Judy's eyes narrowed. "A year ago? So you must have been there at the end."
"Yes." Shannon twisted the strap of her purse between her fingers, playing up her agitation, which wasn't hard. Most of the truth. "I spotted the discrepancies in the brand inspections and realized that Kevin, as the inspector, was deliberately allowing stolen cattle to be sold through the ring."
Judy's eyes widened with comprehension. "You blew the whistle on him?"
"Yes."
Judy made a low, tsking sound. "I can see how that might cause some tension between you and Tyler."
"To put it mildly."
"But you were doing the right thing."
Professionally, yes. Personally...
She settled for a shrug. "Hard not to resent the messenger."
Outside, the diesel engine of a big rig roared to life—duty calling. Shannon sidled toward the door. "If we're done here..."
Judy waved a hand. "Sure. I'll see you this evening."
As Shannon stepped outside, a large man with a hefty potbelly stood aside on the bottom stair to let her pass.
"Is the old battleax still here?" Bud West asked with a grin.
Shannon chuckled. "If you mean your wife—yes, she is. But you might not want to go in there if she heard you."
Bud just laughed.
CHAPTER SIX
Shannon waved goodbye to Bud, but instead of heading for her car she strolled toward the stock pens, where the truck idled. Big West Rodeo owned three eighteen wheelers with livestock trailers, used to haul the bucking horses and bulls. Sometimes the stock went home to the West ranch between rodeos. More often, in the busy summer months, the animals went directly from one competition to the next. Either way, the trucks usually remained parked from the time they unloaded until the last performance was over. So why was this one running?
Danny West vaulted over the fence and strode toward the cab of the truck. Judy's only son had inherited his father's height and his mother's lanky frame and dark hair—not a bad combination. As Shannon watched, he stepped up onto the running board, opened the door and exchanged a few words with the man behind the wheel.
Lonnie Scott had a record: Drunk and disorderly and an assault charge stemming from a brawl during the Miles City Bucking Horse Sale. Hardly the first or the last cowboy to lose his head during that annual wild and western weekend. Lonnie had no history of theft or any other kind of larceny, or he'd never been caught. He'd married recently, had a child on the way, and didn't seem like the type to risk it all for a few quick bucks.
Appearances could be deceiving, but Shannon had a knack for looking under the surface. Lonnie didn't have any layers that she could detect. The man was as straight forward as they came. She'd made a point of chatting with him, asking about his wife and the upcoming addition to the family. He'd grinned shamelessly and showed off pictures of his wife's baby bump and prattled on about possible names. Lonnie was big and homely and maybe not the sharpest barb on the wire, definitely no criminal mastermind.
But he might be both honest and gullible enough to used by one.
She ducked into the ladies room as Danny West slammed the door and sent the truck off with a wave. Then she sauntered out as if their meeting were entirely accidental.
Danny greeted her with a broad smile. "Hey, Shannon, had enough for the morning?"
"Definitely." She faked a yawn. "There's a bed back at the hotel calling my name."
"Sounds cozy," Danny said, with a suggestive tilt of his eyebrow.
She should flirt back, but she didn't have it in her this morning. Besides, there was something about Danny that was just...off. Something in his eyes. Or rather, something that wasn't. A feeling that if she pulled back the curtain, looked behind the smiles and the jokes, she'd find nothing but a blank wall.
Or a void.
He was polite, a bit more than friendly, but never to the point that she could say she felt harassed as a Big West employee. His record was clean as a whistle. Still, every time his attention was focused on her something tickled at the back of her neck. Her spidey sense, the rest of team called it.
And it was almost never wrong.
She tipped her head toward the semi. "Where's the truck off to this morning?"
"Hauling yearlings to the sale in Miles City for a rancher over by Custer. Lonnie gets antsy sitting around, so I arrange side jobs for him when I can."
"And Big West makes some extra money for the trucking fees."
Danny grinned. "That too. You had lunch yet?"
"I'm going to hit a drive-through so I don't waste any nap time."
He fell in beside her as she strolled toward her car. "How about grabbing a beer tonight, after the rodeo?"
Damn. She'd been afraid this was coming. She stopped and laid a hand on his arm, ignoring how the contact intensified her crawly feeling. "Listen, Danny, I'm flattered." Now there was an outright lie." But I work for Big West, so that makes you my boss, and I'm really not comfortable..." And a big fat truth.
Danny sighed. "I guess you're right. I'll get my mother to fire you."
"Danny!"
He snickered, tapping her on the arm with his fist. "Just kidding."
She laughed and waved him off toward the rodeo office. Her smile died the instant she turned and saw Tyler leaning on the hood of her car, arms crossed, smooth-shaven jaw set. No morning scruff for Tyler. His dark hair was cut short, conservative, like a banker or a lawyer. Even after four hours of slack his shirt was pristine white, perfectly starched and creased just like his jeans. Beneath a coating of dust, his boots were polished to a high sheen. Everything about the man screamed, Trust me, I'm one of the good guys.
And in his case, appearances were not deceiving.
Tyler was exactly as he seemed, decent and honorable to the core. She'd known it within a minute of meeting him, the same way she'd known, at some mystical, molecular level, that he wasn't just another man. He was the man. Hers. Body, mind, soul—she'd recognized him almost at first sight.
And he was a suspect in her investigation.
In that instant, she'd thought Fate couldn't be more cruel. She'd learned better. With each piece of damning evidence she'd dug up, she'd become more horribly aware of what she hadn't found—a shred of solid proof that Tyler had no knowledge of his brother's crimes. No judge, no jury would take Shannon's opinion into account. Especially when she'd been unable to resist the irresistible, stop herself from reaching out for what felt like her destiny.
Hers.
She'd dragged out the investigation as long as she could, gone so far as to omit information from her reports to delay the inevitable, becoming more desperate by the day. There had to be something. But try as she might, she couldn't find it. Not even in Kevin's office. The idea of Tyler being cuffed, stuffed in a police car, locked behind bars made her physically ill, even now.
And seeing him—crisp and clean, as oblivious to his brush with doom as only the truly innocent could be—was worth every chance she'd taken to keep him that way, and every consequence she'd suffered.
But the pain of being this close to him was a brutal, physical thing, like an ax embedded in her chest. She pulled her eyes away, forcing herself to stop drinking in the sight of him, and angled around him as she fished for her keys. Her mind whirred, all of her well-rehearsed scripts disintegrating, blown away like words scribbled on scraps of paper. She'd been trying to figure out how to get him alone, now here he was and she had nothing.
"What can I do for you?" she asked.
"Let me buy you lunch?"
She turned to face him, holding her breath so he didn’t hear it catch. "Why?"
"I have a deal for you."
She let her eyebrows do the talking, arching in question.
"Call it a trade." He pushed upright, his expression as impenetrable as hers. "You want me to keep quiet. I want answers to some questions that have been bothering me."
"I can't give you privileged information." No need to let on that she
had permission to share whatever she deemed necessary to ensure his cooperation.
"I already know enough to blow you out of the water." He hooked his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans and she could feel his gaze challenging her from behind his sunglasses. "And I will…if I think you're not being straight with me."
She inclined her head, conceding the point. "What happened between us is off limits."
"Agreed." His clipped tone suggested their personal past was the last thing he wanted to discuss.
She glanced around, her heart clipping along like a pony on uppers at the thought of spending time alone with Tyler. Cowboys, cowgirls and their families lounged in the shade of their trailers or strolled past leading horses to and from the water spigot. Nearby, a gaggle of kids were having an impromptu roping competition with a miniature dummy steer. A few people cast curious glances toward Tyler and Shannon.
"We can't talk here," she said.
"I know a place. We can take my pickup." He gestured toward a black, extended cab Dodge. "There's a park on the other side of town, where none of the rodeo crowd is likely to wander by. We can get burgers on the way."
A picnic in the park. Shannon tried to ignore the pain that twisted wire-tight through her gut, remembering the times she and Tyler had swiped sandwiches from the café at the auction barn to sneak away to the park down the road. How he'd stroked her hair as she dozed with her head on his thigh. Today's meeting would make a mockery of memories she'd held close to her heart in the blackest nights of the past year, a tiny bit of warmth when there seemed to be no other light left inside her.
But this wasn't about how she felt. The job came first.
"Okay," she agreed. "Just let me make a call."
She fished the cell phone from her purse and strolled out of Tyler's earshot while she notified her team members that the Big West truck was on the move.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Well, that was easy, Tyler thought.
Too easy.
He pulled into a shaded parking slot at the park and angled a look at Shannon. "You already talked to your superiors about me."
"Of course. You are a threat to our investigation."
"And they gave you the go-ahead to talk to me."
"Within reason."
"Whose reason?"
She hesitated a beat, then said, "Mine."
Well, then, this would certainly be educational—as much for what she chose not to tell him as what she did.
The park was deserted except for a handful of shirtless teenagers horsing around on the basketball court, their bare chests glistening with sweat. Way off on the horizon, the tops of thunderheads bubbled up over the arid hills, pushing moisture ahead of them and cranking up the heat index but not promising much relief from the current dry spell. Tyler handed Shannon the bags of food and dug a sleeping bag out of the back seat. They found a grassy spot beneath a poplar tree, the shade and a light breeze cutting the heat to a bearable level. Tyler unzipped the sleeping bag and spread it flat. Shannon perched on one corner, looking like she might jump up and run if he moved too fast.
As if he might grab her again. Stupid ass.
But this—confrontation, explanation, interrogation, whatever—was long overdue. He couldn't finish out the weekend in Shannon's company, let alone put the past away, until this heart-to-heart was over and done. His feelings for her were such a jumble of tenderness and lust, hurt and fury. Somehow he had to find closure for this chapter of his life...and avoid the temptation to reopen it instead.
He stretched out on the far side of the sleeping bag. She handed over his bag of food, careful that their fingers didn't touch. She bent her head over a paper sleeve of French fries, but he could feel her watching him wolf down his burger from under her lashes. He crumpled the wrapper into a ball and tossed it at her. Startled, she swatted it down with her free hand before it hit her chest. Always on guard.
"Relax, would you? I don't bite."
"I wouldn't say that," she muttered, retrieving the wad of paper.
He paused in the middle of wiping his hands on a napkin, his fingers clenching at the memory of the kiss he had forced on her. "I'm sorry. I was way out of line last night."
"Yes, you were."
"It won't happen again."
She nodded, gaze fixed on her French fry. She'd nibbled maybe an inch off the end and made no move to unwrap her burger. No wonder she was so damn skinny.
He tried a smile and a joke. "I’m lucky you didn't tear me apart. I imagine they teach you how when they train you to...well, whatever it is you do."
She nodded again and bit off another millimeter of her fry. He tossed the napkin into the paper bag and rolled onto his side, elbow bent, head propped on his hand.
"Who do you work for?" he asked.
She took a moment to compose her answer. "I'm employed by the Montana Department of Livestock, but I'm also under the jurisdiction of the state police."
"So you're a cop?"
"Yes." She set the rest of the French fry aside. "I'm one of a handful who've trained both as a brand inspector and a law enforcement officer. Our task force is a joint effort between the Department of Livestock and the state police, focused on reducing the theft of livestock."
He traced the quilted stitching of the sleeping bag with his finger. She'd trotted out the job description like a public service announcement, with no particular pride. Just the facts, ma'am. Kevin might be his brother, but to Shannon he was simply one piece of a problem that had exploded with the unprecedented high prices of cattle. A fairly insignificant piece, Tyler assumed, judging by the light sentence his brother had received, and the minimum-security prison where he was serving his time.
Kevin had also done some serious plea-bargaining, giving the authorities everything he knew about his partners in crime. Chuck Potter and his crew were the real target of the investigation, Tyler had learned—long after the fact. Hardened criminals who preyed upon people like Kevin, whose precarious financial situation and lack of common sense made him vulnerable to suggestion.
It hadn't hurt that Kevin had lost a bundle to Potter in a private poker game. Money he would've had to dig deep to replace. But Potter had let him off the hook, good ol' boy that he was.
How 'bout we just take it out in trade. I got a couple of strays that came home with my herd from summer pasture, haven't been able to track down an owner. If you'll let 'em slip through the ring, we'll call it even.
But that wasn't the end. Each time they'd asked for a little more, then a little more, until Kevin realized he'd gone too far to stop. If they went down, he went with them. Once he'd smartened up enough to take a good look at his new friends, he'd been scared, and for good reason. Chuck Potter was not a nice man.
Newspapers reported that Potter had critically wounded one of the officers sent to apprehend him. The officer's name had not been released, to protect the integrity of the investigation, or some B.S. like that. Potter was facing charges of attempted murder of a police officer along with the cattle theft conviction, and facing extradition to Kansas for the murder of a former partner that had come to light after his arrest. All in all, Tyler figured his brother had been lucky to get caught before Potter decided he was no longer useful and dumped his body in one of the remote canyons surrounding the Flathead Valley.
Tyler could admit, grudgingly, that his family had Shannon to thank for his brother's safety. After he'd recovered from the initial shock, it wasn't the results of her work he resented. It was her methods. And her exit strategy.
Shannon pulled a bite-sized piece from her burger and popped it in her mouth, chewing unenthusiastically. Tyler studied her, not making a secret of his inspection. Her shoulders and elbows were more angular, her cheekbones more sharply defined, her arms less toned. Though her skin was lightly tanned, she somehow seemed pale. Translucent was a better word, as if the solid core of her had dissolved, or at least become porous, as easily broken as a brittle twig.
Something turned
in his chest, imagining her job bringing her into contact with men like Chuck Potter.
"What made you decide to chase cattle rustlers for a living?" he asked.
"What made you decide to be a rodeo announcer?"
He frowned at her non-answer. "My dad..." He stopped and shook his head at being so slow on the uptake. "Your dad is a cop too?"
She nodded and let down her guard enough to stretch out her legs, the opposite direction as him so they were facing each other. One slender ankle came to rest only inches from Tyler's free hand. He picked up a twig to keep his fingers busy and out of trouble. Shannon braced her arms behind her and closed her eyes, tilting her head back to expose the soft, vulnerable curve of her neck. Her body relaxed inch by inch, breath by breath, the process deliberate. Practiced. Complete and utter control.
Vulnerable my ass.
"Is Shannon McKenzie your real name?"
"Yes and no. My dad works in the same department and we prefer to downplay our relationship, so I use my mother's maiden name."
"Makes sense." He tried to recall the men who had swarmed over the sale barn after Kevin was arrested, barking questions, boxing up records. Had Shannon's father been one of them? Tyler tried to pull their faces out of his memory, match them up with hers, but those days had been a blur of shock and denial and pain, and nothing came clear. He could ask, but he doubted that was on her list of Things Tyler Needs to Know.
"Is that why we're here?" She cocked her head, but didn't open her eyes. "You wanted to know what makes me tick?"
Yes. I want to know how you could make love to me as if there was no tomorrow, make me feel like I was the one you'd been waiting for your entire life, all to get into my brother's files.
He shrugged. "Just trying to understand why you'd want to do this for a living. It seems...difficult. Always on duty. Away from home."
"Not really. Most of my investigations are done at my desk, weeding through reams of computer data and paperwork. More often than not we find enough proof to get a search warrant and that's that. Job done." She made a gesture that included him, past and present. "This kind of thing isn't necessary very often."
Cowboy Six Pack Page 3
