Once Upon a Time in Bliss

Chapter Six

Bishop hopped off the snowmobile and stared at the small cabin in front of him. It was covered in snow, but someone had painstakingly shoveled the walkway from the front porch to the driveway. Three cars were parked along the circular drive, a tiny VW bug, a big-ass SUV, and a truck that had seen better days.

And everywhere he looked, he saw the evidence of the aforementioned gnomes. Their pointy red hats stuck up out of the snow. Bishop would bet that during the summertime, this yard was filled with flowers and ceramic gnomes would rule the valley.

His mother had kept a small garden in the back of their house. The tiny home he’d spent his first years in had been in a trashy part of his hometown, but she’d been proud of it. She kept it clean and she’d made a little playground in the back for him. It hadn’t been much, just a ratty old swing set she’d bought secondhand and had to clean rust off of, and a sandbox she’d dug herself. He would sit there and watch her as she worked in the garden. His mother’s hands had been so callused from work, but she’d been the tenderest woman in the world.

Nell’s hands were callused. Nell worked.

Bishop took a long breath and banished the unwanted memories. He wasn’t sure why they had surfaced. He’d grown up in the heat of Houston. He’d never seen snow until he joined the military. But something about the cabin in front of him took him right back to that time when he’d been safe and warm and loved.

“Hello! Can I help you?” A small woman peeked out of her door. She was thin and warmly dressed, her graying hair in a neat bun. She had a slightly hooked nose, giving her an almost birdlike appearance, but the woman in front of him wouldn’t be a hawk or an eagle. She was a little dove. “Come on inside. It’s freezing out here. I have some cider warming.”

He nodded her way, pocketing the keys to the snowmobile Bill had given him not twenty minutes before along with his promise to watch after Nell. He made short work of the distance, eager to be inside. The world was too cold, too white. Even dressed and away from the resort, he still felt a bit naked, as though all that pristine snow couldn’t cover up the fact that he didn’t belong here. A man needed camouflage to survive, and there was none to be had in this town. This woman proved it. She just noticed a strange man in her front yard and invited him in for cider.

He thought about giving the older woman a stern talking-to. He could be a serial killer. He could be an Amway salesman. He could be just about anyone. But it wasn’t his place. If Logan’s mom wanted to get herself horrifically murdered, then that was her business.

But damn that cider smelled good.

Bishop pushed through the door of the cabin. There was a small wreath hanging on the door. Underneath was a painted sign declaring this home to be the Green-Warner Homestead. Bishop wasn’t sure if the woman currently heating up cider was a Green or a Warner, but she turned in the kitchen and motioned him in the door.

“Come in. Come in, and sit a spell. That was a nasty storm last night, wasn’t it?”

The cabin was warm inside, a fire raging in the fireplace illuminating the space. Bishop shrugged out of his coat, settling it on a peg beside the door. “It seems that way to me. I’m not from around here. This could be perfectly normal and I wouldn’t know.”

The older woman placed a mug on the bar and gestured Bishop to join her in the kitchen. “We get one or two big storms a year. My wife and I like to refer to this as snuggle weather. So you’re Bill’s friend. Where you from? Mr. Flanders, isn’t it?”

Perhaps the lady wasn’t looking to be murdered. He’d forgotten that small towns thrived on gossip. It was on the tip of his tongue to say Houston. It sat right there in Bishop’s brain that he could talk about his house in Houston and how the cabin reminded him of his childhood. But that was Bishop’s childhood. Not Henry Flanders’s. “I’m originally from Ohio.” It was a suitable Midwestern state. His accent was flat and could be mistaken for any number of Midwestern states. “Now I work at a small university in Washington State.”

“A professor! How very nice. My name is Teeny Green. I suspect you’re looking for the boys. Logan told me he helped you out yesterday.”

Bishop was fairly certain Logan hadn’t mentioned that the help he’d provided came in the form of the bar fight.

The boys in question had started to walk down the hall. Bishop heard the door open and then the low conversation between friends. Logan emerged first, a smile on his face. The smile abruptly disappeared as he realized he wasn’t alone in the cabin. Logan took one look at Bishop standing at the bar, turned, and started back down the hall.

Seth Stark didn’t run. He put his hands on his lanky hips and attempted to stare Bishop down. “What are you doing here?”

There was a small gasp that came from Teeny Green. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the young man. “Seth, surely your momma taught you better manners than that.”

Seth didn’t back down at all. “My momma is from the Upper East Side. She doesn’t believe in manners.”

Teeny Green simply stared the young man down. After a few moments of maternal judgment, Seth sighed. “I’m sorry, Miss Teeny. Mr. Bishop, how can I help you?”

It was obvious the kid didn’t want to help, but he wasn’t going to be given a choice. “I have Nell’s computer contents on a thumb drive. I don’t have the time to go through every lead. I rather suspected that you might have some software that could cut that time down for us.”

The minute the word “software” came out of Bishop’s mouth, Seth lit up. “Hell, yeah.” There was the sound of a foot tapping against the floor. Teeny Green didn’t seem to like swearing either. “Sorry. What I meant to say was yes, Mr. Flanders. I can certainly help you with that.”

A brilliant smile came over Teeny’s face. “Well, you boys go on back to Logan’s room. I’ll bring you some cookies when they’re done.”

Bishop wondered for a moment if he’d gone down a rabbit hole. Seth turned, walking back toward the room he’d first come out of. Bishop grabbed his mug of apple cider. There was no use in wasting it. It smelled delicious, and now that he thought about it, the cookies smelled pretty good too. If he had to spend time in teenage hell, at least there were cookies.

Seth opened the door to Logan’s bedroom, and Bishop followed. Logan’s room was a temple to the chosen object of his worship. Posters lined the wall, making a tapestry of superheroes and villains, all in vivid colors. Comic books. At the last group home he’d been in, one of the boys his age had had a collection of comic books. Chris Johnson. Bishop hadn’t thought about Chris Johnson in ten years, maybe more. Though they’d been the same age, Chris hadn’t spent as much time in the system as Bishop. He’d tried to share those comic books, but by then Bishop knew there was no such thing as a superhero.

A wide-eyed Logan sat on the bottom bunk. “Dude, did you tell my mom? Because I told her we just helped you out with directions to the library. I totally did not mention the bar. I’m not supposed to go to the bar. Not just that bar in particular, but any bar. I get to go to juice bars, but not if they sell alcohol.”

It was obvious his parents kept Logan on a tight leash. “I didn’t mention the unfortunate incident. Here’s the hard drive, Seth. Now, what do either of you know about threats against Nell?”

“Are you talking about the shit bombs?” Logan asked. He giggled and then his mouth turned down. “Could you not tell my moms about the cussing?”

“Yes, I am talking about bombs of all kinds.” Did anybody take this seriously? “You know most people get scared when someone sends them a bomb in the mail.”

Seth was already sitting at the small desk, his hands flying across the keyboard. He never looked up, and Bishop realized that this was Seth Stark in his natural environment. The kid’s whole attitude had changed the minute he sat in front of that keyboard. “From what I heard, Will and Bobby said it was a lame attempt. And the bomb wasn’t full of shit. Nell has received packages of crap, but the bomb was full of…well, it was full of bomb stuff. I don’t know what really, but it wasn’t shit.”

Yeah, the kid was trying to pretend, but Bishop was pretty sure he knew exactly what he was talking about. “You should be careful or the feds will show up on your front doorstep this time.”

Logan snorted. “Dude, that happened by the time he was ten.”

Seth shrugged. “I was a curious kid. Can we get back to the problem at hand? Okay. I’ve narrowed the search parameters down to three names.”

“How the hell did you do that?” Bishop had come to get a list of anyone who had sent her a threat. He’d expected to spend days combing through her e-mails and placing potential suspects on a list.

Seth turned back, a superior grin on his face. “I built out an algorithm that matches up names, dates, and then searches the Internet for any information on those names. It then places the potential suspects in order of probability of violation. I have various filters for money lost, position at the beginning of the protest, position at the end, how many keywords they used in the various e-mails.”

Bishop could imagine what those words were. Words like “murder” and “kill” and “rape” and “die.” He’d read a couple of those e-mails, his blood pressure threatening to hit new heights. He had to be very careful about his tone and the words he used himself. “And this thing works? I’ve never heard of software that works like this.”

Seth shrugged a little. “That’s because I wrote the program. It doesn’t exist anywhere else. And it won’t tell us who did the crime. It merely gives us a list of suspects in the order of probability. And here’s our list of suspects.”

There was a low hum as the printer started up and began to work. A single sheet came out, and Seth handed it over with an arrogant smirk. “What would take the police several weeks, I managed to do overnight.”

“Overnight? I just gave you the e-mails.”

Seth snorted, a deeply arrogant sound. “Oh, I hacked her e-mail server after we finished our Battlestar Galactica marathon.”

“Dude, you can’t tell my moms about that either.” Logan seemed to have trust issues with his moms. “They told me I couldn’t commit any felonies or I won’t get the deputy job and I’ll end up having to work at Stella’s. Stella scares me, and I’ve seen what Max Harper can do to someone who gets his order wrong.”

“Why won’t you just let me pay for your college?” Seth’s eyes rolled. “Dude, my parents won’t even notice that the money’s gone.”

A stubborn look settled over Logan’s face. “I’m not a charity case.”

Ah, rich boy and poor boy had some issues themselves. Bishop understood what it meant to not have money. He’d gone into the Army when he’d aged out of foster care because he’d had no other place to go. At least this Logan kid had a home. Bishop understood pride, though. He wouldn’t have taken a handout at Logan’s age either. Sometimes all a man had was his pride. He was pretty sure Logan shouldn’t go into law enforcement though. He seemed really attached to his mothers’ apron strings.

“All right, man.” Seth conceded easily as though he wished he hadn’t opened his mouth in the first place.

“I’m going to start working and save some money and I’ll get there on my own. Now who’s on the list? Who wants to hurt Nell?” Logan asked.

Bishop looked down at the sheet of paper. There were twenty names on the page along with an assigned risk percentage. No wonder the feds had been interested in the kid. This software wouldn’t make cases for them, but it could, when the right information was present, point the way to a list of suspects. He immediately decided to focus on the top three names. They were the only ones with a risk assessment of over sixty percent.

Jim McDonald, Mickey Camden, and Warren Lyle.

“Why no women?” Logan asked, looking over Bishop’s shoulder. It bugged him, but he couldn’t do what he would normally do which was to pop whoever wasn’t respecting his space. Killing a kid for getting too close might break his cover. If Logan’s moms didn’t even want him to curse, they would likely object to his quick, though painless, death.

“Do you know how few women actually plan out killings?” Bishop doubted the perpetrator was a woman. It wasn’t that women couldn’t get pissed off and tear through some shit, but they rarely did it over business.

“Women tend to be moment-of-passion killers,” Seth explained. Logan stared at him. “Sorry, I watch a lot of TV.”

Yeah, Bishop bet the kid did. “I need to take a look at these guys.”

“Do you want me to print out their dossiers?”

“You’re kidding me.” He needed this fucker out in the field. He could get his jobs done in half the time, force Seth to do his paperwork, and sneak off to spend time with Nell.

He couldn’t think like that. Not even in a joking way. He would have a brief time with Nell and then he had to do what he did best—disappear. It could be dangerous for her if he kept up a relationship with someone like Nell. It would be far too easy for one of his numerous enemies to follow him and find out that he had a weakness to exploit. No. Once he left Bliss, he would never come back. Everyone was safer that way.

But before he could leave, he had to make sure she was okay by taking care of whoever wanted to hurt her this time.

There would be a next time, a little voice in his head was whispering to him. He could save her this time, but she wasn’t about to give up the crusades. Women like Nell got more active—not less—as time went by. Sure, she would eventually get married and probably have a kid or two, but she wouldn’t give up trying to change the world, and there were a lot of people out there who were perfectly happy with the world just the way it was.

Nell would always be in danger.

“So do you want me to print it, Mr. Flanders?” The Stark kid was looking up at him, a curious expression on his face.

“Yeah, yeah sure.” The printer began humming again, and Bishop was left feeling unsettled.

There was a brief knock, and the door came open. Teeny Green waltzed in carrying a tray of cookies. “There’s some fresh milk if you boys want some.” She left the tray on the desk. Logan and Seth immediately dug into the cookies, but Bishop’s mind wasn’t on his stomach.

When the printout was done, he grabbed it off the printer and got ready to leave. The quicker he solved this, the quicker he could be on his way. Nell was dangerous. She was dangerous to herself, and she was definitely dangerous to his sanity. He needed to leave as soon as possible. A man could get comfortable in a place like Bliss, but Bishop had made a decision long ago. He could call no place home. He had to stay sharp, and he couldn’t do it in a place filled with lovely brunettes and women who made homemade cookies and apple cider.

He nodded to the boys and started to make his way out. There was something too homey about the small cabin. Everywhere he looked he saw a family and their lives lovingly documented in photos and award certificates and mementoes. He couldn’t help but notice an old family photo that had been framed and mounted on the wall of the living room. It showed two women and a baby boy. He recognized Teeny Green, younger though no less radiant. She was wearing a white dress with a lacy collar as she smiled at the camera. A baby probably no older than eight months sat in her lap, his mouth opened in a big toothless grin. A stout-looking woman stood behind them, her hands protectively on Teeny’s shoulders. She was a bit grim, but something about the picture fascinated him. Though the woman in the back wasn’t smiling, there was a pride in her stance. This was her family.

Lesbian couples might be accepted in big cities these days, but in small-town Colorado two decades ago? What kind of courage had those women had to start a life for themselves here? What kind of fortitude had gone into building this small cabin?

“My wife’s name is Marie.” Teeny walked out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She sighed as she looked at the picture. “I know a lot of families like to keep a current portrait up, but I like to look back and remember where we came from. I love this picture. It was the first one we had done. A travelling photographer took it. We couldn’t find a studio who would take it for us. Things were a little less tolerant in this part of the world back then. Bliss didn’t have a portrait studio, so we had to make our own.”

He was curious. “Why would you stay here? You could have gone to San Francisco or New York. People would have accepted you.”

She shook her head. “This was our home, and here in Bliss, we never had a lick of trouble. We were pioneers in our way. Marie’s family came out here from back East. Her family’s held this land for almost a hundred years. Besides, if we all go and hide in the city, no one would ever get to know us.”

That was the point. “And they would never get to hurt you.”

“Nothing good in life ever came without a struggle. When Marie and I opened our store, there were people from some other towns who said they would never buy anything from people like us. We almost went under that first year, and then the Circle G started buying all their supplies from us even though it would have been less expensive to get them from one of the big stores in another town. And Albert Lang walked in and bought every piece of fishing equipment we had. You have to understand, Al was a judge, and he was the head of a very wealthy and influential family. He should have been one of the people trying to push us out, but he just told me to hang on for a year or two and before long, no one would care because we would just be a part of the community. And he was right. The Harpers finally started buying from us and before we knew it, Max and Rye were coming in and begging for treats and playing with our kid. Things don’t change unless you make them change, Mr. Flanders. You can’t do that by running away every time the going gets tough.”

A low voice broke through the moment. “No. You do it with the business end of a shotgun. You want to know how to change people’s minds, shove a shotgun in their gut and then see how fast they suddenly don’t care what your sexual orientation is.”

The stern lady from the photograph walked through the cabin door. She was as broad as Teeny was slender. And she damn straight looked like a woman who could wield a shotgun. “Who the hell are you?”

Finally, someone he could relate to. “Professor Henry Flanders.”

Marie frowned. “Is he here for Seth? That boy always seems to have some intellectual types sniffing around him.”

Teeny wagged a finger her wife’s way. “Be more polite. People are going to think you don’t have an ounce of manners, Marie Warner.”

Marie stared at Bishop, shaking her head at her wife. “I never did have a lick of manners, but I got a real good nose for trouble. I don’t like the looks of this one. He looks like he’s hiding something.”

Bishop had to give her credit. He was hiding pretty much everything, but he simply shrugged and gave her a harmless little smile. “I’m just trying to figure out who trashed the Finn cabin.”

A long moment passed and finally Marie nodded. “Good for Nell. You let me know if you need an extra gun. I’m damn good at taking a son of a bitch down.”

“Marie!” Teeny threw her hands up.

Marie finally cracked a smile and sent a wink her wife’s way. “He’s good with me if he’s helping out Nell and her momma. They need someone to watch out for them. Nell’s too good to see real trouble coming her way, I always said. Now, I smell your cider, darlin’. You always know how to warm me up.”

She enveloped the smaller woman in a bear hug.

“God, Mom, can you stop with the gross affection stuff?” Logan made a vomiting sound as he grabbed another couple of cookies from the table, but Bishop caught sight of Seth watching the two women, a wistful expression on his face.

Poor little rich boy.

“Thanks for everything, ladies.” Bishop grabbed his coat from the hanger and buttoned up. Teeny pressed a bag of cookies into his hand, for the “road” as she called it. He walked out of the house feeling deeply unsettled because he’d liked it there far too much.

He managed to make it out the door and halfway down the drive when Seth Stark came running out. He hadn’t put a coat on and he stood on the porch, his hands shoved in his pockets. “Someone looked into your cover story. It was probably Stef Talbot. He checks into everyone who comes to town for any length of time. I think it’ll hold, though. He didn’t look past the surface stuff. Are you on the run?”

The snow couldn’t be any colder than Bishop’s gut in that moment. He forced himself to smile. The kid couldn’t possibly know anything. “What are you talking about?”

Seth hopped off the porch, his teeth chattering just a bit. “It’s a good construct, but I know just how deep to go. The information about you appears to begin at your birth, but it was uploaded to various databases just a week ago. You see, the truth is always in the code if you know where to look for it. So I’ll ask again. Are you on the run or are you undercover? You could be a con artist, I suppose.”

He was surprised that criminal hadn’t been the first possibility on the kid’s list. It would have been the first thing Bishop would have thought of. The kid was far too smart for his own good. “It wasn’t the feds who came for you, was it? It was the Agency.”

A single shoulder shrugged. “I’ve done some work for them. Damn it. You’re Agency. That’s why you were able to take out all those guys in the bar fight. Well, it makes me feel better. I was worried you were going to try to take Nell for all she’s worth. It’s not much, by the way.”

Perhaps a little nugget of truth was called for. After all, he wouldn’t be using the name Henry Flanders again after a week or two. He would need to come up with another cover because he didn’t trust just having the one in place, but he’d already known he would get rid of the Henry cover last night. He couldn’t leave it out there for Nell to potentially find one day. “I’m on vacation. I’m only here for a few days.”

“And you thought you would just sleep with Nell while you’re here?”

Or maybe he would have to take the little fucker out anyway. “I like her, but I’m not the right man for her. I don’t live a life that she could possibly understand or accept.”

Seth’s eyes seemed to find something in the snow. “Yeah, well, sometimes we have to accept who we are deep inside.”

At least the kid was reasonable. “Yes. And Nell wouldn’t like that me very much, but I do care about her. It’s why I want to make sure she’s safe. I can handle this problem for her and then I’ll disappear. I’ll just be a nice memory for her. Of course, if you tell her, she’ll feel used when I’m really not trying to use her. I genuinely care about the lady. Can you leave things be at least long enough for me to figure out who’s trying to hurt her?”

Seth nodded. “Okay.”

“Get back inside. Your lips are starting to turn blue.”

“I only said sometimes, you know.”

Bishop sighed. “What are you talking about now?”

“Sometimes we have to accept who we are and sometimes we just have to change who we are so we can get what we want. I play a lot of D&D.”

Bishop snorted. “I bet.”

Seth shook his head. “Don’t be a snob. You can get really attached to a character in D&D, and then you miss one saving throw and bam, your character’s dead and you have to start all over again. But you don’t stop playing. You keep going, and a lot of times you find out that the character you end up with is way better than the one that came before. Sometimes you just gotta keep going until it’s right, until the skin fits finally. That’s all I’m saying. Let me know if you need any more help.” The kid turned and ran back inside.

Bishop stared at the cabin, wondering if he’d ever felt right in his own skin.