In the Blink of An Eye by Jerry Baggett (ebook reader for surface pro TXT) 📕

or seat on the damn thing. She dropped her shorts and underwear around her ankles and backed over the toilet bowl.

She woke to the sound of voices. “Get yourself together, Angel. You’re going to Mexico with us,” Hilo said. “I won’t let anything more happen to you for a while. You may end up back in California, if you cooperate.”

“You know I can’t go back. The Feds will have the whole world looking for me. My condo on Catalina Island has been taken over, I’m sure.” I can’t let them take me to Mexico. Everything depends on getting back to my boat where the new identity might save me.

“Tell me something, Angel. I’ve wondered how you managed a ranch in Alabama and worked as a nurse in California at the same time? We were pleased at the results of that operation and got a little careless. After all, you ran that place like a professional rancher for more than thirty years. You and Doctor Peyton were very well hidden.”

“A simple frequent flier program. My best rest came while flying the night owl flight. It got easier after cell phones became popular and I went to part-time with Doctor Peyton. Please tell me I’ve earned my retirement and leave me alone. Your organization has profited as well as I.”

“Can’t do that. El Jefe said we should bring you home to Mexico. I think you know too much.” He turned toward the door. “Unfortunately for you, Angel, we can’t let your knowledge of the organization’s very private network of bank accounts and business contacts just disappear into the far reaches of the world. You can understand that, can’t you?”

Chapter 47

“Where’s this treasure now?” Marcus McGowin said.

“It’s locked in a storage facility, inside my SUV, along with my belongings. As senior trustee, uncle Mark, I felt you should decide how we handle this mess. Personally, I see no reason to announce a find of this magnitude on trust property. Squatters would destroy everything there overnight, with that kind of publicity. At yesterday’s gold price, one ingot would trade at two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. You received the full inventory by courier. Have you arrived at a rough estimate yet?”

“It’s entirely too early to start appraising everything, Dick. We want to be sure of each step taken. I never met my great-grandfather but he would be happy that his family’s valuables have been found by the family, not strangers. My father loved his grandfather. Johnny lost his leg attempting to remove his father’s body from the battlefield. You know the history. Johnny survived the war, only to fight for survival through the aftermath of suffering the south experienced following Lee’s surrender. Let me fill you in some, a refresher on what you already know about your family.”

He covered the phone for a second. “Before leaving for war, Colonel John Calhoun McGowin freed all the family’s slaves. He knew that a freed black man would not be able to assume full responsibility for his family without help from white people, regardless of any strong desire he might have to do so.”

He hesitated. “This is going to take some time, Dick, but it’s important to know, relative to the time period. The colonel felt obligated to the black families. He met with the adult members of his own family and they agreed to provide each head of family household twenty acres of land with mules and farm equipment for self-sustainment. The family further agreed to assist in building living quarters on each parcel of land, using lumber and other material provided by the family. In return, the ex-slave families agreed to maintain the plantation throughout the war, on a sharecropper type of arrangement. The ex-slave families lived up to their agreement and thrived, right up to the point where Union troops moved in and scavenged the property down to bare bones, making life difficult for everyone, black or white.”

He stopped and thought for a moment. “Grandfather Johnny was near death, in a field hospital, when his family carried him home to die. He recovered from losing his leg and began to exert strong leadership within the family. Government-appointed carpetbaggers were sent into the south to prevent further insurrection. Those appointed agents continued to appropriate land and other assets from landowners for their own selfish needs. A troop of soldiers was sent to arrest Johnny and charge him with treason, a pressure tactic. He resisted in every way possible and was later released, after he swore allegiance to the United States government. He turned over fifty acres of land, where the family’s shoe and boot factory had been burned to the ground by Union soldiers, in an attempt to grab the land. That fifty acres was deeded to the tri-county carpetbagger in charge as payment after reaching an agreement to be left alone.”

“Your throat’s dry. Get yourself a drink of water. I’ll hold on,” Dick said.

“Johnny and many other landowners considered the ex-slave population to be the white man’s burden. He recovered his health and prospered from then on, until the end of his life, at age ninety-seven.” He stopped talking for a moment. “All in all, my dad spent as much time as he could with his grandfather. He helped him around the farm and listened to his stories. Johnny had considered the family blessed. The strength of the family and their timber assets helped many other desperate families live through the devastation of the Reconstruction period.”

He stopped again for another swallow of water. “Here’s what we’re going to do, Dick. I’m putting together notification to members of the trust. A meeting has been scheduled for January fifteenth, here in Los Angeles, at the McGowin Corporation headquarters. I would like for you to charter a plane and fly the recovered treasure to the headquarters building, here, at your earliest convenience. Our greatest concern now should be securing the