Honor Road by Jason Ross & Adam Fullman

Author:Jason Ross & Adam Fullman [Ross, Jason & Fullman, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ReadyMan Publishing, LLC
Published: 2021-05-27T05:00:00+00:00

14

Sage Ross

Donna Butterton Residence

Elgin, Oregon

* * *

Sage laughed and tossed down the last of his beer. It was getting warm, anyway. The girl had been poking fun at Enterprise High—the only high school over in Wallowa County. Apparently, La Grande had beaten them in football ten years running. To call it a rivalry might be overstating things. Enterprise High pulled from three thousand residents and La Grande pulled from twenty-seven thousand. Raw math was on La Grande’s side.

Talking to the girl—she’d said her name was Aimee—felt like taking a shower after working in the dust. She even smelled like civilization. Sage could listen to her prattle of local gossip for days. When she talked, he forgot about freezing to death up on Blue Mountain. He forgot about killing those men. Sitting with Aimee on her mother’s couch felt like returning, finally, from war.

When he first came back from his recon mission into Wallowa County, Captain Chambers hailed him as a conquering hero, like a special forces soldier embedded in the captain’s department for “high value missions.” Apparently, they’d expected him to get picked up right away and sent directly back. The fact that he’d lasted three days, then returned with information on cattle numbers and general intel, catapulted Sage into the inner circle of the police department. When he reported about his meeting with Commissioner Pete, Captain Chambers leaned over his desk in disbelief.

“That self-righteous sonofabitch had a meeting with you?” Sage nodded, not sure what it meant. “I haven’t been able to get him to talk to me since the meltdown—that stuck-up prick. Cattlemen are all like that.” He sat back abruptly in his chair. “They think they’re the only true cowboys. Unless you have a hundred head or more, you’re not even a man to them.”

After his successful recon mission into Wallowa, the department moved Sage into the town of La Grande, to a room at the Best Western hotel. They took him off the security duty roster. Instead, Sage worked out of the police station, though they hadn’t given him anything specific yet to do. For the time being, he went for coffee and food from the town square, where the ladies ran a soup kitchen. The higher-ups in the department took Sage with them on important calls as a back-up gunman, like when they got reports of theft or trespassing by out-of-towners. They even issued him a Glock 17, nine millimeter sidearm.

The hundreds of rank-and-file officers—really more of a militia—called the captain and his close confidants “The Five.” The Five were all high school buddies, had gone to La Grande High School, and had served in the La Grande police department for a decade or more. Sage became their mascot.

Sage’s acquaintances from the militia started calling him “Number Six.” Sage preferred that to “Stack,” but it made him nervous when they said the “six” thing around one of the actual Five. He wasn’t there to rock the boat. He’d promised his dad that he’d do whatever

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