Chapter 4: Pecan Pie Deception
The pecan pie was still warm, its lattice crust perfectly golden, when Beau Dawson’s pickup rattled up the drive. I saw it from the kitchen window and felt my stomach knot. Beau was Tommy’s cousin, a good-natured bear of a man who farmed soybeans three miles over and believed the best of everyone. His arrival was a gust of normalcy we couldn’t afford.
“Hey Bree! Carter!” he boomed, heaving himself out of the truck with the pie held aloft like an Olympic torch. “Martha sent this over. Said y’all looked peaked at the market yesterday.”
“We’re fine, Beau. Just tired.” I forced a smile, meeting him on the porch. The screen door slapped shut behind me. “You tell Martha she’s a saint.”
“Will do.” He handed over the pie, its sweet, nutty scent cutting through the dry air. He hooked his thumbs in his overalls and squinted toward the north field. “Sure is a lot of hay y’all got down. Heard the tractor was runnin’ late yesterday.”
My pulse ticked up a notch. “Trying to beat the weather.”
“Smart.” He rocked back on his heels, his cheerful expression unchanging. “Say, you heard from Tommy? He was supposed to help me with my baler this weekend. Ain’t answering his phone. Martha said he was on a fishing trip?”
The lie we’d planted felt like ash in my mouth. “Oh, yeah. Up to Lake Texoma. He mentioned it.” I adjusted my grip on the warm pie plate. “Sent a postcard, actually. Said the bass were biting.”
Beau’s face brightened. “That’s Tommy. Always findin’ the fish. And the trouble.” He laughed, a deep, rumbling sound. “Well, when he moseys back, you tell him his cousin’s baler is still in pieces. I’ll manage.”
“I’ll tell him.”
He tipped his cap, oblivious to the tremor in my hands. “Y’all take care now.” The truck door creaked open and shut, and he was gone, dust trailing behind him like a fading dream.
I stood on the porch for a full minute, the pie weighing heavy in my hands. A postcard. I’d just invented a postcard. The lies were breeding, each one needing another to support it.
Inside, I set the pie on the counter next to the half-empty bottle of bourbon from two nights ago. The amber liquid caught the low afternoon light. Carter was at the table, his laptop open, fingers flying across the keyboard.
“Beau?” he asked without looking up.
“Yeah. Brought pie. Asked about Tommy.”
Carter’s typing paused. “What’d you say?”
“Fishing trip. Postcard.” The words tasted bitter. “He bought it.”
“Good.” Carter’s voice was tight. He wasn’t gaming. On his screen was a satellite map, zoomed in on our property and the surrounding thickets. He’d been studying it since dawn. “Because ‘Luca the Cheese Consultant’ is currently getting his ass handed to him by Gertie.”
A frustrated stream of French, vivid and melodic, filtered in from the yard, followed by a solid thump and Carter’s burst of laughter.
I walked to the back door. The scene in the pen was something out of a deranged western. Jean-Luc, now permanently dressed in Carter’s faded flannel and jeans, was braced against the stubborn bulk of Gertie, our most cantankerous Jersey heifer. He had the milking stool in one hand like a weapon, the bucket in the other. Gertie, unimpressed, swished her tail and took a deliberate step sideways, pinning him against the fence.
“Your technique is an offense to bovines everywhere,” Carter called from the porch steps, grinning.
“She moves!” Jean-Luc shot back, his accent thickening with exasperation. “The tutorials online implied a stationary animal!”
“She’s a lady. You gotta ask nice.”
Jean-Luc muttered something that was definitely not a nice request. He set the stool down, slowly this time, and edged back toward Gertie’s flank. He moved with a new kind of caution, the elegant tension of a duelist approaching a volatile opponent. He placed his hands on her udder, and Gertie shifted again, but he held on, his movements becoming tentative, then rhythmic. A thin stream of milk finally hit the empty bucket with a metallic ping.
“Enfin,” he breathed, a genuine smile breaking through his concentration.
I watched from the doorway. There was something disarming about seeing him like this—the sophisticated man from the trunk, who discussed mineral profiles in cheese and identified armed men by the glint of their optics, now covered in dust and straw, mastering a humble, messy chore. He was trying. Not just to hide, but to fit. To be useful. It was more unsettling than his anger had been.
Carter’s phone buzzed on the table, shattering the moment. He looked at the screen and went very still. “Bree.”
The tone in his voice brought me inside. He turned the laptop toward me. On the screen was a grainy, zoomed-in photo taken from the road. It showed the front of our farmhouse, the porch, the truck. It had been taken yesterday. And in the corner of the frame, blurred but unmistakable, was a figure in the kitchen window. Jean-Luc.
“Where did you get this?” My voice was a whisper.
“Deep web forum. Local stuff. Someone posted it last night with a question.” Carter’s face was pale. “The caption just says, ‘New hand at the Reed place?’”
The room felt cold. Mrs. Edgarton’s gossip had wings, but this was different. This was targeted. Someone was watching close enough to take pictures and asking questions in the wrong places.
Jean-Luc entered then, wiping his hands on a rag, the scent of manure and fresh milk on his clothes. He saw our faces. “What has happened?”
Carter silently turned the screen.
Jean-Luc studied the image for only a few seconds. His expression didn’t change, but the easy confidence from the barn evaporated, replaced by a cold, calculating stillness. “The angle is from the county road. The photographer was in a vehicle, likely stopped. This is not casual gossip.” He looked at me. “The men in the field were scouts. This is the follow-up. They are confirming the presence of an unknown male.”
“So what do we do?” Carter asked, his earlier humor gone.
“We accelerate the plan.” Jean-Luc’s voice was flat. “The barn. It must be soon. Before they move from observation to action.” He walked to the sink, washed his hands with a deliberate focus. “We need a catalyst that is both convincing and, for us, untraceable. Electrical is predictable. We need something more… natural for a failing farm.”
“Like what?” I asked, dread pooling in my gut.
He turned, leaning back against the counter, his blue eyes catching the flicker of the bulb above the sink. “You have a propane tank for the winter heaters in the dairy shed. Old, somewhat rusty. The line runs near the west barn, through a section of that dry brush Carter hasn’t trimmed.” He said it like he was discussing the weather. “A stray spark from a neglected piece of equipment, a backfire from an old tractor left running too close… these things happen. Tragic accidents happen on isolated farms all the time.”
The casual horror of it left me speechless. He wasn’t just talking about fraud. He was talking about orchestrating a disaster.
“Whoa,” Carter breathed. “A gas line? That’s not a fire, that’s a—”
“It is a controlled eruption,” Jean-Luc interrupted, his gaze steady on me. “It leaves very little forensic evidence if done correctly. It looks like negligence, not arson. And the insurance payout for a total loss, including secondary structure damage, would be substantial.”
The numbers flashed in my mind, a toxic temptation. It would solve everything. And it would burn a part of my father’s legacy to the ground.
“I need air,” I said, turning for the door.
I walked past the pen, past the fields, toward the crumbling west barn. The late sun threw its long, distorted shadow ahead of me. I placed a hand on the sun-warmed, splintering wood. I could almost hear the echoes of my dad whistling inside, the sound of him hammering a loose board. This was his first project on the farm.
Jean-Luc’s footsteps were quiet on the grass behind me. He didn’t speak, just stood nearby, observing the structure with a critic’s eye.
“It’s not just a building,” I said, not looking at him.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He was silent for a moment. “I had a library, once. In Marseilles. Books collected over a decade. A first edition of Dumas. It was not just a room.” He let the statement hang. The unspoken ending was clear: and I lost it.
“This is different.”
“It is always different. And it is always the same.” He took a step closer. “Briar, they have a photograph. The next time someone comes, they will not be wearing binoculars. They will be wearing guns. And they will not stay in the tree line.” His voice was low, urgent. “This is the move that protects your brother, that secures your farm, and that provides the means for me to disappear from your life and find who did this. It is the only move left on the board.”
I closed my eyes. The scent of hay, of dust, of the coming evening, filled my lungs. I saw Carter’s worried face over the laptop. I heard Beau’s cheerful voice asking about a fishing trip that never happened.
When I opened my eyes, I looked at the barn, then at the man beside me. “How? And when?”
“The old Ford tractor in the shed. Its exhaust manifold is cracked. It backfires constantly. We position it near the tank valve late tomorrow night. A simple wire, a spark from the ignition circuit directed to a small leak we cultivate… The wind will be from the west. It will carry the fire away from the house and the main sheds.” He had it all figured out. Every detail. “We will be in town. At the diner. An irrefutable alibi.”
It was monstrous. It was brilliant.
“Okay,” I whispered, the word leaving me like a surrender.
“Okay,” he echoed.
We stood there as the sun dipped below the ridge, painting the sky in streaks of violent orange and purple. The barn’s shadow stretched until it touched our feet, a pool of darkness connecting us. In the distance, Gertie lowed, a long, lonely sound in the gathering twilight. The game had changed. We were no longer just hiding. We were about to strike a match.
We were about to strike a match.
“There is one more thing,” Jean-Luc said, his voice cutting through the grim silence between us. He didn’t look away from the barn. “Tommy. I have been considering his… disappearance. Given what I know of the men who took me, their habits.”
I turned sharply. “What about him?”
“They would not have killed him immediately. Not if they thought he had information.” He finally met my gaze, his expression unreadable. “They use a network of short-term holding locations. Abandoned properties, mostly. Rural. Isolated.”
Carter had joined us, hearing the shift in conversation. “You know where he is?”
“I know the pattern. Not the address.” Jean-Luc’s jaw tightened. “There is a possibility. An old feed mill, about thirty miles northeast, near the county line. It was mentioned once as a ‘quiet place’ for problematic situations. It is a guess. Only a guess.”
It was the first flicker of hope, thin and dangerous. Carter’s face lit up. “That’s something! We could look, after we—”
The distinct crunch of tires on gravel spun us all around. A silver Lexus, sleek and alien against the dusty farmyard, was rolling to a stop by the farmhouse. The evening sun flashed off its windshield, blinding.
“Mom,” I hissed, the blood draining from my face. “She can’t see him.”
Panic was instant and electric. Carter swore, already moving. Jean-Luc didn’t need to be told twice. He was a shadow dissolving into the deeper shadow of the barn’s interior, silent and swift. The warped wooden door sighed shut just as the Lexus’s driver-side door opened.
Evelyn Reed—now Evelyn Prescott, I had to remember—stepped out. She was wearing another flawless linen outfit, this one the color of slate. Her new husband, Gary, a blandly handsome man with a golf tan, emerged from the passenger side, looking politely out of place.
“Just be normal,” I muttered to Carter, forcing my feet to carry me toward them. My heart was hammering against my ribs. “And for God’s sake, don’t mention cheese consultants.”
“Briar! Carter!” My mother’s smile was a practiced curve of lipstick. She presented her cheek for a kiss, which I brushed with my own. She smelled of citrus perfume and money. “We were just in the area. Gary wanted to see the… property.”
Gary offered a firm, meaningless handshake. “Quite a spread you have here.”
“It’s a farm,” I said, my voice too tight.
“We brought a housewarming gift.” Mom gestured, and Gary pulled a glossy gift bag from the back seat. It held fancy artisan crackers and imported fig jam. The irony was almost funny. “For your new helper. Martha Edgarton called me. She said you’d hired a European cheese expert. That you were expanding.”
Carter made a small choking sound. I felt the unseen eyes from the barn like a physical pressure.
“He’s not… he’s just passing through,” I managed. “Helping with the harvest. Temporary.”
“Well, I’d love to meet him.” Her green eyes, so like mine, scanned the yard, missing nothing. “Martha said he was quite the charmer. Knowledgeable.”
“He’s in town,” I lied. “Getting supplies.”
“On a Sunday evening?” Her eyebrow arched, just a millimeter. It was a trap, casually laid. “Everything’s closed.”
The silence stretched, thin and brittle. Gary shifted his weight, sensing the tension but clueless to its source. A crow cawed from the fence line, the sound ragged in the quiet.
“Maybe he’s at a bar,” Carter blurted, then immediately looked like he wished he could swallow his own tongue.
“Perhaps.” Mom’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. She turned her scrutiny back to me. “I’m glad you’re getting help, Briar. Truly. But remember our talk. Help is a temporary solution. You need an exit strategy.”
The barn, with its planned conflagration, felt like it was pulsing behind me. “I have a strategy.”
“Good.” She held my gaze a moment longer, a silent war of wills. Then, as if flipping a switch, she became breezy again. “We won’t stay. We have dinner reservations in Austin. But think about what I said. The guest house is empty. The offer isn’t.”
She air-kissed me again, patted Carter’s arm, and let Gary guide her back to the Lexus’s pristine interior. The car turned smoothly, gliding back down the drive as silently as it had arrived.
We stood frozen until the taillights vanished over the ridge.
The barn door opened. Jean-Luc stepped out, his face a careful mask. “Your mother,” he said, “is a very perceptive woman.”
“You have no idea,” Carter groaned, sinking onto the porch steps. “She knows something’s up.”
“She knows I’m lying,” I corrected, the weight of it all pressing down. The photo online, the men in the trees, the ticking clock on a fake accident, and now my mother’s suspicious curiosity tightening around us like a vine. “It just got harder.”
Jean-Luc walked over, picking up the gift bag of crackers and jam. He examined it with a hollow smile. “So. The old feed mill. And a propane tank.” He looked from me to Carter, his blue eyes reflecting the last of the dusky light. “We have two targets now. Which match do we strike first?”
The night seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the answer.