35. Galen

Chapter 35

Galen

T ightly wound nightmares about buying an old house and simply throwing money at it, to no avail, had occupied Galen's entire night. He woke up restless with a headache, and when he reached out to the other side of the cot, not very far, really, he found it empty.

"Morning, sunshine," said Bede's deep voice from beyond a lump of pillow.

"Morning," said Galen in return, blinking as he pulled the pillow away and folded a length of sheet so he could figure out where Bede was in the dim, dawn-cool, green-tinged light of the canvas tent. "What are you doing down there?"

Bede was on the floor, sitting cross-legged, hands resting on his knees. He beamed a proud smile, eyes glittering with delight, and it was then that Galen noticed how dusty he was. That there were half circles of pale beige dust on his once-white t-shirt, and dark smears of something else on his blue jeans. Even his soft-looking yellow work boots were grimy with dust.

Next to him on the floor were three plastic bins, the ordinary kind you could get at Target or just about anywhere. There was a strip of masking tape on each one, and written on each strip of masking tape were the words, Mom's Trip to Bermuda .

Which was strange because Bede had never mentioned parents, much less a mother who had gone to Bermuda and who had asked her son, Bede, the drug dealer, to watch over three bins of whatever she'd brought back. Which, now that Galen thought about it as he sat up, very well could be drugs.

In spite of Bede and Beck's single dalliance with pot, drugs were not allowed in the valley, nor in Galen's tent, so what the hell was Bede up to? And why was he so dusty and grease-streaked?

Swinging his legs over the edge of the cot, the cotton sheet draping around his ankles like a friendly, soft snake, Galen rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his palm and did his best to bring his thoughts into order.

"What's going on?" asked Galen, his voice coming out morning rough.

"I've come to save the farm," said Bede quite brightly. "If this were a musical, I'd ask Judy and Mickey to sing about it, but since it's just me—" Bede laughed, low and sweet, the smile on his face a thing of beauty.

Galen laughed a little, having gotten the Babes in Arms reference, but he couldn't quite focus on the humor of it when the three plastic bins looked so out of place and Bede looked so unkempt.

"What are the bins?" he asked. "And what did your mom ask you to store that came from Bermuda?"

"Well, I don't actually have a mom," said Bede in a matter-of-fact way as he rose to his knees and started pulling open the lids to the bins. "But what I learned is if you wanted to launder money, you'd take it to an offshore bank account, such as you might find in Bermuda. Or anywhere in the Bahamas, really. Cayman Islands. British Virgin Islands."

"Launder money?" asked Galen with growing confusion, which soon turned to a kind of giddy horror as Bede pulled out plastic baggies that glittered with the coins inside, and old coffee cans that clunked when Bede put them on the wooden floor. And then came the dust clouds that surrounded the large plastic bag stored in each bin.

"Money?" asked Galen, his voice rising. "That's money."

"Yes, it's money, you smart thing, you," said Bede quite breezily as he reached into the nearest black plastic bag and pulled out a fold of bills and fanned it at Galen. "It's to pay the bills from the IRS and the hospital." Bede shrugged, suddenly looking at the money as he held it close to his chest and appeared to be counting it. "Of course, we'll put it in your account—or maybe we'll create a new account with a fake LLC—and then pay those bills, slowly, every month, following the payment plan. So as not to alert anyone that you've got more than enough."

"You—" Galen could hardly get enough air to ask the question. "You want me to put that money in my bank account? Wouldn't I be laundering it, then? Is that legal?"

The more important question was not whether the money was legal, because money stored in bags, cans, and even bigger plastic bags never could be. The question was not only where had the money come from, but how to get rid of it, only Galen couldn't get his brain around the right words to ask the question out loud.

"No," said Bede, looking up, his dark brows drawing together as though he was dismayed to find that Galen didn't already understand all of this. "But it's going to help you keep the farm. Otherwise, it'd still be in my Aunt Lorraine's garden shed."

Galen knew that Lorraine Deacon, according to the manilla folder with all of Wyoming Correctional's notes about Bede, was known to the police.

There'd never been anything to connect her to Bede's drug business, so she'd not been questioned or brought to court to testify on Bede's behalf when he'd been arrested. Yet, all this time, she'd been storing Bede's ill-gotten gains. Gains that Bede had earned buying and selling drugs. Right? That must have been where he'd gotten it all.

"Is this drug money?" The question came out very small because of an even smaller hope that the money was not drug related. An impossibility in this case, but Galen needed to know.

"Of course it is."

Bede shrugged, took out another fold of bills, and began fanning himself with it, one fold of bills in each hand. Perhaps this was done in an effort to be amusing, or to distract Galen from what was laid before him now. Three plastic bins of drug money that he was being told was for his own use. And the very handsome, dusty man whose eyes and smile were asking Galen to be pleased about it.

Galen stood up, swiped his hair back from his face, and swallowed just to get some spit in his mouth. There was a breeze from somewhere beyond the open tent flap, but it failed to soothe him.

"I can't take this money," he said, hoping his tone made it quite plain how impossible this all was. "It's drug money. It's blood money. I can't take it."

"What do you mean you can't?" Bede stood up as well and shook the bills in Galen's direction, like he thought seeing the money up close would persuade Galen to take it.

"It's illegal money." Galen's voice rose, becoming tight as he ground out each word.

"Well, what do you suggest I do with it, then?" asked Bede. He spread his hands wide in a what-the-hell-do-you-mean gesture, and meanwhile, several bills, twenty and tens, it looked like, fluttered to the wooden floor of the tent.

"I went all the way to Denver to get this so you wouldn't lose the farm," said Bede. "That's the important thing, right?" When Galen didn't respond, Bede repeated, " Right ?"

Galen was on the verge of saying, Take it back, take it right back , so they could act like this never happened, even though he could never unsee it. Bags of money, drug money, blood money, in a circle on the floor of his tent, and Bede smiling like it was normal. When it was not and never could be. What had he been thinking to get mixed up with a drug dealer?

But before Galen could bend down and start shoving the money back in the plastic bin, a shout came from outside the tent. Galen went to pull back the tent flap and saw Marston standing there, looking sweaty and hassled, which was quite unlike him.

"Horses got out," said Marston. "The wire on the pasture was loose somehow, and now they're across the river. Get dressed and come help."

"You got it," said Galen, stepping back into the tent as Marston dashed off.

The interior of the tent looked all shadowy, with Bede only an outline, and the pile of money only a suggestion.

"What do you expect me to do?" asked Bede, his voice rising to a shout. "Turn it over? I'd be cited for breaking my parole. I'd need to hire an attorney with money I don't have, and it'd take months for an appeal. Either way, I'd be sent back to jail."

Galen briefly thought of Alice Marie Brenner, Leland Tate's attorney on retainer, but dismissed that as she wouldn't want to represent Bede. Or would she?

But that was beside the point. Bede was currently on one side of the law, and Galen was on the other. Their worlds were too different. Their hopes and dreams and futures were wide apart and could never meet. He'd been a fool to fall in love.

And he had fallen in love. Hard. With Bede's strong arms and steadiness, with the laughter they'd shared, dips in the lake. Oh, how quickly their minds had met and how quickly their hearts had entwined. And now he'd have to give it all up.

There were more sounds outside, heavy footsteps on the path to the paddock. They'd need to saddle up whatever horses hadn't gotten loose and cross through the river below where the rocks created natural low waterfalls.

"Get dressed," said Galen, shoving his legs into blue jeans. "I must have left some wire too slack."

"This isn't your fault," said Bede.

"Yes, it is," said Galen. His face felt numb. "All of it is."

"What are you going to do with the money?"

"It stays here," said Galen with a small snap, looking at Bede's blue eyes and the worry there. "You gave it to me, so it's mine. Help me shove it under the bed." He sighed as he tugged on a t-shirt and then grunted as he pushed the first bin neatly under his cot. "No sense making it worse than it is when someone comes by and sees all this."

Bede leaped to do his bidding, shoving the other two bins into hiding, then draping the sheet from the cot over the edge so everything looked tidy and neat. Innocent.

Galen felt the sweat on the back of his neck as he finished dressing, then grabbed his hat and stomped out of the tent. Bede was close behind him.

Bede wasn't wearing cowboy boots, so he would be one of the men helping to guide the horses back into the paddock, or making sure they didn't shoot off into the trees or, heaven forbid, follow the Yellow Wolf River all the way up the canyon to Aungaupi Valley. Then they'd never get the horses back.

The work of rounding up the horses would settle him, as work always did. But as he strode to the paddock and grabbed the first horse he saw, and saddled and bridled it, the back of his mind churned. Bede had meant well, but they were too different for the relationship between them to continue, and that was, quite simply, that.

Still, Bede had come into his life. Bede mattered to him, made him feel good, in all kinds of ways, in ways he'd not felt for a long, long time.

He had no idea what he was going to do, but he was going to do his best to keep Bede out of it.