Yes, I know.” Cole raked a hand back through his hair, damp from being under his hat all day. “Do you think Matt is in trouble, Billy? Legal trouble?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Strong. He said they were threatening him.”
“Threatening him! Why didn’t he tell me?”
“I told him he should, but Mr. Strong, you’re always out plowing, or on the road to Albuquerque to see your girlfriend. Matt doesn’t much talk to anyone but me.”
“You and Miss Pruitt.” Cole left his son’s bedroom and took the long hall in five strides, as Billy followed. “Where’s the phone? Why does he always move the blasted phone?”
“Use mine. But I already tried calling him, Mr. Strong. He’s got his turned off.”
Cole took Billy’s cell phone and began searching down the list of numbers Josefina had written on the chalkboard near the refrigerator.
“You don’t know Matt’s cell number?” Billy asked, a tinge of disbelief in his voice. “Here, give me the phone.”
Billy punched a couple of buttons—clearly he had his best friend’s number programmed into his phone. “Hey, Mattman, where are you? You said we’d go to DQ after Spanish. I’m out at your place, and your dad’s semi-freaking about you. So call me, okay?” He pressed another button. “I left him a message.”
Cole hurled his apple core into the trash can. He did have to plow. The ranch took most of his time. And yes, since meeting Penny Ames, he had spent what spare time he had in Albuquerque. Now that they were engaged, she required a lot of his attention in planning the details of their fall wedding. She had chosen Tahiti for the honeymoon, and she insisted that Cole go ahead and get his passport, their tickets and a new set of luggage.
Having a woman in his life again took time and energy, but Cole held every hope that Penny would bond them into the family he wanted—for himself and for his son. He felt more than a little guilty about the lousy job he had done as a father. But Matt had never been an easy kid to parent—wandering in a strange world of his own making. Cole had tried to understand the boy, but the older Matt got, the more distant their relationship grew. With the purchase of his first computer, Matt retreated almost completely into a realm of information, entertainment, and communication. Cole had left him alone, grateful his son was occupied and apparently happy.
He sighed. “I’ve got to finish that field. We plant next week.”
“Yeah, sure, Mr. Strong.” Billy’s brown eyes registered disappointment. “Tell Matt to call me tonight if he shows up.”
“What do you mean ‘if he shows up’? Of course he’ll show up.” Suspicion gnawed at Cole. “Where do you think he is, Billy? Tell me the truth.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he had a wreck. He’s not that good of a driver, you know.”
Cole clenched his teeth at the image of his son trapped inside a mangled truck in an irrigation ditch somewhere. For years, he had tried to get Matt out in the fields to practice his driving. The boy wasn’t interested. But the minute he turned sixteen, of course, he insisted on getting his license. Cole had given his son the use of one of the ranch pickups—an old green Chevy with a rusty bed and balding tires.
“The only road he drives is the one between the high school and the house,” he told Billy. “And you just got here. You’d have seen the pickup if he’d wrecked it.”
“Yeah.” Billy thought for a moment. “He might have gone out to see Mr. Banyon in Hope. The whole Agrimax thing, you know.”
Cole grabbed the phone book from the counter and leafed through the Hope directory. Billy handed him the cell phone, and he dialed.
“Banyon,” a voice said on the other end.
“Jim, this is Cole Strong—Matt’s dad.”
“Oh. Uh-huh.”
“Listen, Matt didn’t come home from school today, and I was wondering if he might be out there visiting with you.”
“No.” Banyon breathed heavily into the phone. “Uh, no. Tell him not to come out. Not to do that.”
Cole paused, concern working its way up his spine. “You okay, Jim?”
“Uh.” There was another pause and more labored breathing. “No. Not…not really.”
“Is there anything I can do for you? Do you need a doctor?”
Another silence. “Just…uh…tell Matt not to come. Definitely not to—”
The phone went dead. Cole stared at Billy.
“What’s with Mr. Banyon?” the boy asked. “Is he sick?”
“I’m not sure.” Cole tapped the phone book, weighing the idea of asking the sheriff to look in on the man. Banyon was in his sixties, but he appeared to be in robust health—not the type to have a heart attack or a stroke. Maybe he was struggling with his farm. On retiring from a white-collar job at Agrimax, Jim Banyon had bought land in New Mexico and was trying to grow cotton on it. Many local farmers had gone belly-up in recent years, and Cole had not predicted great success for his new neighbor. The depression and despair these men felt at the loss of their land and livelihood had led some to alcohol and others to the brink of suicide.
Uneasy over his son’s whereabouts, Cole found his thoughts drawn to his work. It was the one thing that had seen him through his wife’s illness and death, the growing estrangement from Matt, and the surge of emotion he had felt on meeting Penny.
“Well, I’m gonna head out and look for Matt,” Billy said, grabbing the last tamale from the plate. “He might have gone to the library and forgotten what time it was.”
“That would be like Matt.”
“Yeah.” The boy picked up an apple and dropped it into the pocket of his baggy jeans. “If he’s not there, I guess I’ll check the computer store. He’s been eyeing this tiny USB key he wants to buy. Sometimes he just goes over there and stares at it. Or maybe—”
“Wait. A US…B…what?”
“It’s a gizmo that stores information.” He paused. “Mr. Strong, Matt’s the one who can tell you about computer stuff. Don’t you ever ask?”
“I’m asking now. I’m asking you.”
“A USB key is a piece of computer hardware, but it’s cool because it’s so tiny you can hang it on a key chain. Like the size of a pack of gum or something.” He held his thumb and forefinger a couple of inches apart. “You plug it into your computer’s USB port—” Billy paused, regarded the obviously inept adult before him, and then rolled his eyes “—Universal Serial Bus. A USB port uses hubs to let you attach stuff like printers, digital cameras, game pads, joysticks, keyboards, and mice to your computer. And USB keys.”
“All right,” Cole said, trying to envision these electronic gadgets that were so commonplace to Matt and Billy.
“So you plug the flash drive, or USB key it’s called, into your USB port, and then you can load
