Maybe that would prove to work in Ash’s favor.
Sutherland’s rough edges were a little softened when she finally stepped back from Kipling’s arms. She nodded and smiled at David, then focused on Ash again.
“What is this business proposition?”
“You know about Gray Wolf Security?”
“The firm you run in Santa Monica?” Her smile widened. “Everyone knows about it. It was in the squad newsletter.”
Funny woman.
“We find ourselves taking more and more cases in the Wyoming/Montana areas. We think it would be beneficial to have a satellite office here.”
“Here? In Wyoming?”
“Here. On the ranch.”
Surprise made Sutherland’s face glow for a moment, an expression that made her more beautiful than she would probably ever know. She turned away, marching up the steps of the massive stone house behind her—a remnant from the days when this ranch was the most successful thing this side of the Canadian border—swinging her hips as she headed for the front door. Once she reached it, she paused, glancing over her shoulder.
“Are you coming? Elizabeth made a nice bean salad in anticipation of your arrival.”
Ash glanced at Kipling who flashed him a thumb’s up sign.
She was letting them in. It must be a good sign.
Elizabeth, Sutherland’s twelve-year-old daughter, was in the kitchen with another little girl, laughing at something they were too late to witness, music filling the room from a radio mounted under the cupboards. When Elizabeth—her long, hair dark as midnight like her father’s, her eyes gray like her mother’s—saw Ash, she ran into his arms, her laughter turned into a little squeal of delight.
“How are you, darlin’?” he asked, brushing hair from her face.
“I’m okay. How’s Ford?”
Ash inclined his head. “Getting too big for his britches.”
She giggled at the old-fashioned comment.
Elizabeth hugged Kipling and David, too, blushing at their compliments. She was a beautiful young girl. One day, she’d be a knockout. David was right when he commented that her mother would have to have a shotgun ready when the boys started coming around, a comment that only made Elizabeth blush brighter, and her mother grumble under her breath.
They settled around the table and enjoyed the salad and bread Elizabeth had prepared with her friend, Cassidy. Sutherland wouldn’t allow them to talk business as long as Elizabeth was at the table. But the moment the meal was done, she politely asked the girls to go down to the stables and help Cassidy’s mother, Becky, who was a vet tech working as Sutherland’s head groom.
The moment they were gone, Sutherland focused on Ash.
“Okay. Start from the beginning.”
Ash sat back and studied her familiar face. He was so determined to make this work that he was hesitant to start. Where did he begin? How did he lay out the plan without making her feel as though he were doing this to manipulate her in some way? How did he keep her from seeing what his true motivations were?
The answer was: he didn’t. Sutherland was too smart not to see right through him. She probably already knew what he was up to.
“We want to open an office of Gray Wolf here on the ranch. We’d give you the capital to start it up, help you hire your operatives, and offer support in the day-to-day running of the office.”
“Just like that? What makes you think I could run a security office on top of running the ranch?”
“You have the knowledge,” Kipling inserted. “You were part of multiple missions overseas when you were with the army. Running these security operations isn’t much different.”
“I was a member of the team, not part of the strategy group.”
“But you know how these operations run.”
She tilted her head slightly. “What kind of cases would we be taking?”
David addressed this question. “We handle everything from stalking cases to corporate espionage to basic bodyguard services.”
Sutherland sat back and wrapped her arms around her chest. “I don’t imagine we’ll get many corporate espionage cases up here.”
“Maybe not,” Ash said. “But we’ve gotten dozens of cases up here with big ranchers looking for bodyguard services. There was an heir search at one point, too, that required our services to protect the potential candidates.”
She tilted her head. “You really think we’d get enough cases in this little town to keep a satellite office open and profitable?”
“We do.”
She rubbed the heel of her hand over her cheek, the wheels in her head clearly spinning.
“I’m not even sure I can see how the logistics of this will work.”
“We’ll give you capital to build an office and space for your operatives. We find it convenient to provide the operatives with a private space to live while they work for you. It keeps them close for emergencies.”
“And then?”
“One of my original operatives, Kirkland Parish, has agreed to come up here and help you run the office for the first six months or so. He’ll help you interview potential clients, help you hire and choose the appropriate operatives for each assignment. It’ll be his job to guide you through the intricacies of management.”
“And the ranch?”
Ash nodded. “Kirkland is married to a gentle young woman who runs her own internet-based business. She would be more than happy to take a role in helping you run the ranch if you would be so kind as to offer hospitality to her and her five-year-old son, Matthew.”
“You’ve got this all figured out.”
Ash shrugged. “We will benefit more from this arrangement than you will.”
“Yes, I do all the work, and you reap the rewards.”
“You’ll also take in fifty percent of the profit.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Is that right?”
“Above operating costs.”
She bit her bottom lip. “That’s generous.”
“We want to make this as easy and advantageous for you as possible.”
She started to shake her head, but paused when she spotted the tall cowboy walking through the door.
“I apologize, Sutherland,” he said, removing his hat from his sweat flattened hair.
“Hank Stratton?” Kipling asked.
“Captain,” he said, standing a little straighter.
Hank Stratton.
Ash stood, feeling almost as if he were seeing a ghost. Hank had been a member of his squad all those years ago, a quiet nineteen-year-old who kept to himself most of the time. But Mitchell could draw him out, bring life into his bland expression. It should have been a shock to see him there—and it was, to some degree—but it kind of made sense, too.
“There you go,” Ash said. “You already have your first operative.”
Sutherland shot him a look that lacked the bite he was sure it was supposed to hold. And then her eyes moved to Hank, and he could see her considering the possibilities. He knew in that moment that she was going to do it. She had to grill him for several more hours and renegotiate the terms, but he was right.
Gray Wolf 3 was off the ground.
Chapter 2
Hank
Four Months Later…
I sat on the back of a horse watching the construction on the new bunkhouse. It was coming along quickly. I supposed the massive check Ash Grayson handed Sutherland had a lot to do with that. Contractors liked being paid in advance.
The building was three stories, built of wood and indigenous stone. It was to hold offices on the first floor and apartments on the top two—one of which Sutherland had offered to me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the whole Gray Wolf Security thing. I’d come to work with Sutherland because of Mitchell, because I’d grown tired of moving around, never having roots anywhere, because I’d heard through the grapevine that she needed someone to watch out for her. Not that she let anyone watch over her. The mere suggestion that she might need help was en
ough for Sutherland to turn that icy glare on and send a person packing.
We’d lost a couple of cowhands that way in the year I’d been here.
I understood what Ash was doing. In his own way, he was trying to rescue Sutherland, too. But adding more responsibility on the already difficult time she was having with the ranch probably wasn’t the best way to go about it.
I sighed as I tugged the reins on my horse, turning him back toward the front of the ranch. It was time to tell Sutherland what I’d found in the barn. It wasn’t bad enough that Sutherland had run into some bad luck with the herd this year. Some of the cows we’d been sure were pregnant turned out not to be. And a couple who were struggled with the delivery, and we lost three. Not huge in the big picture, but it would have an impact down the road.
And then there was the huge hit the ranch had taken when cattle prices plummeted. Sutherland counted on the projected earnings every year. To come up that short must have been a horrible shock. On top of that, was the balloon payment she owed on a loan she took out several years ago, to cover another shortfall back then. She didn’t think anyone knew about it, but I did. And I knew it was keeping her up at night.
Then there was this. Someone had allowed the horse feed to get wet. It was riddled with mildew, and it was causing the prized race horses to come down with colic in epidemic proportions. Becky was overwhelmed with the work, trying to keep these expensive horses on their feet. Sutherland wouldn’t be pleased to learn she’d have to replace three months' worth of feed a week after she’d bought the last batch.
Shelby should have come down here and tell Sutherland the bad news, but he was busy repairing the huge hole someone had put in the perimeter fence down by the gulch. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.
I rode up to the house and swung off my horse, tying the reins around the narrow post set just back from the narrow strip of front lawn that was there for that exact purpose and made my way up the front steps. I didn’t like just walking in, but Sutherland had an open-door policy. It annoyed her when I knocked.
“Anyone home?” I called as I approached the screen door.
“They’re in the study,” Elizabeth said from her spot on the porch screen just off to the side. I hadn’t seen her, but was grateful for the information.
“Thank you, Miss Lizzie,” I said, taking off my hat and offering her a brief bow.
She giggled as she hid her face behind a book. I was surprised Cassidy wasn’t with her, but Cassidy tended to head down to the barn after school to hang out with her mother. Girl was sharp as a whip. She’d probably be a vet someday, just like her momma was working to be.
I let myself into the house after kicking the excess mud off the corner of my boots, careful to make sure I wasn’t tracking anything in on Sutherland’s nice wood floors. The house had seen dozens of cowboys come and go over the years and somehow managed to maintain a nice finish. I didn’t want to be the first to mess that up.
I could hear voices before I was even close to the study. Kirkland Parish and his wife, Mabel, and beautiful son, Matthew, had arrived on the ranch a little over a month ago. They were staying here in the house until the bunkhouse was finished, working out of this little study as they organized what would very soon be the third incarnation of Gray Wolf Security. It annoyed me to be perfectly honest, that they were here, that Ash Grayson had laid this much more responsibility on Sutherland’s already overburdened shoulders. I knew he’d done it to help her—and the money he’d already given her in the name of start-up capital had already proven to be a godsend, but I could see the lights on in the study until late at night and Sutherland was always up with the roosters, checking on the horses before she got Elizabeth up and ready for school. I’d worked on a lot of ranches in my lifetime. Sutherland was the hardest working ranch owner I’d ever met, and that included my own father.
I tapped on the wall just outside the study. “Sutherland? I’m sorry to interrupt but—”
“No, Hank, your timing couldn’t be better,” she said, smiling an exhausted smile in my direction. “I was about to send Elizabeth to find you.”
“Is there something wrong?”
Her smile widened. “No, everything’s fine. In fact, we have some good news.” She gestured toward Kirkland.
“We have our first client.”
The man stood, his hands tucked behind his back as he crowed. He looked like the proverbial cat who’d caught the canary.
“The town council has been very generous in helping us put together our business license and everything,” Sutherland said. “And most of the people on the town council are on the school board, too, so—”
“So,” Kirkland continued for her, “when the school board came and asked us to take a case…”
“What case?”
“Someone’s been vandalizing the high school.”
I tried not to roll my eyes, but Sutherland saw through my blank expression.
“I know it’s not exactly what we told you the cases would be, but I feel like we owe them this courtesy.”
“You’ll basically just be hanging around the high school, looking for trouble,” Kirkland said. “One of the teachers was frightened out of the building a few days ago, by the vandals. You’ll want to talk to her, find out what she saw.”
I inclined my head, thinking I must have walked into the Twilight Zone or something when I came into the house. Two of my least favorite things wrapped up into one neat little package: teachers and school.
I dropped out of high school in the middle of my senior year to help my father out on the ranch. I had my GED, but that was hardly the same thing. The last thing I wanted was to hang around a bunch of teachers who would go out of their way to make me feel as dumb as dirt.
“This is important,” Sutherland said. “Our first case. This will be the case that gets us out there and shows the locals what we can do.” There was fear in her voice as she spoke. I raised my head and studied her face, recognizing fear that underscored her words.
If this was about Kirkland Parish and his eccentric wife—the woman was wearing polka dotted tights with a bright green, oversized sweater in the middle of September, for God’s sakes—I wouldn’t go near it with a ten-foot pole. But it wasn’t about them. It was about Sutherland.
“Okay.”
Relief burst over her face. “Yeah?”
“Yes. I’ll do it.”
She came over and offered me a brief hug and a kiss on the cheek. I looked down at her, seeing the fresh-faced kid she was in the photographs Mitchell had shown me all those years ago. A kid raised in foster care with no family, no roots. We had that in common, that last part. My roots shriveled and died when a drought, and a long line of bad luck caused my father to lose the family ranch. She wasn’t that kid anymore, but I still saw her that way when I looked at her.
I still saw her as the girl Mitchell had loved and had asked me to look after if anything should happen to him. I owed Mitchell my life—quite literally. The man pulled me out of the way of an insurgent with a AK-47. I was only here because of him. This job was the least I could do.
“Okay,” Kirkland said, smacking his hands together. “Let’s go over the protocol.”
Asshole.
Chapter 3
Jonnie
I rapped my knuckles on the top of Shawn’s desk.
“Your snoring is drowning out Faulkner.”
“Sorry, Miss Frakes,” he said, sitting up straight and wiping the drool from the corner of his mouth.
I knew Shawn Peters was his father’s only son. A houseful of girls, and Shawn was the only one who got up before dawn and helped his father feed the animals. The boy almost always came to class covered in fresh mud, circles as dark as midnight under his eyes. And he wasn’t the only one. This was a small town that was surrounded by a dozen cattle ranches. Most of these kids were up hours before typical high schoolers, doing chores those typical kids couldn’t even describe, let alone do.
I f
elt bad, heaping the assignments on them that I did. But this was an honors class. If anyone could make the time for these things, it was these kids.
“I know Faulkner can be a little long winded, but try to stay awake. You might actually discover that you like what he has to say.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I walked back to the front of the class and gestured for Shelly, one of my star students, to continue. Her soft tones filled the room, the words of the great writer flowing with a rhythm that only a bored high school student could achieve. I settled back behind my desk and closed my eyes, reciting the words along with her from memory. I’d read As I Lay Dying dozens of times when I was younger. I knew many of the passages by heart.
The bell rang before the scene truly got going. I sighed, then opened my eyes and gestured for the students to head out.
“Don’t forget to finish reading Chapter 27 before tomorrow!” I called after them as they rushed away like prisoners given a sudden reprieve.
I remembered being happy to leave school at the end of the day, looking forward to hanging out with my friends or helping my mom bake cookies for her book club. But as a teacher, I had to admit to a little disappointment at the eagerness of my students to escape my company.
I walked around the room, straightening desks and picking up the loose sheets of paper that always seemed to find their way to the floor. Then I settled behind my desk once more to begin grading the essays turned in this morning by my basic class. It was always a joy to read these essays. It always revealed how badly I’d taught key concepts to students who should have already known how to structure a basic essay.
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