Stable: Someone is Taking Them... by Cam Torrens

Author:Cam Torrens [Torrens, Cam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Published: 2023-07-19T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 36

Zahn didn’t intend to follow Kevin. It just worked out that way.

He was downtown at the hardware store buying sand for his walkway project. One condition of Daria’s return was for him to stop micromanaging her time. Might as well get some work done. He’d parked his truck on the store’s side where the rocks and stones, cement forms, and bags of sand lay on wooden pallets.

As Zahn rounded the corner to the main entrance, he spotted Kevin exiting his truck and entering the store.

Buena Vista was a small town. Zahn couldn’t help himself. He went back to his truck and pulled it to the front of the store, where he could watch Kevin exit.

Something about Kevin bothered Zahn. Even before the exposure accusations, Zahn hadn’t been completely comfortable around his daughter’s new friend. He had chalked the feeling up as normal since Kevin was the first guy he’d watched interact with his daughter.

Zahn had missed Daria’s teenage years. Sheila, her mother, had done a great job caring for Daria while Zahn had spent the next five years contracting in southern Florida for the government during the day, and losing himself in alcohol-induced numbness at night.

The lost years.

Those years…darkened by the loss of Jacob, by the crash of his aircrew in Kuwait, and, by the subsequent disintegration of his family. The years where he raked in money from a contracting job he hated, most of it going to Sheila and Daria, some of it going to a meager sampling of weekly groceries, rent, and an ample supply of booze.

By the time he’d become self-aware enough to realize he was slowly killing himself and was wasting other people’s oxygen, Sheila was engaged to an Air Force officer in Colorado Springs, and Daria was heading off to college.

Oops. Missed that.

So, Kevin and Daria. The blossoming of a relationship. This was unfamiliar territory for Zahn, and he figured his discomfort was just his protective father instincts kicking in.

Until they had suspended Kevin for indecent exposure. Accused by girls almost half his age. And all of this after finding Kendall, the young girl held against her will, and law enforcement still trying to catch a break on the Janae Longmont investigation.

No proof these incidents were related. But they certainly factored into Zahn’s sudden paranoia about all the shit going down in his adopted town.

Kevin eventually emerged from the store, holding a brown paper bag in one hand and a small canister of propane in the other. He tossed the stuff he had bought in the truck’s passenger seat, then climbed in to the driver’s seat and drove away.

Next stop for Kevin was the Dollar Express. No way Zahn could follow him into the tiny store without being noticed. Wedged between the new grocery and the liquor store, the Dollar Express was the last resort for obscure items when you really needed something and didn’t want to drive thirty-five minutes north to Leadville or thirty-five minutes south to Salida. Zahn parked at the liquor store and waited.

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