Cowboy Strong

by Stacy Finz

  Yep, there was all that. Still, Sawyer believed her. Her story was too ludicrous not to.

  “You and I both know with good photo software anything is possible. Hell, William Randolph Hearst knew how to do it more than a hundred years ago. Remember: ‘You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.’”

  From Cash’s expression he still seemed dubious. “How does she plan to prove it?”

  Sawyer shrugged. “We’re working on it.”

  “We’re?” Jace’s brows shot up again. “Now you’re her champion. Just the other day you couldn’t stand her.”

  Cash, the grown-up in the room, ignored Jace and asked Sawyer, “What would be the motive to spread rumors about her? Who has that big of a grudge against her? Or something to gain?”

  These were all questions Sawyer had asked himself. Gina sure didn’t think there was anyone who would go to this end to ruin her. “It might be someone out to get the Clays and Gina was just an unintended casualty.”

  “Sounds a little out there to me. But if your instincts say she’s telling the truth, I’ll go with it because you’re usually right. Not always, but usually.”

  Jace glanced at his watch. As Mill County sheriff, he usually had meetings and briefings in the morning. “You have a thing for this woman?”

  “Hell no,” Sawyer said and even to his own ears sounded too defensive.

  “For a guy who isn’t into her, she sure spends a lot of time at your place.” Jace topped off his cup from the carafe on the table.

  “She likes my kitchen.”

  “Are you sure that’s all she likes?”

  Sawyer was preparing a pithy comeback when Mitch Reynolds walked in. Jace bristled. The two of them used to be best friends until Mitch started screwing Jace’s other best friend’s wife. At the time, Mitch had been engaged to Aubrey. The whole ordeal had ended in a complicated mess that had almost lost Jace the sheriff’s race.

  On top of that, Mitch, a developer, had been caught up in a scam to swindle Randy Beals out of his ranch so he could build a golf-course community. Jace had arrested him, but Randy wouldn’t press charges because his kids had also been involved in the conspiracy.

  Mitch bobbed his head at them. Sawyer wasn’t sure if Mitch was being cordial for appearance’s sake or if the gesture was his equivalent of waving his middle finger. Whatever. The guy could go screw himself for all Sawyer cared.

  A few minutes later, Randy came in the coffee shop and joined Mitch at his table.

  “What the hell’s that about?” Sawyer said.

  Jace watched the two men across the restaurant. “What do you think it’s about? Randy’s so desperate to sell, he’s willing to make a deal with the devil.”

  “I don’t want that asshole as a neighbor.” Sawyer drained the last of his coffee and poured himself another cup.

  “Are you kidding?” Cash said. “You said it best, Sawyer. When he’s done with Beals Ranch, it’ll be half-acre lots with mini-mansions and an eighteen-hole golf course. Our neighbor won’t be Mitch, it’ll be two thousand new families.”

  “Who’ll complain about the smell of our cattle,” Jace added and rubbed his hand down his face. “Shit.”

  Maria, who’d been working at the coffee shop as long as Sawyer could remember, brought their food while Laney took orders at another table.

  Jace doused his chicken with hot sauce. “Our only hope is that the city won’t allow Mitch to develop the land, that it’ll have to stay agricultural.”

  Jace was delusional. The tax revenue alone would be difficult for any municipality to turn down. And then there was the fact that it was happening all around them. The land was just too damn valuable for ranching or farming.

  “Any way we can appeal to Randy?” Sawyer asked and looked to Jace because he’d known Randy his whole life and had grown up with the Beals kids.

  “It’s not like I can tell him who or who not to sell to. He’s got to do what’s best for him and Marge. And last time I talked to him they were drowning in debt.”

  Basically, there wasn’t a whole lot they could do to prevent the inevitable.

  They ate and moved on, talking about Sawyer’s article, a cattle-rustling arrest in Texas that Cash was keeping tabs on, and eventually came around to the topic that was supposedly the reason they’d met for breakfast in the first place.

  The flower farmers.

  “Well, are we going ahead with letting them lease the property or not?” Sawyer looked to Cash, who’d been briefed.

  There was no question Jace’s vote was yes. Whatever Charlie wanted, he wanted. And Charlie was in favor of a flower shop. Aubrey, too.

  “I don’t see how it could hurt.” Cash pushed his empty plate aside. “If they don’t pay their lease, we own their crop.”

  “Flowers?” Sawyer pulled a face.

  “I did a little research and cut flowers are damned profitable,” Cash said. “On average, about thirty thousand in sales per acre.”

  Jace perked up. “No shit?”

  “Maybe we should eliminate the UC Davis girls and plant them ourselves.” Sawyer was joking, but he had no idea flowers grossed so well. A cow-calf pair needed roughly two to five acres of land. Without doing a lot of fancy math, Sawyer was thinking the flowers had a bigger return. At least in the short term.

  “You want to be a farmer?” Cash didn’t have to ask because the answer was a resounding no.

  They were ranchers, born and raised, even if Sawyer and Cash grew up in the city. As Grandpa Dalton used to say, it was in their DNA and nothing could change that, not even Beverly Hills. Or in Cash’s case, San Francisco.

  “What about the shop they want?” Sawyer supposed the three of them could build it themselves to save on labor costs.

  “If we’re planning to lease out business space, we’ll have to supply the infrastructure,” Jace said. “No way around that, right?”

  Cash nodded. “It doesn’t mean we have to supply them with a refrigeration system or any of the other bells and whistles they need for a floral shop. Just bare bones is the way I see it. The rest is up to them.”

  Sawyer agreed. “What about fencing for their fields? Anything deer-proof will cost a hell of a lot of money.”

  “I think that’s on them, too,” Cash said.

  “The big question is water.” Jace looked from Cash to Sawyer.

  “I say we give them two price options,” Sawyer said. “One with water, one without. They could always truck in their own tank.”

  “Yeah, I’m good with that.” Jace glanced at his watch again. “We’ll have to come up with some numbers.”

  “We might also offer profit sharing.” Cash hitched his shoulders. “Farming’s always a gamble, but as far as the flowers, I like the returns. Something to think about, anyway.”

  Sawyer glanced over at Mitch and Randy’s table. The men were in deep conversation, which couldn’t be good.

  “I’ve gotta motor.” Jace reached for his wallet and Sawyer swatted his hand away.

  “I’ll take care of the bill. You can get it next time.”

  Jace and Cash left at the same time. Sawyer squared up with Laney at the register and went into the kitchen to say hello to Jimmy Ray, who was up to his ass in alligators. The dining room was hopping.

  Every Wednesday the local cattlemen met for breakfast. As always, five big tables had been pushed together to accommodate them.

  “Sawyer,” one of the cowboys called him over. “How you boys doin’?”

  It didn’t matter that he and his cousins were all in their mid-thirties or that Jace was the county’s sheriff. To this group of ranchers, his grandfather’s best friends, Sawyer, Jace, and Cash would always be “boys.”

  Sawyer took an empty chair at the table. “Fair to middling. How ’bout you, Joe?”

  “Real fine as long as the
price of beef holds.” He grinned. “Your grandfather would’ve been real proud of you boys.” Joe turned to look at Mitch’s table and in a low voice said, “Randy’s kids are already counting the money. Damned shame.”

  Sawyer didn’t say anything even though Joe was right. He had no love for Jill Beals Tucker or her brother, Pete. “I got to get home and do some writing. It was good seeing you, Joe.”

  “When’s that war book coming out?”

  “Late next year.”

  “I’m looking forward to reading it. Say hi to Jace and Cash for me.”

  “You just missed them,” Sawyer said.

  “Both of them are doing a good job. I heard Cash caught those rustlers out of Plumas County. Heard he traced the thieves to a Nevada ring trafficking in stolen livestock, farm equipment, and methamphetamine.”

  It was the first Sawyer had gotten wind of it, but wasn’t surprised. Cash was a great cop and unfortunately livestock theft was often tied to the drug trade. Sawyer rose before Joe jawed his ear off. He still had to finish the piece for Forbes.

  By the time he got outside, the temperature had climbed into the nineties. In a few hours, it would soar to triple digits.

  He passed Gina’s cabin on the way to his barn apartment. Her BMW was parked in front. He considered stopping in but decided against it. The undeniable zing between them had ratcheted up a few dozen notches since he’d learned she wasn’t involved with a married man. Now, it was the kind of zing that resulted in two people getting naked and falling into bed together. And in their situation that wasn’t advisable for all the reasons he’d already determined—namely, that she was his mother’s client, a wreck, and he didn’t need the drama.

  But that didn’t mean she didn’t tempt him beyond reason. So it was best to avoid her as much as possible. It was difficult because she’d made herself at home in his house. Then again, he hadn’t exactly dissuaded her from using his kitchen. He’d like to say it was because he enjoyed eating her food. But on the days she didn’t show up it wasn’t her mouthwatering meals he missed. It was her company, her smart mouth, and her impressive capacity to give as good as she got.

  And of course, there was the fact that she was nice to look at. All legs and sweet curves.

  He passed her place and went directly home. Inside, he switched on the air-conditioning and booted up his laptop. He planned to make a sizable dent in the article that was due at the end of the month. But instead of working on the piece, he found himself noodling around on the internet.

  First, he pulled up Gina’s website, read her bio, and flipped through her photo gallery. There were lots of pictures of her on the set of her show, making various dishes in the test kitchen. There were also shots of her posing with a number of celebrities, including the cast of the Today show.

  The woman was damned photogenic. But the bright lights, makeup, and overly coiffed hair made her look a bit like a Barbie doll. Plastic. He preferred her without all the shine and gloss.

  After spending a good thirty minutes trolling around her site, he went in search of the infamous photo. It only took two minutes to find it again. The beach shot of her and Danny was plastered on every celebrity site and tabloid on the internet. He searched for the photo with the best resolution and blew it up on the screen. For a while he just studied it, examining the different angles of the picture. To the naked eye—at least his—he couldn’t tell whether the photograph had been doctored. It looked like the real deal to him. There was no question the woman in the photo was Gina.

  Was it a cut-and-paste job? The answer to that was above his pay grade. But surely there were experts who could tell.

  Sawyer suspected his mother had already consulted with a few forensic photographers. He picked up the phone to call her, then, just as quickly put it down. His mother was too professional to discuss Gina’s case with him, even if Gina had.

  Unable to leave it alone, he searched through his contacts, found who he was looking for, and punched in his number.

  “Hey Shooter, it’s your buddy, Sawyer Dalton.” The two had worked together at the Times, been roommates in Tel Aviv when he was the bureau chief there, and had kept in touch over the years. Carlos Gonzales, aka Shooter, was one of the best photographers in the business. “How good are you at determining whether a photo has been doctored?”

  “You mean like photoshopped?”

  “Yeah, like sticking somebody’s head on somebody else’s body. Or splicing two people together. That sort of thing.”

  Shooter laughed. “Dude, what are you working on?”

  “You’ll keep this on the Q.T., right?” Shooter was good people. Not the kind to spread confidential information. “It’s for a friend. She’s a celebrity chef who the tabloids are having a ball with. Love triangle, racy photos, that kind of bullshit. But she says the picture that’s getting all the attention is fabricated. I was hoping you could take a look at it, see what you think.”

  “Is this that Gina DeRose thing?”

  “Yeah,” Sawyer said, surprised. He wouldn’t have expected Shooter to pay attention to tabloid fodder. The guy had been in Turkey for the last six months, covering the plight of Syrian refugees. “How’d you know about it?”

  “Dude, you’d have to live under a rock not to. Send over the original and I’ll take a look.”

  “I don’t have the original, just a copy from the internet. Will that work?”

  There was a long pause. “It’ll be tough but I’ll see what I can do. Email it to me.”

  “Thanks, buddy. I owe you one.”

  He saved the photo and sent it as an attachment to Shooter. Instead of pulling up the article he was supposed to be working on, he searched a few sites on flower farming. Damn, Cash was right. There was good money in growing cut flowers.

  He continued procrastinating when notification of an incoming email flashed in the right-hand corner of his computer screen. On the small chance it was Shooter responding with a verdict, he went to his inbox. Nope, not Shooter. A note with a Gmail address he didn’t recognize. Probably a press release. He got lots of those.

  Nope, not a press release. Just a concise message. Only six words.

  Stop searching for me. I’m safe.

  He stared at the note for a while, reading the two sentences over and over again. Was it some sort of a very unfunny joke? Or was it Angie reaching out to him? But why after five years? It didn’t make sense. No, it was probably someone trying to mess with him. But who in God’s name would do something like that?

  For a second, his mind flitted to his conversation with Gina. She’d offered to go with him to New Mexico and search for Angie.

  Nah, he told himself. She had no reason to toy with him that way. She might be self-centered, but from his observations she wasn’t sadistic. Only someone really warped would do something like this.

  He replied to the message, Who are you? but a few minutes later his email ricocheted back to his inbox with the heading that it was undeliverable.

  A person with mad computer skills might be able to trace it. But cyber forensics wasn’t in Sawyer’s wheelhouse. It might be in Cash’s, though. And if not, his cousin would surely know someone from his FBI days who could track where the email had come from.

  He wondered if the sender could possibly be the woman in Santa Fe. The one who’d been reticent to talk to him. Perhaps she was trying to throw him off. Whoever it was clearly wanted him to stop searching for answers.

  But why? He suspected the reason would lead him to Angie. Dead or alive.

  Chapter 9

  Gina decided to risk another trip to the kitchen store in Grass Valley. This time, she was loaded with cash so she could purchase anything she wanted without having to use a credit card. It was still chancy, but she was climbing the walls of the cabin.

  On her way out, she stopped by Refind to see if there was anything Charlie and Au
brey needed. A couple of times, they’d grabbed her groceries or sundries in town and she wanted to return the favor. That’s how it was here at the ranch. Everyone looked out for one another.

  The construction crew had moved from framing to walls and windows and were making enough racket to turn a person brain-dead. Gina went in search of her friends, only to find them in bright yellow hard hats in the middle of the crazy. They were picking out the locations for outlets and switches before the drywall went up.

  “It looks as if they’re making progress,” Gina said over the noise.

  The two women led her away from the mayhem to a small Airstream trailer that Aubrey had temporarily set up as an office. At least here they could hear themselves talk.

  “They say two more weeks max.” Charlie hitched her shoulders. “But you know how that is. Two weeks could very quickly turn into six months. In the meantime, we’re going deaf.”

  “Where’d you get the trailer?” The interior was sad. Lots of Formica finishes and worn vinyl upholstery.

  “Craigslist. Charlie’s planning to rehab it and make bank when we resell it. These things are supposedly collector’s items. But first we have to get through this.” Aubrey waved at the barn.

  “So far, it looks great.” Gina was impressed with the expansion’s design. The new build was definitely in keeping with the rustic vibe of the barn. They’d gone with wood siding made from reclaimed lumber. Even the windows had been recycled from a hundred-year-old farmhouse.

  “I’m headed into Grass Valley. You need anything? Earplugs, maybe?”

  “An industrial-size bottle of aspirin,” Charlie joked, then eyed Gina’s disguise. This time, she’d gone with a straw cowboy hat and a pair of mirrored aviators she’d picked up online.

  “What? It’s not working?”

  Charlie laughed. “I know who you are so it’s hard to tell. Maybe tuck your hair up.”

  Gina pulled her hair back and twisted it up underneath the hat. “Better?” She didn’t wait for an answer because it was as good as it was going to get, short of her becoming a brunette. “How ’bout you, Aubrey. Anything?”