LITMIR.BIZ

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paper he’s doing. Weirder than usual, I mean.”

      From anyone but Billy Younger, this statement would have made Cole bristle. He realized his son was different, but he wished others weren’t so aware of it. Reading easily by age three, Matthew had also excelled in math and science. But the boy’s social skills were worse than poor. Shy, gawky, nervous, Matt didn’t help himself by regularly obsessing over one thing or another. Though he was a good-looking kid, with his mother’s dark hair and his father’s blue eyes, he had never been on a date and could claim only one close friend.

      “What’s the paper about?” Cole asked.

      “You haven’t heard him talking about it?”

      “I don’t think so.”

      Cole felt uncomfortable not knowing his son’s activities, but he had a ranch to run. Taking control after his own father’s death, Cole had barely saved the operation from bankruptcy. Now profitable, it had been cited by journalists and lawmakers as one of the finest examples of a family-owned ranch in the state of New Mexico. But the hard work had taken its toll on Cole’s relationship with Matt—not that there had ever been much to build on.

      Cole had acknowledged long ago that he and the boy had little in common. When they ate together, dinner was a mostly silent affair. When they went on a road trip, Matt hid behind a pair of sunglasses and the headphones of his portable MP3 player. In church these days, Matt sat with Billy and the rest of the youth group. Summers were no better. Matt spent all his free time parked in front of his computer, and unless it related to ranching, such current technology bewildered Cole. There had never been a strong relationship between father and son, and now it was almost nonexistent.

      “He’s writing about food or something,” Billy said, wading into Matt’s bedroom—as if walking across old issues of MacWorld and PC Gamer were perfectly ordinary. He approached the tangle of cords and computer equipment piled on his friend’s desk. “It’s like world hunger, you know? The term paper is for English, but we get to choose any subject we want. So Matt gets this idea from Miss Pruitt, who’s like his guru. She teaches computers. Miss Pruitt is cool, though. She goes on all these mission trips with her church. And she really feeds the hungry.”

      “I haven’t met Miss Pruitt.”

      “She’s intense.” He leaned over Matt’s computer and pressed a key. The screen switched from a pattern of morphing colored shapes into a field of text. “You don’t want to take her classes unless you like to work. She expects a lot out of you, but Matt’s into that kind of thing. He’s always going in there and talking to her.”

      “Does he have a crush on her?”

      “A crush!” Billy laughed, and Cole realized the term was a little out of date. “No, sir, you don’t get a crush on Miss Pruitt. I mean, it’s not that she’s ugly, okay? She’s just—wow, she’s intense. That’s all I can tell you.”

      He peered at the screen. “This is it. This is the first draft of Matt’s term paper for English. It’s about how these huge food companies are controlling the world.”

      “What?” Cole frowned. “Food companies doing what?”

      “Come on, Mr. Strong—you sell all your beef to Agrimax, don’t you? And your chile goes to Selena Foods, which is owned by Agrimax. Your alfalfa? Who gets that?”

      “Homestead. Agrimax owns it.”

      “Okay, Mr. S, you’re with me now.” Billy was scrolling through text as he spoke. “I wonder where Matt’s laptop is.”

      Cole recalled the minicomputer that his son lugged around along with a graphing calculator and several other gadgets whose names and functions were a mystery to Cole. As with all of Matt’s equipment, the laptop was in a constant state of being “upgraded”—which, as far as Cole understood, meant he wrote countless checks, and then Matt bought and installed various circuit boards of all shapes and sizes. “Matt always has it with him,” Cole told Billy.

      “It’s probably in his truck,” Billy said. “It has a newer version of his term paper on it. Matt was showing me yesterday. He learned all about these food companies on the Internet, you know? And he went to see that guy who ranches near Hope—what’s his name? Who retired from Agrimax?”

      “Jim Banyon?”

      “Yeah, him. And Matt interviewed Miss Pruitt about her work with famine relief.”

      “What does famine relief have to do with Agrimax?”

      “See, what happened is this. Matt’s doing his research, and he gets this big idea that his term paper can be more than just a school assignment. It’s a plan for Agrimax to help feed the hungry. So he starts crunching all these numbers on his computer, and he’s e-mailing everybody—completely obsessed, you know? He can’t talk about anything else. Anyway, the other day he tells me he was wrong about Agrimax helping feed the hungry. He says they’re only gonna sell their food to the highest bidders, and they don’t even want to hear his ideas. Basically they told him to back off.”

      A prickle ran down Cole’s spine. “Back off? What was Matt doing?”

      “Writing to them and bugging them—stuff like that.” Billy straightened. “I told him to chill out. Just forget the whole thing. Write the term paper and get the usual A, and then drop it. But you know how Matt is. He gets these—”

      “Obsessions. 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

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