Free Fatal Harvest by Catherine Palmer

Strong.”
    “You will do it, because you’re the one who caused all this. You put the bug in his ear about famine relief. You fired him up about all the hungry people in the world, and your big mission trips, and your famine-relief projects. And you taught him every technological thing he needed to know to dig himself into this deep hole. So you’re coming with me, and you’re going to do your dead-level best to stay in touch with my son and help me find him. Do you understand now? ”
    Her nostrils flared as she glared at him. For a moment, he thought she was going to buck him again. But he knew if she did, he’d toss the little fireball over his shoulder, throw her in the truck and make her go with him anyway.
    “I will need to make arrangements for my classes,” she said through tightened lips. “And perhaps I could be allowed to pack a few things?”
    “I’ll take you to your house.”
    “My car is at the school.”
    “You won’t need it.” He took her arm. “Let’s go.”

FOUR
    J ill stared out at the two-lane road that stretched between Artesia and Hobbs. She could not believe what she was doing. Until this day—this simple, ordinary Thursday in May—her life had been organized and structured. She had graduated cum laude from Texas Tech, taken a teaching position at Artesia High School, joined a church, rented an apartment until she’d been able to buy herself a house, and had been content. She enjoyed her job, her garden, her mission trips, her friends. Everything under control. And then Cole Strong had walked into her classroom.
    Now they were jammed into his hot pickup, driving along in the dark, yet they had hardly spoken two words to each other. She could almost feel the rancher seething. Or was it worry that emanated from the clenched fists on the steering wheel, the bunched muscles beneath his blue shirt, the flicker of tension in his jaw? And if he was indeed worried, was it the fate of his son that troubled him—or the unfinished chores he had left behind?
    “I’d drive faster, but the antelope are thick tonight,” he commented, almost under his breath.
    “It would have been a lot quicker if you had dropped down to Carlsbad and taken the highway to Hobbs,” she said. “I’ve done it a hundred times.”
    “Matt wouldn’t go that way. He’d do the straight shot.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I know. ”
    Bullheaded old coot, she thought. Okay, maybe Cole wasn’t old. In fact, they were probably close to the same age. But he was definitely as hard-nosed and stubborn as they came. Handsome in a weather-beaten, sunburned sort of way, he came across as a man who chose to stand alone—who spoke his mind and hoarded his smiles. A man who didn’t need or want anyone.
    Right now, though, he needed Jill’s expertise. But he certainly didn’t want her, the idealistic computer teacher who had led his son astray. Well, he was as stuck with her as she was with him.
    Jill glanced over her shoulder to where the computer equipment was riding under a billowing tarp in the truck bed. Cole wouldn’t hear of leaving it behind, even when she insisted she could communicate with Matt through her own laptop. No, they had to haul the monster LCD monitor and the tower, not to mention the tangle of wires connecting an external hard drive, a CD burner, an optical mouse and the twin speakers. She had tried to draw the line at bringing the printer, but he refused to leave it. So it was jolting behind them, too, no doubt losing bolts and dislodging hardware with every bump in the road.
    “I’m supposed to be starting a new unit in my Web-design class tomorrow,” she said. “There’s no way a substitute can do that for me.”
    “Why bother starting something new? The kids’ brains have shut down for the summer anyway.”
    “Are you kidding? I never quit until the very end.”
    “I can believe it.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Billy said you were intense. I’d call it