Cowboy Six Pack

by Kari Lynn Dell

  "And you finding it rewarding? More so than, say, hunting down car thieves?"

  She hitched one shoulder. "Stealing an animal is different. Most ranchers have worked years to build the bloodlines of their herds. They know every cow, can tell you what kind of calf she produced last year, the year before, maybe even the year before that without looking at a computer database. A thief takes more than one animal. He takes all the years and all the hard work that went into that animal. And horses...well, that's like stealing someone's heart. Their dreams."

  He felt himself softening at the intensity in her voice, the hint of passion that snuck out from under her mask, and had to purposely relive those awful days—and nights—after she’d run out.

  Don’t you dare get sucked in again.

  She drew her knees up, wrapped her arms around them and stared down at her dusty running shoes. "You can’t just go out and buy a new animal to replace what you lost. Not like a car, or a bike. You can get another cow or another horse, but it will never be quite the same."

  Tyler bowed his head and fought the tug at his heart. Damn her for being so firmly on the side of justice. For months he had cursed her. Blamed her for the tears in his mother's eyes; the stress and heartbreak that sent her to the emergency room, clutching her chest in terrifying imitation of their father. Tyler had been so engulfed in anxiety, guilt and self-pity, he hadn't wanted to consider the effect on the victims of his brother's crimes.

  "How is Kevin handling it?" Shannon asked softly.

  Tyler bent the twig between his fingers, gouging the bark with his thumbnail. "At first, he blamed everyone else. The ranchers who by-passed us to take their cattle to Missoula or Butte for better prices. Chuck, for conning him. The rich bastards who turned thousands of acres of the best cattle country in Montana into their personal playgrounds. But he finally admitted he made his own deal with the devil, and he was damn lucky not to end up in a hell worse than minimum security prison."

  "Well. That's good. Accepting responsibility is a huge step toward successful rehabilitation."

  "Sure."

  Tyler was irritated by what sounded like something a shrink would say. Had said, in fact. He didn't want to think of his brother as inherently bad, a potential career criminal, but he supposed Shannon would know. In her line of work, she'd seen enough people like Kevin to guess how easy it would be to backslide. Tyler snapped the twig in half and tossed away the pieces.

  "Why did you really drag me here?" she asked.

  He forced himself to look her in the eye. "I want to know why you're investigating Big West Rodeo Company."

  “I’m not…specifically. Working for them is a good cover to observe animals moving in and out during the rodeos.”

  “Stolen animals?” When she didn’t respond immediately, he answered his own question. “Of course, or they wouldn’t have brought you in. Bud and Judy would never do something like that. Anyone who’s known them more than a day could figure that out.”

  She gazed at him for a long moment, then stretched out on the blanket, propped her hands behind her head and closed her eyes. “If that’s true, you have nothing to worry about.”

  Tyler would have bet his pickup on it…so why did he still have this sick knot in his gut?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Shannon awoke to something brushing across her forehead. She opened her eyes and looked straight into Tyler's.

  "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," he murmured, his fingertip skimming the curve of her jaw. He was lying beside her, his body almost, but not quite, touching hers. "You looked so beautiful, I couldn't resist." His hand cupped her face and his lips grazed hers. "I've missed you so much, Shannon. Why didn't you come back to me?"

  Her heart contracted, then expanded until it felt as if her ribs might crack under the pressure. "I'm sorry. I thought, after everything, you'd never want to see me again."

  She slid her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him closer, their lips meeting in a kiss that held a year's worth of frustration and pain. He groaned and his arm snaked around her waist, molding her body to the long, lean heat of his. She threaded her fingers in his hair, thrilling at the taste and the scent and the feel of him. She'd dreamed of this for so long, so certain there was no hope. His hand slid beneath the hem of her shirt, his fingers inching upward.

  She broke off the kiss. "Tyler, stop, there are people..."

  But it was Chuck Potter's face that snarled down into hers, his fingers that clawed at her shirt.

  "You bitch!" He yanked her head back with a handful of hair. "You're wired!"

  She drove her rigid fingers into his throat. His grip loosened as he gagged. She tore free, stumbling to her feet, turning to run. Her mind had no time to register the meaning of the loud report before the pain seared through her. She felt herself falling, clamped her hands over her ribs as the voices called to her...

  Tyler grabbed her shoulder and shook, on the verge of panic. "Shannon! Shannon, wake up!"

  She moaned, her body rigid, curled on her side with her hands pressed against her stomach, gasping for air. Geezus, what was happening to her? Asthma, a seizure...should he call an ambulance?

  "Shannon?" he pleaded. "Can you hear me?"

  Her eyes opened, glazed and uncomprehending. He watched as consciousness slowly filtered back. The gasping slowed to deep, shuddering breaths, and finally to almost normal. She pulled her hands away from her stomach and stared at her palms. Tyler had the eerie impression that she expected to see blood. She took one last shaky breath and sat up.

  "Are you okay?" he asked.

  "Yeah." She pushed a hand through her hair and managed a wobbly smile. "Too much ketchup on my fries, I guess. My mother always said it would give me nightmares."

  A nightmare. He was so relieved she wasn't having a medical emergency, he didn't bother to point out that she hadn't finished a whole French fry, or used ketchup.

  "Oh, well, good. I mean, I'm glad you're okay." He was still leaning over her, their faces only inches apart, his hand on her arm. She scooted away from his touch and he scrambled to his feet, his knees a whole lot more unsteady than he would've liked to admit. "We should get back."

  "Um, yeah. Okay."

  She gathered the remains of their lunch without looking at him, then waited in silence while he folded the sleeping bag and unlocked the pickup. He fired up the engine and cranked the air conditioning.

  "You're too thin," he said, keeping his gaze straight ahead. "And you barely touched your lunch. I'm pulling into the drive-in to get you a fresh burger and a milk shake, and I'm going to drive around until you finish both of them."

  He felt her stare, waited for her to tell him where to get off, but she only said, "Thanks."

  When he eventually parked next to her car at the deserted rodeo grounds, she didn't reach for the door handle immediately. Instead, she pushed her sunglasses onto her head and turned to him. "Can I ask you a question, Tyler?"

  He shrugged. "I've got nothing to hide."

  "What was the first thing the cops did when they came to the auction barn?"

  "They confiscated all of our records."

  "Before that. I mean as soon as they knocked on the door."

  He frowned, uncertain where she was leading. "They showed us the search warrant."

  "On the morning immediately after you caught me poking around Kevin's office, when I thought you were asleep." She made a rueful face. "Stupid of me, seducing you to get the keys when I knew my guys were already on their way with that warrant. Can't imagine what I was thinking."

  She slid out, closed the door and left Tyler sitting there, feeling like he'd been sucker-punched.

  She was right. The search warrant had been dated the day before he'd finally persuaded Shannon to go home with him after dinner. He'd rolled over, missing her warmth, and looked out the window of his mobile home to see a light moving around inside the sale barn office and Shannon's car still in his driveway. She'd obviously hoped to sneak over
, do her dirty work, then slide back into bed before he noticed she was gone. When he'd confronted her, she'd only shook her head, her face pale and set, and said, "I am so sorry."

  And then she'd run.

  The next morning, the cops had hit like a swarm of locusts, crawling over everything. Tyler remembered how he'd tried to ask what Shannon had found to bring about this apocalypse, where she'd gone, and one of the officers had given him a stony look.

  "Last night?" He shook his head. "We had everything we needed for the search warrant after last week's sale, just took a few days to get a judge to sign it."

  He'd forgotten, in the chaos that followed. But if it hadn't been evidence to nail Kevin's hide to the wall, what had she hoped to find?

  CHAPTER NINE

  By the time she and Judy locked up the office that night after the rodeo, Shannon was cross-eyed with exhaustion. Her brief nap and that damn nightmare had only made it worse. Obviously it had pureed her brain, or she never would've said those things to Tyler.

  Started him thinking.

  When Tyler started thinking, he'd come up with more questions. The man was infuriatingly capable of blocking out anything he didn't want to know, but he'd latch on like a blue heeler dog once a stick was waved under his nose.

  She had nothing to give him but excuses and apologies. Anything but the truth.

  She'd spent the afternoon catching up on her notes and touching base with her team members. Two of them, a man and a woman, were posing as vendors, complete with a hot dog truck. The third was sporting a high-dollar camera, supposedly snapping rodeo photos for a magazine article.

  No animal would set a hoof on those trucks without being seen by one of her team. The trick was scooping up the person or persons doing the loading without giving them an opportunity to warn off their accomplice at the other end. The best bet was to let the horse or horses be loaded on the truck, then follow it to the rendezvous and grab the accomplice at the other end in the act of receiving the stolen goods.

  Shannon hated that plan. Her stomach clenched, recalling how fervently she'd campaigned for a better alternative, only to be shot down.

  Their job was to catch criminals, she'd been told in no uncertain terms, and they would do it in the most efficient, least risky way possible. Let the justice system sort out the rest—and hope Big West Rodeo was still in business by the time they were done.

  Tonight, though, she could relax. Okay, try to relax. After two hours beside Tyler in the crow’s nest, the silky tenor of his voice soaking in clear to her bones, her body hummed like a tuning fork.

  His voice had been the first thing to bewitch her. Hour after hour, she'd listened to his auctioneer's patter at the sale barn, a part of her wishing would never end. Another, even less sensible part, anticipated the moment the last cow would be herded through the ring, the checks would all be written, and they could slip off alone, where that voice could drop down the scale, to a deep, hot bass that played across her skin and plucked every single chord in her soul.

  She'd thought, once, that she'd known every nuance of that magical voice. But until now, she'd never heard it go hard with contempt.

  Regardless, there was nothing left for her to do at the rodeo grounds tonight. With another performance to go, all three trucks sat cold and silent behind the chutes and she'd seen Danny West and the drivers headed for the beer garden as soon as the rodeo ended. They wouldn't be climbing behind the wheel tonight.

  Tomorrow would be a different story. As soon as the bareback and saddle bronc riding events were in the books and the bulls were sorted, Danny and the drivers would load the horses while Bud stayed out in the arena, acting as chute boss. They first truck would be long gone before the last bull bucked at the end of the performance, headed five hundred miles south, across the Wyoming border to the next show.

  All of those factors combined to make the Saturday performance the ideal time to slip an extra horse or two onto the truck, and off again, somewhere in the dead of night. When they made their move, Shannon's crew would be there to nab them.

  And, if Shannon's instincts were on target, destroy Bud and Judy West the same way she'd torn apart the Jernigan family, with Tyler on hand to witness the devastation. Again. And hating her. Again. And there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it.

  For now, it was simply a waiting game. There had been no reports of missing horses in the past three weeks. Maybe the thieves were lying low. Maybe they'd decided to take the money and run, but in Shannon's experience, it rarely worked that way. They'd been successful so far. If anything, they would get greedy, start pushing their luck, and that's usually when they got caught.

  Thanks to a hunch on Shannon's part, the Department of Livestock was a step ahead of the game. She'd compared the stolen horses, noticed they were all trained for either tie down or team roping, and started looking for a rodeo connection. Who better to target this specific kind of horse than someone who saw dozens of rodeo horses perform every weekend? From there, it had been simple to draw the line between the missing horses and the nearest Big West rodeo.

  But maybe she had it all wrong. Could be, the Wests had nothing to do with it. The connection might be one of the ropers instead. Most of the same cowboys competed at all of the circuit rodeos. But if that were the case, why did the horses only disappear when a Big West rodeo was in the vicinity?

  So far, the thieves been smart enough to pick their targets with great care and perfect timing. Shannon's job was to turn that well-oiled machine around and make it bite them in the ass.

  Too damn bad if she tore up her own heart in the process.

  As she walked to her car, thunder rolled in the distance, low and ominous. The clouds had remained offstage all day, a distant threat that made the air press down like a wet blanket. Her thin, sleeveless blouse stuck to her damp skin as she made a habitual survey of the rodeo grounds, her antennae tuned to anything or anyone who seemed out of place, any furtive movements.

  Nothing triggered her internal alarm. The occasional squeal or bellow sounded from the stock pens as bulls and horses jostled for position at the feed bunks. Shannon could just make out their bulky forms milling in the darkness. The music from the beer garden rang clear across the darkened arena, above the murmur of conversation and bursts of laughter.

  Shannon paused by her car, listening, acknowledging a pang of envy. Two summers ago, she might have been one of those women, laughing and flirting. Her feet no longer felt an urge to move to the music. Standing alone in the darkness, she felt separated from her peers by more than the space of an empty arena. As if, in the blink of an eye—or rather, the click of a trigger—she'd aged decades, all vestiges of a young, mostly happy woman drained out of her on the floor of Chuck Potter's shitty little mobile home.

  Her fingers traced the line of the scar beneath her ribs. A permanent reminder that she had, in the end, done the right thing, if not in a smart way. And that Tyler could never, ever know. The only thing worse than his disgust would be guilt. Or pity.

  She'd watched Tyler, with his over-developed sense of responsibility, set aside his own dream to try to help Kevin keep the sale barn afloat, rushing off to work whatever rodeos he could, but never missing a Wednesday sale even if it meant driving all night to get to the next show.

  She could play the guilt card. And if it worked, she'd never know if he really loved her...or just felt beholden to her.

  Which was why she should've kept her damn mouth shut this afternoon.

  She scowled, annoyed at herself all over again, as she dug her keys out of her purse, giving the trucks and stock pens one last quick survey. Her gaze passed over the announcer's stand, then jerked back.

  The door was ajar.

  She frowned, squinting. Surely Tyler hadn't forgotten to lock it, with his expensive sound equipment in there? More likely, someone had gone in after him and left it open. Irresponsible ass. She blew out a quick huff of exasperation and headed for the stairs.

  As her hand cl
osed over the doorknob, she heard a scrape and rustle. Her heart lurched, then broke into a gallop. She froze. Either someone had broken in or had taken advantage of the open door—and that someone was still inside.

  She slid her hand into her purse, fighting to keep her breathing slow and silent as her fingers closed around a canister of mace. Her mind raced, debating courses of action. A confrontation in the dark with an unknown entity was nowhere near the top of her list. Her heart hammered painfully—but hey, still beating so that was good—as she peeled her fingers from the doorknob and eased backward.

  She would slip down the stairs, find cover and call for back-up. No need to force a solo confrontation unless the intruder took flight before her teammates reached the scene. One foot back. Then the other. Setting each down slowly to avoid making the wooden stairs creak. As she lowered to the third stair, she heard footsteps coming straight toward her. The door swung inward, away from her. She crouched, braced against the stair rail to avoid being bowled over, thumbed off the safety clip and held the mace out in both hands like a gun.

  "Hold it right there!" she barked.

  She caught only a glimpse of a dark, male form before it lurched backward, stumbled, and crashed to the floor, accompanied by a stream of curses. The voice was unmistakable.

  She let the mace drop to her side. "Tyler?"

  "Hell, yes, it's Tyler! Who else?"

  She rose, crept up the stairs and peered into the booth. Tyler was a shadowy heap beneath the counter top that ran the length of the front window. He disentangled himself from one of the stools and shoved it aside with a clatter. She could just make out his face—and his muttered profanity.

  He grabbed the edge of the counter and heaved to his feet, swaying a little before he got his balance. "Jesus Christ! You were pointing a gun at me?"