the small insecticide sprayer he was looking for, told him it was time to reorganize.
A good hour later he'd cleaned and refilled the horse feed and seeding bins. Spare bags of both feed and seed were neatly stacked, extra horse tack and medicines were all in their proper cabinets and he had a small path cleared through the rest of his mess.
Which was more than he could say about the situation with Sam. He didn't want to marry the woman. They'd been down that road. But he couldn't imagine life without her.
He decided to tackle the chemicals next. When he went to hoist the fifty-five-gallon carbon steel tank of methanol so that he could sweep the cement slab it rested on, Kyle almost fell backward with the force of his own strength.
He'd used enough force to lift fifty-five pounds, but the tank felt like ten.
With a frown, and an unusual sense of foreboding, Kyle lifted the tank again, rocking it slightly back and forth.
He'd noticed the tank was a little lighter the last time he'd checked, and he'd put it down to evaporation. But forty gallons of gas did not evaporate from a sealed tank that quickly.
What the hell was going on?
Was he mistaken? Had he used more gas than he'd thought? Purchased less?
Shaking his head, Kyle set down the tank and headed for his office--what used to be the formal dining room in the house his grandfather had built for his Gretel seventy years before. He knew he wasn't mistaken. Sam had just thrown the sales figures at him on Friday. Not something he was likely to forget.
Checking both his purchasing accounts and the record of use he meticulously kept for all of the hazardous, seed, feed and medicinal products on his property, he verified what he already knew. He'd stored that last fifty-five-gallon tank of methanol on the cement slab poured specifically for that purpose. And he hadn't touched the tank since.
Call Sam.
Kyle reached for the phone and set it back down as the full implications of that Friday morning visit slammed into him.
Sam believed meth was being made in large quantities in the area.
Kyle had purchased a larger quantity than usual of two of the key ingredients.
And now he was missing a substantial amount of one of them.
How would that look to a woman obsessed with finding this lab, even though her colleagues weren't so sure it existed? Chuck Sewell was the best cop around next to Sam and equally concerned about the county's drug problem. But according to Sam, Chuck believed there was a huge increase in the amount of the drug being imported.
One thing was for sure. Right now, especially after Sunday's visit, Kyle didn't trust Sam to believe him when he told her that he had no idea what had happened to the gas. Or to help him. He didn't trust his best friend to have his back.
Still, methanol was a dangerous chemical. Improper exposure to the gas could cause dizziness. Nausea. Nervous system disorders. Eventual death.
And he had forty gallons of the stuff unaccounted for.
Back out in the barn with his inventory list, surrounded by his "toys," as Sam had once called his equipment and tools, Kyle calmed down a bit. Methanol was dangerous, but only if mishandled. If the extra gas were anywhere around him he'd have begun to react to its presence within hours.
If nothing else, his nostrils would have bothered him.
And if someone had taken it? In the first place, it wouldn't have been all that easy to get it off his property. And in the second place, the whole idea was ludicrous.
He wouldn't even have considered theft if Sam hadn't planted the seed of suspicion in his head. Methanol wasn't exorbitantly expensive. But had someone needed it for a valid and good reason and couldn't afford it?
Or was the thief involved in an illegal superlab?
What if Sam was right? What if the missing methanol was tied in some way to a dangerous drug operation?
He had to alert the authorities.
He couldn't be convicted for something he hadn't done. Hell, he had no idea how to make
A good hour later he'd cleaned and refilled the horse feed and seeding bins. Spare bags of both feed and seed were neatly stacked, extra horse tack and medicines were all in their proper cabinets and he had a small path cleared through the rest of his mess.
Which was more than he could say about the situation with Sam. He didn't want to marry the woman. They'd been down that road. But he couldn't imagine life without her.
He decided to tackle the chemicals next. When he went to hoist the fifty-five-gallon carbon steel tank of methanol so that he could sweep the cement slab it rested on, Kyle almost fell backward with the force of his own strength.
He'd used enough force to lift fifty-five pounds, but the tank felt like ten.
With a frown, and an unusual sense of foreboding, Kyle lifted the tank again, rocking it slightly back and forth.
He'd noticed the tank was a little lighter the last time he'd checked, and he'd put it down to evaporation. But forty gallons of gas did not evaporate from a sealed tank that quickly.
What the hell was going on?
Was he mistaken? Had he used more gas than he'd thought? Purchased less?
Shaking his head, Kyle set down the tank and headed for his office--what used to be the formal dining room in the house his grandfather had built for his Gretel seventy years before. He knew he wasn't mistaken. Sam had just thrown the sales figures at him on Friday. Not something he was likely to forget.
Checking both his purchasing accounts and the record of use he meticulously kept for all of the hazardous, seed, feed and medicinal products on his property, he verified what he already knew. He'd stored that last fifty-five-gallon tank of methanol on the cement slab poured specifically for that purpose. And he hadn't touched the tank since.
Call Sam.
Kyle reached for the phone and set it back down as the full implications of that Friday morning visit slammed into him.
Sam believed meth was being made in large quantities in the area.
Kyle had purchased a larger quantity than usual of two of the key ingredients.
And now he was missing a substantial amount of one of them.
How would that look to a woman obsessed with finding this lab, even though her colleagues weren't so sure it existed? Chuck Sewell was the best cop around next to Sam and equally concerned about the county's drug problem. But according to Sam, Chuck believed there was a huge increase in the amount of the drug being imported.
One thing was for sure. Right now, especially after Sunday's visit, Kyle didn't trust Sam to believe him when he told her that he had no idea what had happened to the gas. Or to help him. He didn't trust his best friend to have his back.
Still, methanol was a dangerous chemical. Improper exposure to the gas could cause dizziness. Nausea. Nervous system disorders. Eventual death.
And he had forty gallons of the stuff unaccounted for.
Back out in the barn with his inventory list, surrounded by his "toys," as Sam had once called his equipment and tools, Kyle calmed down a bit. Methanol was dangerous, but only if mishandled. If the extra gas were anywhere around him he'd have begun to react to its presence within hours.
If nothing else, his nostrils would have bothered him.
And if someone had taken it? In the first place, it wouldn't have been all that easy to get it off his property. And in the second place, the whole idea was ludicrous.
He wouldn't even have considered theft if Sam hadn't planted the seed of suspicion in his head. Methanol wasn't exorbitantly expensive. But had someone needed it for a valid and good reason and couldn't afford it?
Or was the thief involved in an illegal superlab?
What if Sam was right? What if the missing methanol was tied in some way to a dangerous drug operation?
He had to alert the authorities.
He couldn't be convicted for something he hadn't done. Hell, he had no idea how to make
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