Blood Money (Joe Dillard Series No. 6) Read Online Free PDF Page A

quickly became profitable. Five years later, after two miscarriages, Ruth Ann finally gave birth to a daughter. She was conceived during a trip to Charleston, South Carolina, so her parents named her Charleston.
    It was a warm, August morning when the inevitable happened. A small army of federal agents descended on the farm like locusts. Charlie was only four years old, but she remembered the incident vividly. Large men in dark jackets, all carrying guns, broke through the front door just before sunup. Charlie was sitting in a booster chair at the kitchen table. Her father was drinking his coffee across from her. The men screamed at him and threw him to the floor. They did the same to her mother. One of the agents picked Charlie up and carried her outside as though he was rescuing her from a fire. She tried to fight him, but it was useless. He put her in a car with two women who drove her away. Her grandparents picked her up several hours later. She didn’t see her father for almost a year, and she never set foot in that house again.  
    Luke Story had intended to get completely out of the marijuana business by then, but he couldn’t resist experimenting with cross-breeding and had planted fifty plants that spring just to see what the yield would be. The agents found them hidden among corn stalks in a field about two hundred yards from the house. They cut down the plants and seized everything in sight. The federal drug laws allowed them to eventually take Luke’s land, his house, his livestock and all of his equipment and vehicles. The agents padlocked the greenhouse business and seized all of the money in every bank account Luke and Ruth Ann owned. They tore the house and the barn apart looking for cash, but found very little. Ruth Ann had never actively participated in the marijuana business, and the agents knew it, but they arrested her and held her in jail until Luke told them where he kept the bulk of his cash. They dug up a fifty-five-gallon oil drum behind the barn containing nearly a million dollars.  
    Luke was charged with manufacturing marijuana, conspiracy to distribute marijuana, tax evasion, and, because he had a shotgun in his closet, they added a charge of being a convicted felon in possession of a weapon. He was too stubborn to plead guilty, so he went to trial a year after he was arrested and was convicted. His prior marijuana conviction was used against him at sentencing, as was the weapons charge. The judge added everything up, thanked him for his military service, expressed regret that he’d been wounded in combat, and sentenced him to twenty-five years in prison. The judge also ordered that his disability checks be discontinued. The next day, Charlie’s mother, Ruth Ann, who’d been forced to take Charlie and move in with Luke’s parents, left early in the morning and never came back. No one had seen or heard from her since. Charlie suspected she’d gone back to her native West Virginia, but by the time Charlie was old enough to look for her, she’d lost the desire.
    The federal government had finally eased the sentencing laws regarding non-violent drug offenders, so Luke would be getting out a little earlier than he’d expected. Charlie was looking forward to having her father home. She had some concerns about how well Luke would get along with his brother, Jasper, about how he would adjust to life outside of prison, and about their financial situation, but Charlie had taught herself to be an optimist. She’d figure it out. She always had. They’d get by somehow.
    “How’s the job hunt going?” Luke asked. “Any prospects?”
    “I’m going to work with Joe Dillard,” Charlie said, knowing what would come next.
    “Dillard! He’s worthless,” Luke said. “He’s the reason I’ve been rotting in this hell hole for more than twenty years.”
    “That isn’t true and you know it. He didn’t grow marijuana and he wasn’t a convicted felon when he got caught growing marijuana. He