Page 105

Elesio’s mouth twitched.

We set up everything on the hood of the car and ate.

Fried chicken from the deli counter, rolls and macaroni.

Milo arrived eating a sandwich, and Jessamy frowned at him. “I brought you hot food.”

“Sandwich is great,” he admitted. “Thanks for this. I forgot…”

Her lips curved. “You’ve had a lot of stuff to deal with.”

She looked around at the buildings, and her face fell. “What happened?”

I gave her a rundown of everything we’d figured out so far.

“Leo,” she said softly, then turned to Milo. “How’d you keep him away from me for four years?”

Milo shrugged. “Didn’t give him a choice. If he wanted to live there, he had to stay away.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I can’t confirm that it was him, of course. Only eighteen years of experience dealing with his antics. But Leo’s vindictive, and he’ll play the long game. Plus, he saw us working together for the town’s benefit. He might’ve been able to ignore that you kept him away from me for four years, but he won’t like that you and I are actively working together now.”

“We worked together for all of half a minute,” Milo pointed out before taking another bite of his sandwich. “But I can tell you that I had to stop him from leaving the camp no less than fifty times. All of those times I caught him off property, on the way to your place.”

I winced. “That doesn’t surprise me. He’s definitely not a quitter.”

“He would know where all of the cameras are.” Milo finished his sandwich in one bite. Once he was done chewing, he said, “And the fire suppression system. The rest of the kids out here, though vindictive enough to do this, are too new. They wouldn’t know all the ins and outs of the camera systems. Nor about our yearly hike and overnight camping. I go out once a year right around this time to give the contractors a chance to get into the cabins and fix everything that’s wrong. I spring it on them every year.”

“What about the other men that work with you. You trust them implicitly?”

“Implicitly,” Milo confirmed. “We were all in the same unit in Iraq. I’d trust them with my children. With my life. With this camp.”

“Then that leaves Leo or any other campers that you’ve pissed off over the last few years,” Jessamy said.

I tugged her to me and threw my arm around her shoulders, tucking her close to my body.

Milo and Elesio missed nothing.

Jessamy melted into me, her face going up a bit so she could look at me.

“Are you full?”

“Yeah.” I nuzzled her forehead with my nose.

She squealed. “You’re cold.”

“And you’re warm.” I laughed. “Now, Milo. Tell me all about your worst kids.”

He did, listing about five that he thought might be capable of doing something like this.

I went to my cruiser to run checks on them with my computer while Elesio, Milo, and Jessamy talked.

When I got back it was to hear Jessamy say, “I might have a solution for that.”

“Solution for what?” I asked, a list of the boys in my hand.

“Jessamy was just telling me she might have a solution to my homelessness.” Milo sounded amused.

“And I do,” she said as she pulled out some printed-off photos. “I met Ophelia Prestwich at a cyber security conference. Ophelia owns a dude ranch about a hundred miles outside of Yellowstone in the town of Whisper Mountain.”