Not on Her Own

Just then he heard a rumble on the highway—the rumble of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler.

“Wade, pedestrian in the road, gotta go!”

Brandon shoved open his door. Sure enough, he could hear the gears shifting as the truck gathered speed.

“Ma’am! There’s a truck coming! You need to get off the road!”

She waved one hand in his direction, brushing him away. With her other hand, she lifted a small digital camera to her eye.

Blowing out a breath, Brandon crossed the hot tarry asphalt to her. “Ma’am, I’ve asked you nicely—” He went behind her, to lift her up at the waist and remove her bodily from the path of the oncoming vehicle.

“Put me down! What on earth—” The tanned legs wind-milled on him, and one high-heeled shoe caught him square on the shin.

“Ow! Lady, are you crazy?”

“Put me down! I’m going to miss it!” She jerked from his grasp in a lightning-quick move that nearly threw him on the roadway—some sort of tai chi or martial arts move. He recovered his balance and took a step backward.

The truck crested the hill, bearing down on them. Brandon looked up to see the cab of the truck dwarfed by a…

“A house?”

He blinked. Yes. It was a house. Somebody was moving a house down the middle of the narrow county road. Could this day get any more surreal?

The woman took her time snapping photos of the truck, snailing along at maybe thirty miles an hour, if that, with its road-wide load.

Photos apparently done, she strolled to the road’s shoulder to stand by Brandon’s cruiser. He followed her. As he tried to frame an apology, his radio crackled again.

“Uh, Brandon?”

“I think I figured it out, Wade. The escort’s for a house?”

“Yeah. Just make sure they don’t tear any power lines down, okay?”

Brandon spotted a man sitting astride the roof of the house, a long plastic pole in his hands. He blinked again, but the man was still there.

It was weird to see a house on the back of a truck, cruising down a narrow highway. Sure, he’d seen plenty of double-wides delivered, but never an actual house.

And this was indeed a house. He examined it as it trundled past and the man on the roof used the pole to lift up a power line.

The house looked big because of the scale of the road, but Brandon could see that it was no more than a cottage. It had been yellow at one time; now it was in dire need of a new coat or three of paint. Looked like an arts and crafts type cottage, maybe built in the late thirties or forties. Not a window in the thing was intact, and the porch roof was held up by boards fastened to the side of the house.

He glanced from the house to the woman who now, he’d figured out too late, must belong with it.

“Uh…sorry about that. I thought—”

She turned to him, beaming. “That’s my house! My very first house!”

“Well. Congratulations. But next time I’d advise not standing in the middle of the road to get a picture of it.”

Brandon rubbed his cheek and considered. No way was he going to be able to get in front of the truck now, so his escort services would wind up being follow-me services.

“Where’s it headed?” he asked her.

“My land. Oh, I’m sorry, I’m Penelope Langston.” She extended a small hand bare of rings and fingernail polish.

Brandon accepted the handshake. “Deputy Brandon Wilkes. So you’re—”

And then it hit him. Her name.

“Did you say Langston?”

“Yes. Penelope Langston. That was very sweet, what you did for me a moment ago—”

“As in Langston Holdings?”

He couldn’t keep the edge out of his tone.

“Yes. That’s my company.”

A bitter taste coated the inside of Brandon’s mouth, a wash of nausea flooding him. Langston Holdings. The mysterious holding company that had bid up his uncle’s land when it went to auction—again—and Brandon had been unable to save his uncle’s farm. Again.

Uncle Jake tried to keep a stiff upper lip about losing half the acreage he’d farmed all his life, but Brandon knew the way he’d lost it had been the real kicker. Richard Murphy, a big-time area farmer, had colluded with the county tax commissioner to dummy up tax debts.

That’s what had happened to Uncle Jake and Brandon. Brandon had been a full partner in his uncle’s small farming operation when the tax commissioner sent them a bill they couldn’t prove they’d paid. The tax commissioner had handpicked farmers like Uncle Jake, who, in years past, before computers, had tended to pay tax bills in cash and in installments. A few of the farmers had been able to produce ancient, yellowed receipts. Uncle Jake and at least one other farmer hadn’t been such good record keepers. And Murphy had offered to stave off a sheriff’s sale by buying part of the farm at a rock-bottom price.

Then—and here Brandon couldn’t conceal a satisfied grin—Murphy himself had fallen on hard times. He was facing a federal indictment on charges a mile long on government crop insurance fraud. The corrupt farmer had seen his own land, including the acres he’d swindled out of Uncle Jake, sold by auction.

Brandon had tried to buy his uncle’s property back, but a holding company out of Oregon had outbid him at the auction. Langston Holdings.

This was the enemy? This woman? She was what, late twenties? And she could go around snatching up tracts of prime farmland?

If Penelope Langston saw his reaction, she didn’t act like it registered. Nope, she was as bubbly as a kid at her birthday party, ready to unwrap presents. A dimple jumped in her cheek as she grinned.

“So, where’s your car?” he growled.

“Oh, back there.” Penelope gestured with a thumb in the direction the house was moving. “I guess I didn’t think things through, but I did want to get a picture of it. Wasn’t it awesome, coming down that hill? Can you give me a lift? You are here to direct traffic, right?”

He didn’t bother to suppress a snort. Traffic? Here? In South Georgia? The only traffic jams he knew of were when people had to slow down behind an old-timer like Uncle Jake or a creeping tractor.

“You’re obviously not from around here. This road isn’t traveled that much.” He glanced from Penelope’s animated face to the house and blew out a breath. “C’mon. I’ll give you a ride.”

“Great!”

He would have figured her for a chatterbox, but in the cruiser, she proved him wrong. Maybe it was because she was absorbed in her big day.

Brandon felt the tiniest bit churlish for thinking ill of her. So she’d beat him out of the land. It had been an auction fair and square. And at least she was putting a house on it. It wasn’t as though she was turning it into a subdivision.

He turned off on a dirt road and negotiated the Crown Vic over the washboard surface.