Page 21 of Rescued By the Operative

“You just be careful with that stuff, you hear me?” Vern says.

I wink at him. “I always am.”

Slowly, I drive away from the feed store and make my way downtown, stopping for some muffins and coffee at the bakery.

Mariam, the owner, is talking to her husband, Jesse, who’s leaning over the counter. The room is pretty much dead while the married couple gives each other moony eyes.

They pull away from each other, but only a few inches, when I walk in the door.

“Hey, Jake,” says Jesse, tipping up the brim of his tan hat. Behind him, his wife smiles at me, her cheeks pink.

“What can I do for you?” Mariam asks.

“I’ll take some of those muffins, if you have any left.”

“Morning glories? I sure do.” She cheerfully goes to the glass case and extracts half a dozen, but only charges me for two.

“Take ’em. They’re fresh. They don’t taste as good on day two.”

“I can’t eat all these.”

She gives me a knowing look. “Then I suppose you might share these with the ranch hands. Or anybody else you might see today.”

She means the runaways from the cult.

It’s like we all have to speak in code nowadays, because we don’t know who is listening and who is snitching. Not only that, but sometimes a single mention of the cult gets some locals whipped up into a frenzy on the spot, and no one wants any of our good citizens to go viral.

I give her a nod.

“Hold on right there,” she says and goes to the back room. She comes back with three boxes crammed with day-old cookies, pies, and protein bites. “I was going to drive these to the shelter in Helena, but if you don’t mind…”

“I’ll get with Olivia and Wylie and have them deliver these. Thank you so much,” I say.

She lets out a heavy sigh, reaches across the counter, and grips my hand. “We’re all so tired of the way they’re trying to take over the town and change our whole way of life. Please let Jesse and me know if there’s anything we can do.”

I tip my hat to her before I leave.

Outside, I find Jesse ripping off a sign that’s been taped to the bakery’s window. He quickly crushes it in his big hands before I can see it, but my eyes catch on the headline: Wanted: The Wylie Gang.

He shoves the paper into a trash bin on the sidewalk. “I don’t like people littering. Especially with propaganda.”

“Me neither,’ I say.”

Jesse points his chin at the bed of my truck. “Fertilizing for you and about…three other properties, I see. Mighty neighborly of you.”

“Well, you know.”

I slip behind the wheel, and Jesse approaches. I roll the window down and he says, “Be careful.”

“Always.”

The older man’s eyes tell me he wants to say more. He has questions that he knows he can’t ask.

“Let me know if you need any help,” he says. “With the ranch.”

No way in hell am I letting this man with a wife and children help me with this particular task.

This part of the mission is mine and Ennis’s alone. If this goes awry, no women will mourn us.