The Cowgirl in Question

by B. J Daniels

  “Okay, I don’t think Cecil killed his brother. The truth is I’m still investigating and you promised to help me,” he said, and grinned.

  “You’re that determined to get me to go with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you mean it about Cecil?” she asked.

  He shrugged, still grinning. “Maybe.”

  “This isn’t about keeping an eye on me, is it?”

  He pretended to be offended. “Would I be that transparent?”

  She knew she shouldn’t but in truth, she wanted to go riding with him. She felt herself weaken. “I’ll call the café and see if they can get by without me for a few hours.”

  He grinned from ear to ear. “Thanks. I really appreciate this.”

  WHEN SHE CALLED the Longhorn, Arthur said he and Ellie could handle it. She promised to be in later to help with the dinner rolls and bread. Then she changed into jeans, a snap-button Western shirt, boots and her jean jacket and cowboy hat.

  When she came back into the living room, Rourke looked up, his gaze caressing her as it moved slowly over her body, lighting on her face.

  “What?” she asked, feeling embarrassed by his scrutiny. She turned to peer into the hall mirror.

  He laughed and shook his head, his smile broadening. “I was just admiring your face. It’s a wonderful face. You don’t even need makeup.”

  “Thank you. I think.”

  “Come on, I can’t wait to get back in the saddle,” he said, and winked at her.

  She walked past him to the pickup and could almost feel him watching her behind. She hid a smile as he hurried to open her door. This felt like a date. She warned herself to be careful.

  She hadn’t been out to the McCall Ranch in years. She was glad to see that it hadn’t changed. Rourke gazed out at the landscape as if he couldn’t get enough of it.

  “When this is all over,” he said, “I think I’m going to help my brothers with the ranch.” He glanced over at her. “You don’t seem surprised.”

  “I always knew you would,” she said, and looked away from him. “You love the ranch. It’s a part of you.”

  Rourke laughed. “Maybe you know me better than I know myself.”

  Maybe, she thought.

  He parked the pickup and they walked down the hillside to the barn. The same barn where Rourke had kissed her when she was thirteen. She followed him inside, fighting the memories.

  The day Rourke had kissed her she’d come out to the ranch with her father to deliver a load of oats to Asa. While they unloaded it, Asa suggested J.T. show her the horses. But Rourke had volunteered.

  She had thought her heart might stop. It had been the happiest moment of her life as he’d led her out to the horse barn.

  Inside, she had watched him with the horses, heartened to see that he obviously loved horses as much as she did. She’d thought then that she and Rourke were perfect for each other.

  “Would you like to ride sometime?” he’d asked just when she thought the day couldn’t get any better.

  She nodded, unable to trust her voice, and he’d smiled at her in his sweet, tender way, and that’s when she’d realized he was going to kiss her.

  Her breath had caught in her throat as he’d cupped her cheek and dropped his head. And then his lips were on hers, sealing her fate. That fate being unrequited love.

  “You all right?” Rourke asked now.

  She blinked, focusing on the present. From the look on his face, he’d been studying her.

  “I thought you could use one of my sister’s saddles and ride Sunshine,” he said still eyeing her closely.

  She took the saddle he handed her and nodded, unable to trust her voice just as she had so many years ago. That kiss had started her heart along this path. And the kisses since then had only made her more sure that she’d fallen in love with a man who might never really see her for one reason or another.

  She saddled Sunshine, practically hiding behind the horse. Even if he’d forgotten about her kiss, he had to have seen her feelings so clearly on her face.

  They led the horses out of the barn, Cassidy intently aware of Rourke beside her, glad when they’d left the cool darkness of the barn, so full of memory and young-girl hopes, for the warmth and clarity of the morning sunshine.

  The air was still cool from the night before as they rode across to the foothills, then climbed up over the mountains to drop into the gulch.

  “I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed this,” Rourke said, breathing in deeply. He glanced over at her as if she was the one person he knew understood.

  The McCall ranch ran over several drainages ending in a stretch of Forest Service land that connected with Wild Horse Gulch. Beyond the gulch was a section of Logan land that Blaze’s father owned. The rest was VanHorn land. VanHorn had been buying up everything he could get his hands on ever since he’d discovered there was coal-bed methane.

  They stopped on a mountain ridge overlooking the gulch. Rourke carried the brunch basket Martha had made to a cluster of magnificent ponderosa pines and spread out the blanket on the dried pine needles. A breeze whispered softly in the boughs overhead.

  They ate, talking about everything under the sun expect for murder and Blaze Logan. He seemed to like listening to her and encouraged her to talk about herself, something she felt awkward doing.

  “I never forgot our kiss in the barn,” he said after a while. “I’m sorry I never followed up on it.”

  She felt her face flush as he reached over to brush her hair back from her cheek.

  He stared into her face, her lovely face. Her scent mixed with the scents of the land he’d always loved and he felt weak with a need to kiss her again.

  Her mouth was wide and generous, her lips full and heart-shaped. And when she smiled—

  She was smiling at him now, her head cocked a little to one side, her eyes bright as sunlight.

  He’d known he would kiss her again. It was all he’d thought about since last night. He leaned toward her, brushing his lips over that wonderful mouth.

  He pulled back to look into her eyes. She was beautiful! The thought hit him like a brick. It wasn’t just her face or her eyes or her smile. Everything about this woman was like sunshine.

  He’d never wanted anything more than to be with her right now. Not even his freedom from prison. He leaned toward her again, cupping her cheek with his palm. With Cassidy, he felt like he’d really come home.

  “Cassidy.” It was as if all of his feelings were wrapped up in that one word.

  Her eyes darkened with desire and her lips parted as he dropped his mouth to hers. He pressed her back into the blanket, the scent of pine and her filling his nostrils.

  He heard her catch her breath and thought he could hear her heart pounding and realized it was his own. He pulled back. “Cassidy?”

  The look in her eyes was answer enough. He kissed her again, deepening the kiss, burying his hand in her hair.

  His pulse was pounding so hard he didn’t hear the first shot.

  But the horses did. They started, rearing back from where he’d tied them a few yards away, their heads coming up in startled surprise.

  The second shot came on the heels of the first, this one closer. Rourke threw himself on top of Cassidy, rolling them both across the blanket to the cover of the thick trunks of the pines. The shots had come from the gulch. He heard an engine crank up.

  “Stay here,” he ordered Cassidy as he scrambled out from the pines and ran to the edge of the ridge. A green Suburban with ADC on the side disappeared in a cloud of dust over a rise and was gone.

  But in the sunlight, he spotted one gold spent casing lying in the dust not far from where he’d found Forrest in his pickup.

  “It was just another warning,” Cassidy said beside him. “Just like the notes.”

  “Except Cecil is in jail.”

  She nodded. “This wasn’t Cecil.”

  “No,” he said. “I caught a glimpse of the vehicle as it was rac
ing away. It was one of the green Antelope Development Corporation Suburbans.”

  “Blaze,” Cassidy said on a breath.

  He didn’t bother to argue it could have easily been Easton. He dropped down, carefully retrieving the casing from the dust. “Let’s get back to town,” he said, looking up to see Cassidy watching him closely. “I’ll take you to the café where you’ll be safe, then I’ll drop off the shell with Cash.”

  AS CASSIDY WALKED in the back door of the Longhorn Café a couple of customers called to her. Les Thurman from the Mello Dee was sitting at the counter. He gave her a nod. Past him, she saw Holt VanHorn. He looked like he was waiting for someone. Cassidy glimpsed a pickup outside the café. There was a person sitting in it. Cecil? Was it possible he’d somehow made bail?

  Cassidy was so angry with Blaze, it was all she could do not to storm over there and accost her. Blaze seemed hell-bent on keeping Cassidy away from Rourke and had since Cassidy was thirteen.

  The worst part was, Blaze’s plan was working. Cassidy wondered if Rourke regretted that they hadn’t made love under the pines as much as she did.

  He hadn’t said much on the way back to town, insisting he follow her from her house to the café to make sure she was safe. She wanted desperately to know what he was thinking, then decided it might be best not to.

  The phone rang. Ellie picked it up before Cassidy had a chance and, turning, covered the receiver to say, “It’s Yvonne Ames.”

  Cassidy couldn’t imagine why Yvonne would be calling her. She stepped into her office to take it, leaving the door open. “Hello?” Silence. “Hello?”

  “Cassidy?” Yvonne sounded upset. “I have to talk to you.” She sounded as if she’d been crying. “I heard you were helping Rourke look for Forrest’s murderer?”

  “Yes. What’s wrong, Yvonne?”

  “I know I should have come forward eleven years ago, but I couldn’t. You have to understand. If my father had found out that I was meeting Forrest—and then after what happened, I couldn’t tell anyone.”

  “You saw Forrest that night up Wild Horse Gulch?” Cassidy said, and realized her voice had probably carried out into the café. She hurriedly closed the office door. “Yvonne, did you see the killer?”

  Yvonne was crying, sobbing, her words indistinguishable. Then, “I have to blow my nose.” She dropped the phone.

  Cassidy waited impatiently. Was it possible Yvonne really had been the woman Forrest was meeting and not Blaze? And had Yvonne seen something?

  “Sorry,” Yvonne said, finally picking up the phone again.

  “You were there that night?

  “I didn’t see the killer,” she said.

  Cassidy’s hopes sank.

  “When I got there, Forrest was still alive. The killer had just left. I don’t think he saw me. He took off on a horse.”

  Just as Rourke had suspected.

  “Forrest had something in his hand. It was a St. Christopher medal on a chain. It had blood all over it.”

  “Forrest’s?” Cassidy asked.

  “No. The chain was broken. I think Forrest must have reached for his killer and grabbed the chain.”

  “Yvonne, you’ve had something of the killer’s all these years and you’ve never said anything?”

  “I couldn’t.” She began to cry again. “I didn’t know who killed Forrest. It’s just a medal. If I told the police all it would do was let the killer know I was there that night. I didn’t see anything, but he wouldn’t know that for sure. He’d kill me, too.”

  The medal might have cleared Rourke, might have helped find the real killer eleven years ago. “Yvonne, why are you telling me this now?”

  “I’m afraid. I think he’s found out somehow that I was the one there that night.”

  “Where is this medal?” Cassidy heard a sound in the background at Yvonne’s. “What was that?”

  “Someone is at the door again.”

  Again? “Don’t answer it,” Cassidy cried, suddenly afraid.

  Yvonne choked back a sob just before she dropped the phone again. Cassidy heard a voice. It sounded like Blaze’s stepbrother Gavin.

  “Yvonne? Yvonne?!” Cassidy fumbled her cell phone out of her purse and dialed 9-1-1, keeping both phones to her ear. She could hear nothing on Yvonne’s end.

  The dispatcher said Cash was unavailable at the moment.

  “Tell him to go to Yvonne Ames’s house,” Cassidy said. “I’ll meet him there. It’s urgent.”

  “Yvonne? Yvonne?” Cassidy listened for a few moments, thought she heard a scuffing sound but Yvonne didn’t come back on the line. She left the phone off the hook, grabbed her purse and left. What had she done with Rourke’s cell phone number? She’d left it on the table by the door at her house.

  She couldn’t wait for Cash. Maybe the person at the door had been a beauty supply salesman. Cassidy told herself she was overreacting. But she thought she’d heard Gavin’s voice. What if someone had found out that Yvonne was the woman meeting Forrest up Wild Horse Gulch that night and had kept it to herself all these years?

  What was Cassidy thinking? If Blaze knew, then the whole town could know by now—let alone her stepbrother Gavin.

  “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” Easton asked as Blaze came into the office. She looked scared and upset and her clothing was a mess, dusty and dirty.

  She seemed surprised to see him, and at the same time, relieved. “I have to tell you something.”

  He nodded. “And I have something to tell you, too, something I think you already know, or at least suspect. I’m in trouble. I did some creative bookkeeping when I first started this business. Rourke hired a private investigator and now the auditors are coming to go over my books—the real books. I’ll probably be going to jail for a while.” He waited for her to say something.

  She stared at him, then began to laugh and cry at the same time.

  “You’re taking it better than I expected,” he said. “I figured you were only interested in marrying me for my money and once you realized there was no money…”

  “I thought you killed Forrest,” she managed to get out between sobs.

  “Oh, Blaze,” he said, and opened his arms as he moved to her.

  She stepped into his arms. “I did something really stupid eleven years ago and again today, East.”

  “Did you kill anyone?” he asked, holding his breath.

  She shook her head. “But I lied about where I was the night Forrest died. I tried to follow Forrest. I thought he was meeting someone else. I lost him, but Cecil knew because I gave him a ride as far as my dad’s ranch.”

  “Has Cecil been blackmailing you?” Easton asked, wondering how Cecil had made bail. He’d just seen him on the street outside.

  “Cecil isn’t that smart,” she said.

  Easton watched as Rourke’s pickup pulled up out front, then the sheriff’s patrol car. The two men got out and looked into the Suburban Blaze had just returned in. His heart caught in his throat. He hadn’t realized how much he didn’t want to lose Blaze until that moment. “Blaze, I think you’d better tell me what you did today.”

  THE SUN WAS HOT coming in the car windows as Cassidy drove to the outskirts of town. Yvonne lived in a small house that she’d bought after beauty school. The front of the building housed her beauty shop, Hair For You.

  As Cassidy drove up, she saw that the Closed sign was still in the window of the shop. She climbed out of her car and went to pound on the door. Locked. Peering in the window, she could see the place was empty, the door that went into the apartment part of the house closed.

  The lot next door was waist-high weeds. On the other side, there was a flower shop that had gone broke, the windows soaped, a For Lease sign out front.

  Across the street were more empty lots and several old houses that were in the process of being torn down for a minimall that she’d heard Easton was building.

  Cassidy hurried down the narrow sidewalk along the side of the house. Yvonne’s small blue car was p
arked at the back next to a shed.

  Grasshoppers rustled in the tall weeds, the air back here hot and rank. She caught a whiff of the garbage cans along the dirt alley as she stepped up to the back door and knocked. No answer.

  “Yvonne!” she called, and pounded on the door. Through a crack in the curtain, she peered into the house but could see nothing beyond the small kitchen and breakfast nook.

  She tried the knob. To her surprise and concern, the door swung open. She stood for a moment, wishing Rourke was here with her. Wishing she heard the sound of Cash’s siren.

  Silence. Except for the chirp of the grasshoppers.

  She peered in and saw two dirty plates on a small breakfast-nook table, a half-eaten slice of bacon sitting in the congealed egg yolk on one. Yvonne had had company.

  “Yvonne?” She stepped in and had to stifle a gasp. The house had been ransacked, everything pulled out of drawers and cabinets.

  She stood looking at the mess. Wait for Cash. A noise came from upstairs. Like the scuff of a shoe on the wood floor, the same sound she’d heard earlier on the phone. “Yvonne?”

  The living room was also ransacked. A floorboard creaked overhead. Cassidy looked up the narrow stairway against the wall. She could see nothing at the top of the stairs but shadowy darkness.

  Wait for Cash, her instincts told her. Don’t go up there alone.

  But as she started up the steps, Cassidy knew she had to go up. She had to see if Yvonne was up there, maybe hurt. Another creak of a floorboard.

  “Yvonne?” No answer. Just the old house creaking like old houses tended to do.

  Cassidy ascended the steps coming out on a short dark landing with three doors, two closed, one partially open. She started toward the door that was open a crack.

  “Yvonne?” she called as she pushed the door slowly open.

  “THERE’S A .22 RIFLE under the back seat of this one and the engine is still warm,” Rourke said as he and Cash moved along the side of the green ADC Suburbans.