Montana Hearts

by Darlene Panzera

  Jace rolled off his cousin and for a moment lay on the ground, staring up at the sky, allowing his heart rate to return to normal. For a moment, Zach didn’t move either, then he sat up, scratched his head, and said, “Whoa.”

  That was an understatement. Jace rolled over and found his gun on the ground a few feet away.

  Dismounting, Ryan, Dean, and Josh ran toward them, and Ryan shouted, “Zach, you okay? It happened so fast I couldn’t get a clear shot of that beast.”

  “I’m fine,” Zach said, and in the glow from the flashlight, which Jace still held in his hand, he gave him a rueful grin. “Thanks to our fine, bulldoggin’ cousin.”

  Jace shrugged. “We’re lucky I didn’t get my foot caught in the stirrup this time.”

  Ryan gave Jace a hand and pulled him to his feet. Dean and Josh did the same for Zach, and for a moment the four of them just stood there. With visions of sharp teeth hovering inches from his face, Jace drew in a deep breath, glad no one had been bit, especially him.

  Stepping forward, Zach stretched out his hand, and said, “Thanks, Jace. I mean it.”

  Jace accepted the handshake and then Ryan chuckled and stretched out his own hand. “I owe him one, too. Sorry for the cold reception when you first arrived.”

  “No problem.” Jace grinned as his cousins all gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder. “If it were me, I would’ve wanted to protect my family, too.”

  “We are family, Jace,” Dean said, his face serious. “From now on, we protect each other.”

  The following morning over breakfast Jace told his mother and sister about the carcass the poachers had left, and how it drew in the wolves. He didn’t mention his close encounter with the largest one, but did warn them not to go anywhere on the Collins property alone.

  “Well, then, my protective brother,” Natalie teased, “can you escort us safely back to our cabin?”

  At his request, his mother and sister had been given the cabin closest to his. He’d wavered back and forth as to whether they should be given one closer to the main house or to him. He worried over their safety, but in the end, it was his bad cell phone ser­vice that made up his mind. If they stayed in the cabin next door, all they had to do to get his attention was yell.

  “I love hearing the sound of the river rush by the side of our cabin when we sleep,” his mother said, and sighed. “This is such a peaceful place. It’s hard to believe the Collinses have had as much trouble as they say they’ve had or that there could actually be poachers nearby.”

  “They’re here,” Jace assured her, leading them past the row of cabins. “And if they are the same poachers who have been sending you the threats, then you shouldn’t be.”

  “I’ll only stay a few days until my house is fixed. I’m having a new security system installed,” she said, holding her head high. “And there’s only another five and half weeks until the election. After that, I’ll go after these poachers with every available resource available to me as governor to put them behind bars where they belong.”

  “Jace, who’s that?” Natalie asked.

  She’d stopped walking and both Jace and his mother turned back to look at her. She gave a slight nod across the field and, following her gaze, Jace saw she was referring to the man on the main trail alongside the Collinses’ east border.

  “That’s Isaac Woolly, head of Woolly Outfitters,” he told her. “His property is the next one over.”

  “Why is he staring at us?” Natalie demanded, her voice shaking.

  Jace glanced back at Woolly. The man didn’t move. He stood ramrod straight as he faced them head-­on, and he was staring.

  Concerned for his mother’s safety, Jace’s pulse quickened. “I think he knows who you are.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “WE’VE GOT A lead on another outfitter not far from here,” Eli said as he slung a backpack into his truck. He nodded toward Clint and Clay. “The boys and I are going to check it out.”

  Jace frowned. “But what about Gavin McKinley and Isaac Woolly?”

  Eli put a hand on his shoulder. “We haven’t found anything.”

  “Not yet,” Jace said, “but we know there are poachers in the area. They’re killing animals for their antlers and horns and dumping the bodies everywhere.”

  “Not everywhere,” Eli corrected. “Most of the carcasses have all been found on the Collins property.”

  “Because they want the Collinses to take the blame,” Jace said, balling his fists at his side. “Or me.”

  “Possibly both,” Eli said with a nod. “Your endorsement won’t mean much if the bad guys can tarnish your name by claiming you’re a poacher. They’ll kill two birds with one stone—­use you to bring down your mother’s campaign and bring down the Collins ranch in the process.”

  Jace frowned. “Which is why you should stay here.”

  “We’ll be back on Monday,” Eli told him. “This new lead may blow this case wide open. In the meantime, keep a watch on the neighbors and let me know if you see or hear anything.”

  Jace didn’t have a good feeling about this. He’d already convinced his mother and sister to go back to Bozeman and check into a hotel for the weekend. They’d left right after lunch. But he still needed to catch the poachers in action.

  Delaney had been taking the wasteful deaths of the animals exceptionably hard. Each one was a reminder that not all things always worked out the way they should. Sometimes lives were lost, mistakes were made, and dreams went unfulfilled, proving they lived in a broken world where justice did not always prevail.

  His mother had learned about the poachers from listening to his friend Bucky talk about his father’s work as a game warden. Then when Eli became an undercover agent to track down these heartless poachers, his mother vowed to make this one of her main focus areas when she became governor. Jace had listened to her campaign speeches, but now that Delaney had come into his life mirroring his mother’s passion and he’d seen what the poachers did firsthand, he hoped with all his heart that his mother won the governor’s seat.

  Sometimes all it took was one person to take a stand to change everything. And he hoped for all their sakes that his mother’s influence could make a difference.

  Meghan took his hand and led him toward the kitchen. “Grandma has something for you. It looks like a present.”

  “She isn’t going to give me more hand cream, is she?” he joked.

  “No, silly,” Meghan said with a laugh. “It’s bigger. I hope I get big presents for my birthday.”

  She still had a ­couple months to go, but he smiled at her, and asked, “What do you want?”

  He expected her to say a pony or a puppy, but Meghan looked at him and smiled, “A bug house.”

  “You want to catch bugs?” he asked, surprised.

  “No,” she said, shaking her adorable blond pigtails. “I want to save them.”

  The child pointed toward a bristly black caterpillar with a reddish-­orange band around its middle crawling on the ground, and pulled him back so he wouldn’t step on it.

  “If they stay here ­people will step on them,” Meghan explained, her blue eyes looking up at him in earnest. “But if I put them in my bug house and take them to the field, they will be safe.”

  He laughed. “I see you have a great future ahead of you in wildlife conservation.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, crinkling her nose.

  “It means you are a lot like your mother,” he said, his chest tight from the overwhelming affection he had developed for them in so short a time. “And that is a very beautiful, wonderful, incredible thing.”

  “Okay, Cowboy Jace,” Meghan said, squeezing his hand as she looked up at him and laughed again.

  He briefly thought of his own life and wondered what career he would choose if he decided not to continue with rodeo. If he couldn’t “save
the world,” was it possible he could find a way to at least make a difference in his little neck of the woods?

  When he entered the kitchen, Jace discovered Meghan had been wrong. Ruth Collins didn’t have a present for him to open, but a package for him to deliver.

  “These were shipped to the wrong house,” she explained, pointing to the fifty-­pound bags of dicalcium phosphate.

  “It’s my fault for accepting the delivery,” Delaney said, lifting up the attached tag. “I saw they were some kind of minerals and didn’t look at the name on the address label. I thought Grandma had ordered them to make more of her mineral lotions.”

  “Which is ridiculous because you know I always make small batches to ensure they are fresh,” Ruth scolded softly. “What would I do with three fifty-­pound bags of minerals? Open my own lotion factory?”

  “You could use them to make salt licks,” Jace said, and caught Delaney’s eye. “Whose name is on the address label?”

  “Isaac Woolly.” Her mouth fell open as she realized what he was thinking. “Do you think he’s making salt licks to attract the animals onto his property to boost his outfitting business?”

  Ruth furrowed her brows. “That would be illegal, wouldn’t it?”

  “It sure would,” Jace said, and lifted the first bag of mineral supplement into his arms. “He could be caught for poaching.”

  REFUSING TO STAY behind, Delaney asked her grandma to watch Meghan, then grabbed her camera and jumped into the truck with Jace to go with him to deliver the minerals to Woolly.

  The outfitter appeared surprised to see them and his brows raised even higher when he saw what they had for him. “Sorry to trouble you,” Isaac said, taking the bags Jace unloaded. “Some of the delivery trucks don’t realize there’s a new resident on this road.”

  “No problem at all,” Jace said, scanning the grounds. He nodded to a few other bags leaning against the mobile unit. “Is that rock salt?”

  Delaney sucked in her breath, then pressed her lips together. Rock salt was another key ingredient to make salt licks.

  Isaac stroked his white woolly beard and said, “Yeah, with snow in the forecast I figure I better stock up for winter. We’ll need to deice the roads to get our trucks in and out.”

  “And the minerals?” Jace asked, distracting Isaac while Delaney raised her camera to her eye and snapped a few pictures. “What do you plan to do with them?”

  “Figure I’d mix it into the horses’ feed,” Isaac said, gesturing toward his outdoor pasture filled with trail horses.

  “I usually give Rio supplements designed specifically for horses,” Jace said, arching his brow.

  Isaac shrugged. “Everyone has their own beliefs and ways of doing things.”

  Delaney gave the man a direct look and said, “That’s for sure.”

  She’d zoomed her lens in on the bags’ labels, but what she really needed was a picture of a salt lick. She focused the lens across the field to a patch of trees, but didn’t see anything. “Beautiful piece of land you have here,” she said, lowering her camera. “I always wondered what it would be like to own this piece over here one day.”

  Isaac chuckled, and he glanced over the border toward her family’s house. “I’m sure the feeling is mutual. We always want what we can’t have, eh?”

  “What do you think of Gavin McKinley’s outfitting operation?” Delaney asked, hoping she appeared curious and not too inquisitive.

  Isaac scrunched his face like Meghan did sometimes and shrugged. “I’m not worried about him.”

  “Aren’t you worried about him putting you out of business?” Delaney pressed. “He told me the day you moved in that this area can support only one outfitter.”

  “He did, did he?” Isaac asked, drawing back to give her a good look. “Are you worried?”

  “Not at all,” she lied, lifting her chin.

  “Well, then, neither am I,” Isaac said, and gave them each a nod. “May the best outfitter win.”

  Delaney hesitated, and bit her lip. “That’s what he said.”

  Jace took her arm as they returned to her house and murmured in her ear, “He didn’t ask about my mother or sister at all. Don’t you think he would have wanted to know what they were doing here?”

  “Maybe he already knows,” Delaney suggested.

  “I hope he knows they left,” Jace said, spinning her around and taking her into his arms. “You didn’t book anyone else into their cabin, did you?”

  “No. Bree thought it best to leave their cabin empty.”

  They didn’t want anyone breaking in and giving their new guests a scare. Or worse. At this point they needed to avoid lawsuits and bad publicity as much as possible.

  “Any luck with the camera?” Jace asked, brushing a stray hair back away from her face.

  “No,” she said, her gaze drifting toward his mouth, eager for one of their daily kisses. “I should have known he wouldn’t have his salt licks out in the open.”

  “From the way you’re looking at me, maybe we shouldn’t be out in the open,” Jace teased.

  Delaney smiled. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Bold words,” Jace teased again.

  She shook her head and laughed. “Honest.”

  Bree ran into the hall and placed one hand on each of their arms to keep herself from bowling them over. “Jace! Delaney! Come quick. We have news.”

  Delaney glanced at Jace. “Later?”

  Jace nodded. “That’s a promise.”

  Then, hand in hand, they followed Bree into the living room. When they arrived, Delaney’s father was pacing back and forth, his face contorted in a dark scowl, and she wondered who would be the target for his wrath this time. With dread already pouring over her, slowing her steps, she prayed it wouldn’t be her.

  “It’s the Randalls,” Bree informed them, and as she glanced around the assembled family, Delaney realized it was the first time they’d also included Jace.

  “Have they been seen?” Ma asked. “Did the sheriff find out where they’ve been hiding?”

  “No,” Bree said, and cast a worried look toward her father. “I had a call from Doug Kelly, our private investigator. He says Isaac Woolly is Susan Randall’s cousin.”

  Jace sat up straight in his seat. “What?”

  “Well, that just figures, doesn’t it?” Delaney’s father demanded. “Seems the Randalls have everyone in their back pocket, all willing to go against us.”

  “You haven’t exactly made a lot of friends over the years,” Luke reminded him. “You could at least try to be a little friendlier to the towns­people.”

  “I’m plenty friendly,” their father growled.

  Delaney shared a look with Bree and Luke, confirming they, too, thought his words were contrary to the truth.

  “Who else is in on their scheme to run us off the ranch this time?” their father barked.

  “Isaac Woolly has a daughter named Alicia Stevens Woolly,” Bree said, checking her notes.

  “Alicia?” Delaney asked, glancing over at Jace. “There’s a woman named Alicia working for Gavin McKinley.”

  “If she’s Isaac’s daughter, why wouldn’t she be working for her father?” Ma asked, confused.

  “Maybe she is,” Jace offered.

  “Gavin McKinley and Isaac Woolly could be working together,” Delaney exclaimed.

  “With the Randalls directing their steps, of course,” her father added. “They know how to manage, all right. Instead of managing our ranch, they’ve managed to hire all the right ­people to put us out of business.”

  “We can’t go making snap judgments and pointing fingers without proof,” Grandma scolded.

  “No, we can’t,” Delaney said, backing her grandma, and quoted, “ ‘You can’t blame the most obvious fox in the henhouse,’ right, Grandma?”

&nb
sp; “That’s right, sweet pea,” her grandma nodded proudly.

  Bree said she’d talked to the sheriff, but Delaney suspected there wasn’t one person in her family who expected the lawman to do anything. Except Grandma, who still looked at him through rose-­colored glasses and thought he was as handsome as her movie hero, Clint Eastwood.

  “I could take the sheriff some cookies,” Grandma said, smiling. “And urge him to look into the Randalls and Woollys a little closer.”

  “Yes, Grandma, that’s a great idea,” Bree agreed.

  But from the set look of determination on her sister’s face, Delaney could tell Bree had formulated another plan. And from their similar expressions, it appeared Luke, their father, and Jace were busy thinking up plans, too.

  It would be easy for Delaney to sit back and see what ideas the rest of her family came up with like she’d always done. But after the phone call from her lawyer that morning concerning her ex, she knew she couldn’t hide in the shadows any longer and wait for others to make decisions for her.

  She’d enact her own plan to expose those poachers and she’d do it tonight.

  JACE SPENT THE remainder of the afternoon in town making sure the hotel room his mother and sister checked into had adequate security. His mother settled into her new accommodations and acted as if the incident at the ranch with Woolly had been an insignificant consequence. She trusted the authorities would expose the poachers and couldn’t wait to get back on the phone with her political supporters and campaign managers. Natalie still shuddered at the way Woolly had stared. Assuring he’d let them know if there was anything else to report, Jace drove back to Collins Country Cabins eager to spend the evening with Delaney.

  He entered the main house looking for her, but Loretta said, “She asked if I’d watch Meghan and slipped out of the house right after dinner.”

  Jace asked around but no one else had seen her. His imagination played havoc with his emotions as the hour drew later and still Delaney had not returned. Where could she be? Sunset was around seven-­thirty and soon it would be dark. What if she came across one of the poachers or a pack of wolves? After grabbing his gun from his cabin, he caught up with the Walford twins on his way down to the stable.