Cowboy Under Fire

by Carla Cassidy

  The chair squeaked, indicating that he’d shifted positions. “The day they died I thought my life was over. When I took to the streets I didn’t much care what happened to me. I felt like a dead man walking.”

  “And then you came here and that changed,” she murmured. His voice was so deep, so hypnotically smooth she was growing drowsier by the moment.

  “Cass Holiday definitely changed my life. She embraced me like a son, she taught me how to find joy in working hard and bonding with the other young men who worked the ranch. She gave me back a family, different than the one I’d had, but family nevertheless.”

  She was awakened once again for her pupils to be checked. And so the night passed with her dozing between checks until the light of dawn drifted through her small window.

  When she woke up to the early new day she looked over at Forest, who was asleep in the chair. He sat straight up, his head leaning slightly backward against the wall. His strong jaw held a shadow of dark whiskers and his mouth was slightly open, although no snores came from within.

  He was definitely a handsome man and physically he stirred something deep inside her, but it frightened her—the pull she felt toward him. She didn’t want to be pulled toward anyone. She’d always been alone and that was the way she liked it, the way it was supposed to be.

  She closed her eyes once again. One thing was certain, despite her bravado and positive attitude the night before, she knew she couldn’t work today. A bone-weary exhaustion gripped her, partially from being awakened so often during the night and also from the trauma she had suffered. Her brain still felt slightly scrambled.

  What had happened to her? Would she ever remember? Since everyone assumed she had been attacked, then by who and why? She knew that when she and Devon had ventured into town and to the café for dinner a few nights before there had been a couple of men she hadn’t been particularly friendly with. But if this had been their retribution for unfriendliness then she’d hate to see what they might do to somebody who really ticked them off.

  She must have fallen asleep again, for the scent of bacon roused her back to consciousness. She opened her eyes to see Forest holding a bed tray with a plate of food and a built-in cup holder that carried a glass of orange juice.

  Once again he was stepping all over her personal boundaries, but it was hard to be too mad at him when the scent of bacon filled the air.

  “I’d be really upset about this if I wasn’t so weak,” she said and sat up against the bed pillows so that he could place the tray over her waist. It was strange that she was in bed, in her nightgown, and yet felt no self-consciousness about his presence.

  “How’s your head this morning?” he asked, obviously ignoring her touch of crankiness.

  “The headache is gone. I just feel so weak and I’m still so confused about what happened to me.”

  “Don’t think, just eat.” He sat in the chair where he’d spent the night. He’d apparently taken the time while she’d snoozed to have a quick shower and shave. The morning whiskers she’d spied earlier were gone; he smelled of fresh-scented soap and wore clean jeans and a white T-shirt that stretched over his broad shoulders.

  “I’m used to taking care of myself,” she said as she picked up the fork.

  “Everybody needs somebody at times in their lives. For you this is one of those times,” he replied. “You just need to deal with it.”

  “This is the first time in my entire life and hopefully it will be the last.” She took a bite of scrambled eggs and realized that as good as it smelled, she didn’t have much of an appetite.

  “There’s nothing wrong with needing other people in your life,” he countered.

  She set her fork down and picked up a piece of bacon. Bacon she could always do. “And who do you need?”

  “It depends. When I need a little music, I go to Mac McBride, who plays the guitar and sings like an angel. When I want a good laugh I usually go to Dusty. When I need somebody to set me straight, I talk to Brody Booth, who is a bit of a hard-ass and always tells me what he thinks. Different people serve different needs.”

  He leaned back in the chair and his gaze grew softer as he stared at some distance over her head. “Someday I hope to have a woman in my life that I want, that I need to stand by my side, to give me children and to love me until the end of time. I want that...I need that in my life.”

  Patience fought the impulse to scoff at him. Just because she didn’t believe that kind of a relationship was possible didn’t mean anything she said would change his mind about such nonsense.

  She finished two pieces of bacon, drank the orange juice and then told him she was finished. He frowned, but took the tray from her lap. “I’m going to return this to the dining room, but you have to promise me that you won’t move an inch from that bed while I’m gone.”

  “I promise,” she replied. It was an easy promise to make because she didn’t feel like moving. She didn’t want to think or feel. She just wanted to be left alone until she could get back to work. But she knew she couldn’t work today.

  Tomorrow. She’d rest for today and then she’d be back at work tomorrow. Dillon was depending on her to complete the job. Cassie was eager to get the crime scene cleaned up. Patience’s own reputation was at risk if she languished in bed for longer than a day.

  She huddled back beneath the sheet and closed her eyes. She sensed Forest returning to her room. Did he intend to just sit in the chair and stare at her all day long? Surely he had better things to do.

  “Patience, Dillon is here to speak to you,” Forest said with a hint of reluctance. Instantly her headache returned. He was going to make her think. He was going to ask her questions to which she had no answers.

  Yet she wanted answers, too. She needed to know who had attacked her in the darkness of the night. She sighed wearily and nodded to Forest, fighting against a faint shiver that threatened to walk up her spine.

  Who had attacked her and why?

  * * *

  The last thing Forest wanted was for Patience to be stressed, and it was definitely stress lines that danced across her forehead when Dillon stepped into the small room.

  She sat up, her face far too pale, and her hand shook slightly as she reached up and tucked an errant curl behind her ear.

  “I don’t think this is such a great idea,” Forest said. “Maybe you should talk to her tomorrow. Clayton said her brain shouldn’t be strained. Besides, she doesn’t remember what happened to her last night.” He looked at Patience for confirmation.

  “The only thing I remember from last night is working in the tent,” she said to Dillon. “I don’t remember anything that happened after that.”

  “The questions I have for her don’t pertain to last night and I promise I’ll be as brief as possible,” Dillon said.

  “It’s okay,” Patience replied and gestured Dillon into the chair where Forest had spent the long night.

  Forest remained just inside the room. There was no way Dillon was going to exhaust or make Patience anxious, not on his watch.

  Dillon pulled out a pad and pen. “I need to know if you’ve made any enemies while you’ve been here. Is there anyone you can think of who might want to do you harm?”

  Patience’s small burst of laughter surprised Forest. “If I was to guess, Chief Bowie, you’d be right up there at the top of the list,” she replied.

  Dillon’s cheeks flushed faintly. “I’ll admit we initially butted heads.”

  “I was just protecting the burial site,” she replied.

  “Okay, so take me off your list and tell me who else you might have made angry,” Dillon said.

  “Probably everyone on this ranch,” she said. “I haven’t exactly been the face of friendliness while I’ve been here.”

  “None of the men here would ever hurt Patience, no matter how
cranky she’s been,” Forest exclaimed. “I mean, not that she’s been really cranky with anyone in particular,” he added in an effort not to offend.

  “I’ve been a rip-roaring witch to almost everyone who has gotten in my path,” she said and then frowned. “I did have a little run-in with a couple of men at the café when I went there for dinner with Devon the other night.”

  “What were their names?” Forest asked. He’d love to find the person or persons responsible for Patience’s condition and crack a jaw or two.

  “I have no idea. They were rude and vulgar and I told them so. Devon would know their names. I think he eats with them on a regular basis.” She leaned her head back against the pillow, exhaustion once again playing across her features.

  “I think that’s enough questioning for now,” Forest said as protectiveness surged up inside him. “Maybe we should go have a talk with Devon.”

  He knew it wasn’t his place to intrude into Dillon’s investigation, but he wanted to hear the names of those men, one of whom might have attacked Patience.

  Dillon got up from the chair and Forest looked at Patience. “If you remember anything else, call me,” Dillon said.

  She nodded, closed her eyes and then waved a hand to dismiss both men. Forest pulled her door closed and then he and Dillon headed toward the huge white recreational vehicle parked near the blue tent that sheltered the burial site.

  When they came to the area where Forest had found Patience unconscious on the ground the night before, his heart beat a bit faster.

  If the blow to her head had been a little harder, if it had landed just an inch or so to the right, then she might have been found dead instead of just suffering from a concussion.

  His hands clenched into fists at his sides. Anger was normally an alien emotion to Forest, but the attack on Patience had awakened a rage-filled beast inside him.

  “While you were at the hospital last night, several of my men and I swept the area looking for something, anything that might provide a clue,” Dillon said.

  “And I’m assuming you found nothing. Otherwise you would have already mentioned it to me by now.”

  “You’re right,” Dillon replied in obvious frustration. “We didn’t find whatever she was hit with or any sign that anyone was on the property who didn’t belong.”

  He cast a sideways glance at Forest. “I know all of you men here share a special bond with each other, but that doesn’t mean there might not be a bad apple in the bunch.”

  Forest shook his head. “You’ll have to prove that to me before I’ll ever believe it,” he said firmly. The men on this ranch had all grown up together.

  They weren’t just a dozen cowboys working on the same ranch. They were brothers, hardened by loss and dysfunction at an early age and then made whole again by Cass Holiday’s firm but loving hands and bonded together like family.

  Forest had worked with, laughed and confided to his “brothers” for almost sixteen years. Together they had mourned deeply Cass’s death almost three months earlier in a tornado. It would take one hell of a lot of cold, hard evidence for him to believe any of the men here had a rotten core.

  Dillon knocked on the trailer’s door and it took only a moment for Devon to answer. “Chief... Forest,” he said and stepped down the stairs, closing the door to the trailer behind him. “How’s Dr. Forbes doing?” he asked Forest. “Sawyer told me last night she’d refused to stay at the hospital and that you were looking after her.”

  “She’ll be all right, but she won’t be working for the next day or two,” Forest replied.

  “But that doesn’t mean you can’t continue the work,” Dillon said.

  Devon looked utterly horrified, his brown eyes behind his glasses widening. “Are you kidding me? She would kill me if I touched anything in that tent without her being present.” He shook his head. “If she’s not working for a couple of days, then neither am I. That’s the way it goes.”

  “I have a couple of questions to ask you,” Dillon said.

  Devon frowned. “If it’s about whatever happened here last night then I can’t help you. I heard a commotion and came out of the trailer, but that was after whatever happened to Dr. Forbes.”

  “No, it’s about the times you and Dr. Forbes went into town to the café for dinner,” Dillon said.

  Devon’s frown deepened. “What about them?”

  “Patience told us she had a little unpleasant encounter with a couple of men at the café,” Forest said. “She thought you would know their names.”

  “It really wasn’t a big deal,” Devon said. “A couple of the men got a little mouthy with her and she retaliated. I’m sure you’re both aware that Dr. Forbes can have a very sharp tongue at times.”

  “I’d like more detail about what happened and the names of those men,” Forest said firmly.

  Devon shrugged. “They’d heard Dr. Forbes had been referred to as the dragon lady around here and they wanted to know if she was as hot in the sack as she was with her temper.”

  “Names,” Forest said as his anger rose up again inside him.

  “Zeke Osmond and Shep Harmon. I think Greg Albertson might have been there, too,” Devon said after a moment of hesitation.

  “I should have known,” Forest said in disgust. Humes ranch hands. He knew none of the Holiday men would ever talk to a woman that way. Forest narrowed his eyes and looked over toward the property line that divided the Holiday land from the Humes place.

  “They’ve all been nice to me. I can’t imagine any of them hurting Dr. Forbes because they all got a little mouthy with each other,” Devon said defensively.

  “You obviously don’t know the true nature of the company you’re keeping,” Forest replied and looked back at the man.

  Devon raised his square jaw. “Like I said, they’ve all been nice to me.” He looked at Dillon. “Was there anything else you needed to know?”

  “No, that should do it for now,” Dillon replied.

  Devon nodded and returned to the interior of the trailer.

  Forest released a sigh of frustration. “You’d better check out where those men were and with whom last night when Patience was attacked. Otherwise I’ll be more than happy to go over there right now and get some answers.”

  “Forest, we both know that’s not a good idea. I’ll head to the Humes ranch now,” Dillon said. “But you know at the moment we have nothing to implicate any of those men in any wrongdoing. I don’t want you going off half-cocked and on a mission of retribution.”

  “I’ll let you do your job,” Forest replied evenly. “But there’s something I’m sure you’ve already considered in this whole mess.”

  “And what’s that?” Dillon asked.

  “That whoever killed those people in that grave is possibly still around here and the moving of the bones and the attack on Patience is their way of slowing down the investigation. For the past fifteen years or so the killer has felt safe.”

  “If the tornado hadn’t ripped that shed apart, he would still feel safe,” Dillon replied with a frown.

  “But now the crime has been exposed and Patience is the key to help solve the mystery.”

  “Even if the killer murders Patience, there will be another forensic anthropologist brought out here to continue the work,” Dillon countered.

  “And that will take more time and there’s no way of knowing if each person who comes here to work the crime scene won’t face the same kind of danger.”

  “So you think the killer is going to try to attack Patience again?”

  Forest dropped his hand to the butt of his gun in his holster. “I think a killer is desperate to keep this burial scene from being fully processed and that means Patience is definitely in danger. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s just inherited a full-time bodyguard.”

&nb
sp; “She’s probably not going to be happy about that,” Dillon said ruefully.

  “I’m not taking on the job of making her happy,” Forest said with determination. “I’m taking on the job of keeping her alive.”

  Chapter 6

  Patience slept most of the day away. She was grateful that, for the most part, Forest left her alone, only popping his head in the door a couple of times to see if she needed anything.

  It was late afternoon when she finally crawled out of bed, feeling better than she had all day. She reached up and touched what had been a goose egg the night before and was now just a tender lump on the back of her head.

  She needed to shower and get dressed. Even though she wouldn’t be working or doing much of anything else, she just wanted to feel somewhat human again.

  She peeled off her nightgown and threw it into a laundry bag on the floor of the small bathroom. She knew there was a washing machine and dryer that the cowboys used. She’d already washed clothes there several times since her arrival at the ranch. Maybe she’d spend what was left of the late afternoon doing a load of laundry. That shouldn’t strain her brain too much.

  The shower was heavenly. The warm spray drizzled her from head to toe. Thankfully, other than the tenderness on her scalp, the headache was completely gone and she had no other aches or pains.

  It was strange. Somebody had attacked her and she knew she should be afraid, but having no memory of the actual attack made it difficult for her to work up any genuine fear for her safety, other than an occasional faint shiver up her spine when she focused on the idea of being attacked.

  If the person who had hit her over the head had really wanted to hurt her, he would have used a meat cleaver and split her head wide open, the way someone had killed the young men she’d found in the ground.

  If the attacker had wanted her dead, he could have stabbed her in the back rather than clobber her over the head. Apparently he hadn’t wanted another murder investigation taking place on the property.