03 Cutler Brides

by Paige Tyler

  Riley sat up, as did Shayna. They both looked at the other girl expectantly.

  “Were you able to find out anything from the license plate number you copied down?” Riley asked.

  Rosie nodded, her dark eyes filled with excitement. “Yes, and it’s really weird. That car belongs to a pharmaceutical company.”

  Shayna frowned. “What would someone from a pharmaceutical company be doing talking to Bill Bingham out in the middle of nowhere?”

  The Mexican girl shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but I’m thinking that it must have something to do with drugs. I mean, what else would a pharmaceutical company be involved in?”

  Riley’s brow furrowed. “Drugs make sense, but what are they doing?”

  “I have no idea,” Rosie said. “None of the day-laborers who work at the mining company will say anything, either. But I know that a lot of them got picked for work today, which means that something big is going on up there.” She looked at them expectantly. “I thought you girls might want to come with me to check it out.”

  Shayna’s eyes narrowed. “Check it out how exactly?”

  “I’m going to sneak up there and take pictures of whatever it is that’s going on, then give them to my boyfriend,” Rosie told them.

  Riley looked at her in surprise. “Why? Is he a cop?”

  The other girl nodded. “He’s the deputy you saw me with the day you came to the sheriff’s office.”

  Shayna gave her a frown. “Then if he’s a cop, why don’t you just tell him your suspicions and let him check it out?”

  Rosie sighed. “Because Clay always thinks I’m imagining things,” she said. “Which is why I need to get him proof.”

  “But wasn’t your boyfriend the one who ran the license plate for you?” Riley asked.

  “Didn’t he wonder what you wanted it for?”

  The Mexican girl shook her head. “Actually, he didn’t run the plate for me. I got his computer password out of his wallet while he was in the shower.”

  Shayna blinked. “Won’t he be angry if he finds out?”

  But Rosie only gave her a grin. “Probably,” she said. “But I have Clay so wrapped around my finger he doesn’t know which end is up most of the time.”

  If Cade caught her doing something like that, she would be over his knee so fast, Riley thought. From Shayna’s expression, apparently she didn’t think Madoc would be nearly as understanding as Rosie’s boyfriend, either.

  “So,” Rosie said. “What do you say? Are you in?”

  Riley looked at Shayna, who shrugged. She knew exactly what the other girl was thinking – they’d better not get caught, or they would be in for it.

  “Okay,” Riley told Rosie. “But our husbands can’t find out about this.”

  Rosie grinned. “No problem,” she said. “We’ll just tell them we’re going shopping.”

  Since they couldn’t very well go with Rosie dressed like they were, Riley and Shayna went upstairs to change out of their bikinis and into more suitable clothes. When they went back downstairs, it was to find Rosie in the kitchen with Arlene.

  “You girls have fun,” the older woman said when Riley told her they were going shopping with Rosie.

  As they left the house, Riley wondered if they should have let Arlene in on where they were really going just in case something went wrong and she and the other girls got caught snooping. Then again, if they did get caught, Bill Bingham would probably have them all arrested for trespassing on private property, which meant Madoc and Cade would find out anyway.

  They drove out to the same location they had the day before and hid the car in a ravine.

  As they crept over the next hill, they saw that the area was crawling with people. Most of them seemed to be the day laborers Rosie had mentioned, but there were also a handful of men carrying rifles. It looked like they were the ones directing the work that was going on. It was hard to see exactly what they were doing with all the dust that was being kicked up, but Riley could see that there were several large trucks, as well as a bulldozer. The dozer had just finished digging what looked like a really deep trench.

  Eager to see what was going on down in the valley below them, Riley and the other two girls carefully crept closer to the working men. They tried to move as stealthily as they could from one hiding place to the next. Within a few minutes, they had worked themselves to within a hundred feet or so of the work site. From their vantage point behind a large rock, Riley watched as the day laborers unloaded plastic bags from the trucks and tossed them into the huge hole the bulldozer had dug.

  “What are they doing?” Riley whispered to the other two girls.

  It was Rosie who answered. “I don’t know, but it’s obviously not legal.”

  Digging into her bag, Rosie took out the digital camera she had brought with her and held it up so that she could use the zoom function to see better.

  “Do you think they’re burying drugs?” Shayna asked, leaning in close so that she could look through the camera, too.

  “Maybe,” Rosie said.

  Riley’s brow furrowed. “But why would they bury drugs? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Unless someone else is going to come and dig them up later,” Rosie suggested.

  They all fell silent for a moment as Rosie took some pictures. “I’d love to get a little closer, but I don’t know if we dare,” she said.

  “And what the hell do you girls think you’re doing?”

  Startled by the gruff male voice, Riley jerked around to see two men standing behind them, a pistol in one of their hands and a rifle in the other. From the corner of her eye, she saw Rosie’s grip on the camera tighten.

  Riley swallowed hard. “We, uh, were just out sightseeing and...” she began.

  “Like hell you were!” the second man snarled. “Get up!”

  With two guns being held on them, Riley and her friends had no choice but to obey. She wondered for a moment if they should try and make a run for it, but then thought better of it. If they ran, the men would probably shoot them for sure. However, if they went along willingly, the men might let them go, or at least she and the other girls might be able to escape later.

  Apparently, Shayna and Rosie must have thought so, too, because when the men gestured for them to walk toward where the men were working, they went without protest.

  Though the day laborers looked at Riley and the other girls curiously, they didn’t stop unloading the trucks. But perhaps that had something to do with the half a dozen men brandishing guns, she thought bitterly. Bill Bingham, however, strode over to meet them as soon as she and the other girls were herded into the clearing.

  “I thought I told you girls to stay away from here,” he said, looking from Riley to Shayna. “But you couldn’t leave well enough alone could you? And now you’ve involved your friend, too.”

  Rosie glared at him. “They didn’t involve me in anything. I’ve been on to you for weeks now, you bastard! I knew you were doing something illegal and now I’ve got the pictures to prove it.”

  Bill Bingham’s eyes narrowed as he took in the camera she had in her hand. “You’ve got nothing but pictures of a bunch of Mexican day laborers unloading plastic bags from trucks and tossing them into a hole in the ground.”

  “Plastic bags full of drugs, you mean,” Rosie sneered.

  Bill Bingham stared at her in disbelief. “Drugs? Is that what you think is in those bags?”

  He let out a harsh laugh. “Does that stench smell like drugs to you?”

  Riley had been too preoccupied with their situation before to pay much attention to the smell, but now that she did, she wrinkled her nose. She didn’t know what drugs smelled like, but she didn’t think it was that.

  “If it’s not drugs, then what is it?” she asked.

  He regarded her in silence for a moment as if deciding whether he should answer, then shook his head.

  “You really want to know what’s in the bags? I’ll tell you,” he said. “A loca
l pharmaceutical company is paying us to dispose of the lab animals they use for testing.”

  Riley blinked, her gaze going to the bags the workers had already thrown into the hole.

  There had to be hundreds of bags in there, she thought, sickened by the idea. She didn’t like the thought of animal testing to begin with, and after seeing this, she was even more against it.

  Beside her, Shayna looked just as disgusted. “This can’t be the approved method of...of disposal,” she said.

  Bill Bingham shrugged. “No, but it is cheaper. And more importantly, it covers up how many animals they’re actually killing in their testing. If the public ever found out how many of those cute, cuddly critters die just to make sure their mascara doesn’t run, there’d be an international outcry.”

  Riley tore her gaze away from the growing pile of bags in the trench. “What about the body we saw floating in the stream the other day? That wasn’t an animal.”

  His mouth tightened. “No, it wasn’t. It was one of the laborers we hired. He decided he was going to tell the authorities what we were doing up here, anonymously of course, since he was an illegal. But either way, we couldn’t have him doing that, so we stopped him.”

  “Killed him, you mean?” Rosie sneered.

  Bill Bingham fixed her with a glare. “If you prefer,” he said. “Which is exactly what it looks like we’re going to have to do to you.”

  Riley felt her heart start to pound. “B-but you can’t!” she protested.

  “She’s right,” Shayna told him. “Our husbands are U.S. Marshals and they know we came up here.”

  Bill Bingham smirked. “Somehow I doubt that.” His gaze went to the men standing guard behind them.

  “Shoot them and then put them in the trench with the rest of the trash.”

  “You can’t think you’re going to get away with this!” Rosie shouted.

  But Bill Bingham was already walking away.

  Cade and Madoc were just heading in from the barn when they spotted a sheriff’s vehicle coming up the driveway. His brow furrowing, Cade came to a halt, as did his brother. A moment later, the SUV slowed to a stop and Clay Ericson got out. Cade and Clay had been friends since grade school, and while Cade had chosen to become a police officer in Dallas, Clay had decided to stay in the local area and become a deputy instead. Cade grinned at the other man as he and Madoc walked over to meet him.

  “What brings you out here?” Cade asked, giving him a hearty handshake.

  “I’m looking for Rosie, actually,” Clay said. “She left me a message on my cell saying she was coming out here to see your wives. I’m going to be on duty for a while yet so I thought I’d come by and see if she wanted to grab some dinner.”

  Cade glanced at Madoc. “Rosie’s not here. She went into Fort Worth to do some shopping with Riley and Shayna.”

  Clay’s eyes went wide at that. “Shopping? Are you sure? Rosie hates to go shopping.”

  Cade didn’t think he’d ever heard of a woman who didn’t like to shop. “That’s what they said.”

  Clay was about to reply when a woman’s voice came over the radio handset attached to his shoulder.

  “Clay, you there?”

  The deputy reached up to thumb the talk button. “Go ahead, Marcy,” he said.

  “I think we may have a problem,” the woman said. “One of Rosie’s friends is here and she said Rosie went up to do some snooping around on Big Sky Mining property this afternoon.

  She says Rosie swore her to secrecy, but since Rosie’s not back yet, her friend thinks she might be in some kind of trouble.”

  Cade’s brow furrowed as he shared a look with Madoc. There was no way Riley or Shayna would deliberately go snooping up at the mining company after they’d specifically told the girls to stay out of it. What the hell was he thinking? Of course they would!

  Clay swore under his breath. “Is the sheriff still there, Marcy?”

  “He and his wife already left to go to Dallas,” the woman said.

  “What about Whitley or Michaels?” he said.

  “Both of them are out on Old Mine Road about a domestic disturbance,” Marcy said.

  “Shit,” Clay muttered. “All right. Get them on the radio and have them meet me up at Big Sky Mining.”

  “Roger that,” she said.

  “What do you think is going on?” Cade asked.

  Clay shook his head. “I’m not sure, but Rosie has been going on about something shady happening up at Big Sky Mining for weeks now. I told her to stay out of it, but obviously she didn’t, and now who knows what she’s gotten herself into.” His mouth tightened. “Or what she’s gotten your wives into.”

  Madoc clenched his jaw. “Shayna and Riley probably didn’t need that much persuading.

  They thought they saw a body floating in the stream when they went riding up near the mining company’s property the other day, so they were already suspicious.”

  Clay frowned. “Absolutely wonderful,” he muttered. “Well, as you heard, I could use some back-up.

  You boys game to help out?”

  Cade had known his wife’s snooping was going to get her into trouble, and now it seemed that he’d been right. He should have listened to her when she’d said they’d seen a body.

  If he had, then she and Shayna wouldn’t be in this situation right now. But there was no time to beat himself up about it; they had to get out to that mining property, and quickly.

  Apparently, Madoc had the same thought because he turned and disappeared into the house without saying a word. A minute later, he came back out with two rifles, one of which he tossed to Cade.

  “Let’s go.”

  Oh God, this had been a really bad idea, Shayna thought. Madoc and Cade had been right; she and Riley should have minded their own business. But of course they hadn’t, and now they were going to pay for that stupidity. She glanced frantically at Riley and Rosie to see that though both girls looked as frightened as she felt, they also seemed as determined as she was not to give in without a fight.

  “You can’t do this to us!” Shayna shouted, trying to jerk free as the man holding her began dragging her closer to the edge of the hole.

  “She’s right!” Riley added. “People know we’re here!”

  “They’ve probably already called the sheriff!” Rosie said. “He’ll probably be here any minute!”

  The men all laughed, obviously finding the whole thing amusing.

  “If they called the sheriff, he would have been here by now, bitch,” the man who was holding on to Rosie snarled. “Which means you girls are on your own.”

  “And about to become fertilizer,” the man holding Riley sneered.

  Shayna was dangerously close to the edge of the hole now. All it would take was one shove from her captor and she’d be in it, she thought. If that happened, she’d never be able to escape. Desperate, she began to fight more wildly, as did the other two girls.

  Suddenly, Shayna heard police sirens. Jerking her head around, she saw not only two sheriff vehicles, but also a familiar dark SUV speeding down the dirt road toward them.

  Madoc!

  Thank God, she thought.

  The man holding her tightened his grip, and for one fearful moment, she thought he was going to throw her in the hole anyway, but to her relief, he released her. Barking an order to the other two men to get the hell out of there, he and his companions took off at a run toward their one of the trucks. They weren’t fast enough. though, and within moments, Madoc, Cade and the sheriff’s men were out of their trucks and holding them at gunpoint.

  Shayna’s first impulse was to run over to her husband and throw herself into his arms, but she forced herself to stand beside him while he and Cade kept their weapons trained on Bill Bingham and his men so that the sheriff’s deputies could handcuff them. Once that was done, Madoc immediately turned to her. Resting his rifle against the SUV, he took her in his arms.

  Shayna leaned against his chest, hugging him tightly as she le
t the warmth of his body envelop her. All too soon, however, Madoc pulled away to gaze down at her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “Did those men hurt you?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’m fine. We’re all fine. But thank God you got here in time.”

  Though Madoc clearly looked relieved that she and the other girls hadn’t been harmed, his jaw tightened anyway. “What the hell were you girls doing up here? You promised you wouldn’t get involved!”

  Shayna bit her lip and looked away to find Riley getting the same lecture from Cade.

  Several feet away, Rosie was obviously hearing the same thing from her boyfriend.

  She lifted her gaze to look up at Madoc. “I know, and we really had every intention of keeping that promise, but then Rosie had a hunch something was going on up here. Riley and I couldn’t talk her out of it, but we couldn’t just let her investigate on her own, either, so we came with her. We only meant to take some pictures, so that we could prove to you that there was something illegal going on, but then we got caught.”

  Shayna went on to tell him what she and the other girls had discovered, including the fact that they’d been right about the body floating in the stream that day.

  Madoc scowled at her. “We are definitely going to talk more about this when we get back to the ranch.”

  Shayna suspected she would be over his knee for a good portion of that conversation, but she supposed she couldn’t really say she didn’t deserve it. If Madoc and the other men had gotten there even a couple of minutes later, then she, Riley, and Rosie would be dead right now.

  The thought made her shiver. She was so happy that she and the other girls were safe that she’d gladly submit to any spanking Madoc gave her.

  Madoc’s gaze kept drifting over to where Shayna and the other girls were giving their statements to the federal investigators who had arrived. While he was angry with his wife for putting herself in danger once again, he was also immensely relieved he, Cade, and the sheriff’s deputies had gotten there in time. If they’d just been a couple of minutes later...he didn’t even want to think about it.