by Janet Dailey
Then Jessy Calder spoke, and Logan clamped off his feelings and switched his attention back to the blonde. “Ty and Dad Calder are in the den.” She walked toward a set of double doors, indicating he should follow.
Chase Calder sat behind a huge desk, still every inch the range lord, yet shorn of some of life’s vigor now. Ty lounged beside the room’s massive fireplace, a shoulder braced against its stone face, a forefinger rubbing across his mustache in a thoughtful pose. He came erect when Logan walked into the room.
“Echohawk, good to see you.” Chase rocked back in his chair, but didn’t rise. “Ty and I were just talking about the dead cattle, and wondering what you might have learned?”
“One thing is certain, Mr. Calder. Somebody out there doesn’t like you very much,” Logan stated with an abruptness that was perhaps not politically wise.
Chase gave him an amused look, a metal-hard irony at the corners of his mouth. “The Triple C has always been a big target for people with stones in their hands. A lot of things have changed, but that hasn’t.”
“And probably never will,” Logan agreed with an answering glint of wryness. “I could be wrong, but this reads like more than a simple case of malicious mischief.”
“What did you find today?” Ty asked.
“A half dozen bullets that I dug out of the carcasses, the print of a bootheel near that pile of entrails, and only one shell casing, which tells me the rest were picked up. I also found a blood trail in the grass that ran about ten yards before it disappeared. It looks to me like they butchered one of the cows, then used a winch to drag it to their vehicle and load it up.”
No sound marked Cat’s entrance into the room, but Logan knew the minute she appeared in the doorway. It was an animal awareness he had of her. But he allowed no break in his talk to betray the fact her presence was in any way unsettling. “At this point, it’s only supposition. All the signs point to that, but I can’t say it as a hard and fast fact.”
“You said they,” Cat broke in, walking the rest of the way into the room.
“This is my daughter, Cat,” Chase began.
“We’ve met,” Logan acknowledged her with a curt nod, his expression falsely passive.
“Yes,” Cat confirmed with an aura of confidence and smooth self-assurance. “Sheriff Echohawk was at the Shamrock the other night when I went to visit Uncle Culley. It turns out that he’s our new neighbor. He bought the Circle Six.”
Chase raised an eyebrow in mild surprise. “I’d heard Henson had sold out. Welcome to the area.”
“Thanks.”
“Cat had a good point,” Ty interposed, bringing the conversation back to their previous topic. “By they, are you saying you believe there was more than one person involved?”
“If a cow was butchered and the carcass removed, as I suspect, it’s logical that—even with the aid of a winch—it would take at least two people to handle it.”
Chase idly rocked in his chair, studying Logan with thoughtful eyes. “You sound convinced that’s the way it happened.”
“Like I said before, the signs seem to point that way,” he replied. “And it would be easy enough for a truck to block the entrance to the gully and trap the cattle inside. We’ll have a better idea about whether I’m right when you finish your gather.”
“But to kill all those cattle and butcher only one, that makes no sense,” Ty said with a troubled shake of his head.
“Maybe they did it for the joy of killing, maybe to cover up the fact they had butchered a beef. Or maybe, they wanted to make certain you found out what they did. If you came up a cow short in your gather, you might not think much about it. But no one can ignore nearly a dozen dead animals.”
“You’re saying it was a calling card of sorts.” Chase studied him with narrowed eyes.
“I’m saying they wanted to throw it in your face,” Logan replied smoothly. “Any ideas on who might hate you that much? A former employee, maybe?”
“I can’t think of anyone. Ty?” Chase deferred the question to his son.
“Offhand, no.”
“Check your records. Make me a list of anyone you have fired in the last year.” He was conscious of Cat filling his side vision, but he kept his attention centered on the two men. The stiff control he placed on himself made him abrupt.
“The list will be a short one,” Ty replied. “We don’t have much turnover on the Triple C. Most of our hands were born and raised right here on the ranch.”
“Then that will make my job an easy one.” Logan paused, and that pause accented the rest of his words, giving them weight. “This wasn’t a random act. They weren’t just driving around, saw the cattle, and decided to shoot a few. This had to have been planned by someone familiar with the area. If it’s someone with a grudge against you—as I suspect—maybe slaughtering some of your cattle will satisfy them. But I wouldn’t count on it. This kind of thing can feed on itself and escalate. I’d have your men keep a lookout for anything unusual and anyone with no business being around.”
“We’ll get the word out tonight.” Chase looked to his son, silently passing the chore to him.
Satisfied, Logan said, “Get that employee list to me as soon as you can. And if you think of anyone whose toes you might have stepped on, inadvertently or otherwise, add their names to it.”
“Of course,” Ty said.
“If there’s nothing else you can add, I’ll be going,” Logan said and proceeded to take his leave of the two men.
In silence, Cat looked on, aware of Logan Echohawk as she had been of few men in her life. He stood with a balanced straightness, as though ready to whip into action at the first hint of danger. For the first time, she realized that he had a capacity for violence, sharply controlled, but present just the same. In profile, his bronzed and angular features were chiseled in unsentimental lines, vaguely tinged by a distant bitterness. She briefly wondered at that, then pushed that curiosity aside. She had other, more important matters on her mind.
During those initial moments after he first arrived, the old fear had rushed back that he had learned the truth about Quint. It had driven her to the den where Cat discovered again that her fear was groundless. He didn’t know, and there was no reason to believe he ever would. She had overreacted before. She was determined to correct that now.
When he turned to leave, Cat said calmly, “I’ll see you out.”
His eyes briefly locked with hers, setting off a small tingle along her nerve ends. It was, Cat thought, the dangerous gray color that made his glance feel like a jolt of electricity.
“That isn’t necessary,” he told her, his voice cool in its rejection.
Cat didn’t answer, instead simply turned and headed for the door, asserting her will through action. The accompanying sound of his footsteps was an echo to her own. She continued through the door and onto the porch, then paused near a white column and gazed into the night. Moonlight sprayed its frost-glow over the ranch buildings and silvered the vast sweep of prairie beyond them. Familiar as it was to her, the scene pulled at her, stirring up again the deep attachment she had to this land that was her home.
Drawing level with her, Logan halted and faced the front, for a moment looking into the night as she did. Then he angled his head toward her, and she felt the force of his gaze tunneling into her.
“There is obviously something you wanted to say before I leave.” The challenging dryness of his voice held a faintly sardonic note.
She squared around to face him, coolly composed and serious. “Anyone who knows me well will tell you that I tend to be too impulsive and quick-tempered, traits that I have worked hard to control. But recent events have shown that I haven’t succeeded all that well,” she said. “The things I said to you the other night at my uncle’s—I was out of line. What you do or don’t do, who you see or don’t see, is really none of my concern. I had no business talking to you the way I did.”
“You don’t apologize very often, do you?” A whisper of
her perfume reached him, emanating from the smooth curve of her neck and conjuring up unsettling images of sultry nights and satin sheets.
“Probably not as often as I should,” she admitted, then asked, slightly defensive, “Why?”
“Because you don’t do it very well.” Logan turned a sidelong glance on her and felt the instant play of electricity between them. “It’s all that pride you wrap yourself in, like armor.”
“And you don’t, I suppose,” she murmured with some heat.
Something that passed for amusement slanted the line of his mouth. “We weren’t talking about me.”
Cat chose to ignore that. “I should explain that I never expected to see you again. In fact, I hoped I never would. That night in Fort Worth was a mistake, one that I have tried very hard to forget—”
“It seems you were no better at it than I was,” he observed.
She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “As far as my family is concerned, they think you are a complete stranger. I prefer that they never find out otherwise. Unfortunately, I can no longer control that.”
“Am I supposed to take an oath of silence now?” he mocked, then turned serious. “If I did, would you believe me?”
Cat hesitated, stung by how vulnerable she was. “I would want to,” she said at last, lifting her chin a notch.
“It goes against your grain for someone else to hold your reputation in their hands, doesn’t it?” Logan observed and watched her eyes turn stormy. He didn’t fault her for that. Pride and honor were two things he understood. Sometimes they were all a man had, especially when he lost his faith in things like the goodness of his fellow man.
“Naturally, it does,” she replied, very cool and controlled again.
He could feel the invisible barriers she threw up to keep him at a distance. It rankled. Logan had little respect for barriers; he had battered in too many of them in his job. The impulse was there to do it again.
“I’m curious about something.” Almost leisurely Logan swung toward her, his glance skimming the bareness of her shoulders and the shadowed hollow of her throat before rising to the green of her eyes. “Are you still mourning your dead boyfriend?”
Resentment flared, turning her voice frigid. “That is none of your business.”
“I never said it was.” His mouth crooked. “I thought it was supposed to be ‘until death do you part,’ and here you are still sleeping with a ghost.”
“I happen to love him,” she insisted stiffly.
“He’s dead, Cat. That’s why you were so eager to crawl into bed with me. Remember?” he taunted.
“I told you that was a mistake I would like to forget.”
“It’s impossible, isn’t it?”
“You have no idea how impossible it is.” She looked away, pain thickening her voice and bringing the bright sheen of tears to her eyes.
Angered by the sight of them, Logan cupped a hand to her face, his thumb capturing her chin and turning it back toward him. “Who are you crying for, Cat? You or him?” he challenged.
“Certainly not for you,” she lashed out in sudden anger. “Never for you.”
Logan had known that, but hearing it snapped the last thin thread of control. Roughly he hauled her to him, his fingers twisting into her hair and forcing her head back. His mouth came down hard to crush her lips. This time he took what she wouldn’t willingly give him, and liked the fight she gave him, finding it offered its own kind of stimulation.
He kept up the pressure until her struggles lessened and her body softened against him. Lifting his head, he looked with savage satisfaction at the aching need that darkened the green of her eyes. In the very next instant, Logan understood the emptiness of his victory. The moistness of tears shimmered at the edges of her eyes. He hadn’t driven out the memory of her lost love. It was a bitter discovery that stopped him cold.
“You can stop worrying, Cat.” Anger tightened his voice, giving it a raw and husky edge. “A lot of men might brag about bedding you, but I’m not one of them.”
She gave him a startled look that revealed her surprise and told him, more clearly than words, the low opinion she had of him. Swinging away, he went down the steps at a swift pace, more irritable than before.
From his favorite watchpost, hunkered down in a small pocket of ground some distance from The Homestead, Culley saw it all. Although he had been too far away to hear their talk, it had been impossible to mistake the charged tension between them when they faced each other, their bodies taut and motionless like a stag and a doe during mating season.
A car door slammed with a metallic thud, and an engine turned over with a rumbling growl of power. Headlights flashed on, cutting through the darkness. Briefly their twin beams swept over Cat as the patrol car made a reversing turn away from the house before it took off, its fast-spinning tires spraying gravel.
As always, Culley focused on Cat. She stood with one slender hand resting on a pillar and the other pressed to her stomach, her head turned in the direction of the departing vehicle. After it disappeared, she appeared to take a moment to gather herself, then turned and went inside.
Culley rocked back on his haunches and considered all that he had seen, both tonight and over the last few days. The ululating call of a coyote drifted across the plains, a plaintive and primitive sound. Lifting his head, Culley listened to it, glanced again at the house, then stole off, making his way back to the place where he had left his horse tethered.
An hour after leaving the Triple C headquarters, Logan pulled into Blue Moon. Light pooled beneath the canopy at Fedderson’s, illuminating the gas pumps. More light poured through the store’s plate-glass windows. Logan noted that, but his brooding gaze centered on the lighted neon sign at Sally’s Place and the half dozen pickup and utility vehicles parked in front of it.
Faced with easily an hour’s worth of paperwork before he could call it a day, Logan swung the patrol car into an empty parking slot, radioed his twenty, and stepped out. As much as his empty stomach wanted food, he wanted the distraction of people around him to get his mind off Cat. She was becoming like a drug that he knew was no good for him, yet each encounter with her left him wanting more. It was an addiction he was determined to conquer.
The jukebox blared a honky-tonk song amid the crack of billiard balls and laughing, raucous voices. Logan paused inside the door and scanned the inhabitants of the café-bar, conscious of the second looks the uniform brought him and the instant muting of loud talk. Most times such things amused him, but today wasn’t one of those times.
As he finished his sweep of the bar area where the bulk of the customers were gathered, his glance was stopped by a pair of brashly arrogant eyes staring back at him. Lath Anderson grinned with insolence and lifted his long-necked bottle of beer in a mocking salute. His younger brother, Rollie, gave him a sharp nudge, his own glance skipping off Logan. Still grinning, Lath swung away.
Logan felt again that fiddling along his nerves that warned of impending trouble. He started toward the men’s room to wash up, then, pushed by a testiness, Logan altered his course to pass by the two brothers.
Observing his approach in the back bar’s mirror, Lath swiveled around on his stool when he drew close. “Workin’ kinda late, aren’t you, Echohawk? Or are you pullin’ the evening shift this week?”
Logan halted. “Does it matter?”
“Guess not.” Lath shrugged one shoulder, still wearing his cocky grin.
“Have you found yourself a job yet?”
“Tell you the truth, that’s been a bit of a problem for me. No one seems to be doin’ any hirin’ right now.”
“I heard Dy-Corp had some openings,” Logan remarked, then turned his glance on the younger one. “Isn’t that true, Rollie?”
“I couldn’t say.” His attention remained on the bottle in front of him.
“You’re still working there, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.” Rollie picked up the bottle by its neck and took a quick swig fr
om it.
“He’s always been the hardworking one of this family. Ain’t ya, little brother?” Lath tossed the question to him, without taking his hard and glinting eyes off Logan. “Me, I’m just the no-account one.”
“With no desire to change,” Logan observed, and threw another glance at Rollie, now eyeing them both uneasily. “You’re running in some poor company, Rollie.”
“He’s my brother.”
“I guess a man can’t choose his family,” he said.
He sent a glance at Lath, then continued to the men’s room, washed away the worst of the day’s grime and returned, this time skirting the bar area and heading for a table on the café side of the room. Taking off his hat, he dropped it on an empty chair and sat down next to it, reaching for the plastic-covered menu, propped between the sugar jar and napkin holder.
Sally Brogan came to the table, carrying a pot of coffee and a glass of water. She set the glass before him, righted the cup on the table and filled it with steaming coffee. “You look like you could use this,” she said, her quick eyes picking up the hints of fatigue etched into his face.
“About a gallon of it,” Logan admitted, reaching for the cup, drawn by the steam’s rich coffee aroma.
“I heard there was some trouble out at the Triple C today. Nothing serious, I hope,” Sally remarked, fishing for specifics.
Logan shook his head. “Just some cattle killed.”
“How?”
“They were shot.”
She clucked her tongue in a small sound of dismay and sighed. “I don’t understand people nowadays, shooting at something just because they feel like it—with no respect at all for someone’s property.”
Such people had always been around, but Logan didn’t bother to point that out to her. “How about a steak, medium, and a baked potato with all the trimmings.”