by Julie Miller
Tracy could hear Bull deep in a conversation with his brother in her living room when she peeked out of her bedroom and dashed across the hall to the bathroom to rinse out her blouse and wash the streaks of his blood from the right side of her rib cage before pulling on a clean T-shirt. With the door cracked open behind her, she could still hear his deep-pitched voice booming through her apartment. Tracy grinned. Subtlety would never be one of Bull McCabe’s finer traits. He was honest to a fault, dove into trouble with both feetfirst, apologized after the fact rather than ask for permission beforehand, and he guarded his heart as fiercely as he defended underdogs and baby sisters and a friend who thought she might actually be able to get answers from a pair of dangerous men.
Why would she ever think Bull might have been hiding tender feelings for the grown-up tomboy staring back at her from the mirror the way she’d been hiding feelings from him all these years?
Tracy picked up a brush and tried to tame her hair into a neat ponytail. But some things, no matter how badly she wanted them, just weren’t going to happen. They hadn’t happened ten years ago, and they weren’t going to happen now.
But they had shared a real kiss once.
Big, rough-and-tough Bull McCabe—most folks around Serpentine thought his only talents were taming rodeo bulls, winning fights and standing up to his hard-nosed father—had a secret gooey center that only a few lucky people ever got to see. She knew he was sensitive to the teasing he feared he’d get over his old-fashioned name. It had annoyed him that his classmates didn’t give him credit for being as smart as he was. He’d ached with the need to measure up to his father’s standards.
And when he’d shown up at her father’s barn one afternoon, with blood at the corner of his mouth and anger and hurt streaming out of every pore, she’d known Justice had lashed out at him again. Tracy had saddled up Lady and ridden down into the rocky valley near Homestead Creek with Bull that day. She’d listened for hours and wiped away the tears he’d shed, swearing that she’d never tell another living soul that Bull McCabe cried.
They were sitting on a flat rock, overlooking the trickle of the summer creek when he’d pulled her into his arms and hugged her tight. Much like he had a few minutes ago in her kitchen.
Only, at age seventeen, that thank-you, that shared closeness of bared souls, had turned into something more. With no kidnapped sister or seeping wound to distract him, with adolescent urges raging through their veins, Bull had kissed her. He’d pulled her onto his lap, knocked her hat off into the dust, tunneled his fingers into her hair and kissed her. And just as the shock wore off, just as she realized how much she liked his hand on her bottom and his tongue in her mouth—just as she decided she was in love with the boy next door—Bull had ended the kiss.
He had set her aside on the hard, sun-warmed rock. He’d raked his fingers through his hair and glanced at her with a red-faced grin.
“Was that weird?” he asked.
Before she could answer how special her first kiss had been, how unexpectedly perfect it had been to share that first kiss with Virgil McCabe, he was pushing to his feet, checking on his horse. “That was weird. I’m sorry, Trace. I just... I wasn’t thinking. We’re still cool, right? I mean, that won’t happen again. I promise.”
He seemed to be holding his breath, waiting for her answer as though he was afraid that kiss had somehow altered the friendship they’d always shared—that she’d be dumb enough to think he’d want something more from her. But she wasn’t dumb. “We’re cool.”
Swallowing the lump of hope and longing in her throat, Tracy picked up her hat and untethered Lady. If kissing her felt weird to Bull, then clearly, whatever feelings had suddenly sprung up inside her weren’t mutual. And wasting another moment lusting after her best bud wasn’t going to help either one of them. “The sun will be setting soon.” She offered the easiest reason to end the conversation and put some much-needed distance between them. “I’d better head back home.” She mounted up into the pinto’s saddle. “You coming?”
He shook his head. “I want to hang out here a little longer. The quiet is something I don’t get much of at home.”
“Are you gonna be okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks for listening.” He winked, resuming the familiar persona of the friends they were.
“See you at school tomorrow, Bull.”
“See ya, Trace.”
She nudged her heels into her horse’s sides and took off at a canter. Tracy made it all the way to the arroyo that split the McCabes’ land from her father’s before the embarrassment of forgetting she was just one of the guys, and the what-ifs of feelings that would never be, brimmed over into tears.
“Tracy?”
Her hairbrush clattered into the sink as the knock on the open bathroom door startled her back to the present.
Bull’s eyes narrowed as they caught her gaze in the mirror. “You okay?”
Oh, great. Her eyes felt gritty, as though she was going to give in to those adolescent tears again. Needing to hide those raw feelings now as she had back then, Tracy quickly turned on the faucet and splashed cool water on her face. “Yes. I’m fine.” She grabbed a towel to dry her skin and turned once she felt she could look him in the eye without giving anything away. But all those silly self-doubts vanished when she saw the tension lining his rugged face. Fear tightened her belly. “Is something wrong?”
He held up his phone. “There’s been another message from Calderón.”
Chapter Three
“Good ID, Tracy.” Wyatt pocketed his smart phone after pulling up some suspect photos that matched her description of the men in the alley the night before. Looking far more authoritative than the kid brother he’d grown up with, Sheriff McCabe confirmed Bull’s suspicions. “Sol Garcia and Manuel Ortiz. Intimidating and eliminating their enemies is just the kind of work Calderón hires them to do. They may have been in town, scouting out our actions—finding out if Justice has talked to a lawyer about deeding over the land rights down by the river, or if we’d brought in reinforcements to go up against the Los Jaguares.”
Bull felt his brother’s gaze slide across Justice’s office to where he stood behind Tracy’s chair. He was the reinforcement Wyatt was talking about. Morgan, too, if he ever came out of where he was hiding and got his butt here to Texas.
“Garcia and Ortiz have had plenty of time to report in.” Wyatt shared the grim news with everyone in the room. “So Calderón knows we’re looking for him.”
“Are we sure this is Brittany’s hair?” Bull asked, handing off the plastic evidence bag to Wyatt. “Is this our proof of life?”
“She’d better still be alive.” Justice pounded his fist on top of his desk. “Calderón won’t want to mess with me if he harms my daughter.”
“Let us handle Calderón, Dad.” Wyatt was trying to play peacemaker again. “You’ll get your chance with Brittany.”
“It sure looks like Brittany’s hair. She told me she was growing it out for prom in the spring.” Tracy’s queasy expression as she watched the long twists of dark blond braids go by seemed more genuinely concerned than his father’s outburst had. “Is this my fault? Did I provoke them to hurt Brittany?”
Bull reached over the winged-back chair where she sat to squeeze her shoulder. “If Garcia and Ortiz are the men who delivered this to the house last night, then they already had it on them when we met them.”
Wyatt agreed. “Frankly, I like the idea of you getting a few licks in on Calderón’s men and throwing them off their scheduled plan. Makes me feel like he’s not controlling every move we try to make.”
Tracy sat a little taller in her chair. “So making contact with Calderón’s men was a good thing?”
“Yeah,” Wyatt assured her.
“No.” Bull couldn’t agree. Sol Garcia’s backhand had left a bruise on Tracy’s cheekbone. “We’ve already got a sister in trouble with the Los Jaguares, we don’t need anyone else to get hurt.”
“Bull—”
>
“I just meant—”
“All of you, shut up!”
For once in his life, Bull didn’t snap back at his father’s shouted order. Of course, the quick squeeze of Tracy’s fingers around his where they fisted on her chair might have something to do with that. Everyone’s nerves were on edge this morning.
He opened his hand and squeezed back, thanking her for her calming influence before pulling away and crossing to the window to gaze out over the east paddock and the mares and colts there. The flies must be bad today. The horses seemed to be a little skittish, dancing around like that instead of quietly grazing. Bull wasn’t feeling quite like he belonged inside his own skin today, either. A reassuring touch from an old friend shouldn’t make his pulse leap like that.
He’d like to attribute this whole weird vibe with Tracy to fatigue and stress. It had been a long night with little sleep, thanks to the bittersweet memories he had of bunking in his old bedroom on the second floor and to the fitful dreams he’d had about Tracy herself.
The trouble was, he didn’t know which was more unsettling—images of Tracy being beaten or cut by a pair of Los Jaguares gang members, or the erotic visions he’d had of sharing that bed with her. Somehow, the long, friendly hug he remembered from Tracy’s apartment had become her soft skin and lean curves pressed against his naked body. And there were no teasing remarks or words of solace. There’d been moans and sighs and that wild chestnut hair falling all around him until he’d sat bolt upright in bed—wide-awake, hot with sweat and wanting.
A cold shower and a silent breakfast with Justice this morning had convinced Bull that it was just wishful thinking to believe something had changed between him and Tracy over the years. She’d been a rock of caring and common sense to him growing up, and he needed her to be that for him now. He wouldn’t chase away her support by acting on that latent attraction he felt for her. Nor would he mislead her into thinking he had any intentions of staying in Serpentine once Brittany Means was safely back at the J-Bar-J.
“The longer Brittany’s away from us, the harder it will be to get her home unharmed.” Justice’s sharp voice intruded on Bull’s thoughts and pulled his attention away from the horses outside. “That’s what this latest threat means, isn’t it?”
“May I?” Tracy reached for the sealed note Justice handed across the desk. “I don’t think you believe we mean business, Mr. McCabe. Here is your daughter’s hair. Next time it will be a slice out of that pretty face of hers. 12 a.m. Christmas Eve—your land, or your daughter’s life.”
“There has to be something more we can do than sit here and listen to the clock ticking. She’s only seventeen. Brittany thinks she’s all alone in this world. She may not even believe this new family of hers is looking for her. Missing her.” Tracy’s soft gasp of anger and despair punched Bull right in the gut. His instinct was to reach for her, to soothe her raw emotions. He curled his fingers around the window sill, instead, and watched her scoot to the edge of the leather chair, pleading with Justice. “I can’t imagine how frightened she must be. We need to do whatever it takes to get her home safely before Calderón makes good on these threats. Can’t you talk to him? Make some kind of deal with him so we can at least speak to her and reassure her?”
“If I give him access to that part of the ranch to smuggle his drugs, who knows what he’ll want next? And who knows what he’ll do or who he’ll hurt to get it?” Justice shook his head, denying Tracy’s request. “I can’t stand the thought of him touching Brittany—much less hurting her. But I have to protect my family and their future. I don’t want Javier Calderón to think that he can come after me again and win.”
“Then we have to rescue her,” Bull stated plainly, striding back to his father’s desk. Justice might put his principles above people’s lives and feelings, but Bull wouldn’t. “We have to take away his bargaining chip.”
“We have to find Brittany first,” Wyatt reminded him.
Tracy turned those sweet blue eyes, bright with hope, up to him, reminding Bull to start thinking like the detective he was. “Let’s track them down. There has to be some lead as to where he would take her.”
Wyatt shook his head. “You think I haven’t tried? Calderón’s not a man who leaves loose ends.”
“Wait a minute.” Tracy picked up her purse from the floor beside her chair and pulled out a folded-up piece of paper. “I don’t know if this would be any help, but I looked up the names of other students who missed the same three days of school before Christmas vacation that Brittany did.”
She unfolded the paper as she stood and handed it to Bull.
Wyatt circled the desk to look around Bull’s shoulder and read the list of names with him. “What do the X’s mean?” he asked.
“I double-checked against the principal’s truancy list and crossed off the students who had excused absences because of illness or family travel.”
“And the three that are left?” Bull read off the unmarked names. “Marvin Tate, David Echevarria and Julio Rivas?”
“Unaccounted for,” Tracy explained. “David and Julio are seniors. Marvin is a sophomore.”
Wyatt was typing the names into his smart phone.
These students being absent might be nothing more than a coincidence, but Bull could tell that Tracy believed them to mean something more. “Do you have any reason to suspect that one of those students had something to do with Brittany’s kidnapping?”
“No, but Brittany is a young woman with a lot of hurt and anger to work through. One of the causes that she seemed to obsess over was reuniting families who’ve been separated by immigration laws or divorce or whatever.”
“She wanted to make sure that no one was denied her real family the way she was.” Bull could understand that sentiment.
“Something like that.” Tracy hugged her arms in front of her, clearly uncomfortable with where her suspicions were taking her. “At least two of those boys—David and Julio—still have family down in Mexico. I can see Brittany agreeing to help one of them get back to his family for the holidays.”
“Watch your accusations, son.” Justice rolled back his chair and stood. “I didn’t deny that girl anything. I respected her mother’s wishes. I want my daughter to be a part of this family, even if you don’t like it.”
“Get off your high horse, Justice.” Bull didn’t have time to either reason or argue with his father. “This isn’t about you. Or me. We’re profiling Brittany and her motivations—why she might choose one option or another. See if we can retrace where those options took her. It’s called investigative work. It’s what I do. And I’m damn good at it, too, if you want to know.” He turned from Justice’s snarling shock to Wyatt and his phone. “Do either of those boys drive a rusty black farm truck?”
“I’m checking them in the DMV database now to see if we get a match.”
“If she drove across the border with one of them, she’d make an easy target for anyone following her.” And she’d be a hell of a lot tougher for U.S. authorities to find. But this was McCabe territory, and Bull believed he could find anything—or anyone—here if he put his mind and considerable will to it.
But Wyatt was shaking his head. That search was a bust. “Neither one of them is a registered vehicle owner.”
Bull turned the paper back to Tracy. “Are the addresses you have on here current?”
She nodded. “Those are the homes they have listed in their school files.”
Bull handed the list off to his brother and picked up his hat. “I’ll check out one and you get the other.”
Tracy followed Bull out the office door into the main room. “What would Calderón’s men do to the boy she was helping?”
Bull took his time settling the black Stetson into place, trying to figure out how to make “Don’t ask” sound like a reassuring thing.
But Tracy’s fingers had already curled into the tight muscle of his uninjured forearm. The skin beneath that dusting of freckles on her cheeks had paled.
She understood that Calderón wasn’t the type of man who left innocent witnesses to his activities alive to talk about them. “They’re expendable, aren’t they? We have to find them and make sure they’re okay.”
“Easy, sweetheart.” Bull couldn’t help it if the endearment slipped out. He needed to see a smile on her face again. He at least needed to see a little bit of that lifelong faith in him shining in her eyes. With a gentle fingertip, he caught that long curl that refused to stay in her ponytail and tucked it behind her ear. “I won’t let anybody get hurt.”
“I know you won’t.” Despite her fear for her students’ safety, Tracy was smart enough to realize the importance of moving quickly on this. She rested her hand at the center of his chest and nudged him toward the hallway. “If Brittany was with one of those boys, then he would have been the last person to see her before the kidnapping.”
Bull finished her thought. “And talking to him could put us that much closer to finding her.”
“Then you need to hurry. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Don’t set up a clandestine meeting with any drug dealers while I’m gone?”
That triggered a smile. “I won’t. How about I wait here and keep an eye on your dad—make sure he stays out of trouble.” She nodded toward the Christmas tree at the front end of the room. “Maybe we could string a few more lights on that tree. Looks like he hasn’t quite bought out all of Serpentine’s supply of decorations yet.”
“Sounds like a plan.” And then, because it seemed like the right thing to do, Bull dipped his head and pressed a quick, chaste kiss to her soft smile. But her fingers folded into the placket of his shirt and she stretched up on tiptoe to cling to his mouth for a few seconds more. He inhaled a breath of her clean, citrusy scent. Her other hand came up to cup his jaw and hang on to him. Her mouth opened at the touch of his tongue and her moist heat swept through him. His fingers tunneled under the silky weight of her ponytail as he palmed her nape to anchor her lips beneath his and give full reign to this impromptu kiss.