Protected by a Hero

by Susan Stoker, Cristin Harber, Cora Seton, Lynn Raye Harris, Kaylea Cross, Katie Reus, Tessa Layne

  “Where’s Sadie?” she asked as the intro music soared.

  “She went out,” Jo said. “Said she’ll be back later.”

  Cass sighed.

  Family night had been fun while it lasted.

  “Who is she with?” As if she didn’t know.

  Jo made a face. “Mark, who else? Shh.”

  It was impossible for Cass to enjoy herself now. Lena was still on her phone, probably checking up on Scott. Sadie was off chasing a man doomed to let her down.

  What was she doing flirting on the couch with a man the General had sent to spy on them all?

  Cass stood up again on the pretext of fetching a glass of water. When she came back into the room, she hesitated. Brian patted the cushion beside him, but she held back. Her job wasn’t to fool around with handsome Navy SEALs. Her job was to watch over her sisters. Time to get her priorities straight.

  She nodded and smiled at Brian.

  But she took Sadie’s empty chair across the room.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Back to square one.

  The phrase rattled around Brian’s brain all the following day as he made arrangements for roofing materials and made a thorough inspection of the ranch’s outbuildings. When he showed his list of needed repairs to Lena, she added a few more, but approved it overall.

  “Are you going to get the General on board with all that? Maybe he’ll cough up the money since Cass won’t.”

  “I’ll talk to Cass first.” He needed to know why she was being so tight-fisted. But first he needed to know why she’d moved across the room from him last night, and why she’d been avoiding him ever since.

  Sadie’s absence had something to do with it. She’d snuck out in between films and Cass had immediately stiffened up. Brian understood why, after what Cab had told him. It sounded like Mark was into some heavy stuff. The thing that didn’t make sense was why a man like that would date little Sadie Reed.

  Brian had been around the block enough times to spot the symptoms of a heavy drug user. Sadie’s actions didn’t add up. She was far too clear-eyed and present when he was around her to be using the stuff herself. Did she know what her boyfriend was up to? Was she attracted to his bad-boy image?

  Or had she settled for what was available to her?

  He’d investigate her situation next, he promised himself.

  After a quiet, stilted lunch in which Sadie’s chair was conspicuously empty, and Cass spent most of her time looking at her plate rather than catch his eye, Brian decided he needed a change of pace. He spent the afternoon in town, walking the streets and getting a feel for the place. He stopped in at the sheriff’s office and said hello, scoped out the Dancing Boot and Rafters, two local watering holes, noted on which streets the houses and buildings were up and coming, and on which they were fading into disrepair. As he walked, he listened to conversations, spotted places where grown men congregated although it was mid-afternoon on a weekday. He tried to pick up the vibe of the town.

  In the end, he ate dinner at the local burger joint, deciding to give Cass some space. He wasn’t sure what he’d learned from his afternoon, except that Chance Creek suffered from the same problems all small towns did.

  When he finally drove back to Two Willows and walked into the kitchen around eight, Alice was climbing down from the top of the refrigerator.

  “Howie finally texted me,” she said, waving her phone. “He’s bringing back my car. He just left Billings.”

  “Did you think at all about what I said?” Brian asked her.

  “Yeah. You’re right. I’m done with him. As soon as I get my car back, I’ll tell him.”

  She brushed the wrinkles out of the peasant blouse she wore over a pair of white cut-off jean shorts. Her long, tan legs were encased in a pair of cowboy boots. Howie wouldn’t let go of a woman like her easily, Brian thought. Especially not when he felt he could take her car any time he wanted it to cover his tracks.

  “Alice—do you trust me?”

  She met his gaze and held it, and something told him she wasn’t simply looking at him; she was listening, too. “Yes.”

  “How about you give me your phone and let me deal with Howie?”

  “Don’t you think I should break up with him myself?” She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Stuff like that is character-building, right?”

  “If this was a normal relationship, I’d say yes, but this isn’t normal. Howie’s running drugs in your car. I’d like to handle it.”

  She gave him her phone and told him her password. “You realize how unusual this is, right? We Reeds don’t trust anyone.”

  “You trusted Howie,” he pointed out. He patted his pockets to make sure he had his keys, and headed for the door again.

  “I don’t think I ever really trusted him,” Alice said, following him. “I think I thought being with him was better than being alone.”

  “You won’t be alone for long, I promise. Once word gets out that you’ve ditched Howie, you’ll have to beat men off with a stick.” He stepped outside. “I’ll be back with your car. Don’t wait up.”

  He waited until he was sitting in his truck to pull out her phone and answer Howie’s text. Howie’s last message had been short.

  Just left Billings. On my way. See U soon.

  Alice had texted back a smiley face, but nothing else. Brian thought a moment and began to type.

  At the Boot with Lena. Pick me up?

  He waited until Howie texted back.

  Be there by 10.

  Brian checked his watch. That gave him nearly an hour and a half. He pulled out and headed toward town. His next stop would be the sheriff’s department again.

  Cass had just emptied the dryer, and was on her way upstairs, balancing the basket on her hip, when she got a call from Lena. Brian had barely been around all day. She’d seen Lena and Jo head back to the barn after dinner to do the evening chores. Sadie still hadn’t come home, and she peeked out the kitchen window at Alice’s workshop. The lights were on out there, so she must be working away on some project or other.

  “Could you get away for a while and come down to the Park?” Lena said without preamble when Cass answered her call. There’s something going on.”

  “What kind of something?” Cass turned to look out the window, but the Park, where the hired hands had their trailers, wasn’t visible from here. The light was fading and it was a perfect summer evening, but a chill traced down her spine nonetheless.

  “I don’t know. I bumped into three guys in a white Datsun close to there. They were going real slow; trying not to kick up dust. When I tried to flag them down to talk, they swerved around me and took off. I didn’t like the look of things. Never seen them before in my life. I want to ask the hands some questions. Could use a little backup.”

  “Where’s Jo?”

  “Finishing up at the barn. I don’t want her involved in this. I need someone with a level head.”

  Lena’s praise surprised Cass. Her sister generally regarded her with a mixture of exasperation and disdain for favoring household chores over ranch work. “Maybe we should wait for Brian to come back.”

  “Are you serious? Have you forgotten he works for the General?”

  “No. Of course not.” But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be handy in a situation like this. Cass knew that things between Lena and the hands had been coming to a head for a while. She wished Bob had never come to the ranch, and at the same time realized she couldn’t say the same for Brian.

  “Look, I get it,” Lena said candidly. “He seems like a good guy, but we can’t forget who he answers to. If there’s trouble, the General will sic another overseer on us before you know it.”

  “I know. You’re right.” Cass heard the frustration in her sister’s voice and understood it all too well. But she didn’t like the idea of strangers driving on the ranch. She liked the idea of confronting the hands even less.

  “Are you coming or not?” Lena pushed.

 
“I’ll be there.”

  As Cass walked down to the Park to meet Lena, she couldn’t help wishing that Brian was there despite his connection to the General, but she reminded herself that just a few days ago she hadn’t known the man existed. They’d done all right without his help up until now. The hands might be a surly bunch, but at the end of the day, they knew who paid the bills. They wouldn’t pull anything that would stop the flow of money. Still, the sun was low in the sky by the time she reached the stables.

  “Ready?” Lena asked when Cass met her.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be. How do you think the hands are going to react when we start poking our noses into their business?”

  “They won’t like it one bit.”

  “We should wait until tomorrow. It’s getting dark.”

  “We need to strike while the iron’s hot,” Lena countered.

  They walked on without talking. Cass didn’t relish asking five grown men a bunch of questions they wouldn’t want to answer. But Lena had made it clear she thought they should, and Lena didn’t act on impulse.

  The Park was nothing more than a flat stretch of land about a quarter mile from the barn. Hidden from view by the curve of the land, bushy growth between the trailers provided their inhabitants with even more privacy. The trailers were a motley collection of sizes and vintages. The trailer Bob had lived in during his tenure at Two Willows was the newest and largest. The rest ran from a two-bedroom eighties special to a vintage Airstream that used to be second to last in the line. Bob had hauled away the final trailer a month ago—a dilapidated brown and tan affair that the hands had always used for storage. When Cass had confronted him about taking ranch property, he’d laughed in her face and said he’d hauled it to the dump. “You can’t expect anyone to use it; it’s not even fit for storage. It was drawing rats. Some people build real houses for their hands, you know.”

  He’d shamed her into keeping her mouth shut, and looking at the cluster of trailers now, Cass thought again he was right. The people who worked their ranch deserved real homes. Maybe if they had them they could replace the rough single men Bob had hired with hardworking couples. Even families.

  Still, before this bunch Cass had mostly felt she’d had a good relationship with the men who worked the ranch. Lena had counted many of them as friends. She’d been furious when Bob had let the last group go, but when Cass urged her to call the General about it, Lena had refused. She hadn’t spoken to the General—even on the phone or computer—for years. The most stubborn of the sisters, she’d dug her feet in and the General hadn’t made any effort to bridge the gap.

  They were almost to the first trailer—traditionally reserved for the most senior hand—when the door opened and Gary Boyd stepped out.

  “Who told him he could move in there?” Cass asked Lena. “He’s not the overseer.”

  “Not me.”

  Cass quickened her pace. Gary braced his hands on the railing of the small built-on porch and waited for them.

  “What brings you two lovely ladies down to the Park at this hour?” he called out as they approached.

  “We’ve got a couple of questions for you and the others.” Cass had always disliked the man. He had a way of waiting a beat before answering any questions to let you know he was only talking because he’d decided to, not because you outranked him.

  “Let ’er rip.”

  “We need the others here, as well,” Lena put in.

  “Whatever the lady wants, the lady gets.”

  Cass didn’t know how he managed to make the line suggestive, but he did, and she rolled her eyes as Gary swaggered down the steps of the foreman’s trailer, went to its neighbor and rapped his knuckles on the door. “Ed? You in there? The ladies from up at the house have some questions for you. Tell the others to get out here, too.”

  Ed must have texted the others, because a minute or so later, Cass and Lena were surrounded by the hands. Cass didn’t like the feel of this, but she didn’t know how to get out of it now.

  Lena took command of the situation. “I’ve been seeing traffic on this ranch I don’t understand. I want to know what’s going on.”

  “No crime having a few friends over now and then,” Ed said, hitching up his pants and scratching at his waistline.

  “A few friends is one thing,” Lena said. “But entertaining half the county? Getting high? Or maybe selling something? That’s another thing altogether.”

  Gary leaned in toward her. “See here. You’d better stop throwing around accusations like that.”

  “If I partake now and then that’s no one’s business,” Ed added. “What’re you, the morality patrol?”

  “I want to know if you’re dealing pot on my ranch,” Lena said.

  Cass just wanted to leave before things got any uglier. She’d never felt unsafe at Two Willows, but between Bob’s threats the other day and the way the hands had circled around them now, she didn’t like how this was going.

  “Okay. That’s fair enough,” Gary said suddenly, surprising Cass. “You want to make sure we’re not selling pot on your property, we’ll give you a tour of our homes. You can look all you want. You’re not going to find anything like that here.”

  After a moment, Ed chuckled. “That’s right. But you will find a mess in mine. Not much of a housekeeper. Never thought it was a problem, seeing as it’s not much of a house.” He turned to lead the way to his trailer. “Me, first.” After a moment, Lena and Cass followed him. “Come right on in.”

  “Lena,” Cass said beneath her breath as they moved toward the trailer. This was a dumb idea. A really idiotic idea. What if the men cornered them in there? What if…?

  “I’m packing,” Lena whispered as they approached the trailer.

  Cass nearly stumbled. That was all they needed—a shootout at the O.K. Corral. But it was too late to stop any of this now. Her sister elbowed her way past Gary and Ed and went inside. There was nothing for it but for Cass to follow. As soon as she stepped in the door, she gasped and fought the urge to pinch her nose.

  Trash overflowed a small canister near the sink, which was stacked so high with dirty dishes it was impossible to use the tap. Every inch of the place held paper plates, pizza crusts and take-out containers. Flies buzzed around.

  “You’re supposed to keep the trailer in good condition,” Cass told Ed.

  “Yeah. I’ll get right on that.” He smirked at Gary.

  “Seen enough?” Gary said.

  “Hardly.” Lena pulled her phone out of her pocket and began taking photographs. She documented everything. Both men began to get restless. Cass silently begged her sister to hurry up as they made their way through the place. The one bathroom was disgusting. The bedroom was hardly better. When she finally launched herself out the front door again, Cass sucked in deep breaths of fresh air. She’d have to burn her clothes and take a shower when she got home to rid herself of the contamination.

  “We’ll give you a week to clean that up before I do another inspection. Otherwise you’ll find your own accommodations,” Lena told Ed.

  “You and who else is going to make me?”

  “Me and the Board of Health,” Lena said tartly. “Next.”

  Thankfully, the next three trailers were in far better shape, although as they passed through each one, the men whose homes had already been inspected seemed to feel the need to inspect all the others. Trailed by the group, Cass was definitely feeling outnumbered.

  “Now yours,” Lena told Gary, pointing to one of the eighties specials. “Then we’ll take a look at the foreman’s trailer. You haven’t moved in there, have you? No one gave you permission to do that.”

  “I haven’t moved in,” Gary growled at her. “But it should be mine. I was just checking it out.”

  Gary’s trailer wasn’t the worst of the lot and wasn’t the best, either. Lena kept taking pictures. When she was done, they headed for the newest one. Cass couldn’t wait to get this whole thing over with, and she braced herself for what th
ey might find as they approached it.

  The trailer was starkly empty, clean as a whistle. Almost eerie. As they walked through the trailer, Cass realized she had underestimated Bob. He was either a far more meticulous man than she’d thought he was, or he’d had something he wanted to hide so badly he’d made a clean sweep of it when he’d left.

  When they finally trailed outside again, Lena said, “Ed, get your trailer cleaned up. I’m not joking. I appreciate everyone’s cooperation.”

  Cass fought to keep her steps even as they walked away. She wanted to run from the ugliness of the encounter. She wanted to set off a few sticks of dynamite. The sun was beneath the horizon now. Soon it would be dark. She picked up her pace. “It didn’t used to be like that,” she said.

  “Damn right it didn’t. Things need to change around here,” Lena said.

  Brian was more than a little gratified to find Cab at the station so late when he arrived. The man ushered him into his office for the second time that day, a plain room with a utilitarian desk, a set of filing cabinets and a couple of chairs for guests.

  “Have a seat. What can I do for you?” Cab asked, settling his big frame in the chair behind his desk. He laced his fingers behind his neck and leaned back, signaling his readiness to hear anything Brian might have to say.

  Brian filled him in on the situation as quickly as he could. “I don’t know if there’s anything you can do. I intend to meet Howie at the Boot and pass along the message that Alice is no longer interested in dating him.”

  “He’s coming back from a trip right now?” Cab asked.

  “That’s right.”

  The sheriff looked thoughtful. “What I’ll do is pass the message along and make sure he’s got a tail all the way. I’ll join in at the county line. If he makes a mistake, we’ll pull him over and have a look in the car.”

  “Alice is concerned she might lose her vehicle,” Brian said, but he passed on the make, model and license plate number.