Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
The military is all compartmentalized. It’s all need to know. There is a chain of command and if you’re not on the chain, you don’t get to know. So I do believe that Jim Bob is telling the truth about this. But it’s really bad sign. I know better than most that there’s a lot of corruption in the military. Congressional hearings, Exhibit A. So whatever is going on up there, that’s how it’s gonna end. Eventually. One year, or five years, or fifteen years from now someone will blow the whistle and that’s how Blackberry Hill will end.
Or… maybe not. Maybe it’s so much more than illegal private armies and experimental biological treatment and it was made to last forever. Either way, doesn’t matter. I might not know any details but I got a secret this morning. And people, like this Ike Monroe guy, are pretty upset about that.
“OK,” I say, pulling myself together. “How the hell does Lowyn fit into all this?”
“She’s the only one knows how to get up there besides me. She’s the only one of us who’s ever been inside. I’m too damn old to walk two miles up a fuckin’ mountain these days. So I sent her up to smooth things over with Ike because you found his fuckin’ boneyard, Collin. I had to send her up there because of you.”
“How long ago was this?” Amon asks.
Jim Bob looks at his watch. “About… two hours ago.”
“Two hours?” I stand up. “What the fuck has she been doing up there for two hours?”
“Smoothin’ things over, I assume.”
“This is why you couldn’t get through,” Amon says. “There’s no signal up there.”
“Well, there must be some kind of signal,” I say. “A landline, or somethin’. Because Jim Bob already admitted he got a call from Ike. So you call him, Jim Bob. You call Ike Monroe right the fuck now and tell him to put Lowyn on the phone.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Collin.”
“Then how’s it work, Jim Bob? Because I’m holding my shit together right now, but just barely. And you’re the one I want to be angry at.”
He takes offense to this because his chin juts back in surprise. “Are you threatenin’ me, Collin?”
“You’re damn right I am.”
“Even if I could”—Jim Bob glares at me—“after your threat, I wouldn’t. But as it is, I can’t. They call me. It’s a satellite phone. I have no way to contact them at all. And if I tried to go up there, or you try to go up there, or any one of your small army tries to go up there, they will shoot you, Collin. If you learned nothing else at all this morning, I hope you learned that. They will shoot you.”
“Surprised?” Ike is smirkin’ at me.
“That you’re the one who ruined my life?” I scoff. “Not in the least.”
Ike scowls at me. “How the hell do you figure that I’m the one who ruined your life?”
“You sent that man to kidnap Olive?”
“That man?” He laughs. “That man, Lowyn, was Olive’s real father.”
“Bullshit.” This word comes out quick and it comes out mean too. “That’s bullshit. You’re just making things up!”
“Oh, am I?” He leans down into my face. “You have no idea what is really going on around here. You saw something nine years ago. You got into my security room.”
“You left the door open. I didn’t force my way in.”
“You went snoopin’ around.” He straightens up to his full height, which is considerable. Way over six foot. “So you saw a secret on those screens. Good for you. But that’s just the literal tip of the iceberg, if, of course, the iceberg is a mountain. And it is.”
“What?” I don’t even know what he’s talking about. I did see screens in his security room. There were like twenty or thirty of them in there. But I didn’t really have enough time to make sense of what it all meant. I saw… lots of… places? Rooms? Hallways? I don’t know. The only thing I did know was that they were not the part of Blackberry Hill that I had already seen. These places, they were in secret buildings or something. It looked military and it looked secret. That was my takeaway.
Ike grabs me by the arm and starts pulling me. I resist, but he yanks harder. And there’s no way to resist if he’s yanking me. I stumble along with him.
But as we’re walking people emerge. Like maybe they were hiding, waiting to see what was gonna happen. They look… well, just like local people, I guess. Not as poor as they looked the last time I was here. There were a lot of people back then who were still wearing raggedy things. Dirty things.
They are neater now. Cleaner. Richer, I decide. Because of course they are. But still, I know in my heart that they are local. Descendants, maybe. From some hill clan.