Page 8 of Rust and Bloom

He does recall this. And his side-eye comes with a single raised eyebrow. "What are you saying? You really did sleep with my mother?"

"No, you sick fuck. I was her… muse, or somethin'."

Cash scoffs loud. "Muse?" Then he laughs.

"Hey, you asked. Your mother followed me around my whole life takin' pictures. She's got a whole book about me in that vault under your house. And that day I showed up covered in dirt, I was lookin' for that book. So Savannah took me into the vault and opened it up. I hadn't seen it since your mother tried to give it to me a decade ago. But I told her I didn't want it. Well, I did want it. I just didn't want it in my possession. So I didn't take it. Anyway, I told Savannah everything that day. Fully expectin' to be in some kind of FBI shootout in the next forty-eight hours."

"Which never happened," Cash says, takin' a left into the ranch driveway. The gate is already open, so we just drive past it.

"Nah. What I got instead was weeks of waitin' and an asshole called Mike in an old abandoned gas station."

"He runs it. The whole fuckin' thing."

I let out a sigh and agree. "Yeah."

Cash parks his truck where he always does, over by some building I've never actually been in. Then he says, "It's gettin' real now, Legion. And a lot of shit is about to go down here on the ranch."

We stare at each other for a moment. "OK," I say.

"So you should take Savannah away for a weekend."

The smile on my face is immediate. "Should I?"

"I don't wanna know," Cash says, wavin' a hand in the air. "She just needs to not be here." Then he lifts the lid on the crap box between the seats, pulls out an envelope—thick, oversized, and heavy—and hands it to me.

"What's this?" I ask. Takin' it.

"Little sign-on bonus." Then he winks at me, opens his door, and hops out. "Welcome to the family."

That's how he leaves me. Walkin' off toward the round pen as his hands call out greetings.

I open the envelope by pinchin' the two metal tabs and liftin' the flap, then peek inside.

"Holy shit."

The first thing I see is the money. Bound in paper, two stacks of it, held together tight. I take them out and turn 'em over in my hands. One stack's twenties, worn soft at the edges like they been through a lotta pockets. The other's fifties, crisper, newer, like they came straight outta some bank vault.

Seven thousand dollars.

Sign-on bonus.

I sit there a second, lettin' that number roll around in my head, weighin' it against every moment of my life that came before this one.

OK.

But that's not all that's in the envelope.

I dig deeper and it just keeps comin', like Cash sat down one night and thought through every single thing a man might need to belong to this place.

It's like I'm on the Ashby ranch payroll now and this is my HR entrance meetin'.

Because there are three credit cards. Emergency numbers printed neat on a card. A whole ring full of keys. A roadside assistance card. A health insurance card—health insurance, for fuck's sake, like I'm the kinda man who goes to doctors. And a fuel card for the co-op.

There's also a map and the map has a note.

Call the pilot, his name's Jeff. Tell him where you wanna go and what time you want to leave. He'll have her fueled and ready.

Her? Oh. A jet.