling. Well done,” leaving out the “Darling,” of course.

Fred grinned at Jeff. “Damned straight,” he said, nailing the inflection just right.

“Thanks, my love,” Diana said, sitting in her husband’s lap in the living room.

“They are super people,” Jeff said to Frank, who had returned looking a little bedraggled after making love to Margaret, but in an excellent mood. “Heck, they’re so honest, I’m surprised that they made it in the construction business. I don’t mean to slight the construction business, but ... I’ve been meaning to ask you, Frank. As much as I like them, and it’s damned obvious that I do, I’ve wondered why you gave Dave the contract for this place. He told me he usually stayed with smaller businesses, houses, even a strip mall or three, but building the convention center, particularly where it is, I would have thought that you would have gone with a bigger company...”

Frank pushed back in the recliner, his arms across his chest, the fingertips of one hand touching those of the other hand, contemplating. Finally, he said, “I almost screwed up and did,” he chuckled. “Oh, I’ve had a lot of buildings built, and I’ve fussed with more than one contractor, and even almost sued one. Sometimes, both the contractor and I have come away from the deal thinking we’ve been screwed.

“I had the road roughed in up here, although it wasn’t paved and the rails weren’t up when I put out the bids. Tingle, Margaret, the architect and I worked over the paperwork for months, I guess. Since I wanted all the extras, the place didn’t exactly fall into the usual mold, so to speak. The woodwork, heck, even the countertops and floors, not to say anything about the triple layered exterior walls, or soundproofing, the steel roof under the regular one, well ... you get the picture. When the bids started coming in, there was such a range of figures, that we began to wonder, then as we got more bids, that wonder changed into full-fledged worry.”

Frank looked over at Jeff. “Why would one contractor bid half what the next one did? Was it because he was going to cut corners that I wouldn’t be able to check? Now keep in mind, this wasn’t a government bid, sealed, supposedly, where the bid was going to the lowest bidder, all to be opened on a certain day. I was just about to shitcan the whole thing, when a young contractor came to see me. He didn’t have an appointment and I was busy as heck that day. He waited for over two hours. When he finally walked in with his pretty wife in tow, he told me that I was going to get screwed on my convention center.”

Frank chuckled and winked at Diana. “Well, since I tended to agree with him, I had some refreshments brought in, and told him to tell me how to keep from it. As best I remember the conversation, it went something like this: He looked at me, grinned, glanced at his wife, and said, ‘Simple. Just use our outfit. The next part isn’t so simple. Two years of hard work, plus a whole lot of cooperation between us and whoever you use to oversee the construction. Oh, I’ll do it all right, but there are going to have to be many, many decisions as we go along. That’s why a set price will never work, and cost overruns in the contract are a sure bet to cost you a whole lot more money.

“‘Just look at the amount of industrial quality concrete we’re going to have to use. You want the first wall layer to be poured concrete slabs – reinforced to your specifications and anchored to the foundation that is many times thicker and wider than specs. Then the second wall consists of concrete blocks with steel reinforcements (not just rebar) all the way through the holes in the concrete blocks – anchored to the foundation, then the blocks poured solid with that same industrial concrete, and the whole thing anchored to the steel roof. After that, the outside layer of decorative bricks goes over those first two walls.

“‘Cement trucks have a wide turning radius. That means a real hassle getting them up the driveway, if they will come up it at all – which I doubt. Lose the brakes, or the driver screws up, even once, and you have a dead driver. So, we’re going to have to have a portable concrete plant built on site, and pour the walls, or pour the slabs and lift them into place with a crane.

“‘I don’t have the equipment, nor do a lot of companies, to swing the steel into place for the structure. That means a big crane that won’t come up that drive. But I can subcontract all of it that I can’t do myself.’ Well, he went on and on, checking a list from time to time. When he finished, with a helpful reminder from his wife occasionally, I was depressed, because a lot of these same things were what we had been worrying over for the last weeks.

“Finally, he grinned at me, handed me a list of buildings that he had built, including several very expensive homes. He had names, addresses and phone numbers for me to contact. When I looked at the list, he just said for me to check him out. Then he told me the center was indeed going to be expensive, but he would build it to my specifications, if I would pay for everything, including salaries for his crews – everything, plus ten percent profit for his company. Well, ten percent of the price of this place,” Frank said, motioning to include the conference center around them, “was a chunk of change, as my father used to say. But at least I would be getting exactly what I wanted without giving some contractor a chance to screw over me, and half-ass things without me knowing.

“He gave me the phone number where they were staying, his cell number, and left. I had gotten Margaret and Ray in earlier in the conversation, and we sat and talked a while after Dave and Evie left. We split the numbers and called several people on the list, and with no exceptions, they were pleased. But... that wasn’t too shocking. I mean, who would give numbers for people who would give him a bad reference. Turns out, he would.

“Margaret suggested that she go and see some of these people, personally. Tingle and I were tied up, and well, Margaret liked Dave and Evie. By early that night, she was knocking on the first door of a several million dollar home that he had built a couple of years before. She spent two days in the area talking to everyone she could easily find, even the owner of one of the strip malls he had built. With one exception, everyone had been very pleased with his work, and his ethics. Most showed her through their home, or building. She said that the guy that was the exception probably couldn’t be pleased with anyone about anything.

“Over and over, she kept hearing about how Dave’s work and his materials were always what the owner expected, or better. One of the most expensive homeowners said that Dave, Evie, or one of their people inspected every piece of material that went into his house. Even some of the framing lumber was culled and sent back. Expensive doors were closely inspected, and even minor things were either brought to the owner’s attention to okay, or sent back for a better product.

“I called Dave the next morning and told him what was going on. He didn’t seem to mind, just said that was the reason he had given me the list. He told me that if this was going to take a while, he and Evie were going to do a little sightseeing while they were in the area, and I could reach them on his cell, unless they were too far out to get reception. If so to leave word at the hotel, and they would call back when they got back to the city.

“By the middle of the second day, Margaret was convinced, and I told her to come on back. We got in touch with Dave and Evie later in the day and set up a meeting for the next day. One of the company attorneys sat in on the meeting and drew up a contract that Dave took back for his lawyer to look over. Within two weeks, I was buying materials for the center. Two years later, he handed me the keys.

“I think Tingle grew a few gray hairs during those two years, and I’ll bet Dave and Evie grew more, but I got my building built the way I wanted it. And barring a direct hit by a class three tornado, nothing is going to happen to this building. And that safe room that we eat in,” he chuckled, “won’t move with far more than that.

“It was one time, at least, that honesty and integrity paid off. Then you put him in charge of building a fortress a couple of hundred feet underground – well, I guess you could say, under rock, in this case,” he finished, chuckling.

Jeff grinned and looked at Diana, then turned to Frank, “Maybe you should tell Tingle that you’re going to send him up here to be in charge of building the fortress. That should be good for a laugh.”

“Yeah, it would,” Wainwright said, his voice changing, “but it might backfire on me. He could always quit. And I know damn well he would consider it. So maybe I won’t tease him about the fortress.”

Jeff laughed, then sat for a few moments, thinking. “Are you still considering building another convention center/retreat in a more accessible place, like you mentioned before?”

Frank thought for a moment. When Margaret came in and sat in his lap, he took time out to kiss her, then said, “I can’t make up my mind. This place was just what I wanted, but the winters scared me for my people. I didn’t want to think about one of them being hurt or dying getting from Boulder to here in some of the conditions I talked to you about. Then when we had the near misses, we quit having our meeting here in the winter, but Margaret and I still spent some time here.”

Margaret turned and looked at Frank for a moment, then turned back to Jeff and Diana. “I know that you two have invited us to come more often, and we think you were serious. But the truth is that we miss this place, and would really like to come for the weekend occasionally.”

“I’ve already told you that you’re welcome, anytime,” Jeff said.

“We know you did, but well ... we still feel like we’re imposing, but we’ve absolutely loved being here, and even though we still have the better part of a week, we’re already starting to dread going home...”

“Frank,” Jeff broke in, “my wives and I have already talked about this, and although you got off to a bad start with some of them, I’ve known you much longer. Just bring some clothes, set up in one of the apartments...”

“No, no. That isn’t necessary, especially if we continue to eat with you. We want to be at the retreat, but we want to be with you people just as much. A suite would be fine. We really miss this place, and until we wear out our welcome, if you really mean that, expect us often.”

Jeff laughed. “You just fronted me twenty million for the fortress, and my lawyer said you were nuts, or a damn good friend to sign a contract like that. And despite pissing off my wives, you did it because you were worried about me. Even they know that, and have ‘forgiven’ you,” he laughed, as Diana sniggered. “And besides, you have built a lot more things than I have. I would be a fool to run you off.”

Margaret got up and kissed Jeff on the cheek. “We’ll just leave everything we brought with us, and bought while we were here. We’ll add to it when we come next time. Thanks, Jeff, and thank you, Diana. We’re going to love coming up here again. We’ve really missed it.”

“We’ll be expecting you two to be regulars around here.”

A little later, Margaret was sitting in the bedroom talking with Jeff’s wives. “I heard what you said when Arlene asked if Jeff really believed that something was going to happen. If it isn’t personal, you got my curiosity up, could... ?”

The wives were all sitting around, either in some of the seating, or relaxing on the bed. Margaret was seated in a chair near the bed, and Diana was sitting against a pillow propped at the head of the bed. There was a moment of silence as Diana seemed to think. She glanced at Arlene for a second, who shrugged. “Arlene, Jeff and I had been to the mall shopping,” Diana quietly said. “We picked up a couple of things, then stopped by for a bite to eat. About two o’clock, we hit the interstate on the way home. I was driving when Jeff suddenly, almost yelled, for me to take the exit. I just barely managed to get on the exit ramp.

“Well, to be truthful, he pissed me off. I mean all of a sudden he just yells to get off the interstate. As soon as we got to the bottom of the ramp, he told me to pull over. We had a good view of the interstate when we stopped because it turned slightly to the right and was going uphill. He told us to look at the interstate, and just as I realized that there was a car going fairly slow in the right lane, an eighteen-wheeler rammed the back of the car going about eighty, I guess.

“The eighteen-wheeler slammed hard into the car and they both went onto the shoulder. The car seemed to disintegrate. The eighteen-wheeler just went on over the car, pieces flying everywhere. The car, what was left of it, wound up all the way to the back wheels of the trailer and was still dragged several hundred feet. The two people in the car were killed, I suppose, almost instantly. Traffic was heavy. If I had stayed on the road, we would have been behind that car. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that we would have been the car that truck hit. None.

“Jeff was white as a sheet, as we all were, I guess. But I’ve never seen him like that. He just kept saying, “‘I almost didn’t tell you to get off. I almost didn’t tell you to get off.’ He was shaken. I’ve never seen Jeff like that.

“There have been other times,” she said, looking at her daughter, who nodded again. “But the others weren’t so dramatic. But, well, if Jeff ever tells us something is going to happen, we tend to take it as gospel. If he didn’t believe that something bad was going to happen, he would have answered this morning.

“This whole thing is scaring me more and more all the time.” She stopped, took out a cigarette and lit it. No production, like she usually did, not trying to look sexy, took a pull on it, then almost immediately put it out in the ashtray. They all saw the sparkle of unshed tears in her eyes.

Laura, sitting next to her, pulled Diana over to her, hugging her. “We’ll make it, Di. Jeff will take care of us, and we’ll damn sure give him all the help we can. We’ll make it.”

“The really frustrating part for Jeff, I think,” Laura said taking up where Diana left off, “is that his – talent – if you want to call it that, isn’t consistent. He didn’t expect the bear attack, and he’s said that there were other times when serious things happened, and he didn’t anticipate it. I think he was talking about times with the military, but I’m not sure. But what is consistent, is when he starts to worry that something bad is going to happen – it will.”

Laura let Diana go, and she leaned back against the pillow and wiped tears from her eyes. Glancing back at Margaret for a moment, she started to speak, but her voice broke. She cleared her throat and continued, “Jeff is almost obsessed with teaching us to shoot. And not just to shoot, but he’s talking about combat shooting. Combat with my daughter and my sister-wives involved. I can’t even think coherently about that. It scares me to death.”

Her voice quieted, taking a new tone. “I wake at night and realize that his breathing has changed and he’s awake. He just lies there, unmoving. I know he’s thinking, and I know that he’s worrying. He knows that something is coming, but he doesn’t know exactly what. But he does know that it involves an attack.”

Sitting up straighter, her voice stronger, Diana continued, “Jeff wants us to start on emergency drills. He, Frank and Laura,” she said, nodding to her sister-wife, “have been working with the programming of the security system. Jeff already has an outline for a drill, and we’re all adding to it. We’ll soon be practicing daily.”

Margaret felt chills go down her back. Looking around the room, she realized that all of Jeff’s wives believed this without question. They were all dead serious, and they were all intelligent people – very intelligent. If they believed this so strongly – well, the chills down her back said it all. She and Frank were going to have a long conversation. Maybe there was something they could do to help.

TUESDAY MORNING EARLY

Shortly after midnight, Tuesday morning, Jeff slowly turned the doorknob to Fred’s suite. Walking quietly through the sitting room, he placed his hand on the doorknob of the bedroom. He was snoring last night when I came in; I sure hope he’s deeply asleep tonight as well. I don’t know whether he sleeps with that Sig or not, but he was a cop for thirty years. Ten to one, he still does.

Feeling uncomfortable sneaking into anyone’s bedroom, no matter the reason, and for some reason, more tense tonight than he had been last night, he slowly turned the knob. As he gently pushed the door open enough for him to walk through without brushing up against it, he paused again to listen to Fred’s breathing. He heard long, deep breaths, as he held the Healer and crept the remaining distance to the side of the bed. Holding the Healer out, he froze as Fred said, “What in the fuck are you doing, Jeff?”

“Ah, shit,” Jeff returned before he could catch himself. “Dammit Fred, you’re supposed to be asleep,” he said, indignantly.

“Well, I was, until you’ve sneaked into my bedroom two fucking nights in a row,” Fred answered, fighting not to laugh.

“Ah, shit,” Jeff said, this time quietly.

“And, what’s that you have in your hands?”

Jeff hastily held the Healer behind himself. Crap, he’s fifty-something years old, and he knew I was here last night as well. Now what do I do? The others, more or less, had to know about the Healer. That won’t fly with Fred. I’m surprised he can see enough to tell I have something in front of me. I’ve already stolen one of the night-lights.

“Fred, do you trust me?”

“Well, that’s a dumbass question. I haven’t got my gun in my hand.”

“I need for you to just close your eyes...”

Fred sighed, and said, “I thought Brenda and I had stayed in a couple of very nice hotels. They had plenty of amenities, but they were about skid row compared to this place. Now, I’ve seen bathroom scales before in a hotel, but even your scales are nicer, so I stepped on them the first night, as I did last night. Funny, when I weighed this afternoon, I had lost ten pounds in two days. That little trot up the road and back didn’t do that much, even though it should have about killed me. But I felt fine afterwards. Why don’t you just tell me... ?”

“I can’t, Fred. I really can’t.”

“So you want me to close my eyes?”

“Yeah.”

“Done.”

It didn’t even cross Jeff’s mind that his friend would lie and open his eyes, and he didn’t. Jeff eased the sheet up and placed the Healer on Fred’s chest. The blue light came on before the Healer even touched. Fred slept.

Jeff sat down leaning against the wall to catnap until the Healer called him. This is getting old, he thought as he closed his eyes.

At five, everyone was gathered in the kitchen cutting up about their “slave driver.”

“Man, I feel good this morning,” Fred said, grinning at Jeff.

There were sniggers and chuckles around the room, but Fred acted like he hadn’t heard.

After their stretches, they jogged down the drive in a crisp morning. The women, having checked the outside temperature, wore light jackets, but shed them a few hundred yards after they turned onto the county road, tying them around their waists. Frank hung back with Fred, and it seemed they were having a good time joking with each other about which one was more out of shape. Neither seemed unduly stressed with the distance, so Jeff added a few hundred yards before they turned around, but he kept to the walk/jog combination.

As before, he had left the Escalade at the bottom of the drive when he had started on his morning run, so with Diana driving, and the men providing their laps, they stuffed themselves into the SUV and rode to the house.

When they got back, Evie was just starting breakfast. Laura shooed the men away and the women dropped into production line mode.

Later as they were finishing breakfast, Laura asked, “So what are we going to do on the range today?”

“I thought we would continue working on the courses, alternating speeding up and slow-firing them. Then, of course, intersperse basic training between the courses. After lunch, we’ll do some slow-fire on a plate rack or two.”

“Oh, heck,” Jennie said. “I have a hard enough time shooting the courses with a passing score. I think those plates are beyond where I am right now.”

Melissa agreed with her. “Me, too.”

Jeff just smiled at them. “If I don’t keep pushing, you’ll never reach your full potential. Isn’t that right, Teach?”

“I’m not getting involved in this, since I don’t have to push them at all for their schoolwork. But you do realize that the girls have done a lot of school work after the range.”

“Yeah, I know, and I’ve told them how much I appreciate it. It’s just that...”

“We know, Jeff. I wasn’t complaining. And the range work is pushing me as well. I don’t think I shoot any better than they do. But if you think we need to be pushed, we’ll do whatever you say.”

Jeff sighed. “I’m not trying to be mean to any of you. But when you teach someone to shoot, you have to keep raising your expectations. Every little bit goes together to make a greater whole. A few days ago, you would have been appalled if I tried to run you through the courses we shot yesterday. Yet now, you don’t think much about it; you just want to shoot a higher score next time. Of course, I’m excluding Diana in this.”

Ann laughed, “She did throw one flyer yesterday. She must have hiccupped or something. It went into the eight ring. Of course, it was still a hundred,” she finished, winking a Diana.

Diana got up and began stacking dishes in preparation for carrying them to the sink to be rinsed off, but she stopped, looking around the table. “Jeff says he’s pushing us. He hasn’t pushed us. Oh, maybe a little. But I couldn’t shoot the way I do now to start with. During that ‘week’ of training, I was yelled at more than I have been in all my life. It seemed like every time my concentration slipped a little bit, one of the instructors leaned over my shoulder and screamed in my ear. To hear them talk, I would never learn to shoot. They had me so pissed that all I could think of was, ‘I’ll show you, you son... ‘ well you get the picture. But you know something? My scores did improve. They knew they were pissing me off, and they knew I couldn’t say anything. They would have thrown me off the range. So, I got better. Then the rangemaster just smiled at me, patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘I knew you could do it,’ and left me alone.

“What we’re doing isn’t just sport. It’s serious. And I’ll back what Jeff has already told you. Everyone here has come a long way. But you’re capable of more, just as am I. I don’t know much more about finding it than you do, but I know we can’t keep doing the same thing at the same speed. I’ve only shot plates a time or two, and even then just a few rounds. They bother me, too, because I know that it won’t be long until we’re competing. You two, Jennie and Melissa, started from probably never holding a gun in your hands to what you can do today.

“I’ve had a lot of training – well, comparatively speaking. Arlene has had some, with Laura and Ann having less than Arlene, and Helen has shot a handgun little, if any. If you’ll look at the scores, they pretty much fall in line by the amount of training we’ve had. But a year from now, that few hours that one has over the other will be a lot less of the overall hours. I might not be top scorer when we’ve all fired that much.”

“Yeah, sure,” someone said.

“If we blindfold you,” Melissa said.

“Seriously my sister-wives, I guess I could shoot the courses a little faster, but you don’t even want to see Jeff shoot them. Of course, come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea,” she said looking over at her husband, who shook his head. “One afternoon just before the course ended, I came back a few minutes after all the rookies had left; I had left my cigarettes, and I didn’t want to stop and get more. As I walked up on the range, two of the instructors were shooting the same course we had been working on that day.

“I just stood there stunned. I had never seen anyone shoot like that. It humbled me. I had seen Jeff quick draw, and shoot plates, and shoot in contests, but I had never seen him shoot a simple course. He finally did for me. Of course, he can make those instructors look like it was their first time on the range, but he won’t. But we’ve all seem him shoot the tree once with Fred, and saw him draw and fire at one plate, over and over. He did shoot a few rounds from the twenty-five, and you could hardly count the rounds, he was shooting so fast. He’s teaching us to survive. But we’re his wives, so he won’t get on our case like the instructors did me. But if he won’t and I think you need it. I will. We have to push ourselves, or otherwise, someone will have to.”

There was dead silence at the table. Diana’s face was red as she turned with the stack of dishes and went to the sink. All the women got up to help with cleanup. As Jeff glanced in Diana’s direction, Jennie and Melissa were hugging her.

“She’s right,” Fred said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “A good handgun shooter develops fairly easy. To get better than that, you’ve got to work at it. A lot. And you can never be satisfied. Even if you shoot a perfect score, you can always tighten the group or shoot a little faster.” He refilled his cup from the pot on the table, then grinning at Jeff, walked out of the kitchen to wait in the living room.

As Evie and Dave stood up to get their day started, Evie looked at Jeff. “One of these days, you’re going to teach me to shoot.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” he said, grinning at her.

A little later, Dave had left for Denver, Evie was in the basement with the crew bosses, and Frank, Fred and Jeff had adjourned to the living room for a last cup of coffee. The women had finished cleanup, and Margaret left to get her gear.

Diana got the attention of her sister-wives. “I’m sorry I got a little abrupt a while ago. It’s just like I talked about in the bedroom. If he ever gets intense like that and says something is going to happen – it will. When he gets one of his feelings, it scares the crap out of me.

“He loves us so much that he won’t push any of us, at least not much. We have got to push ourselves – really push ourselves. I’ve only seen Jeff mad a few times in our whole marriage, even then, it wasn’t at us. But it was awesome. I don’t want him to get frustrated and get mad at any of you. I had rather have you mad at me than for you to be mad at him. So let’s stop with the ‘I can’t,’ and focus. All of you have come further than most could in the time we’ve had on the range, but I know you. You’re not the average bears, remember. It’s time we all stopped with the negative comments, and showed our husband what we can do. From now on, I’m going to shoot the dead level best I can on that range. If it hurts your feelings, tough – get better and outshoot me.

“And tonight, he gets some special loving. If he’s going to carry our load of worry, then we’re going to help him every way we can. On the range, in your classwork, in our bedroom.”

Later as the men strapped cases of ammunition onto the ATV, Jennie grabbed a box of targets, Melissa got the box with the staple guns and they were headed for the range on another ATV before the men. There was still kidding, but Jeff noticed a look on his wives faces that he wasn’t quite sure what it meant. But within the next few minutes, every one of them had kissed him.

As he pulled up on the range to set the ammunition off on one of the large tables in the “range house” behind the fifty, some of the women were already getting barricades, others were stapling targets up, while others were bringing out the mats. Frank and Fred pitched in. The women had always helped, but most of the time they had waited for him to tell them what to do.

By the time he had the ammunition unloaded, Helen was opening the cases and putting four boxes in each shooting tray, along with glasses and ear protection.