“Strange,” she said again. “This is where he should be.” She turned in a full circle, her embarrassment increasing with every moment that Nate didn’t appear.
Chapter Nine
Nate really disliked the sound of the voice on the other end of the line. He’d known the unknown number calling him would be Oscar, and he’d quickly left the chickens to peck at their feed. He probably had twenty minutes before someone would notice he wasn’t with the horses, and even then, he could simply say he’d taken a walk.
He was allowed to walk.
“…so I’ll just need to know where you want my guy to come,” Oscar finished. Of course, he wouldn’t come to deal with Nate. He had underlings to help with that. Nate frowned at the far fence line, though the morning sunshine should’ve lifted his spirits.
“I can’t get you what you want in one delivery,” Nate said. “I’m sure you know I’m on parole, and in a re-entry program.”
“That is what I was told,” Oscar said, his voice never hitching. Nate never could tell how he was feeling, not even when they’d met in person. No matter what, though, Oscar wanted his money. And if he couldn’t get his money, he wasn’t happy. That was all Nate really needed to know.
“So I have to get a ride to town,” he said. “I’m never left alone.” He looked over his shoulder. He was alone right now, but Oscar surely wouldn’t know that.
“Yeah, the pretty redhead waits downstairs for you,” Oscar said, and Nate’s blood turned cold.
“That’s right,” he said, playing some of that coolness into his voice. “And she’d notice if I left the bank with a huge bag of cash.” He looked back out at the waving fields beyond the chicken pens. A semblance of peace existed here, and Nate didn’t want to crack it. He wouldn’t put Connor in jeopardy, nor anyone else on this ranch.
Things were different when it was just his neck on the line. Just his bet going to the bookie. Just a few thousand dollars.
But Oscar had accelerated things from simple horse betting and sports to investments, and Nate owed him a lot more than a few thousand dollars. He’d been ready to pay too, but then the indictments had come, and if Oscar wanted his money, he’d have to wait.
Which he’d been doing for almost five years.
“So I’ll send a guy to talk to the banker.”
“You will not,” Nate said. “I have my brother’s son now, and I have to live here. The money is there, Oscar. I know you’ve seen the account.” He probably hadn’t let a day go by of Nate’s sentence where he didn’t check that bank account.
When Nate got time on the computer, he used a few minutes of it to check the account himself. Still there, week after week. Still accumulating interest. Still bigger than Nate thought possible.
Now, with Ward’s money too, Nate wouldn’t need to work once he completed his six months at Hope Eternal Ranch. He would, though, because he’d had plenty of idle time in prison, and he didn’t like it. Not one little bit.
Oscar exhaled in a rare showing of his irritation. “Fine. When can I get the first installment?”
“I have it here at the ranch,” Nate said. “But you absolutely cannot come here.” His brain whirred through the week’s upcoming activities. “I can probably get to town on Friday or Saturday.”
He’d asked Ginger to eat dinner with him, and they had several times. Always with her friends and Spencer and Nick. Never alone. Maybe this weekend, he could achieve two things at once—dinner with Ginger alone, and a drop for Oscar.
“They have lockers at the mall,” Nate said. “I can put the bag in one of them, pay for it, and get your guy the code to open it.”
“Okay,” Oscar said. “Friday or Saturday.”
“I’ll have to see how it goes,” he said. “I don’t exactly make my own schedule like I used to.”
Oscar chuckled, which grated against Nate’s nerves. “Don’t call,” he said, still laughing. “Text, and delete.”
Nate was familiar with the T&D method Oscar preferred, and he couldn’t help feeling a little slimy as the call ended. A sigh passed through his whole body then, because he just wanted to be done with everything from his previous life.
“As soon as you pay him back, you will be,” he muttered to himself.
His phone rang again, and Nate recognized a number he was well-versed with. He’d sat at the phone where this call originated from, and he quickly swiped on the call from River Bay. “Ted?”
“How’d you know it’d be me?” Ted asked, a smile in his voice.
“Maybe because you’re the only person I gave this number to,” Nate said, smiling on back. No one had told him he’d miss his friends inside the prison. He’d thought he’d want to walk away from those fifteen hundred days without any baggage too. He’d been wrong, and he missed his boys that were still inside.
“How’s the ranch?” Ted asked.
“You know what? It’s pretty great.” Nate glanced around at the barn to his left, the vast stables about a hundred yards behind him to the right, the gently waving grasses and further out, stalks of corn.
“Not too many mosquitoes?”
“A few,” he said. “It is by the water.” He’d taken Connor out to a pond in the middle of the ranch, where Spencer had told them to go to catch a few small fish. They hadn’t caught anything though, and Nick said they had to take bacon to get the crawdads to come up. Nate was planning on doing that with Connor in the near future. “So you get fifteen minutes,” he added. “And I know you didn’t call to chat about the ranch.”
To an inmate, their outbound calls were precious. With only three each week, and only fifteen minutes long, every call had to be really important. The prison monitored every call, except those to lawyers, but Nate wasn’t worried about something Ted would say. They’d banded together inside River Bay for a reason, and that was so they’d be able to watch each other’s backs.
“Right,” Ted said, another chuckle coming from his mouth. “Down to twelve minutes. I wanted to ask about the RRC program.”
Surprise darted through Nate. “Oh.” He’d never given it much thought, because he hadn’t dreamed Ward would die or that he’d altered his will. Nate had asked his lawyer to find out where Ward’s ex-wife was, but he hadn’t heard anything yet. “What about it?”
“Do you like it?”
“It has some advantages,” Nate said. “For sure. For one, I have a place to live. A job. A way to earn money. Someone to help me with all the things it takes to live.”
“Bank account, utilities, stuff like that,” Ted said.
“Yeah, all of that,” Nate said. “But I can’t leave the ranch. I can’t go to town myself. I’m driven everywhere.” He didn’t want to dwell on the negative. “It’s nice having my daily interview with Ginger, though. We’re to weeklies now, and I haven’t heard from my parole officer yet. So that’s nice too. She’s nice, and she’s actually pretty easy to work with.” He’d never truly met with a parole officer, so he couldn’t say if he’d like it or not, but he knew it wouldn’t be as casual or as enjoyable as chatting with Ginger about what help he needed and what he was doing fine with.