The Cowboy

by Vonna Harper, P. J. Mellor, Nelissa Donovan

  The sound of an engine stopped Cassie in her tracks. She clutched the greasy bag to her chest and looked around, unable to help her reaction to the sound. A Jeep. Like the one she thought she’d heard the night she came into Granite Hollow and spotted the downed deer. Headlights beamed off the building to her right as the car turned the corner. Cassie stared, her heart pounding.

  Not my dad…not my dad….

  And of course it wasn’t. It was Simon Alistair. And someone else. It was too dark to see who sat in the passenger’s seat as the faded old Jeep jugged by, but for some reason Cassie was relieved when they didn’t see her. Their tires threw mud and rocks across the cracked asphalt of the street as they sped past and headed east. Away from the coalition’s rented house. Away from the road that led out of town.

  Her cell phone buzzed on her hip, and Cassie fumbled it loose from its case to answer, hope burning in her chest. “Jake?”

  “They’ve made a decision, Cass.”

  “Jesse!” Cassie stopped walking, the sound of her friend’s unexpected voice a welcome beacon in an otherwise dreary night. “Sorry, thought you were someone else.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” Jesse said, and Cassie heard a pointed sigh. “Richard will call you personally tomorrow morning, but I knew you would want to know sooner, so here I am, good news–bad news delivery boy.”

  Cassie’s heart skipped a beat as she tossed the grease-laden bag into the nearest trash can. “Good news first.”

  “The good news is that they finally got around to discussing your report, and they agreed with your conclusion.”

  “What’s the bad news, then?”

  “They didn’t agree with your recommendation.”

  Cassie’s stomach fell into her toes. “What did they recommend, Jesse?”

  “Extermination—for the pack.”

  “No!” Cassie yelled and then quickly found a place to sit on the cracked curb, her heart thumping. “Why? If they don’t think the pack is stable enough for release somewhere else, they can go back into the captive breeding program and—”

  “Stop, Cass.” Jesse’s firm command halted the tirade bubbling to the surface of Cassie’s brain. “They feel the pack is too dangerous to spend time and money on a capture program. They’re sending trackers in. They leave for Phoenix tonight and should be there in Granite Hollow by noon tomorrow to meet with you and Simon before they set up. This is Danny’s crew. They’re good. It won’t take them long to start culling the pack.”

  Cassie pinched the bridge of her nose. “It’s just as easy to dart and cage them as it is to shoot and kill them!”

  “I know this is rough, Cass, but I thought it would be better for you to hear it from me than from Richard an hour before the crew arrives. And…there’s something else.”

  “What?” Cassie asked. “What else?”

  “Is there more going on there in Granite Hollow than the situation with the pack, Cass?”

  Cassie frowned and chewed her lower lip. “I’m not sure what you mean, Jesse.”

  “I think you do.”

  Cassie’s gut went cold and her mouth dry. There was no way they could know about her and Dean. Right?

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Cassie said, her eyes focusing on an industrious brown-spotted moth that had landed on her pumps. “Not…really.”

  “Cass….”

  “All right. There is this guy, here. We met, he yelled, I gave him my cool and unruffled agent response, and then…”

  “And then?”

  “Oh, Jesus. They know, don’t they, Jesse? They know about me and Dean.”

  There was silence again on the other line and then Jesse’s pointed sigh. “They do. They received an anonymous call earlier this week. From what I could gather, the caller stated you’d had ‘relations’ with this Dean McCabe, who just happened to be the leading opposition to the wolves staying in Granite Hollow and couldn’t be trusted to give an impartial report.”

  “Did—did they believe it?”

  “I’m not sure, Cassie, but either way they’re pulling you from the case.”

  Cassie squeezed her fingers into her palm, her mind reeling. “Well, that’s that, then. I fucked my career because I wanted to screw a guy I barely knew. I failed everybody, Jesse. The wolves, this town, the agency.” Myself. Cassie lowered the phone a few inches and stared up at the faded streetlight. There it was. The sad, horrible truth.

  Jesse’s voice arrowed from the earpiece. “Cassie! Put the phone back on your ear!”

  She did, her mind numb, her emotions raw.

  “I mean this in a loving way…get it the fuck together! I know your recommendation wasn’t based off how you felt about Dean McCabe. You’re too good of an agent for that.”

  “Who else will believe that, Jesse?”

  Jesse growled, “Who cares? I don’t know how strong your feelings are for this guy, Cass, but you owe it to yourself to find out. Ask to go on leave, or take the eight billion weeks of vacation you have saved up. They’ll think up some asinine disciplinary action while you’re gone. Probably pull you off fieldwork for a while, maybe a cut in pay, but they’re not going to fire you over it. You’re the best they have, and they know it.”

  “I don’t know if I can stay, Jesse. I do care for him. It’s kinda scary how much I like this guy,” Cassie said, a tiny sliver of hope at Jesse’s words already lodging inside of her. “But I don’t—”

  “Cassie!”

  Cassie stood, her eyes widening as she watched Jake jogging toward her. “I have to go, Jesse. I’ll give what you said some thought.”

  “Cassie…don’t hang up before I tell you who they think—”

  She snapped the phone closed just as Jake stopped in front of her, his face flushed. “There’s been another killing. Out at the Rocking T.”

  She took hold of Jake’s arm and pulled him down to sit on the curb. He didn’t look good. His color was off and his breathing ragged as if he’d just run a mile.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. They came right into the corral, Cass. Dean and I heard the commotion and the dogs, but by the time we got out there, Remus, our Australian shepherd, was down, killed, and the Lab was cut up bad. I just dropped her off with the vet.” Jake put his head in his hands. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but we’ve got to stop them, Cassie.” His head came up, and Cassie recognized the steel in Jake’s gaze. “No matter what it takes.”

  Cassie squeezed Jake’s arm. “We—they—are. I just got word.”

  Jake sobered, and he focused on Cassie’s grim expression.

  “They think the best option at this point is extermination.”

  Jakes green eyes went wide, and his face paled. “That’s not what any of us wanted.”

  Cassie tried to swallow away the lump in her throat. “It wasn’t what I suggested they do, I swear, Jake. I asked that they be captured and monitored before considering them for relocation.”

  “I believe you, Cassie.” He paused, and Cassie was struck by the gloomy tone of Jake’s voice.

  Dean.

  Cassie’s stomach cramped, and a sick feeling filled her chest and throat. “Where is Dean, Jake? Did he come with you?”

  “He stayed at the ranch to watch the horses.” He waited a few seconds before adding, “You should know…he…he thinks there’s something going on between us.”

  Cassie jumped to her feet. “What! Why on earth would he think that?” An instant image of she and Jake in the diner filled Cassie’s mind. Of Jake holding her hand, of the innocent peck on the cheek. But…how could Dean have seen that?

  Standing, Jake shoved his hands in his pockets, his expression confounded. “He was at the diner, Cassie. He wouldn’t admit it, but I know he was there to see you. To tell you how he felt. When he saw us, he jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Cassie said, her arms crossed on her chest to hide their shaking. “He thinks I’m a manipulative bitch working both sides.”

/>   Jake looked sheepish. “Well, uh…something like that.”

  Cassie jerked away, tears burning her eyes.

  A hand on her arm pulled her back around. “I told him what a jackass he was for even thinking that.”

  “And did he believe you?” Cassie said, the pitch of her voice rising, along with her fury at Dean’s ignorance.

  Jake’s silence said it all, and without waiting for an answer, Cassie headed for her car a block away.

  “Cassie!” Jake fell into step beside her. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to go take pictures of what happened out at the Rocking T so I can give them to the trackers who will be here tomorrow. Then I’m going to thank your brother for single-handedly shit-canning my career.” She stopped at her car and faced Jake, fighting to keep the tremble out of her voice. “I’m sorry if I ended up causing an issue between you and Dean. You are a great guy, Jake.”

  Jake put his hand on her car door. “You make it sound like I’m not going to see you again, Cassie.”

  Cassie took a deep breath and pushed Jake’s hand aside. “You won’t. As of tomorrow, I’m off the case and out of yours and Dean’s lives for good.”

  11

  T he Rocking T was dark as Cassie drove up. “Damn you, Dean McCabe, you’d better be around somewhere, or so help me I’ll hunt you down.”

  Fury had gotten her this far, but as Cassie parked in front of the sprawling ranch home, an overwhelming sense of loss filled her. Loss over the outcome for the pack, loss over what she and Dean might have had.

  “Get a hold of yourself, girl,” Cassie said between gritted teeth, her eyes already misting up. This was no time to feel sorry for herself. She needed to be strong. Pissed off and ready to rip Dean a new asshole for what he did. God…she still couldn’t believe he had been the one to make the call. But who else could it have been? She never would have figured Dean for a vindictive stool pigeon. Which just showed her how much she really didn’t know about him.

  A sharp ache filled Cassie’s chest again, and she shrugged it away as she slung her camera strap over her neck and started out, wishing she’d had enough sense to go by her room first and change into jeans and boots.

  “Where in the hell are you, Dean?” Cassie muttered as she looked out over the sprawling cluster of lit barns, shelters, and dark corrals that surrounded the house. Her gaze stopped on a gray outbuilding. “The medical room, of course.”

  With purposeful strides Cassie made her way to the building Dean had taken her to the other night.

  Shadows lengthened into vast lakes of inky velvet the farther away from the house she went, and a tingling erupted at the base of her spine. Cassie’s gaze flicked from the worn path at her feet to the quiet shuffling of horses ten yards away.

  “You’re spooking yourself, Cassie,” she muttered, the back of her neck pinging with electricity. The closer she got to the medical shed, the more urgent Cassie’s footsteps became, and she suddenly found herself running. She ripped open the door without knocking and stumbled inside.

  It was dark.

  She flicked on a light near the door. The room was empty. A sinking feeling filled Cassie’s abdomen, and she took a deep breath as she walked to the freezer. She opened the door but didn’t step inside. She could see the body of the shepherd from where she stood, it dead eyes staring into the far corners of the cooler.

  Cassie squeezed her hands into her palms and stepped back, closing the door. “This shouldn’t be happening. They have plenty of prey. Plenty of range to roam. Why would they be coming here?”

  Her questions hung silently in the air as Cassie turned and headed back outside, her thoughts spinning. She had to find Dean. Had to tell him that the trackers would be here tomorrow and would do everything in their power to keep something like this from ever happening again.

  And give him a piece of her mind. She couldn’t lose sight of that.

  As the door banged closed behind her, Cassie tried to think of where Dean might have gone. Into town? To a friend’s to enlist help? There was no way he would have tried to track the wolves. Not at night with only a half moon. Not on his own.

  Right?

  A niggling of doubt made Cassie’s stomach roil, and she pressed a hand there as she started back to her car. The snorts and shuffling of the horses filled her ears. She could make out their shadowed forms as they moved from one side of the corral to the other, their unshod hooves throwing up dust.

  Cassie coughed and waved a hand in front of her face. Her car seemed a mile away, and the tingling was back. Cassie fought to quell the sudden surge of panic that had infected her.

  The red Thunderbird gleamed in the light from the house, but Cassie knew she would never make it. Not now. Not with what stood between her and the driver’s-side door.

  “Shit,” Cassie whispered, easing to a stop.

  She watched as one, two, and then four dogs walked out from around each side of her car. Their tongues were lolling, their bodies thin and primed for action.

  Dogs. Wild dogs.

  The enormity of her—and everyone else’s—error wasn’t lost on her, but she had no time to dwell on it.

  “Stay,” Cassie barked, keeping her eyes up and making herself seem as big as possible. They stopped. They were large dogs, leggy and powerful. Shepherd and Dane mixes, with possibly some boxer and chow mixed in. A dominant, low growl reached Cassie’s ears, and she looked to her left. Out of the darkness slunk a massive animal, its head low, its yellow eyes fierce, and its white and gray coat bristled.

  The alpha male. Cassie’s gaze darted from him to the pack in front of her, trying to keep them all in her line of sight. “A hybrid,” Cassie whispered. Probably shepherd and wolf. Its head was huge, its muzzle long and menacing.

  “This is not good,” Cassie whispered, her mind grasping for solutions even as it processed the bizarre set of coincidences that had led to this moment. How had a group of wild dogs been allowed to roam in Granite Hollow undetected?

  Cassie weighed her options. The house was too far, and she would never get the car door open in time, plus she would have to go through the animals to get to her car.

  Shit, shit, shit!

  She looked at the corral a few feet away and the mass of snorting and seesawing horses pacing nervously in their pen. The alpha growled again as it moved in on stilted legs. Quietly Cassie pushed her pumps off one foot at a time.

  The alpha lunged.

  Time was up.

  Cassie spun and bolted, diving between the wide fence boards and into the churned-up dirt of the corral.

  Stay on your feet! Fucking run!

  She heard the dogs’ mad scramble behind her, and Cassie’s legs pumped harder as she sprinted directly toward the shifting herd of wild-eyed mustangs. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted fur, and an audible snap at her calf made her pitch forward. Hot breath grazed her thigh and, in sheer terror, Cassie threw herself into the crazed mix of sweating horseflesh and flashing hooves.

  “Uh!” Cassie’s shoulder was slammed sideways. She caught herself on the rump of a spotted pony. The scent of horsehair and dust filled her nose and eyes, and she lurched around one scrambling, hot body to the other. Hooves slashed the dirt around her legs, and she heard a yelp somewhere within the chaos.

  Stay upright!

  Cassie spotted a fawn-colored foal a second before it rocketed into her, knocking her flat onto her ass. Her breath whooshed from her lungs, and as her head smacked the lumpy ground, everything went a hazy red. Her vision came back just in time to see the wave of black and white bodies part like the Red Sea, leaving her completely exposed. The foal that had hit her stumbled sideways and froze, its nostrils flaring and its sides trembling violently.

  Cassie forced her head all the way up. Oh, God….

  A blood-flecked muzzle filled her field of vision. She raised a hand to cover her face and—

  A sharp clap. Once. Twice. The dog’s head plowed into the compacted soil as its rea
r twisted around, striking Cassie’s legs with a thump.

  Cassie slapped a hand over her mouth to hold back a scream. More shots. The foal next to her shuddered and then bolted toward the herd at the far end of the corral, its light-colored tail streaming out behind it like a victory banner.

  Gulping lungfuls of air, Cassie forced her feet beneath her and stood. The dog was still. She kicked at it. Dead.

  She looked up as a massive red stallion jerked to a halt, and Dean vaulted from the saddle.

  Dean.

  Without thinking, Cassie met him halfway and threw herself into his arms. He picked her up and crushed her to his chest, one hand buried in the hair at the nape of her neck.

  “Jesus, are you all right? Did you get bitten or kicked?” His breath blew warm across her cheek as Cassie wrapped her fingers around his neck and drank in his pine and leather scent.

  She couldn’t speak. Could only feel, and Dean’s warm, hard body felt so good. So safe and solid.

  “Cassie?” Dean’s hands grabbed her arms and he held her at arm’s length as his amber gaze roamed her from head to foot, his expression grim. “Can you talk? Are you okay? Jesus, woman, answer me!”

  A feeling of calm stole through Cassie, and somehow she managed to disengage Dean’s fingers from around her arms. “I’m fine.” Back on her own feet, Cassie fought to keep her balance and to maintain her earlier sense of rage. Of the real reason she’d come to find him. The reason why she’d ended up in the horrible situation in the first place.

  Images of the wild dogs slammed into her mind, and she shivered.

  Thank god it had happened to her and not to a child or group of children. The thought left Cassie’s stomach sour, and she turned away from Dean’s anxious gaze. “The other dogs…did you see them?”

  “I shot two, including this one, but the others ran. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Dean stepped closer, and Cassie stiffened. Don’t touch me, please don’t touch me…. If he touched her, she would be done. History. A weak kitten in Goliath’s embrace.

  “Why?” Cassie spun, her chest burning. “Why did you do it, Dean? I never figured you for a chickenshit rat. Not ‘Dean the mighty pillar of the community. The man of conviction and loyalty.’” Hurt and rage boiled up to replace the terror of moments before, and Cassie inched closer to Dean’s startled face. “Did you know that’s what all the people I spoke to said? They went on and on about what a great guy you are. How self-assured and honest. Guess you have all of them fooled, eh? Guess you like to make fools out of the people you care—”