He cleared his throat and rubbed Gaucho’s white spotted ears. “How long were you in the Marines?”
“Four years. All in San Diego at Camp Pendleton. I trained dogs to find bombs, and I worked in the base animal shelter. Then I came home to run the horse ranch after my brother—your boss—got his first job with Homeland.”
Bronco opened his mouth to follow up with another question, but she stopped him with an upraised waggling index finger.
“Quid pro quo, Mr. Winchester. My turn.”
Emma favored him with a sideways glance and flashed a sizzling grin so hot, he was pretty sure his bones were melting—while other parts of his body hardened. Good thing Gaucho’s on my lap.
“Why are you called Bronco?”
Instead of saying, “Let me show you why,” his usual response when trying to pick up a woman, he said, “Would you believe me if I said it was my given name?”
“Given by whom? You or your motorcycle club?”
“It’s the road name I picked before I began to work undercover for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.” He shifted in his seat, and the cat grunted. “My real name is Brandon. At first, it was easier for me to remember my road name because it began with the same letters as my real name. Now—” he shrugged—“I barely respond to my real name. I’ve become Bronco. Occupational risk in undercover work. Glad your brother pulled me out of the ATFE. I was pretty close to—” She doesn’t need to know what happened on that last assignment. He pointed his index finger at her. “Now you have to answer my question.”
“No problem. We can play this game all the way to the hotel.”
He gently traced the outline of an eagle holding a banner that said Semper Fidelis sitting on a globe against the backdrop of an American flag on her upper right arm. The three inch by three inch design must have taken hours of painstaking attention to detail. “Nice ink. The person who did this is an artist.”
She glanced down at his index finger, and he pulled his hand away—but not before he noticed the goose bumps that erupted under his scrutiny.
“One of the local guys,” she said. “We have a lot of tattoo parlors, but he’s the best. If you want your ink touched up, or something new, I’d be happy to recommend you to him. He’s pretty picky about who he takes. No teenagers, no drunks, and no assholes.”
“I got my first tattoo when I was nineteen and stinking drunk,” he paused. “I may have been an asshole, too, come to think of it.”
She laughed. “Have you grown out of that stage, or have you become a certified asshole?”
Smiling, Bronco pretended to consider the question. “Hmmm. Some say I have a chronic disease that arises when I become annoyed. I guess you’ll have to let me know.”
Quirking an eyebrow, she retorted, “That, Mr. Winchester, is a promise.”
He smiled and glanced at the rearview mirror and swallowed hard. A stupidly quick, underdressed, imminently dead motorcycle rider, or SQUID, was rapidly gaining on them in the breakdown lane. Straight black hair trailed out from under his red do-rag. The shirtless, helmetless teen-ager looked barely old enough to have a license to drive, much less be a hooligan driving at high speed. Hanging on high handlebars—an ape-hanger in biker parlance—the kid drew alongside the rusty old truck and glared at Bronco.
Keeping his voice even Bronco asked, “Should we be concerned about this dude?”
She glanced at his window and did a double take. “Oh for the love of—roll your window down,” she ordered.
Bronco complied and leaned back, right hand resting on the cat’s spine, the other behind his back, ready to yank out his Glock.
“Jimmy Two Toes, you’re gonna have no toes and no head if you keep riding like that,” she yelled.
The kid grinned, revved his engine, popped a wheelie and cut in front of them, forcing her to hit the brakes. Bronco clutched Gaucho. Fortunately, no one was behind them or they would have been rear-ended.
“Good thing I had my seatbelt on.” Bronco rolled up the window. “I take it you know him?”
Pressing on the gas, Emma nodded. “Idiot. Thinks he’s riding in the Indian relay races. Unless his grandmother takes that thing away from him, he’s gonna kill himself one of these days.”
“He keeps driving around without a helmet, he’s gonna be an organ donor. How do you know him?”
“He’s a teasing cousin—one of my father’s clan members in the same generation as me. His mother had him very late in life, and he’s an only child, so he’s spoiled rotten by his grandmother.”
Looking sideways at her, he asked, “Would it be rude of me to ask how he got that name?”
“If you saw his bare feet, you’d know.” She chuckled.
He raised a questioning eyebrow.
“He has an extra pinky toe on both feet, hence two toes.”
“Guess I should have figured that out.”
“Not necessarily.” She shrugged. “Things and people aren’t always what they seem, are they? Like you, for instance. Who would ever guess that you have a special talent, one that makes you good enough to be a Special Agent with Homeland?”
Gaucho stood, stretched, turned around, and put his paws on the dashboard. The weight of the cat on his groin made him wince. The twenty-pound beast tossed a look over his shoulder, as if to say, “Serves you right. You had me neutered, remember?”
She tilted her head in the cat’s direction. “Not to mention having a four-legged partner.”
“Okay, next question. Aside from being a very ballsy lady, going after attack drones armed only with a shotgun, what’s your ‘special’ talent?” He put air quotes around the word special.
She smirked and waved her hand as if brushing away a fly. “Nothing to see here, Mr. Bronco, just move along.”
“I find that hard to believe. That mare—what was her name? Indigo? She didn’t throw herself in front of you out of love for humans. If I were a betting man, I’d say you were a telepath. With horses. A horse whisperer times a thousand. And dogs, too, if I’m not mistaken.”
She gripped the steering wheel so hard, her knuckles turned white. “Sure you’re not a mind reader?”
“I’m a people reader. So is Gaucho. He’s already extremely comfortable with you.” The bobcat’s instant approval of Emma was more than a little unusual. In fact, it had never happened in the five years since he’d rescued him. While the majority of pet bobcats loved dogs, domestic cats, and people, Gaucho’s history had instilled caution when it came to humans.
“I have to confess, I’m not much of a cat person. Horses and dogs are more my thing.”
Bronco nodded. “He trusts you, which tells me I can trust you, too.”
“What does he do if he doesn’t trust someone?”
“He stays in his safe space, my backpack—unless they’re dangerous,” he paused. “He was a kitten when I rescued him. I was hanging around a dive and one of the miscreants brought in this tiny kitten, saying he’d shot the mother in the parking lot—just for fun. Then he spotted the baby she’d been carrying in her mouth and picked him up. His drinking buddy thought it would be entertaining to see how long it would take for the kitten to drown.”
A little gasp escaped Emma’s lips. “That’s horrible.”
He nodded. “Fortunately, the thug was stinking drunk and had trouble finding just the right bucket for this live show he wanted to put on. I told him I’d hold the kitten for him so he could look in the back room. I slipped the little guy into my pack and took off like a bat out of hell.”
Gaucho growled. “I know, buddy, it was a terrible night.” He stroked his head. “He has returned the favor many times over and saved my sorry butt.”
Bronco relayed how the vet he’d taken the cat to in Nevada shortly after he rescued him from the bar told him the little guy was probably around four weeks old, not weaned, and in need of constant care. Bottle feeding the kitten at the start, Bronco had transitioned to canned cat food mixed with lactose treated milk. At fi
rst the kitten had only eaten, slept, and eliminated. Over time, he began to explore the world outside Bronco’s backpack—and to grow by leaps and bounds.
A year later, he knew the cat was unusual—but had no idea how special he was until a burglar broke into his undercover apartment in a crappy part of town. Sleeping on Bronco’s chest, the cat heard the burglar enter the bedroom before he did. An ear-splitting series of screams woke him from a deep sleep just in time to see the crook turn tail and try to run. Bounding into the air, Gaucho had scaled the shrieking man’s back like a tree, bit his scalp, and clutched at his face with his needle sharp claws. By the time Bronco put the lights on, the man was on his knees sobbing and begging for help. When he peeled the cat off, he realized it was the man who had brought the kitten into the dive that night after bragging about shooting a large female bobcat.
“I told him,” Bronco finished, “for some karma is a bitch, but for you, karma is an angry bobcat on four legs.”
The raven-haired beauty thumped her chest with her fist and pointed at the bobcat. “Respect, man.”
Gaucho tipped his head and chirped.
Chirping? So soon? Bronco shot his sidekick a mental jab. Oh man, you are a goner.
Emma put her turn signal on to go left under a sign that said Yellowstone River. “You want to hear one of my worst stories?”
“Only if you lived to tell the tale.”
She burst out laughing. “Yes, of course I lived.”
“Something worse than the one you told me earlier today?” Awe for this woman grew—no, professional respect, that was it. Nothing more. “I wasn’t sure that was possible.”
“Well, you can be the judge of that. So, here I am back in Montana, after four years of going nowhere and fighting nobody in the Marines. Which is a bit annoying, given that I’m a descendant of a powerful Medicine Woman and a Woman Warrior, and I wanted to kick some ass. Doesn’t happen while I’m in the good old U.S.M.C. Nope, one unremarkable, completely boring day four years ago, I pull into a little gas and go convenience store, out near the rez. It’s closed now. Anyhow. I’m gassing up the truck, this same lovely beater you are riding in, pulling a horse trailer, on my way to pick up a mare an owner asked me to break in.”
“So you not only train them, but also pick up and deliver horses? Like take out?” Gaucho lifted his head and glared at Bronco, as if to say, that was a terrible joke.
“Right. So, while I’m in the rest room, a meth addict walks in with a pistol and points it at the old woman behind the counter, demanding cash. When she doesn’t move fast enough, he hits her with the butt of the gun and knocks her out. I come out of the bathroom, see the bloodied elder and the scumbag tweaker reaching over the counter to grab the cash.”
“Holy crap. What happened?”
She shrugged. “I go a little crazy. I jumped on his back, put my hunting knife at his throat—yes, it’s always on me—and this cranked up creep throws me off. He turns his gun on me and shoots just as I’m throwing my knife at his chest. I take a bullet in my upper chest, missing my vital organs. He takes a blade in his heart.”
“My god, woman.” Bronco released a long breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “A little crazy? When I met you, I thought you were an Amazon. I was wrong. You are a bad ass Amazon. A Super. Bad. Ass. Amazon.”
A carved wooden sign accented with blue and white denoted the entrance to Hotel LaBelle, and Emma turned the truck onto a long, blacktopped driveway. “So, can you top that?”
The phrase took him off guard, hurtling him back to dark times, his childhood. His father, a loser with a capital L, would end all his verbally and physically abusive tantrums with, “So you little shit. Can you top that?” No one could ever top that. Not his mother, nor his brother, or any of the dogs that ran away as soon as they could get loose. When there was no reply, the SOB would take a swig of beer, wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, and say, “I didn’t think so.”
Gaucho jerked his head up and moaned, his golden eyes fixed on Bronco’s face. Looking down, he scratched behind the big cat’s ear, cleared his throat, and said with a forced guffaw, “Well, if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
Chapter Three
Emma didn’t need to be a telepath to recognize the false laughter and the wild cat’s throaty worry. What had she said to change Bronco’s mood? She turned to search his expression for some clue, but his formerly easy-to-read face had undergone a transformation. Flat and cold, his eyes belonged to a killer, not to the gentle man she’d bantered with for the last hour. A chill slithered down her spine. When he appeared at her house, all tattoos and testosterone, she’d taken him for just another arrogant jerk—and she’d had her fill of them in the service.
When the bobcat jumped out of his backpack and wrapped himself around his neck like a domestic feline, she’d been forced to adjust her opinion. Against her better judgment, she’d been warming up to this ink-illustrated man, enjoying the banter—not to mention the primal pleasure of his male presence triggering the alarm on her biological clock. Oh, my aching ovaries. This man was a pheromone weapon of mass distraction, a natural hazard to any woman between the age of eighteen and eighty-five.
Over the course of the ride to the hotel, she had begun to know a gentle, kind man capable of risking his life to protect a helpless, vulnerable creature—or so she thought. This shift into a dead-eyed robot disoriented her and made her touch her hunting knife to reassure her it was still there—just to be safe. Is this how he looks when he’s undercover? He was good, scary good at wearing the mask of evil. She wondered if the strain of pretending to be one thing, while actually being another had forced him into his new line of work with Homeland. He’d been about to tell her something, then abruptly switched topics.
The clandestine division Bronco worked in was full of odd people with talents and skills that didn’t fit neatly into any other agency’s boxes. Was this an evil twin of the man Emma thought she was getting to know or was it the real Bronco?
Purring loudly, Gaucho stood, put his front paws around Bronco’s neck and head-butted him until the man laughed. “Okay, okay, big fella.” As if waking from a trance, the Bronco she had begun to know and like returned from wherever he’d gone.
“How close are we? This guy needs a relief area and some food.”
“Right around the next bend,” Emma said blowing out a long breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. He—the good-natured hunk with the mischievous smile—was back, and she hoped that other guy, the creepy one, never returned.
As she spoke, the Victorian mansion came into view at the end of the long driveway, and the modern world fell away. She could picture fine carriages at the entryway and horses tied to the railing, cowboys and gentlewomen flirting in the afternoon sun. Even today, the green rolling plains provided a jewel-box setting for the spectacular two-story manor. Light reflected off the Yellowstone River in the distance, inviting fly fishermen to cast their lines and try their luck catching trout. As they nosed the truck up to the grassy verge of the partially filled parking area and parked, several mule deer lifted their heads away from the grasses, twitched their ears, and then went back to grazing.
At the sight of the small herd, Gaucho’s eyes widened, and a low growl rumbled in his throat. Holding the lead to the cat’s harness, Bronco opened the door and allowed his four-legged partner to hop down and search for the right spot. The bobcat ducked behind a bush, and Bronco whistled a song about sitting on some dock on a bay while he waited for the cat to finish.
The damn man could even carry a tune—what couldn’t he do?
Emma called, “If he’s so smart, why isn’t he using the toilet?”
Dirt flew into the air from behind the shrub, and Gaucho reappeared, trotting ahead of his owner’s long fluid steps. “He can. Just likes to mark his territory, let other predators know there’s a new boss in town.”
“Who needs a watchdog when you can have a watch cat?” Or a watch man. Oh, stop,
you are not going there, Emma. The guy was here on an assignment, not a booty call. “So he keeps everyone in line, is that what you’re saying?”
“Exactly.” Bronco grabbed his backpack out of the truck, slung it over his shoulder, and closed the door. “This place is beautiful. What can you tell me about it?”
Heading up the path, Emma began to provide a brief history of the majestic hotel. “This place has always been in my family. It was built in the early 1900s by Lucius Stewart, the man my brother said would be an asset to your team. He’s my great-great-great—well too many greats to count—grandfather.”
Sputtering in protest, Bronco reminded her of a cartoon character she’d enjoyed as a child. She chuckled and held her hand up. “Hold on there, Rooster McFusspot.”
Mouth agape, he stared at her with an expression of disbelief. “Rooster McFusspot?”
“Yeah, I’m looking at you, mister. When I told you I was descended from a great Medicine Woman, I wasn’t kidding.” She pointed at the mustachioed man standing on the verandah. “That’s Lucius Stewart. My ancestor, Beautiful Blackfeather, cursed him to limbo when her daughter—his wife—died in childbirth. Trapped in the LaBelle for over a century, he wandered the halls and watched his beloved hotel disintegrate around him, unable to do a damn thing about it.”
Lucius waved at her and grinned. She waved back and called, “Be with you in a minute.” She turned back to Bronco, continuing her story.
“That is, until Tallulah showed up. His wife, who must be inside, is Tallulah Thompson. Also a descendant of a powerful Medicine Woman, only Choctaw, not Crow. She was called in by the current owner to inspect the hotel and help him reboot his renovations efforts. She saw and heard Lucius after no one had seen him or heard him speak in over a hundred years. With help from our Crow ancestors and her visions of Beings without Bodies that we couldn’t see, Tallulah was able to lift the curse and bring him out of limbo.”
Legacy of Evil Page 3
