Sheepdog-07

Ken went to bed after the two lawmen took their leave. Years ago, he’d be mad at this sort of development, thinking that he’d been suckered somehow- and he had gotten suckered into this before. This time, he noticed, he felt nothing. No anger, no resentment, no sense at all of being on the wrong end of a con- nothing at all. It just didn’t matter anymore. Why this, again, came to him did not mean a damn thing. Those details would sort themselves out, and they always did, when it was time to do so. All that mattered was the goal.

Kathy slipped into his bed as he reflected on this, and she noticed the look—that look what to her meant serious business either went down, or would presently—on his face. Without a word, she curled up next him; it always brought him out of his trance when they were together, and indeed he did come out again. They said nothing; they didn’t need to. They’ve been here so many times before that all what could been said had been said, and so at last both drifted to sleep in each other’s arms. The last conscious thought before dawn, for both, was “At least Reggie doesn’t mind.”

Reginald, though he slept through the night undisturbed, was no slouch. He awoke alone, which he expected, and therefore felt no surprise to see his wife and his wife’s former boyfriend together in the guest bedroom. He let them be, cleaned up and got dressed. He noticed that the gun cabinet had been used when he put the rifle back in its proper spot, and then put the pocket pistol into the holster he used when he carried it. As he saw no damage, nor signs of violence, he quickly deduced that what occurred overnight ended without bloodshed.

While he cooked his own breakfast, Reginald poked his head outside and noticed the tracks in the dirt; being quite familiar with the county sheriff’s department, he knew their vehicles well and thus guessed—correctly—that they stopped by during the night. One quick phone call got him confirmation on his hunch. As he ate breakfast and read his usual array of papers and magazines on his tablet, he put in a call to one of his businesses—the local gun store he owned—and had his manager set aside a few things for him.

Then he put in a few more calls, sent out some emails and held a brief conference call before he finished his coffee and woke up his daughter. As he hustled her out of bed and into the morning routine Reginald marked the points of similarity between himself and his progeny. While he awaited his little girl’s appearance downstairs, he pulled out the medical records and smiled- just to be certain, he had some DNA checked at birth. Reginald is an atypically accepting man of means, but he’s still a man of means and thus protects his interests, and he wasn’t about to give his wealth away to someone not of his blood.

His daughter came down to breakfast, and after breakfast the two of them left the house for some father-daughter time at the local gun club where he maintained a membership. They spent the morning shooting, and shooting video; Reginald’s latest project was a video series about teaching the fundamentals of firearms safety to children roughly his daughter’s age. When they came back to the house for lunch, Kathy and Ken were up. Kathy was in the kitchen, and Ken in the backyard.