فصل 21

chapter-21 Clay pigeons.

The next morning my mood was as gloomy as the weather—gray and threatening. Most everyone was still asleep, so I went for a ride on one of the ATVs, then came back for breakfast. I went over to the girls’ bunkhouse to see if Taylor had come back in the night, but Tessa said she hadn’t.

I walked into the kitchen to find Ostin, Zeus, Jack, and Tanner already eating. None of the girls were at the main house yet except Nichelle, who rarely ate breakfast.

For breakfast they were serving French toast with powdered sugar and sliced bananas, link sausage, and banana smoothies. It had been a while since anyone had tried to push bananas on us. I sat down next to Ostin.

“Hey, where’ve you been?” he asked with a full mouth.

“Out riding.”

“Taylor back?”

“Not yet.”

“Hey, Michael,” Tanner said. “We’re going to shoot clay pigeons after breakfast. Want to come?”

“Never done it before.”

“I’ll teach you,” Jack said.

Then Chairman Simon walked into the dining room. He looked about as bad as he had last night. He lifted a glass and tapped it with a fork to get our attention. The room quieted. “There will be a mandatory meeting in the main room at one thirty, right after lunch,” he said gruffly. “Any questions?”

“Any word on Mr. Ridley?” I asked.

“Not yet. I’m sure we’ll hear something by this afternoon.”

After breakfast, Tanner checked out two twelve-gauge shotguns, and he, Jack, Zeus, and I drove one of the golf carts out near the pond to shoot clay pigeons. On the western side of the pond there was an automatic trap that flung bright orange disks into the air for us to shoot at.

I had seen trap shooting in a movie before but had never shot at clays, or even fired a shotgun, for that matter. Jack had done it a million times before, and he gave me a few tips before I tried. I missed the first four and hit the next two. Tanner was a pretty good shot, hitting six out of seven. Zeus was an even worse shot than I was. He finally got frustrated and ended up just shooting the clay pigeons with lightning bolts. It looked pretty cool.

The lunch bell rang at noon, and we packed up the guns and clay pigeons and drove back up to the main house. Lunch was corned beef sandwiches, pasta salad, and banana pudding. I asked the chairman again if he’d heard anything about Mr. Ridley.

“I spoke to him a half hour ago,” he replied. “He’s still recovering, but, all things considered, he sounded well. He says they may release him tomorrow.”

“That’s good,” I said, wondering when Taylor would be back.

“Yes, we were lucky. I’d say we dodged a bullet, except we didn’t.” He stood. “Remember, we’ll be meeting right after lunch.” He walked out of the room.

I immediately started blinking. Something about the tone of his voice filled me with fear. It was clear that our time on the ranch was drawing to a close. Who knows, maybe even our time on earth. I was looking forward to the meeting about as much as a guilty murder suspect looks forward to the jury’s verdict.