Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
“How much have you grown since I last saw you? Eight feet?” Harry asked.
Ledger popped back. “You saw me last week.”
“Question still stands.”
Ledger turned to me. “He’s a goof.”
“He seems pretty awesome to me,” I said, right when Riggs made it to me.
“He does?” Riggs asked under his breath.
I looked up at him. “Third place, after the Riggs Boys.”
His lips quirked.
“Everything good?” I asked.
“Talk later,” he muttered.
Fantastic.
“I gotta head,” Harry announced. “Hey and bye, Nadia. Good to see you again.”
“You too, Harry. Hope the plainclothes mean you have the day off.”
“I never have a day off,” he replied like that didn’t bother him. “Doc,” he bid and looked down. “Ledge. Later.” His lips tipped up. “And you got a chocolate mustache.”
Ledger’s arm went up immediately to rub it off, and he whirled on me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded after he dropped his arm.
“We were talking chaos theory, I had to concentrate,” I semi-lied.
The truth: I hadn’t told him because it was cute.
“I’m out,” Harry interrupted this.
Ledger swung back to him.
“Later, Harry,” he said.
“Thanks for coming out, man,” Riggs said.
Harry left and was barely out the door when Riggs called, “Kid, vamoose. Find something to do outside. Nadia and me will be out in a minute, and we’ll hit the Double D for breakfast.”
“You find something from the trespassers?” Ledger asked.
Riggs glanced down at me, then to his son, he said, “No. I wanna make out with her.”
“Barf!” Ledger yelled and scrammed out the door.
Riggs looked down again at me, and this time, he kept doing it.
“Well, that worked,” I remarked.
“Yup.”
“Are we gonna make out?”
“Yup.”
I grinned.
“But in a minute,” he said.
I frowned.
That meant he grinned.
Then I explained, “I told him you were checking on something I saw. I thought that was what you’d do. He didn’t seem alarmed.”
“It’s what I’d do.”
“He also told me something, and to keep our growing bond thriving, I’m not going to tell you what it is. And it’s not bad. Just that you might want to carve out time to have a chat with him.”
“It’s not bad?”
“No. He listens to you as well as processes what you say in a deep way that’s beyond his years. He’s processed something and made a decision about it. He’ll bring it up to you anyway, just wanted to give you a warning.”
“Right. This have something to do with chaos theory?”
“Yes, actually.”
He shook his head with amusement.
“Okay, then, now can we make out?” I queried.
He smiled again. “Not yet.”
“Ugh. So, does this delay in making out mean you found something?”
“It took some looking, but yeah. We found a multitude of footprints. Two people. One’s either a guy with a small foot and not a lot of weight on him, or a woman. The other, definitely a guy or a female shot putter who’s not afraid of getting caught doping.”
I started laughing.
He kept talking.
“They came in around where you said, moved around a lot, went back to an old, now unused access road off the main one where they parked their car. No clue what they were doing, but they weren’t hunting or camping.”
“Is there another reason for someone to be there?”
“Not that I know. I’ve had to tell folks who come in to chop down trees for firewood to get off my land. Not often, but it’s happened a couple of times. One group of them were out-of-towners who thought they could ignore the signs their footprints passed right by to chop down a Christmas tree.”
“Losers,” I muttered.
“Agreed. I do get hunters. Trappers too, but that isn’t much anymore, ’cause I spring those fuckers, confiscate them and melt them down to use in my work, and some of that shit can be expensive.”
“I take it you aren’t a hunter.”
“My dad was a hunter.”
“Ah.”
“I grew up here, so I get how it’s part of tradition and even a way of life.”
“I sense that’s not the entirety of your opinion about it,” I remarked.
This time he smirked.
It was hot.
“You sense right,” he confirmed. “It boils down to the fact that we’ve managed to discover ways to sensitively raise and slaughter animals for consumption, and I can’t wrap my head around stalking a living thing through its natural habitat for the purpose of killing it. I know a number of things that are challenging and prove you’ve got mettle that don’t include taking the life of a living creature. If it poses an immediate threat to you, okay. If you go out for the purpose of ending its life so you can hang its head on your wall, absolutely not.”
I very much agreed.
But he wasn’t done.
“And I don’t buy the argument that I eat meat so I can’t be against hunting. I don’t work in an abattoir or on a ranch, and neither do the vast majority of hunters. I don’t grow my own vegetables either, and I eat those. I don’t mix my own shampoo, and I use that shit. Seemed the animals had a way of controlling their own population when humans weren’t around. It’s humans that invaded their patch who didn’t like them killing their chickens or cattle. To keep their investment safe from predators, it’d cost money. People like to keep their money. My take, that’s a price you pay for being in that business. Sure, that price would be passed onto the consumer, which might drive them to eating more vegetables, and they can’t have that. So it’s down to greed. You don’t eradicate the wolves and mountain lions so you got so much deer they starve in the winter so you gotta open a hunting season for greed.”