CLINT'S WILD RIDE

by Linda Winstead Jones

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  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

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  Chapter 1

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  The hairs on the back of Clint's neck stood up. Every nerve in his body went on alert. Something was wrong here. He was about to be ambushed.

  Shea had plied him with steak and potatoes, his favorite meal, forgoing her usual attempt at some evil casserole that often included the dreaded lima bean. His sister had stocked up on his preferred brand of beer, and after dinner had offered him a cold bottle and Nick's most comfortable recliner. She was all smiles tonight, and hadn't even mentioned the fact that he didn't have a woman in his life. Not once. Something was definitely fishy here.

  Their brother Boone, a private investigator, and his obviously pregnant wife, Jayne, were in attendance, having made the trip from Birmingham for the weekend. Dean, eldest brother and a deputy with the U.S. Marshals Service, was also present.

  And they were all looking at him. Staring. Waiting, just as he did, for the other shoe to drop. Even Justin, Shea and Nick's one-year-old son, knew something was up. He banged a big plastic car on the floor, but his eyes were on Uncle Clint.

  Shea glanced at her watch for the tenth time since they'd retired to the family room five minutes or so ago. Nick cracked his knuckles and glanced at the ceiling. Justin cooed and giggled.

  "Okay," Clint said, unable to stand the suspense any longer. "Somebody tell me what's going on."

  Shea glanced pleadingly at Dean, who sat on the far end of the couch he shared with Boone and Jayne.

  Dean slowly shook his head. "This is your party, Shea," he said. "I'm just here for…" He glanced up at his little sister. "Why am I here?"

  "Moral support," Shea said softly, before turning her eyes and her smile on Clint.

  Shea had always been naturally curious, a trait which had led her to her current career as an investigative reporter for CNN. She could be fearless, unrelenting. Clint was usually proud of his little sister—until she turned those curious and relentless eyes his way.

  "Are you going to participate in the Brisco Rodeo this summer?" she asked, deceptively innocent and seemingly sweet.

  "Sure," Clint said warily. "Just like I have for the past three years."

  He didn't need to rodeo anymore. He had won a few big competitions before he'd given up bull riding four years ago, and he'd invested his earnings well. The horse ranch in north Alabama was finally making a profit. He occasionally worked as a rodeo clown because he liked it. The job was fun, exciting, dirty and dangerous. Just like him.

  The Brisco Rodeo was a six-week summer tour across the Southeast, and he had several friends who regularly worked that tour. Six cities, six weeks. Three or four days in each arena, and then they were off to the next show. His foreman, Wes, had no trouble running the ranch on his own when Clint took off for a few days or a few weeks at a time.

  "I have this friend…" Shea began.

  A woman friend, Clint knew immediately. For some reason his little sister was forever trying to fix him up. He was close to thirty, but he wasn't there yet. He had plenty of time to settle down. And no inclination to do so. Why was Shea so damned determined to see him married and reproducing?

  "Not interested," he said, silencing a stammering Shea before she went any further. He glanced at the closemouthed occupants of the room, one after another. "And why does it now take the entire family to fix me up with a woman? Is the situation really that desperate? Dean's the oldest and he's not hitched. I don't see you trying to marry him off."

  "She does," Dean said sourly. "Just not in front of a crowd. Usually."

  "I'm not trying to fix up anyone today," Shea said, her voice too bright and quick. "This is strictly business." Her eyes sparkled with a new, sudden thought. She bit her lower lip. That meant trouble, every time. "Though, Mary is very nice, and she's pretty. And Dean, she's just your type. She's with the FBI, you're with the Marshals Service, you both carry guns. It's just…"

  Dean held up a silencing hand. "I was going to let you hang yourself, Shea, but this is just too painful." He glanced at Clint and sighed. "There's been a series of particularly ugly murders over the past four years. Eight women in six different cities, in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee. The victims were between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-six, all blond and attractive, all raped and then murdered. Three were killed by strangulation, the others were…" He glanced at Shea and then at Jayne. "They were cut," he said in a lowered voice. "The bodies of all eight victims were dumped in isolated areas and not discovered for some time, which is why the connection to the rodeo wasn't made until recently."

  A chill ran down Clint's spine. He'd rather go on a hundred blind dates than process what this bit of information meant. "What kind of connection to the rodeo?"

  "Apparently there's a possibility that all the murders took place while the Brisco Rodeo was in town."

  "A possibility?"

  Shea shrugged and glanced away. "Some of the bodies weren't discovered for months, so it's impossible to have an exact date of death. But a couple of the dates of disappearance are definite, and the others are in the right time range."

  Clint shook his head. He had been set up, and in the worst possible way. "All through dinner," he said, "y'all knew what Shea wanted and you didn't say a word."

  "She made us promise," Boone explained.

  "Still…"

  Dean interrupted. "We tried to tell her this was a lousy way to spring the idea on you, but she wouldn't listen."

  "She never does," Boone muttered.

  Clint turned his eyes to a silent Nick.

  "Don't look at me," Nick said, hands up in surrender. "I thought a simple phone call would work just fine."

  No one could reason with Shea when she didn't want to be reasoned with, not her brothers, not her husband.

  Clint was unhappy with them all at the moment. "You want me to spy on my friends. You want me to play private investigator and sneak around trying to find this guy for you. Nope. Not gonna happen. No way. I like the people I work with. There's not a serial killer in the bunch."

  "You don't know that," Boone interrupted. "You see them once a year for a few weeks. Someone there might be responsible for these murders."

  Clint shook his head. "No." Mentally, he ran down a list of the people he knew who traveled with the Brisco Rodeo. They were honest, fun-loving, hardworking people, each and every one of them. They were like family. "If the murders really are connected to the rodeo, maybe it's someone who follows the tour."

  "Maybe so," Dean agreed.

  Clint placed the flat of one hand on his chest. "I'm not a cop. I'm not a P.I. like Boone or a federal marshal like Dean. I want absolutely nothing to do with law enforcement, especially not the FBI. I am a retired bull rider, a rancher and a rodeo clown. None of those pursuits have prepared me for hunting down a serial killer."

  Shea shook her head quickly. "Oh, we don't want you to hunt down the serial killer. We just want you to teach Mary to be a rodeo clown and get her a job with Brisco."

  He laid disbelieving eyes on his sister. Hard to believe that what his little sister wanted was more impossible than what he'd thought she wanted. "The tour starts up in less than three weeks."

  She smiled at him, calm and completely unruffled. She showed no signs of backing down from this one.

  "And besides, I can't see Oliver Brisco hiring a girl rodeo clown."

  Shea pursed her lips. "I think you'll find Mary's able to do anything you can do."

  Clint grinned. "Oh, really?"

  The doorbell rang. Nick, who had probably been dying to get out of this room since the conversation had begun
, offered to answer. He left the room and Justin crawled quickly and nimbly after him.

  "This is a bad idea," Clint said softly.

  "I told 'em that," Boone said. "A girl rodeo clown? Ridiculous. It'll never work."

  Jayne patted him on the knee. "Don't be patronizing, honey." She laid her free hand over her rounded stomach. "What if our daughter wants to be a clown?"

  "Heaven forbid." Boone, soon-to-be father, looked truly horrified by the very idea.

  "We've always been there for one another," Shea said. "I know it's wrong of me to assume so much, to just expect you to do as I ask, but to be honest it never occurred to me that you might refuse."

  They heard Nick returning, footsteps soft but certain on the carpeted hallway, and the conversation ceased. Shea's husband walked into the room with Justin in his arms and a woman trailing right behind them.

  The disastrous night got a little more interesting when the woman walked into the room. Clint's attention was focused entirely on the newcomer, until everything else in the room faded. Surely this was not Mary.

  She was taller than Shea, probably five seven, and she was built like a brick outhouse. The luscious curves just went on and on. Her pale blond hair, sleek and golden, was cut chin-length. She wore a gray suit, which should have been plain, but thanks to her figure was not, and a pair of matching high-heeled shoes that emphasized her long, shapely legs.

  FBI Mary was absolutely gorgeous. Clint's mouth went dry. His body reacted the way any man's might when confronted with a woman like this one.

  Maybe this wasn't such a terrible idea, after all.

  All the Sinclair men stood and Shea greeted her friend with a quick hug. Shea didn't waste any time with niceties. She took the blonde's arm and led her to Clint.

  "Clint, this is my good friend, Special Agent Mary Paris. Mary, this is my brother, Clint Sinclair."

  The FBI agent laid the bluest eyes Clint had ever seen on him in a calculating way. She didn't smile, she didn't offer her hand. Gorgeous or not, she looked at him as if she were quite capable of chewing up any man—including him—and spitting him out.

  Tough as nails, pretty as a picture … and she wanted to be a rodeo clown.

  * * *

  Mary stared at the man before her, Shea's youngest brother, Clint Sinclair. He was tall and lean, with dark brown hair and moss-green eyes. In his jeans and checkered shirt and cowboy boots, he looked very much as she had expected he would. His hair was cut conservatively, but a misbehaving lock and a cowlick in the middle of his forehead kept that conventional cut from looking ordinary.

  If she wasn't absolutely desperate, she would immediately dismiss this plan as ludicrous. This pretty-boy clown could not possibly be the answer to all her problems. He looked like the kind of man who came with more problems than he could possibly solve. But then, wasn't that true of all men?

  No need to waste time by prolonging the introductions. Mary always preferred to get right to business. "I assume Shea has told you why I'm here."

  "You want to be a bullfighter."

  "A bullfighter?"

  "Rodeo clown," he clarified.

  It was a ridiculous idea, convoluted and risky and desperate. It was also the only viable plan she had at the moment. "Yes."

  He grinned and shook his head. "Darlin', it'll never work."

  "Excuse me?" she said coldly.

  "It just won't—"

  She raised a censuring finger. "Before that."

  The man looked truly confused. She imagined that was a semi-permanent state for him.

  "Don't call me darlin'," she said tersely. "It's insulting."

  He was not at all taken aback. "All right, Special Agent Paris." He took his eyes from her and stared down at Shea. "This isn't going to work."

  Mary pursed her lips. She should have let the darlin' thing slide, for now. She might've ruined everything by annoying the pretty-boy clown. "Why won't it work?" she asked.

  Clint turned his green eyes on her as if he expected them to work some kind of magic. Oh, yeah, he was definitely one of those condescending, annoying types who thought women were second-class citizens. She saw it in his eyes, and in that boyish half smile.

  "First of all," he drawled, "you're a girl."

  Mary took a deep breath and bit her tongue. A girl! She'd worked with too many men who were firmly entrenched in the good-old-boy network to let that one slide. She was a damn good agent, but she'd had to work twice as hard as any man to get where she was today. Still, she'd been a bit hasty with the "darlin'" admonition. Perhaps it would be best if she saved the argument that she was a woman, not a girl, for another time.

  "Second," Clint continued when she didn't argue, you don't just decide to become a bullfighter and jump into the arena on a whim. That's a good way to get yourself killed. It's an extremely dangerous job."

  "I'm sure that's true," she said calmly. "That's why I've come to you for advice on training."

  Sinclair shook his head as if she just didn't get it. "You have less than three weeks."

  Mary was undaunted. "I can learn anything I need to know as quickly as necessary."

  She didn't care for his calculating smile. "Oh, really?"

  She had avoided men like this one all her life. Clint Sinclair was charming, condescending, pretty and laid-back. Yes, he was lean, but he was also hard. Muscled from his neck to his calves. But it was his smile that probably got him anything he wanted. Girls probably followed him around like besotted puppies and fell at his feet in adoration and ached to play with that annoying little lock of hair on his forehead.

  Women did not. If he thought he could charm her with that smile, he had another think coming.

  His grin faded, his green eyes lost their hint of teasing and a muscle in his jaw twitched. "How old are you?" he asked softly.

  Mary bristled. "I don't see how that bit of information is any of your business."

  "Tell me right now, or we're done talking."

  Mary didn't like demands, especially not from men she'd just met, but in this case she didn't have many options. "Twenty-eight."

  Clint nodded his head slowly. "Fits the profile, doesn't she, Dean? Twenty-eight, blond, pretty." He never took his eyes from her. "You're not just looking to spy on the people who work the rodeo, you're setting yourself up as bait."

  She could deny the accusation, but she didn't think Sinclair would buy it. Pretty boy or not, there was something calculating in his eyes. Something intelligent. She couldn't afford to insult or annoy him. And if he knew the truth, he'd toss her out on her ear. Like it or not, she needed him.

  "Only as a last resort," she said calmly. "And if it comes to that, I will call in sufficient backup. None of the other victims worked for the rodeo, so in reality I am not setting myself up by following a pattern."

  He did not look convinced. "Sounds awfully dangerous anyway. Well, it's dangerous if you're right about the serial killer being affiliated with the rodeo. Which you're not."

  "Your opinion doesn't concern me. All I want from you are a few pointers on working the rodeo and an introduction to the man who runs the tour." Oliver Brisco, her prime suspect.

  Sinclair was going to refuse. She saw it, in the firm set of his mouth, in the quickly fading spark of fury in his eyes. He was her last chance, her best idea. Her only idea. She'd stood here and held her temper in check—for the most part—and now he was going to turn her down flat and she'd be back to zero.

  "Shea," the man before her said softly, in that Southern drawl that sounded like molasses, dark and sweet. "How bad do you want this?"

  "Pretty bad," Shea admitted. "One of the stories I've been working on for the past year is about a man who was found guilty of the second murder almost four years ago. He was convicted long before anyone made the connection with the other murders, and all the evidence against him is circumstantial. Mary came to me a few months ago to ask some questions about the case, that's how we hooked up." Shea's entire face softened. "Clint, this guy
is sitting in prison for a murder he didn't commit. Until we have more, no one's willing to do anything about getting him out."

  "Who made that connection to the rodeo?" he asked.

  "I did," Mary said. After hours and hours of studying every detail of those murders, after more sleepless nights than she could count, she'd finally discovered that at the approximate time of each and every murder, the Brisco Rodeo had been in town.

  It was the approximate that was killing her. The bodies of the victims had been disposed of in remote areas, and not discovered until days or weeks after the fact. The longer the bodies went undiscovered, the harder it was to pinpoint the exact date of death. Until she had more, some people in the bureau wouldn't validate her theory.

  "If this is such a great lead," Sinclair said softly, "why isn't the rodeo crawling with feds? Why isn't there an army of agents going in?"

  An unexpected chill danced down Mary's spine and down her arms. He was getting too close, asking too many questions. "It's a theory not everyone in the bureau is buying at this point," she said honestly. "There are a few discrepancies in the killer's MO, from murder to murder, some inconsistencies on a couple of the victims." Inconsistencies she had tried and tried to explain away.

  "So, this charade of yours might be a waste of time."

  She suspected Sinclair was concerned about his time, not hers. "I don't believe it is a waste of time," she said calmly.

  "But—" he began.

  "This butcher, he doesn't kill his victims right away," Mary said. She couldn't allow herself to be annoyed, to hold a grudge against this man she'd just met because he was her best hope. It was a luxury she could not afford. "He keeps them alive for anywhere from two to four days, from what we've been able to tell. He tortures them. He plays with them." Her heart rate increased, and deep down … deep down something she tried to ignore constricted. "The man I'm looking for is a predator of the worst kind, Mr. Sinclair. If he isn't found and stopped, he will kill again. And again." And again…

  Clint Sinclair sighed. He mumbled a foul word. The strawberry-blonde sitting on the couch said, "Hey, I heard that. Watch your language around the babies."