by Rachel Lee
He laughed, dragging his gaze appreciatively over her. She didn’t like that look, as if he was mentally stripping her. It made her skin want to crawl.
“I wish it were mine,” Jim said. “I get to drive some of the dealer models. Maybe someday.”
She turned her attention to Mr. Liston and went to bend over him and give him a light hug. “How are you doing?” she asked.
“About as well as can be expected,” he said, a bit angrily. “Losing a son ain’t easy.”
“No, it’s not. I’m so sorry about Ray.” She hesitated, noting that she hadn’t been offered a seat or a beverage, both common forms of local hospitality. But maybe it was because they were grieving.
“Well,” she said, just as it seemed the silence was about to grow too long, “I just thought I’d check in and see if I could help somehow. I guess with Jim here to look after you, you certainly don’t need me. You take care.”
No one suggested she stay, but she could understand that, too. Fifteen seconds later she had been ushered out the door and was headed back to the car and Buck.
She climbed in. He didn’t say a word, simply turned them around and headed away from the house. When the farmstead began to disappear behind them, he finally asked, “Well?”
“I was right. Jim is home. That’s his car.”
Buck gave a low whistle. “He’s doing damn good for himself. You think he’d help the family out.”
“It’s not his car. He says he works for a dealer who lets him drive demos.”
Buck didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes and she wished she knew what he was thinking. Finally she asked, “Buck?”
“Think about it, Haley. If you were a dealer, would you let one of your salespeople drive a car that expensive up to the wilds of Wyoming? And unless you owned that car, would you want to risk the dings that you could get on a gravel road? It could cost you your job.”
“Oh.” She twisted her fingers together, considering it and realizing he was probably right. “It doesn’t add up, does it?”
“No, but I’m glad you thought it did. At least you didn’t do or say something to make them think otherwise. Anything else?”
“Not really, except I didn’t feel welcome. There’s no crime in that. The Listons are grieving, and anyway, I’m practically a stranger. I guess I was expecting too much.”
“They might just be grieving,” he agreed.
She replayed the entire encounter in her mind and realized that there was one other thing that had made her feel unwelcome: neither man had risen to greet her. In these parts, men still stood when a woman entered a room like that. They definitely hadn’t wanted her there, and had done nothing to extend her visit. But that certainly wasn’t evidence that any of them were up to something wrong.
“You really think he owns that car?” she asked, running over everything one more time, seeking something she might have missed.
“Well, if he doesn’t own it, then he lied about where he was taking it.”
“That’s possible.” Then another thought struck her. “He might be lying to his parents. If he’s making that kind of money, you’re right, he should be doing something for them. Maybe he hasn’t done one blessed thing and is hiding his success.”
“It’s possible. He wouldn’t be the only person that selfish.”
They wandered some more of the gravel-and-dirt back roads, but nothing seemed to catch Buck’s eye, or if it did he said nothing about it. She got the feeling he was building a mental map, but its meaning to her was opaque. Must be a military thing.
He broke the silence finally with a question. “Does Claire live in town?”
“She used to, but a couple of years ago she married Murdock Bertram. He’s got a sheep ranch near here.”
“How are they doing?”
She could, if she let herself, resent the way he seemed to be suspicious of nearly everyone. Given how little he knew about the area and what he was trying to figure out, though, she supposed she could excuse him.
“All right, I guess. Better than some. Claire sometimes talks about quitting her job but she always comes back to her policy, never trust a man.”
He chuckled at that. “Bad experiences?”
“This is marriage number three. She says she’s never again going to be dependent on anyone.”
“Makes sense. Do you feel the same way?”
“I do about being independent.”
He nodded. “Smart.” Then, “So where exactly is Claire’s place?”
So she guided him to it, even though it meant going back the way they had come. The Liston and Bertram houses were only about ten miles apart. Most of the road to the Bertram place was paved, but like on so many other ranches, the road up to the house and outbuildings was not. Buck pulled in at the gate and turned the car around.
From this distance, the Bertram ranch looked to be doing okay. White clapboard gleamed in the sun, and sheep grazed the pastures as far as the eye could see. Green lawn graced the front of the place, well tended and unusual in these parts where most ranchers had more important things to do than tend an acre of useless grass. A relatively new steel barn dominated a small rise not too far from the house.
“They’re definitely doing okay,” he remarked.
“Wool prices haven’t dropped as much as other things, I hear,” Haley explained. “And Murdock has started to raise alpacas, too. Claire was complaining how expensive those animals are, but I guess their wool is worth it.”
“Must be.”
He scanned the area, and she thought a little wryly that he was probably disappointed that he didn’t see a white box truck in plain view.
Then he put the car in gear again and headed them back toward town. “Let me buy you lunch,” he said. “And please don’t suggest the truck stop. You spend enough time there. I did notice, though, that there aren’t a lot of restaurants.”
“There’s the City Diner.”
“So basically it’s a choice of the same or the same?”
She laughed. “Pretty much. Unless you want to get a sandwich or some fried chicken at one of the bars.”
“Still more of the same.”
They found parking near enough to the diner. As it was Saturday, the streets were fairly busy with pedestrians, most of them people Haley knew by sight and often by name. They smiled and nodded as they passed, and only a few looked askance at Buck.
Maude, the diner’s owner, was nowhere in sight, and they were served by her daughter, who might have been a clone, every bit as stocky and graceless as her mother.
“Don’t see you here much,” she remarked to Haley as she slapped menus on the table.
“Hasty feeds me at work. Is Maude okay?”
The woman nodded. “Just claimed she needed a day off. After all these years, she wanted a day off. Imagine that.”
Buck was clearly fighting to hide a smile as the woman stomped to the next table. “Service with grace?” he said quietly.
“Not here.” Haley battled her own twitching lips. “The food makes up for it, though.”
Because the place was packed for lunch, they were treated to only the minimum of service and no conversation. Voices around them created a buzz just loud enough to have a private conversation, a rarity in here.
Haley ordered a chef’s salad that proved to be big enough for three, and Buck took her recommendation on the steak sandwich.
“So what now?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “I’m thinking. So tell me more about yourself. You mentioned your mother, but what about your dad?”
“He died in a hunting accident when I was sixteen.”
He faced softened. “I’m sorry. So that leaves just you?”
“Yeah.” She looked down at her salad. “It’s something I try not to think about too often.”
“Understandably. So now you’re in college.”
“I want to be a nurse. I figure I’ll start with my LPN, save some money and then go for my RN eventual
ly.”
“That’s a long-term plan.”
She looked curiously at him. “Don’t you have one?”
“Not right now. I’ve been running in the short term. I look a day or two down the road and no further.”
“Why?” she asked baldly.
He set his sandwich down, reached for his napkin and wiped his mouth. He didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Then he said something so painfully honest it tore at her heart.
“Have you ever been so disturbed by something that you felt everything you thought you were, everything you ever believed in, had just been thrown into a shredder and you had to figure out how to put it back together again?”
She caught her breath. “What happened, Buck?”
He just shook his head. “Maybe another time. Certainly not here.”
She had to respect that, but the ache that filled her at his description was hard to ignore. It also worried her. There was sympathy and then there was sympathy. Was she feeling more for Buck than she should?
Then she wondered how she would know. For five of the past six years, she’d thought of little but her mother. For the past year, she’d refused to deal with anything except her grief and school. She certainly didn’t have some kind of emotional barometer built from experience to gauge what she should be feeling and what was a little too much.
Buck had come from a darker world. Intellectually she recognized that, but having watched him in operation, she almost felt sorry for him. Suspicious of the Listons, who had never done a single thing wrong? And now, she gathered, suspicious of Claire as well, a woman whose only crime had been to question a truck driver.
But the more she thought about Claire asking that driver, the more anxious she got herself. Why in the world would Claire have done that, especially when the police had considered it unimportant and Haley hadn’t mentioned it again?
Then there was Jim Liston showing up in that ridiculously expensive car. She had to agree with Buck that it was unlikely he would have been permitted to drive a demo like that all the way up here. But if he made that kind of money, why wasn’t he helping his family? Why had the Listons stood there at a fancy wake wearing threadbare Sunday clothes?
Nothing was adding up, she realized. According to Buck, something had to be going on that wasn’t aboveboard.
But what?
After lunch he took her directly home, remarking that she needed to get some rest before the play. He did ask where in town he could find a warmer jacket, and that put her on alert.
“Buck?”
“Yes?”
“You’re not going to prowl on any of those ranches, are you?”
“Why would I do that?”
He had just pulled up in front of her complex and was reaching to take the key out of the ignition.
“Just don’t,” she said. “Don’t even think of it. Out there it takes as long as a half hour for a deputy to respond to a call, so people pretty much look after themselves. A prowler could get shot.”
He gave her a half smile. “I have no intention of getting shot. Been there, done that. No desire to repeat the experience.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “You’ve been shot?” she whispered. “When? How?”
“Again, a story for another time. No, I’m just going to wander around town a bit today, get some clothes.”
“Go to Freitag’s,” she said automatically. Why didn’t she believe him?
He came around to help her from the car, and this time she let him. Once again he walked her to her apartment, but he didn’t come in. He leaned forward and brushed the lightest of kisses on her cheek. Then he followed the touch with his fingertips, heightening her awareness of him instantly to an almost painful longing.
“I’ll see you later,” he said. “Before the play.”
She watched him disappear down the stairs, then closed the door. “He wouldn’t go out there in broad daylight,” she said to the empty room. “He’s not crazy.”
At least she hoped he wasn’t. Because right now it occurred to her she didn’t know a damn thing about Buck Devlin, except Gage said he checked out, and that he was a former MP.
That wasn’t a whole lot of information, and he seemed determined to avoid any subject that could really reveal anything about him. Although, in all fairness, he didn’t exactly know much about her, either.
What’s more, he’d been quite blunt about using her for cover. She needed to keep that in mind before she wasted any more worry on Buck Devlin.
If only his lightest touch didn’t make her body sing.
Chapter 6
A trip to the local gun shop proved illuminating to Buck. He’d had no idea how easy it would be to buy a piece, even though he was just passing through. Apart from the requisite shotguns and hunting rifles, there were plenty of semiautomatic jobs, both pistols and long guns.
“People around here like shooting for fun?” he asked the proprietor, who had introduced himself as Rick. “Hobbyists?”
“Some. Mostly there’s a lot of varmints. Wolves, bears, coyotes, cougars. A man’s got to protect his livestock.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” And if a man wanted to, apparently he could have an arsenal to rival an army’s.
Rick pressed him to take a look at some, but Buck already knew them all intimately. Their look, their feel, their reliability, even how to strip them down and put them back together. Knowing weapons had once been part of his job. “Sorry, I can’t,” he told Rick. “Not allowed to have a firearm in a truck.”
“Really? That’s purely stupid.”
Buck nodded agreement, moving down to a case of knives. “Now these I can have.”
There was the usual assortment of what Buck thought of as vanity knives—they looked mean but weren’t all that useful if really needed. Then there was an assortment of hunting knives. He hovered over them for a while, then moved on to find what he really wanted: a modified Filipino barong by a manufacturer he trusted. Hefting it, he felt it settle into his hand like an old friend. “I’ll take this.”
“Anything else?”
“I’d like to look at a folding knife. Some of the places I spend the night are pretty dark and deserted. I’d feel better with something in my pocket.”
He departed a short while later with the knives and sheaths in a bag, but he was far from done. Next he headed to the hardware store. Obvious weapons could be a liability. But other things...
He pulled out his cell and called Gage Dalton. Ten minutes later, Gage called back and agreed to do him a favor.
Too bad, he thought, that it felt so good to be back in the saddle.
* * *
Buck piled the last of his purchases into the trunk of the rental. Freitag’s even had a whole section devoted to the kind of clothing he wanted: heavy-duty and dark.
They also had plenty of camo, which amused him, because the animals these folks would be hunting wouldn’t be fooled by it. They depended on their sense of smell more than their eyes, unlike human predators.
Nor did he want any of it himself. When you infiltrated at night, you went dark. He needed to start keeping a closer eye on that parking lot in case another exchange was made. The question was when. Did he want to risk missing a cargo exchange? They’d been getting closer together, to judge by the information he’d gotten from Bill, but it wasn’t anything like regular. The shortest time frame so far had been ten days, and that had been the last one. Would they speed up their business or slow it down until they were sure the heat over Ray was off?
Good question, and he couldn’t answer it.
Whoever they were, they seemed to be an interesting mix. Some elements of caution mixed with others of confidence, like exchanging crates in the truck-stop parking lot. He had a mental map of the road going in both directions, though, and he figured he could understand why they would have chosen to make a switch in the parking lot.
How many people would readily recognize that was wrong? Only truckers. So wait until you
were the only two trucks around, and most casual observers would think it was normal. Do it out somewhere on the road, like a deserted turnout or a rest stop, and then it would look squirrelly to almost anyone.
So it made sense to choose the truck stop. However, since Claire had asked the other driver about it, the people involved might now be on high alert. Or they could have believed the explanation had satisfied Claire. Damned if he knew which way they’d flop. The important thing was that they didn’t guess why he was hanging around.
Which he supposed meant he should take Haley to the truck stop for a late dinner after her play, making it look like he was pursuing her. In a way he hated to do that to her, because he was sure a lot of looks, winks and nudges might happen.
Usually he didn’t have a Haley to consider when he was doing something like this. Often in his career he’d been a solo missile, and those times when he hadn’t been alone he’d worked with people who had the same training and experience. Haley was a whole different matter.
He was honestly worried about her.
Damn, he had to figure this out before Gage started looking into it. Because sure as hell, that toxicology was going to come back positive for something. He hadn’t been certain until he looked at the wreck site earlier, but he was convinced now. And Haley was about the only person who could testify that Ray hadn’t been under the influence at the truck stop. A dangerous witness.
At this point Buck would be willing to bet a month’s pay that whatever had been running through Ray’s blood was enough to kill him, because nobody with half a brain would trust an accident to do that.
It was pure luck that Ray had hit his head hard enough to be fatal. If that word went out, maybe these guys would relax.
This group was no bunch of masterminds. They’d had an idea that could work for a while, but sooner or later someone was going to put two and two together. So all along, they’d been racing against a clock they couldn’t see: the clock of when the cargo switches would add up enough to get attention. That was actually stupid, unless they honestly believed that the Seattle terminal would hold such a noisy investigation that they’d get warned.
