Free Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller by John A. Daly

widened and his mouth gaped open. “Oldhorse?” He suddenly pictured the
man clothed in denim with his long hair tied back in a ponytail, the way he was used
to seeing him.
    Both men stared at each other, cautiously sizing one another up and down, struggling
to understand the other’s presence in the bedroom.
    Sean knew Ron Oldhorse, but not well. The rumor was that he was formerly in the armed
forces, but Sean didn’t know for sure. All he knew was that the man lived as a hermit
in the hills outside of Winston. Of Native American heritage, Oldhorse chose to live
largely as his ancestors did, hunting for his own food and growing his own crops.
He owned a bare-bones cabin with no modern conveniences that was so old and weatherworn
that anyone who happened to stumble across it in the woods would probably think it
was uninhabitable and had been abandoned decades ago.
    Oldhorse had played an incidental but important role in bringing Alvar Montoya, the
man who had murdered Sean’s uncle, to justice. For that, Sean respected him, but
he couldn’t wrap his mind around why the man would possibly be standing before him
now, looking the way he did.
    “It’s okay, Sean,” said Toby. “You don’t have to be scared. I just didn’t know that
Ron Oldhorse was coming over tonight. That’s why I yelled. Mom’s always telling me
that I yell before thinking sometimes, and that I need to process things first.”
He swallowed quickly before continuing. “I actually thought I was making some good
progress until tonight.”
    Both men, still breathing heavily in the awkwardness enveloping the room, held onto
their weapons.
    Sean frowned. “Why would he be spending the night, Toby?”
    Lighter footsteps trounced down the hallway and then Joan appeared by Oldhorse’s
side, dressed in a dull blue robe. Her short, graying hair was matted to her head,
framing angry eyes.
    “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sean muttered, lowering his chair to the floor.
    Joan slid under Oldhorse’s outstretched arm and stood in front of him to face Sean.
She was trembling in anger as she glared at him. Oldhorse lowered his knife to his
side.
    “Sean! Why in the hell are you here?” she screamed so loudly that the others winced.
    Sean and Toby exchanged glances.
    “Don’t look at my son!” she snapped, commanding the attention back to her. “Why are
you here?”
    Oldhorse shook his head, taking a breath before he turned around and quietly left
the room.
    “I wanted him to look something up on the Interweb for me,” said Sean.
    “Internet,” Toby whispered.
    Sean ignored him.
    “At eleven o’clock at night?” she wailed, throwing her hands up in the air and glaring
a hole through Sean’s very soul.
    Sean’s face soured and he found himself subtly nodding. “I guess you have a point
there.”
    Her head cocked to an angle and her eyes blinked repeatedly, reflecting the audacity
of Sean’s words.
    “But it was for something important!” he added up with some gusto in his voice.
    “What, Sean? What was so important that you had to sneak in here and scare the hell
out of my son in the middle of the night?”
    “Me?” he sputtered. “I’m not the one who ran in here waving a knife around!”
    “We thought someone had broken in!” she yelled, her nostrils flaring to the size
of nickels as she tightened her fists. “What am I saying? Someone did break in! You broke in!”
    Toby interjected. “Mom, I actually let him in and—”
    “Shut up, Toby!” she bit out.
    The boy’s gaze went to the floor.
    She ordered her son to close the window where the chilling breeze and blowing snow
were still flooding into the room.
    “Listen,” Sean said. “He has an article up on the screen here that I need to read,
and then I’ll be gone.”
    “Oh, no,” she quickly replied with her eyebrows raised authoritatively. “You’re not
spending another second inside my home. You’re going to leave right now.”
    “Please. This will just take a