Page 24

“How about just one of us then?”

He shook his head. “Not my decision.”

I sighed, making the mistake of stepping back.

When I did, he closed the door and locked me out once again.

I narrowed my eyes and walked back to the group of people. “They’re not budging.”

“That’s just great,” one of them threw up his hands. “I say we storm the capital.”

“It’s city hall, Doug.” Someone snorted. “I say we just keep knocking and making enough noise until one of them agrees to let us in.”

“What’s going on?”

The strawberry-blonde was back.

Zee.

“They’re trying to steal our land,” one of the neighbors said. “Taking my entire front pasture and gate for a ‘road expansion.’”

Zee frowned. “Are they making any decisions today?”

“We don’t know,” I grumbled. “That was our hope, to get some more information on what they’re thinking. All of us just got messages about their intentions, and projects were to start mid to late next year.”

“There’s a door on the side that’s open.” She pointed.

I looked and, sure enough, there was a door propped open at the side next to what looked like the resident smoking area.

“Let’s go.”

I followed, but at the back of the group with Zee.

We walked into the side room, which brought us into a room that looked like it was just storage.

As the group pushed forward, we found ourselves in a hallway that was just off of the main room.

The security guard from earlier was standing at the front door looking out with a frown.

The group as a whole started to go into the main hallway then farther down where we could hear a discussion.

“…not their decision!” one angry voice said. “We need the space. We’ve had tourists complaining about travel time. They’re forty percent of our revenue. We can’t afford to piss them off. We need more access to our town. That starts with wider roads.”

“The nine ranches that are affected aren’t even in the city limits. We’d have to annex them into the city limits before we can eminent domain those parts of the…”

I missed the rest of what was said because damn Doug interrupted them.

“We deserve to be here!” Doug roared. “I’ve owned that land for forty-nine years. My father owned it for forty before me! Y’all also have fuckin’ nobody coming through from Bear Pass to Sawtooth. Literally nobody. Everyone comes down 287…” Doug went on and on and on, hitting everyone’s issues, complaints, and worries.

No one said a word on the board, just sitting there silently listening.

They waited for Doug to finish, then said, “Paul, please escort these people out and have them trespassed.”

Son of a bitch.

“We’re not leaving until someone tells us what we want to know…”

For once, I wasn’t locked into a jail cell thanks to my no-good brother.