License to Love Series:Trilogy (Contemporary Western Cowboy Romance)

by Rose, Amelia

  She looked up at Cale’s face and found his calm sea green gaze reassuring. This was something that she had to do if she wanted to catch Sanders, and she was not about to miss out on the opportunity.

  Nodding, she stepped across the threshold and walked round him, looking around the room as he closed the door behind her. There was a single king sized bed with a desk and a small table in the corner. On the desk there was a laptop with a stack of papers scattered around it. On the table there was a similar set up with a different laptop. Melinda studied both areas intently for a moment.

  “So, one of those is your brothers?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he answered, walking over the section of the room that he had obviously transitioned into an office space. He motioned to the chair in front of the table while he took a seat at the desk. “I’ve been working on breaking his encrypted files all day. I’ve managed to get through the barriers on most of them, however, there are still a few that I haven’t been able to breach.”

  Melinda didn’t take a seat right away. She stood next to the bed and shifted her weight onto her hip. She was still in her full sheriff’s regalia, and it was quite cumbersome. After a moment she decided that Cale was probably telling the truth, and she undid her gun belt and holster laying it on the bed.

  He raised his eyebrow and smiled at her curiously but said nothing. Melinda realized how it must look and immediately offered up an explanation. “Sorry about that, it’s just that this is way too cumbersome to sit in for long, and I’ve been wearing it all day. Don’t worry though I’ve still got my hidden gun so if you try anything I’m covered.”

  “I would take that as a joke, but I’m pretty sure it’s the truth,” he told her, a slight edge to his voice as he watched her unclip her radio and set it next to the tightly folded belt.

  A laugh burst out of her lips and she pressed them together, trying to maintain some sense of order as she sat in the chair. Cale smiled back at her, and for an awkward moment neither of them said anything else.

  “What do you think those last files have on them?” she asked finally, breaking the silence.

  “I have no clue, but he has them completely encrypted. I disconnected it from any wireless access earlier by pulling the wireless adapter card. If there is something on this computer that he needs to help him escape, I don’t want to risk him trying to gain remote entry.”

  He had turned back to the computer as he spoke, and Melinda found that she was watching him with great interest. Not just because of what he was saying, but also because of how he was saying it. Lawyer might be the title that Cale Winters gave to the world, but there was a whole lot of computer nerd in there as well.

  “Where did you guys learn about computers?” She asked.

  Cale was startled for a second, breaking out of his reverie and turning back to look at her. “Charles’ father, my step-dad, was a big computer programmer. He taught us a lot about computers, operating systems, codes, encryptions…you name it, we learned about it. Charles just caught on a lot faster to most of it than I did.”

  He sighed, and for a moment Melinda could see the pain in his eyes. She realized that she’d always assumed Charles had been a psychopath. It was hard to think of him as an ordinary teenage boy. Yet that is probably how Cale remembered him. How would she have felt if this had been Shad or Woody?

  “What happened?”

  Cale studied her for a moment before answering. She worried that he wasn’t going to say anything, but then he leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. When he was no longer looking at her he started talking, and she realized with each word that it was a far more haunting tale than the spoiled rich kid scenario she had mapped out in her mind.

  Chapter 5

  Cale did not want to look at her when he told her Charles’ story. He did not want to see the false platitudes and concern, and those looks that made him want to stop short. As a lawyer, he knew that he should not be telling her this and that it would most likely taint the case against Charles, but the truth was that he needed to be free of the ghost of the past. There was something liberating in letting it flow through him and out into the world.

  “I first met Charles when my mom was dating his dad, Martin. I was eight, he was six. Even though he was barely out of kindergarten, he was already damaged. I didn’t know it then, but his mother had just been sent to an institution in Canada. She died there five years later. Suicide.”

  He paused to see if she said anything, but when she didn’t he pushed on. “She had kidnapped Charles when he was one, worried that Martin would take him away from her. Apparently she was bi-polar, and after Charles was born it got a lot worse. Martin spent four years searching for him, and when he finally found him they’d been living in a row house in South Dakota with no running water or electricity. No one knows exactly what happened during those missing years. At least, no one ever talked about it if they did.”

  “That must have been horrible,” Melinda said, taking a deep breath.

  “I’m sure it was, but Charles went to regular appointments with his therapist and we didn’t talk about it. Overall, he was a fairly normal kid. But when he was fourteen it was like everything changed. He started acting more morose than normal, moody even. We all thought it was like any other teenage boy phase, but after his dad died it only got worse.”

  “How did his dad die?” she asked. Cale squeezed his eyes shut and pushed all of the doubts he had concerning Charles’ involvement with his dad’s death to the back of his mind. He might have been spilling his guts, but he didn’t want to unnecessarily implicate him. Cale wasn’t sure that his thoughts were anything more than an overactive imagination.

  “He had a heart attack one day while he was working on some new program. Charles was the one who found him slumped over in front of his computer, and he was never the same after that.”

  When he finished talking he could feel her eyes boring into him and, after a moment, he turned back to face her. She had moved slightly closer to him, and there was a look of compassion on her face that he had never seen before. For the first time he realized that there were caring and humanitarian depths to Melinda Brandt that she didn’t often dare to tell anyone, not even her brothers.

  “Why would you tell me all of this?” she asked, her steel gaze never wavering as she studied him. Cale could tell that she was trying to guage his intentions, and he would have been surprised if she hadn’t.

  “I suppose for the same reason people confess to a priest. Only a priest wasn’t available so I guess I took the next best thing and confessed to a sheriff.” He tried to smile, but he could feel the corners of his mouth twitching and he knew that he was failing. “The truth is, I don’t plan on representing him any longer. I will do what I should have done before my brotherly guilt kicked in. I’ll hand his case over to someone else to represent.”

  Just saying those words out loud gave him a tremendous feeling of relief, and he sat up a little straighter. The rest of the world suddenly seemed a lot larger. This time he felt his lips curving up in a more natural smile.

  Melinda nodded, and her gaze softened even more as she spoke. “I know exactly how you feel. I can’t do anything without my sisterly guilt,” she chuckled and he realized for the first time how kind her eyes could be when they were not trying to pierce through you like a hawk.

  Reaching forward, she grabbed his hand and squeezed. As soon as she touched him he felt the undercurrent of their attraction rush through him. He wondered if she felt it too, because as soon as she did it she pulled back, retreating once again into her protective shell.

  Still smiling, Cale pulled the computer onto his lap and opened up the series of folders that he had discovered on Charles’ laptop.

  “These are the items I’ve managed to open so far. They’re mostly related to the hunt for Clara. There are items that he organized according to how he thought they would help him find her however, there is an entire ranting document about her as well. I’m p
retty sure it’s the equivalent of a computerized diary.”

  Melinda leaned in over his shoulder, close enough that he could smell the subtle scent of lilac lotion as she read a few sentences. Her eyes lit up and then narrowed, and he knew that she was already starting to realize the depth of delusion that Charles was operating at. Cale was sure that she had only limited experience in dealing with mentally disturbed people in Stanhope, but he was confident that she would know how unbalanced Charles was when she realized these were definitely not the writings of a sane man.

  “Do you realize that he is making a judgment against Clara as if she were a motherly figure? On the second paragraph when Charles was talking about Clara ignoring him and purposefully shunning him at the office when he tried to be helpful and something caught her eye, he is having the kind of tantrum one might expect from a child.” Melinda said.

  “I wondered if I would be the only one to see the connection,” he answered, pointing to the line in the second paragraph that most intrigued him. “Here, look at this.”

  She’s ignoring me again. Acting like I’m not important enough for her to care for, important enough to be part of her life. Well, forget her. This is the last time she puts me aside.

  “This is right before he starts plotting to strip away her life one layer at a time. I don’t know what changed on that specific day, but it sounds as if he means business, so it was obviously something that he sees as critical.”

  “Is there anything on here that can help us to track him now?” Melinda asked.

  “Not this, but I’m fairly confident that the other encrypted files are holding some of his falsified credit card information. If I can get into that, we should be able to track any charges.”

  “That’s good. If I’m going to severe my ties with the OSBI and the official case, I want to make sure that I have some form of backup information to turn to. Otherwise I would be leaving us out in the wind.”

  “So, if you go out to hunt down Charles with me, you won’t be able to do anything on the case in an official capacity?”

  “I probably could try to do both, but I would rather not. The more I’m around the OSBI agents the higher the chances that they will try something sneaky like putting a bug or a tracker on me. They know better than to put too much trust and faith into small town sheriffs. Apparently we are notorious for messing with their investigations,” she smiled mischievously, and for once it actually lit up her eyes. Again he saw how much emotion was there. She may have been pretending to be a cold and calculating person but her eyes spoke differently. There was strength there; but also anger and sadness, joy and laughter. Cale caught himself holding his breath as struggled not to reach out and touch her.

  Instead, he turned back to the computer and banged out a few more commands on the keyboard. “I’m running a few different programs to try and decode the rest of this, but they won’t be able to tell us much of anything before tomorrow. If I push it too hard it is likely that his original program will crack and corrupt under the pressure, and I don’t want that to happen.”

  “No,” Melinda agreed, turning her back to him as she stood up and began pacing the room. “However, tomorrow might be perfect. If we can get a good lead on him, it will give me enough time to set the departure in motion. I can ham it up good enough at the office that the OSBI guys will assume I’m just some lame duck sheriff out in the middle of nowhere who doesn’t know which end is up. If I can sell them on that, then I can walk away without worrying about them poking around in our business while we search for Charles on our end.”

  “I have a program that might help us keep up with their investigation after you are no longer in the office,” Cale replied. “It’s kind of a backdoor to their server system.”

  “Would that compromise the integrity of other cases? Couldn’t anyone just access it and do damage, including your brother?” she asked, the skepticism clear in her voice.

  “No, it would be a highly encrypted password protected way into the sheriff’s office servers. Once this is over you can remove it rather easily.”

  Melinda thought about it for a second, stood up, and remained in her position as she thought it over. “If you can guarantee me the sanctity of the sheriff’s office will stay preserved and that I will have the only access, then I don’t think it would be such a bad idea.”

  As she spoke she stopped in front of the bed and put her belt holster back on, fastening the latches and settling it into place with expertly deft fingertips. They moved so fast that for a moment he was sure her hands were nothing but a blur until she snapped her fingers in front of him.

  “Hello? Earth to Cale.” He looked up and realized that he’d been so mesmerized by her actions that he hadn’t responded to her last statement.

  “Sorry, I can get that ready for you right now,” he said, pulling out a small zip drive and attaching it to his laptop in order to download and run the executable file that would attach itself to the server inside the sheriff’s office.

  “So you just have a file like that on hand?” she asked.

  “Well kind of,” he smiled a little and stood up next to her as the file transferred to the drive. “It was one of my step-dad’s programs, and I still have all of his files.” He looked at her and took a deep breath, steadying himself once again against her beauty even as he continued to talk. “It’s just something I figured I would keep on hand for random spy and espionage type stuff.”

  She smiled, but it was the kind of smile that didn’t whole-heartedly reach her eyes, and he knew that she was weighing him, sizing him up to see if he was trustworthy. He held her gaze steady. There was nothing to hide from her. Charles’ dad may have married his mom but that was where the similarities ended. Cale had done nothing but be completely honest about his intentions. If they were going to work together than they were going to have to overcome this hurdle. The sooner she was able to do this, the quicker they could move on.

  After a moment she nodded her head in agreement. “I don’t see any other way to make sure that we keep up with the agents if I’m not going to be in the office.”

  The computer beeped, alerting him that the file copy was complete. He pulled out the drive and turned around to hand it to Melinda. Apparently she’d heard the beep too and had stood closer to him to see what was happening, and when he turned around he bumped into her. Immediately he stuck out his arm and caught her when she started to fall backward.

  Pulling her close, he found that her head was tilted up at him, her mouth half open in surprise and her eyes wide. In that moment he forgot anything else that existed outside of that moment and he leaned forward, his body almost desperate to kiss her as every muscle in his body tensed in anticipation.

  He leaned down, his lips brushing gently against hers as his hands ran down along her back. Just then they brushed along her gun belt, and the feel of the cold thick leather snapped him out of his reverie. When he pulled back he saw that she had leaned forward as well, her eyes half-lidded as if waiting for him to finish his kiss.

  Standing back, he pulled away gently. Every molecule of his being was telling him to go ahead and kiss her, but instead he held out the drive. Her eyes snapped open the moment that there was a vacancy between them, and the mask of calm descended on her face. Cale sighed, he knew that she would convince herself that none of this had ever happened and he saw the one window on the chance for something between them swing shut.

  “You will want to plug that into a computer that is hooked up to the server,” he told her in a clam tone. “Ideally your office computer would be best, but if you can’t get to it then any other computer in the area will do.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be able to use my computer?” she asked, the defiance already creeping into her voice.

  “I wasn’t saying you wouldn’t, but realistically you might go into work tomorrow to find the entire thing has been commandeered by the agency,” he told her, trying to stay calm. The aggression was her defense mechanism, and when it
popped up so easily he knew that the lingering memory of the almost kiss was haunting her as well.

  “Was there anything else?” she asked.

  “I was just thinking that before you leave it might also be a good idea to run a check to see if any medical warehouses, supply rooms, or even veterinarian clinics have been broken into in the neighboring counties. He’s going to have to patch those wounds soon, and since he can’t just stroll into a pharmacy and pick up…” his voice trailed off just as Melinda’s picked up.

  “I thought of that this afternoon. I have someone at the station on it. As soon as anyone in the medical field reports a break-in we’ll know about it. I hadn’t given too much thought to animal clinics, but I’ll message her when I leave to be sure to add that to her list.”

  “Won’t that just alert the agents to our plan?” he asked, curious why she would trust someone else to be doing this.

  Melinda gave a half smile as she walked to the door and stood there with her hand on the doorknob. “Oh, I seriously doubt they are able to pry anything out of Edna. And if they can…well, then they should probably be given a raise and sent down to interrogate terrorist suspects at Gitmo.” She winked. “Oh, and don’t forget to text me tomorrow as soon as you have all your ducks in a row. I left my personal cell number on the desk.”

  And with that she yanked the door open and disappeared into the night.

  Chapter 6

  Melinda went into work early the next morning, hoping to get a small head start on the agents. She pulled into the parking lot in the hushed pre-dawn hours. The gravel crunching under her tires the only discernible noise. In the parking lot she noticed only a handful of cars, and none of them were marked from the agency. She parked at the very far back corner of the lot by the dumpster, hoping that her SUV might be overlooked for a little while when the lot started to fill up.

  Since she went in through the back door, she did not pass anyone as she walked down the long corridor and made her way to her office. Breathing a sigh of relief as she crossed the dark threshold, she went into her office and closed the door behind her before flipping on the light. She didn’t need that much time, but she knew that she would have to be very quick if she wanted to get everything done that she needed to, before the agents swooped in.