The Cowboy She Never Forgot

by Cheryl Biggs

  It had taken Shane a little over half an hour to get up the winding mountain road to Kate’s place. It took him twenty minutes to get back to town. Luckily there had been only a few other cars on the road. And no cops.

  He came to a squealing halt beside his trailer, then crashed his way inside, not caring if he woke the dead, but there was no one there to wake. Minutes later he was back in his pickup and on his way downtown.

  The streets were crowded with tourists, most meandering from one garishly lit casino to another. Shane cursed as he waited for a throng of them to slowly cross the street. Jamming the pickup into gear the moment the last straggler cleared his fender, Shane pulled into a small parking lot next to one of the larger casinos, slammed the truck’s door behind him, and stalked toward the adjacent store. Over its door was a huge sign that simply said Pawn Shop.

  Shane pushed through the glass door. Second-hand goods of every mode and model available, from stereos to wedding rings, guitars, swords and watches, crowded the walls and glass showcases in the huge room. He slammed the velvet-covered box down on the counter and glared at the clerk, who hurried over to wait on him. “How much for that?” Shane demanded, pushing the box toward the clerk.

  He picked up the box, opened it, and, taking out his eye glass, examined the ring.

  “How much?” Shane snapped again, impatience fairly bristling off him and his tone.

  “Oh, ah...” The man looked up. He smiled nervously, but his beak-thin face barely widened. “Three hundred. I’ll give you three hundred.”

  Shane leaned across the counter, his eyes narrowed menacingly. “I paid two grand for that ring.”

  The clerk looked ready to swallow his tongue and hurriedly looked at the ring again. “Five hundred,” he said, the tremulous smile wavering somewhat. “But that’s as high as I can go, sir, I’m sorry.”

  “Fine.” Shane shoved the money and receipt into his pocket the moment the clerk handed it to him, and walked from the store. Now it was over.

  Chapter 5

  Kate sat at her desk and looked thoughtfully at the stack of files she’d been going through. It had taken several tries to get her attention focused on her work, back on the job, and out of her memories, but she’d finally managed. Solving this case wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d hoped though, unless she managed to either capture their saboteur red-handed or just trip over him.

  She checked back through the list she’d made up from the reports that had come in so far. One of the men hired to work at the Snack Shack was local, and had been arrested twice in Sparks for breaking and entering.

  Craig Lawyler had one arrest in Texas for negligent driving.

  His teenaged brother Josh had a juvenile record, but it was sealed, and Kate knew getting it unsealed would probably take a month of Sundays. She’d put in a call to his old probation officer, but the man had been out, so Kate left a message. Now she could only hope he’d call back, and be willing to talk.

  One of the other barrel racers had been arrested as a suspect, but not charged, in connection with an arson in Utah when she was a teenager. And one of the rodeo’s biggest local independent sponsors had a son who not only had a juvenile record, but since becoming of age had been suspected of assault, robbery and vandalism, all within the last few months. Kate remembered him from a vandalism she’d been called out on. Everybody knew he had done it, but there was no proof, and no eyewitnesses who would talk.

  The real surprise, however, was Tim Norris. He had been arrested a couple of years ago in Colorado for destruction of private property.

  She wouldn’t have expected that of Tim. He’d always seemed so easygoing and laid-back. Kate closed her eyes and kneaded the bridge of her nose with her thumb, trying to ease away the headache haunting the back of her skull. She’d wanted one good, solid suspect. Just one, not half a dozen. And her culprit might not even be anybody on her list. These people might have priors on their records, but she couldn’t see any of them pulling the near-vicious pranks that had been staged at the Reno rodeo. Nor could she reason out a motive for any of them. Especially Tim, who was Shane’s closest friend.

  She remembered the time Shane’s old truck had broken down in Sacramento while he’d been on his way to compete at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. The damage to the undercarriage had been extensive, there wasn’t a vehicle in the city to rent as the place was filled with conventioneers for the weekend, and Cody had already gone on ahead. They’d gotten a late start and had only three hours to get to the arena before Shane’s first scheduled ride, which he’d forfeit if he was late.

  Tim, who’d dallied in Reno at the roulette table, saw them broken down on the side of the road and stopped. Dragging Pamela Jaye up tight against him, he’d insisted Shane and Kate climb in and go with them.

  If he hadn’t done that, Tim would have most likely won the competition that year, as he and Shane had been neck and neck to that point.

  Kate sighed. It couldn’t be Tim. But it could be someone from the craft show, from the carnival, one of the vendors that came and went regularly, a disgruntled stock supplier, or it could just be a local kid out to pull some nasty pranks. Somehow though, she didn’t think so. Shane had been singled out more than anyone else. It was her guess that he was the real target, and the other incidents had just been done as a diversion.

  The thought unsettled her, scared her, but she pushed her personal feelings aside. If she was going to do her job, she had to be objective.

  The question that it all came down to was still the same—why?—what was the prankster’s motive? She glanced at her watch. It was nearing four o’clock, which meant she had to get going soon. Dancer would need a good working out before their ride this evening, and that would have to be done in the arena before the opening ceremonies started.

  A somewhat nasal-sounding voice calling out her name broke through Kate’s thoughts. Gladstone! She cringed. When Aames’s assistant entered the bull pen and summoned you in that distinctive tone it was an invitation you couldn’t refuse, and the Captain was about the last person in the county she wanted to see at the moment. Yanking open a drawer, Kate hurriedly shoved the files into it, slammed it shut, and grabbed her bag. Luckily her desk was partially hidden from view of Aames’s and Gladstone’s offices by a tall file cabinet and a luxuriant devil’s ivy plant growing on top of it. If she was even luckier she could get out of the department, and the precinct, without either of them knowing she’d even been there.

  “Anyone seen Officer Morgan around this afternoon?” Aames’s assistant called out into the room. “Officer Morgan?”

  Kate ducked around a hall corner and bolted for the stairs. Ten minutes later, using her cell phone, she finally acknowledged dispatch, telling them she was at the fairgrounds and would check in with the Captain later, and pulled into the rodeo parking lot. Grabbing her show clothes from the back seat, she walked toward the stalls. She’d work Dancer out for about half an hour, brush her down, then get a quick bite to eat at one of the fast-food vendor shacks in the carnival area before the rodeo started.

  Two men suddenly charged around the corner of one of the stables and ran past her, one accidentally clipping her shoulder and nearly knocking her down.

  Kate stumbled, caught her balance, and glared after the man.

  “Find Hodges,” someone yelled from behind her.

  Kate spun around, startled.

  “Grab a bucket,” someone else hollered.

  A half dozen people hurried past her and toward the opposite end of the stables.

  “Open the arena gates.”

  Suddenly a young girl ran toward Kate with Dancer in tow.

  “Hey, hold on there,” Kate said, jumping in front of the girl and grabbing her arm. “That’s my horse.”

  “Great. Then, here, take her.” The girl shoved Dancer’s reins into Kate’s hands, then spun on her heel and ran back toward the stalls.

  “Wait a minute.” Kate bolted after her and, rounding the corner, sud
denly saw and smelled the acrid smoke billowing out like huge clouds from the area near Dancer’s stall. She stopped instantly, stunned. Dancer pawed at the ground and tugged on her lead rope, not at all happy about moving back into that gray cloud.

  One man was dousing a bale of hay with a fire extinguisher, while several others tossed buckets of water on it, and tried to fan the smoke away.

  Kate saw Samson coming toward her, and glanced at the man leading him. It wasn’t Shane.

  She ran up to him. “Where’s Shane? Is he all right? What happened?”

  Craig Lawyler stopped and turned to look down at her. Soot and sweat covered his handsome face and the front and sleeves of his once-white dress shirt. His gaze raked over her insolently, and he broke into a flirtatious smile.

  She recognized him instantly from the PRCA booklet she’d gotten from the association office earlier, and the picture that had been included with the background check she’d had done on him.

  “Kate Morgan, right?” he said. “Larrabee’s lady.”

  “Where is he?” she asked again, ignoring his question, and the interest she saw in his eyes. Fear clutched at her heart. Panic fueled every molecule in her body. She grabbed his shirtfront. “Where’s Shane?”

  Craig shrugged. “I don’t know, haven’t seen him. But you can bunk your filly in my stall, if you want.”

  “What happened?” Kate demanded, looking past him now. “What’s going on?”

  He resettled the hat on his head, slid a toothpick into one corner of his mouth, and looked back over his shoulder at the still smoldering hay bale, his features settling into a thoughtful expression.

  Kate felt on the verge of trying to shake some answers out of him, when he finally spoke. “Looks like someone pulled a bale of hay up to the stalls, covered it with oil, then set it on fire.” One side of his mouth quirked up into a half smile. “I’ll tell ya, they don’t catch the creep that’s doing this pretty soon, there’s going to be hell to pay. Somebody’s gonna get hurt.”

  Several other cowboys, leading horses that had been in the adjoining stalls, hurried past.

  Kate brushed around Craig and walked to the stalls that only moments earlier had housed Dancer and Samson. Their blue, aluminum front walls and gates were black with smoke.

  She swore softly. Their saboteur was getting bolder... and more dangerous. But had the attack been directed at Shane again, or at her?

  The screeching of tires sliced through the noise of panicked horses and frightened and demanding people. Kate barely had time to identify the sound in her mind, but her whole body tensed in anticipation of the loud crash that reverberated throughout the area a split second later.

  Mayhem ensued.

  Kate turned back toward the parking lot. Several cowboys ran past her. One yelled out for someone to call 911. A truck had smashed into one of the light poles.

  A security officer ran past, a cell phone in his hand.

  The nurse from the Justin medical trailer charged down its stairs and hurried toward the parking lot, yelling for someone to find the doctor.

  Another cowboy hollered for an ambulance.

  Dancer fidgeted nervously, jerking on his lead rope in an effort to get away from the bedlam surrounding him.

  “Whoa,” Kate said absently. She glanced toward the burning stalls, then at the parking lot. Shane. Her heart nearly dropped to her feet, and her blood turned cold. She saw Josh Lawyler.

  “Josh.” She grabbed at his arm and shoved Dancer’s reins into his hands. “Put Dancer in the arena.” With that, Kate whirled and ran toward the gate, praying, hoping, willing it not to be Shane.

  The hiss of steam mingled with the shouts of the people around the truck.

  Shane’s pickup. Her mind screamed a denial, but she couldn’t refuse to believe what her eyes could see. It was Shane’s pickup lodged up against one of the parking lot’s overhead light poles.

  “He’s unconscious,” someone yelled.

  “Get the damned door open,” Jim Hodges ordered loudly.

  Kate wove through the cars in the lot, rolling over the hood of one in order to cut short her route.

  Cody Larrabee was jerking on the driver’s side door of the pickup. “I can’t, it’s locked. Or stuck.”

  “Passenger side’s too wedged up against the pole,” another cowboy yelled.

  “Son of a—get something to bust out the windshield with,” Cody ordered. He pounded a fist on the door’s window and jerked on the handle again. “Shane!” Panic laced his voice. “Shane, dammit, wake up. Shane!”

  “It’s gonna blow,” someone said.

  Kate’s heart skipped a beat, then nearly stopped altogether when she saw the motorcycle wedged beneath Shane’s truck, and the pool of gasoline forming beneath both vehicles. “Oh, God.” Her entire body began to tremble as terror threatened to overtake her.

  She ran up beside Cody. “Get him out,” she screamed, grabbing the door handle and jerking frantically on it. “Shane! Shane!”

  He lay slumped and pale halfway into the passenger seat, his head cocked at an awkward angle between the two headrests. Blood streamed down one side of his face from a gash on his cheekbone.

  “You have to get him out,” she screamed, mindless of everything except Shane stuck inside of a truck that could blow up at any moment.

  “Get out of the way, Kate,” Cody grabbed her arm and pulled her aside.

  The sound of a siren split the air.

  Startled, Kate spun around.

  Someone ran up with a hose and started squirting water under the vehicles.

  A man shoved a crowbar in between the door of the truck and its panel.

  “Here, wait!” A woman screamed.

  The men paused.

  “Don’t stop,” Kate shrieked.

  A petite brunette ran up and shoved a key in Jim Hodges’s hand. “It’s his,” she snapped. “To the truck. Hurry.”

  The man with the crowbar grabbed the key and shoved it into the lock. The door opened with a groan of its slightly bent hinges.

  “Get him out, quick,” Cody ordered, shoving past several other people to get to his brother.

  Kate moved behind him, needing to get to Shane, needing to make sure he was all right.

  “Shane,” Cody said, as they dragged him from the pickup. “Shane, can you hear me?”

  Kate reached out to him, but the petite brunette moved in front of her, blocking her way. “Shane,” she said, grabbing one of his hands. “Are you all right?”

  Two paramedics pushed their way through the crowd.

  “Get out of the way,” Cody yelled, standing and pushing at several people. “Give them room.”

  The paramedics dropped down beside Shane. One instantly began setting up to give him oxygen, while the other checked his vital signs.

  “No sign of alcohol,” one said.

  Kate, gripped by fear, wanting to scream at someone to do something more, bit down on her lip, wrapped her arms across her body, clenched her fists, and fought back tears. Her gaze darted from Shane, lying on the ground unconscious, to Cody, hovering nearby, back to Shane, and then to the woman kneeling beside him, her face streaked with tears. Kate recognized her as one of the barrel racers.

  “Shane, honey, you’ll be all right,” the woman crooned softly, over and over as she rocked back and forth on her knees and held his hand tightly between her own.

  The paramedics worked fast. Within seconds they’d recorded Shane’s vital signs, given him a shot of something, had him on oxygen, and strapped onto a gurney.

  “Is he all right?” Cody asked. He jerked on one of the paramedic’s arms as they lifted Shane in preparation to leave for the hospital. “Will he be okay?”

  “Unless there’s some trauma from that knock on the head, he should be fine,” the man said. “Doesn’t look like any internal injuries. Nothing broken.”

  Kate breathed a sigh of relief, but her entire body continued to tremble. He could have been killed. The words echoed t
hrough her mind. She moved to follow them to the ambulance, wanting to be with Shane, needing to be near him when he woke, to make certain he really was okay, but the other woman hurried alongside him, holding his hand and talking softly, and looking absolutely terrified. She scrambled into the ambulance after Shane and the paramedic shut the door and ran around to the driver’s door.

  A fire truck arrived and two firemen began hosing the gasoline away.

  Kate saw Cody climbing into his own pickup. A second later he sped out of the parking lot in pursuit of the ambulance. She felt suddenly lost. Empty. And scared.

  “What the hell happened?” Jim Hodges bellowed, looking back at Shane’s pickup.

  Kate jerked around. That was a good question. Had something dodged in front of Shane, a dog or cat, and caused him to swerve and lose control of the truck? Or had it been something else? Something connected to their saboteur?

  She wanted desperately to go to the hospital. But she needed to find the answer to what had just happened, to what had been happening here for the past several days.

  Hodges’s accusing gaze found hers and burrowed deep.

  Do your job, Kate, she told herself sternly. Shane will be all right. The best way to help him now is to find out what happened. Find out who it is who’s out to hurt him.

  She dragged in a long, calming breath, and shook herself. She approached Hodges. “I can’t do much as long as all these people are milling around. Not without giving my cover away,” she said softly.

  “Fine,” he snapped. “I’ll get rid of them, but when you’re done here, come to my office. We need to talk.”

  “About?” Kate challenged.

  Hodges looked around nervously, then shook his head. “Not here.” Without explaining further, he turned to the small crowd that had gathered and began waving his arms in a pushing motion, as if to herd them all back toward the arena. “Okay, folks, c’mon, it’s all over. Time to get back to work. Everything’s fine now.”

  Kate walked back to Shane’s pickup and began looking at it carefully. The first thing she thought was that it was not an accident. She looked for skid marks on the pavement. There were none near the pickup. She walked across the lot. His skid marks ended barely halfway into the lot, while the pole he hit was nearer the rear of the lot. And just about where the skidmarks ceased was where he’d hit the parked motorcycle. She bent down and looked under the truck. The motorcycle’s gas tank was half severed from its support, but Shane’s undercarriage was intact.