The Last Wilder

by Janis Reams Hudson

  “Thanks, Donnie,” he said, keeping his voice low.

  Donnie didn’t appear to have heard. He was leaning forward again, staring at their guest with a grin on his face that Dane could only think of as goofy.

  “Donnie?”

  Donnie finally blinked and straightened. “Huh?”

  “I said thanks.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure. You’re welcome, Sheriff. Who is she? Where’d she come from?”

  Dane halfway expected the next question to be, Can we keep her? Such was the look on the kid’s face. Like he’d just seen the perfect puppy, or horse, or whatever it was that he’d been dreaming of all his life.

  “Forget it, Deputy,” Dane told him as he nudged him back through the door. “She’s way out of your league.”

  Donnie sighed and grinned. “Don’t I know it. But a guy’s gotta dream, Sheriff, right? Or else, what’s the point?”

  “Do your dreaming out at your desk.” Dane closed the door on his grinning deputy and shook his head. Donnie was a good kid.

  Scratch that. Just because Dane was thirty-five and Donnie was only twenty-three, that didn’t make the deputy a kid. He was a man. A young one, but not stupid with it. He’d been on the payroll nearly a year and was doing a good job.

  Ordinarily Dane wouldn’t have left Donnie alone in the office, not even during the quiet hours of the night. But some damn virus was going around. It had hit three deputies and two jailers, one of whom doubled as a dispatcher, all this week. Another dispatcher was out having gall bladder surgery, and the office manager had quit last week.

  With all that going on, Dane felt lucky that Donnie was willing to take the third watch and do double duty as dispatcher and jailer.

  But Donnie wasn’t the only fairly new staff member in the department. A good portion of Dane’s small staff was fairly new on the job, including himself. He’d been sheriff a little more than a year, undersheriff for his predecessor, Gene Martin, for a year before that. It hadn’t been three weeks after he’d been sworn in that he’d had to fire two longtime deputies.

  He’d known that if he got elected—hell, he’d been a shoe-in, nobody ran against him—he would fire those two. They were cronies of Sheriff Martin’s and willing to do anything the man had ordered, no questions asked. The problem with that, Dane thought with disgust, was that not everything Martin ordered was what one would call legal.

  Martin had been a popular sheriff for many years, but according to the stories Dane had heard, and what he’d seen for himself the year he worked for the man, Martin had turned into an egotistical bully during his last few years in office. There had been more than a few sighs of relief when he decided not to run for reelection. It had been too bad that when he retired and moved away he hadn’t taken his two goons with him.

  Deputies Wilson and James had enjoyed throwing their considerable weight around. They weren’t above dragging some poor soul off into the dark and beating the hell out of him. They, along with Martin, had done just that to Grady Lewis when he’d come back to town about six months after Dane had taken the job as undersheriff.

  When Dane was elected sheriff, he’d decided to wait until Wilson and James pulled something while working for him. It had been a short wait. He’d caught them red-handed rolling a drunk one night behind a bar. He’d fired them on the spot.

  It had been a scramble to hire new deputies. He’d lost another due to family business taking him off to another state.

  But he had a full complement of ten deputies now, even if some of them were currently out sick. He had a good detective, four honest, tough jailers, two of whom doubled as dispatchers. There were three more on staff whose sole job was dispatching. His two clerks were conscientious, and he hoped whoever he hired as office manager would be the same.

  Add them all up and his full staff totaled twenty-one, counting himself. And nobody better forget about the department’s two drug-sniffing dogs and their bloodhound, whose specialty was search and rescue.

  The only thing missing was an office manager. Marva Dawson quit just last week to help take care of her new grandbaby up in Pine Bluff. He doubted he would ever find anyone who could truly replace her. She’d been the glue that held the department together. She’d known everything about every case they worked, never forgot anything, and had insisted on making the coffee herself.

  Where the hell was he going to find someone else like that?

  He had a few applications on his desk and a couple of hours to kill before he could call the Flying Ace. He wouldn’t feel right calling before seven, even knowing they would all be up and around by five.

  Maybe if he could pile on enough paperwork, he could keep his mind off the woman sleeping like a baby on his couch.

  The first thing Dane did when he settled at his desk was log onto the Internet and check the social security number Carla Smith had written on the form at the hospital.

  It was bogus. No big surprise there, but maybe a little disappointment. For some reason, he kept wanting something, even one small something, about her to be real.

  Shaking his head at himself, he put her out of his mind and concentrated on the never-ending pile of paperwork stacked on his desk.

  He managed to get some of it taken care of, but not as much as he’d anticipated. He didn’t get to work on it until seven, when he planned to call the Flying Ace, because at six, Ace Wilder, manager and part owner of the Flying Ace, called him.

  Hearing Ace’s voice on the phone, Dane leaned back in his chair and smiled. He had a deep fondness and respect for all four Wilders and their families. Ace was not only one of the most successful ranchers in the state, he was a good friend, as were his brothers, Jack and Trey, and their sister Rachel, and her husband, Grady Lewis.

  When Dane had first moved to Hope Springs, the Wilders had gone out of their way to make him feel welcome. Not for any particular reason, but simply because that’s the type of people they were. They were his first friends, and were still his best friends. He valued that.

  “You read my mind,” he said to Ace. “I was just waiting for a decent hour before I called you.”

  “I hope you didn’t have anything important on your mind,” Ace said, his voice sounding grim, “because we’ve got trouble.”

  Dane straightened in his chair as his stomach dropped to a level somewhere below the basement. He knew what Ace was going to say without hearing it. Still he forced himself to ask, “What’s happened?”

  “I’m not sure of the exact number, but we’re minus somewhere between forty and sixty head of cattle from the south range.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “That’s close to what I said, and a hell of a lot more polite.”

  “I’m en route. Where do you want me to meet you?” But Dane had a feeling he knew exactly where. Right about the same spot where a fancy little sports car sat parked among the bushes.

  “The south road,” Ace told him. “You’ll see a small sports car parked beneath a tree. Meet us a half mile west of there.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Dane hung up the phone, but he had to take a deep breath and order himself to relax before his fingers would unclench from the receiver. It was a much longer moment before he could tear his gaze from the woman sleeping so innocently across the room.

  Doing his best to ignore her, he picked up the phone again and called John Taylor, the department’s detective. After filling him in on the situation and telling him where they were to meet the Wilders, Dane hung up the phone, and once again, his gaze went involuntarily to the woman across the room.

  “Carla Smith from Laramie, my Aunt Fanny,” he muttered. The angel he’d spotted in the beam of his flashlight mere hours earlier had just moved up a notch—from misdemeanor trespasser caught red-handed, to suspect in a felony cattle-stealing operation.

  He wanted to bring her car in. If she had her purse, he could demand to see some ID. If she refused to open her trunk, where she’d stashed her purse and probably her tag,
he didn’t think he’d have any trouble getting a judge to sign a search warrant, considering the entire population of two counties was up in arms over the cattle rustling.

  “Ms. Smith?” He leaned over her and touched her shoulder. “Ms. Smith, can you hear me?”

  She scrunched up her face like a pouting angel—did angels pout?—grumbled something unintelligible and made a shooing motion with one limp hand, as if halfheartedly trying to rid herself of a pesky mosquito. Definitely not an angelic gesture.

  “It’s Sheriff Powell, Ms. Smith.”

  She frowned and moaned. “Stacey.”

  Dane stilled. He held his breath. “Stacey?”

  “Hmm?” Her eyes were still closed.

  “I’m going to go get your car for you.”

  Without opening her eyes, she smiled, and her face eased. “Care. Sweet.”

  “Yes. I mean no. I’m going to get your car. But I need your keys.”

  She worked her mouth, then swallowed. Her smile widened. “Kiss?”

  Dane fought a groan. Hell yes, he’d like to kiss her, but he wasn’t about to start something with a woman who wasn’t even half conscious. “No, keys.” He gave her shoulder a small shake. “Where are your keys?”

  “Too sleepy to drive.” She had yet to open her eyes. Sleep, and probably the painkiller, slurred her words.

  Dane didn’t know whether to laugh or beat his head against the wall. “I’ll drive,” he told her. “Just give me your keys so I can bring your car to town.”

  Her lips pouted; her brow furrowed. “Kiss.”

  “That’d be real nice, honey, but first give me your keys.”

  For a long moment he feared she’d drifted back into a deeper sleep. He started to give her shoulder another shake when she spoke again. “Pocket.”

  “Your keys are in your pocket?”

  “S’whad I said.” She was definitely getting cranky now.

  He hoped like hell she meant her coat pocket, or she’d likely sue him for sexual harassment if he had to reach into her jeans. The ice he was skating on, in getting her to provide her keys so he could drive her car, was thin enough. She wasn’t exactly aware of what was going on. But there was one more thing he needed from her.

  “Do you want me to get your purse out of the trunk?”

  “Wannasleep.”

  “I know, honey, and you can, but do you want your purse?”

  She looked as though she was trying to open her eyes, then gave up the struggle. “Yeah. Okay. Purse.”

  Bingo. Got it. Permission from the suspect to open her trunk.

  “Go back to sleep now, honey.” Praying for a little more luck, Dane carefully reached into the only coat pocket he could get to without tunneling his hand beneath her, which he’d rather not have to do.

  When he reached into her pocket, he came out with more than just her keys. Tangled around his fingers was a wad of ribbon. Upon examination, what he had in his hand was more than two dozen strips of red ribbon, each one about six inches long.

  “What the hell?” Adhered to one side of each piece was a strip of reflective tape, and on some of them he found bits of dried sage or pinyon needles.

  Now what…?

  Bread crumbs. He was sure of it. She had tied these pieces of ribbon to bushes and trees and used them to find her way back to her car. They would have picked up the barest glow from her flashlight and would have lit up like neon. Hell, as bright as the moon was last night, they might well have glowed without the flashlight.

  “Luckier than Hansel and Gretel, weren’t you, angel. Nobody came along behind you and ate your ribbons.”

  Now he had proof, if he’d needed it, that she hadn’t merely stopped her car and gotten out for a stroll. She had planned and prepared to cross unfamiliar country in the dark.

  What Dane wanted to know, and what he thoroughly intended to find out when he got back, was why.

  For now, he had her car keys. Getting them, he told himself, was a job well, if not exactly fairly, done.

  Now, what the hell was he supposed to do with her while he was gone? He was likely to be out for three hours or more. If he left her sleeping like she was on the couch she might never be able to move her neck again, the way it was scrunched up at an odd angle.

  He eased one arm beneath her neck and stuffed the pillow Donnie had brought beneath her head. “There,” he said aloud to himself. “That’s better.”

  “Hmm,” she murmured. Then, before Dane realized what was happening, she raised her arms and wrapped them around his neck. Her eyes fluttered open, then closed. “Kiss now.”

  He wanted to. Oh, yes, indeed, he wanted to taste that sweet-looking mouth. But she was too out of it to know what she was saying, and she was in his custody. In his care. He could not, would not allow himself to take advantage of her.

  Then she pulled him down and parted her lips against his.

  He could have pulled away. Probably. Maybe. Until he heard the soft moan that slid up her throat. It echoed the same pleasure he felt. Her mouth was soft and sweet, hot and hungry. He did his best to give her what she asked for, and in the process, took what she offered.

  No, dammit, he couldn’t do this. When he kissed this woman he wanted her wide-awake and aware of him. As aware of him as he was of her.

  Just one more taste. One more slide of his tongue along hers.

  Then her arms fell from around his neck and her mouth went slack.

  Dane pulled back. “Stacey?”

  She smiled and snuggled deeper into the pillow, as deeply asleep as he’d ever seen anyone. He didn’t know whether to be insulted, amused or relieved.

  He was all of those things. Insulted, of course, because no woman had ever fallen into such a state of unconsciousness while he was kissing her. Amused because it served him right that she’d fallen asleep. Relieved because he shouldn’t have been kissing her in the first place, and he had high hopes that when she woke she wouldn’t remember it.

  Biting back a curse, he stood and looked down at that angelic face. For all he knew, he’d just been kissing a cattle-rustling felon. He shook his head at himself and walked away. When he left his office a moment later he closed the door softly behind him.

  “Is she still asleep?” Donnie asked.

  “That’s affirmative. When she wakes up, I’m counting on you not to let her leave.”

  Donnie swallowed and bobbed his head. “Yes, sir. Does that mean you’re heading out again?”

  “I am. No matter what she says, she stays here until I get back. Copy that?”

  “I copy, Sheriff. Is she under arrest?”

  “Not yet. I’ve got to get to the Flying Ace. It seems they’re missing some cattle this morning,” Dane added grimly.

  “Ah, damn.” Donnie, along with all the other deputies, was well aware of the situation with the rustlers. They’d all been hoping they’d get lucky and the culprits would bypass their county.

  It appeared their luck had just run out.

  “Yeah,” Dane said. “Damn.”

  Chapter Three

  Along the south border of the Flying Ace ranch, a mere half mile from the little red sports car, the fence had been cut.

  Jack Wilder, ranch foreman and the second oldest of the Wilder siblings, had awakened early that morning. Unable to go back to sleep for worrying about the possibility of rustlers, he’d taken a ranch rig and started driving the outer fences.

  He took the ranch road up into the foothills, then turned south along the west edge of Wilder property. He saw nothing amiss, and at the southwest corner he turned east, coming down out of the foothills on what the locals called South Flying Ace Road. The land was more rugged on the south side of the ranch, so he drove slowly as he kept one eye on the gravel road and one on the barbed wire fence that kept Flying Ace beef on Flying Ace land. And hopefully kept everyone else out.

  It was the sight of a fast-food sack that made him stop. The sky had still been dark, but a flutter of white, snagged on the barbed wi
re, caught Jack’s attention. He’d stopped and found that the fence had been cut and heavy tire tracks, like those made by a semi, led through the opening.

  Then there was the sack itself, with its distinctive logo recognized around the world. The nearest location for that particular franchise was at least a hundred miles south.

  Jack had used his cell phone and called his brother at the main house. By then the sky was lightening in the east. He didn’t wait for his brother, but set out on foot, careful not to disturb the tracks.

  By the time Dane arrived, Jack pretty much had the situation figured out. Grimly he filled the sheriff and detective in on what he’d found.

  Dane, who was used to doing his own detective work back on the L.A. police force, kept an eagle eye on John Taylor as the county detective took photos, drew sketches and made notes.

  John was fifty-three, happily divorced and bald as a cue ball. The latter, he claimed, was a direct result of the former. His ex, he said, took everything, including the hair on his head. He was a good detective and came to Wyatt County with four years as a detective on the Denver P.D. under his belt.

  Dane wasn’t hovering because he doubted the man’s ability, but more because as sheriff, he took this cattle rustling personally. But he was careful not to interfere. He let John do his job and helped or gave advice only when asked. John knew Dane’s restraint came hard, since the sheriff had once been a detective himself, so he cut Dane some slack and asked his opinion often, swearing that two heads were better than one.

  The two of them examined the cut in the fence. John took the paper sack as evidence, and they walked with Ace, Jack and their younger brother Trey the two miles into the ranch, to the spot where the rustlers had parked their truck and loaded the cattle.

  “Fifty head, you think?” Dane asked.

  Tight-lipped with fury, Ace Wilder nodded. “Near as we can tell.”

  The thieves had come prepared. In addition to the semi, there had also been a pickup pulling a horse trailer. They’d rounded up the cattle on horseback and herded them into the funnel they’d erected with portable fencing. The marks on the ground told the story.