by Janet Dailey
Before it did, Quint drew back scant inches. “It’s late. You’d better get some sleep.”
Regret flickered briefly in her eyes. Then a tiny frown puckered her forehead. “I thought of something. Now I can’t remember what it was.”
“That’s because you’re tired. It’ll come to you in the morning,” he said and braced a hand on the bed to push himself away from it.
“You don’t have to go, Quint.” It was a statement, issued softly, not an appeal.
More than tempted, Quint studied the heavy lidding of her eyes and smiled. “If I stayed, neither one of us would get much sleep. And you’re halfway there right now.”
“I know.” Her smile was lazy with sleepiness even as she snuggled a little deeper into her bed, settling herself in for the night.
“See you in the morning.” He dropped a light kiss on her nose and turned off the lamp as he straightened up from the bed.
“Good night.” Her voice floated after him when he crossed to the door.
Only a handful of reporters showed up at the ranch the next morning. They looked with regret at the healthy cattle standing in the pen and halfheartedly recorded the scene when Quint distributed hay to the animals. They lingered for a while until it became apparent no new story would be coming from the ranch. The last one pulled out a little before noon.
During lunch, Jessy called, alerting them to expect a delivery of hay that afternoon. There would be only six of the smaller-sized round bales. Considering that only ten square bales remained in the barn, the news was welcome.
Armed with a grocery list, Dallas headed to the store after lunch. She waved to Quint when she pulled out of the ranch yard. His own trip to the city to switch pickups had been delayed by the arrival of a state inspector.
In less than an hour, Dallas paid for her purchases at the checkout counter and wheeled the cart out of the store into the bright sunlight. The air had a hint of sharpness to it, but the sun blazed a hot counterpoint, the heat of its rays warm on her face.
Dallas rolled the cart to the rear of the white pickup and lowered the tailgate. Turning back to the sacks in the cart, she paid no attention to the tan and white truck that pulled into the empty slot next to hers. She lifted a sack from the cart and pivoted to set it in the pickup just as the driver’s door of the other vehicle swung open and Boone Rutledge’s muscular frame emerged from it. The bright glitter in his dark eyes and the cocky smile on his face told Dallas that he had known where to find her.
A cold loathing welled up inside her. “Did your spies tell you I was here?” Dallas challenged and reached for another sack, a tightly controlled anger stiffening her movements.
“What do you think?” Boone mocked and strolled over to the tailgate. “I’ve been waiting to hear from you.”
“Why?” She flashed him a chilling look and shoved another sack into the truck.
“Echohawk’s bound to be sweating—three cows dead from anthrax, his cattle quarantined, and his hay running low.”
Dallas longed to slap that smug look from his face. She settled for taunting. “You seem to know everything already. Obviously there isn’t anything I need to tell you.”
But it was the phrase “know everything” that clicked in her mind, and Dallas remembered the thought she had wanted to tell Quint last night. With a rare sense of anticipation, she turned to face Boone, tilting her head at a provocative and faintly challenging angle, a small smile curving her mouth. The essentially male side of Boone looked at her with quickening interest.
“You aren’t really going to try to convince me that the Rutledges didn’t have anything to do with those cows dying of anthrax, are you?” Dallas murmured.
Shock brought a flicker of panic to his eyes, and a telling pause that was heavy with guilt. “What makes you think we did?” He smiled, as if amused by such a ridiculous suggestion, but his gaze was a bit too sharp and searching in its intent study of her.
Dallas had no doubt that Quint’s suspicions were true. But she needed more than that. “Because it was so ingenious, of course. And the very last thing anyone would expect.”
“You did,” Boone stated, unaware that his words were an admission of sorts.
“Experience gives me the advantage of knowing just how dirty and devious the Rutledges can be. There is very little you wouldn’t dare, is there?” Venom coated her words, and Dallas made no attempt to disguise it, aware that Boone would instantly be wary if she tried to act friendly or cooperative.
“I knew you were smart. Make sure you stay that way.” His eyes had the smug gleam of a man convinced he had the upper hand.
“I intend to.” But not in the way he meant it.
“Is Echohawk wondering if we had something to do with the anthrax?”
It was a question Dallas had expected him to ask much earlier. Her nonanswer was all prepared. “Why should he? They were Cee Bar cattle on Cee Bar land. I’m still trying to figure out how you managed that.” She looked at him with unfeigned curiosity. “After all, they’re range animals, hardly tame enough to be hand-fed. And if you set out contaminated feed, there was no guarantee it would be eaten right away—and a definite risk that it could be discovered.” She paused, not at all sure the ploy would work. “I’m curious. How did you do it?”
Mentally Dallas crossed her fingers, hoping against hope that Boone wouldn’t be able to resist the opportunity to boast of his cleverness.
The wideness of his smile signaled her success. “It was a simple matter of throwing up a portable holding pen to confine them and setting out some contaminated feed for them to eat.”
“But—you would have had to do that on the Slash R land,” Dallas said, feigning surprise.
Boone shrugged. “How can it be our fault if the boundary fence is in such bad shape that a few cows stray onto Slash R range? Naturally we had to push them back on their own side.”
“Something that would have looked completely innocent to any chance passerby. But you ran the risk of infecting your own cattle,” Dallas said, subtly pressing for more information.
“Hardly,” Boone scoffed in amusement. “Not when you have someone with all the training to know the safe way to do it.”
“That would be you, I suppose.” But she saw at once that her acid flattery wouldn’t succeed in getting an answer from him this time.
“That’s something you don’t need to know,” he replied in easy unconcern.
“It never hurts to ask.” She turned away and proceeded to calmly transfer the grocery sacks from the cart to the pickup bed.
“So what’s Echohawk doing about hay?” Boone prompted.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Dallas took great satisfaction in throwing the question at his face with cool contempt.
He went from smugness to barely contained fury in a lightning instant, grabbing her arm and viciously digging his fingers into her flesh, finding bone. “Don’t get smart with me, you little bitch.”
Making no effort to struggle, Dallas gave him an icy stare. “Let go of me or I’ll scream loud enough for the whole town to hear.”
“Go ahead,” he jeered. “Nobody’s going to come to your rescue. Now tell me what I want to know.”
His grip tightened, the pain intensifying as he twisted her arm higher, but Dallas refused to give him the satisfaction of crying out.
“I guess I forgot to tell you.” She fought to keep the pain out of her voice. The effort gave it a constricted sound. “You won’t be getting any more information from me.”
Dallas tilted her face to him in stubborn defiance, her attention focused on the fiery black glitter of his eyes. There was no awareness of the hand he swung at her until it slammed against her cheek, snapping her head to the side.
There was an explosion of color behind her eyes and a roaring in her ears. She never heard the squeal of skidding tires.
Blinded with his own rage, Boone took no notice of it either as he seized her chin in a viselike grip. “You’d better wise up
—”
Quint jerked Boone away from her and shoved him into the tailgate. “You’re the one who’d better wise up, Rutledge.” Something savage glittered in his gray eyes. “You touch her again and you’re liable to find yourself in a wheelchair like your father.”
“You think you could do it?” Boone challenged, smiling with an eagerness that matched the avid and ready gleam in his eyes.
Dallas’s voice came between them before a fist could be swung. “The Rutledges infected the cattle with anthrax, Quint. He admitted it.”
Stunned, Boone threw her a shocked look, then yanked his gaze back to Quint. “That’s a damned lie. I never said anything of the kind.”
“Worried, are you?” Quint smiled with a cold kind of pleasure.
“No cattleman would mess around with anthrax.” Boone’s denial had all the readiness of something rehearsed.
“How true,” Dallas said in a voice brittle with control. “But the Rutledges stopped being cattlemen a long time ago.” She turned to Quint, her chin lifting fractionally. “Would you like to know why he hit me?”
A puzzled wariness leaped into his expression as if Quint sensed something amiss. “Why?”
“Because I refused to act as his spy and keep him informed about your plans the way I’ve done in the past.” She watched as his gray eyes narrowed on her with an intermixing of disbelief, anger, and pain. The sight was like a fist closing around her heart.
“She’s making the whole thing up,” Boone rushed in denial. “Everybody knows she’s been trying to make trouble for us ever since her grandfather lost his ranch.”
Quint unleashed the sharp edge of his temper on Boone. “I don’t want to hear another word out of you. Just get in your truck and get the hell out of here.”
Boone took a sideways step, hesitated, and pointed an accusing finger at Dallas. “I tell you she’s lying. You can’t trust anything she says.”
“I can’t trust you either,” Quint fired back. “Now get.”
Boone ran a calculating glance over Quint. Satisfied that he had planted all the doubt he could, he sidled clear of the white pickup and backed up a few steps before turning to his own pickup.
Dallas waited in silence, cold all over, but Quint never turned to her until Boone drove off. When he did, his gaze bored into her, demanding and probing.
“Is it true what you said? You’ve been feeding him information?” Disbelief lingered that she could have betrayed him like that.
The guilt of it weighed on her. “I intended to tell you before now, but…the time never seemed right,” Dallas admitted.
“But how? Why?” His voice was thick with anger.
“That day I came to the ranch and told you Boone made threats against Empty—that part was true. I knew I could never persuade my grandfather to quit working for you, so I did what I had to do to protect him.” It was an explanation. Pride wouldn’t let her beg for his understanding. “I hardly knew you then, Quint.”
He stared at her, wrapped in a fury and pain that ran deep and hot. Too hot. Not trusting himself to speak, Quint turned and walked back to the idling pickup, slipped behind the wheel, and slammed the door.
Dallas watched him drive off. There were always consequences to be faced with every action taken, but Dallas had never guessed there would be so much pain with this one.
Chapter Seventeen
The Cee Bar ranch yard was blessedly empty of other vehicles when Dallas drove in. She parked the old white pickup in front of the ranch house and climbed out, hastily scrubbing the dampness from her cheek with her hand.
But it didn’t seem to matter how many tears she wiped away; there was always another waiting to slither down her face. It was all part of the big, hollow ache in her chest.
Creaking door hinges came from the porch as Empty emerged from the house. “I’ll give you a hand bringing the groceries in.” Spindly but spry legs carried him quickly down the steps to the walkway.
Dallas pressed a quick finger to a corner of her eye, blotting away a gathering tear, and took a long galvanizing breath, steeling herself for this meeting with her grandfather. In an attempt at normalcy, she lowered the tailgate and went through the motions of dragging the sacks onto it.
But it was the reddening mark on her face from the hard blow Boone had given her, and not the dampness on her cheeks, that Empty’s sharp eyes noticed. His demand for an explanation was instant.
There was no longer anything to be gained by avoiding the truth, and Dallas didn’t try. She told him everything, omitting only Boone’s admission about the anthrax. The explosion that followed was one she had anticipated.
“You did what!” Empty thundered in outrage. Dallas didn’t bother to repeat it. He knew exactly what she’d said. “How could you do that? My own granddaughter siding with the Rutledges! By God, I oughta take a belt to you. What was going through that head of yours?”
“I explained that.” Dallas absorbed his wrath with remarkable stoicism, thanks to a pain of a different kind that had left her numb.
“To protect me!” The contempt in his voice told her exactly what he thought of that reasoning. “For your information, little lady, I’m not so old that I can’t look after myself. And I sure don’t need you stabbing me in the back while I’m trying. I tell you, it flat turns my stomach to think of my own flesh and blood doing the Rutledges’s bidding.”
“Not anymore,” Dallas reminded him. “I told Boone that he’d received the last information from me that he was ever going to get.”
“A little late, wasn’t it?” Empty snapped.
Her head lifted. “You always told me it was never too late to correct a mistake.”
Her words took some of the fire from him, but didn’t change the glare in his eyes. “You’re through with them. That’s something, I guess.”
He subsided into silence and Dallas reached for one of the grocery sacks. Empty threw her a sideways glance, measuring and thoughtful.
“What did Quint say when you told him?”
“Nothing.” Dallas wrapped both arms around the bag, holding it tightly in front of her as if it might provide protection or comfort. “He just got in his truck and drove off.”
Empty dragged in a deep breath and let it gust out. “Guess there wasn’t much you could expect him to say after telling him a thing like that. You’re probably lucky he didn’t tell you to get the hell out of his sight.” He grabbed up a sack. “Guess we might as well get these groceries in the house and start packing. It’s not likely he’s going to want us here anymore. It might be better for us to be gone when he gets back.”
“No.” Dallas was surprised by the forcefulness of her answer. Yet she felt the rightness of her stand. “Somebody has to be here when the hay’s delivered. And if anyone leaves, it will only be me. I’m not going to let him blame you for what I did.”
“You aren’t going to go anywhere without me,” he stated firmly.
Dallas shook her head. “Quint needs you. And if he wants me gone, he’ll have to tell me.”
Empty offered no argument, but there was a sadness in his eyes. “You love him, don’t you?” he guessed.
“Yes.” She choked up.
“I just wished you had trusted him a little, Dallas.”
His words were a poignant echo of similar advice Quint had given not so many nights ago. And trust was the issue—a broken trust that might never be made whole again.
The upthrust of glass and granite soared four stories into the air. Its sleek, polished sides mirrored the blue of the Texas sky and reflected the image of the black pickup that pulled into an empty slot in the parking lot. Quint piled out of the cab, slamming the door behind him, and headed for the building’s entrance, a long-striding walk propelling him toward the door.
There was one thought and one thought only in his mind right now. No matter what rawly emotional road his mind had traveled during the drive to Fort Worth, it had always come full circle back to one thing—the Rutledges. Their b
lack hearts had been behind it all.
When he reached the executive suite on the fourth floor, Quint shoved aside the glass doors, mindless of their wild swing. A trim brunette glanced up from her desk and smiled warmly.
“Good afternoon.” Her gaze traveled over his face with open interest.
His glance had already darted past her to the closed door just to the left of her desk. “Is Rutledge in?” Quint gestured to the door without ever slackening his pace toward it.
“Mr. Rutledge is in conference right now. If you would care to—” She broke off in alarm when he walked past her desk. Rising from her chair, she protested, “You can’t go in there.”
Quint spared her a dry, cold look. “Watch me.”
A testing turn of the handle revealed the door wasn’t locked. He pushed the door open and followed it into the office.
His sweeping gaze ignored the room’s sleek, contemporary decor and abstract art, and centered instead on the three men in the room. Max Rutledge sat in his wheelchair behind the steel and wood corner desk. Boone stood facing him. A third man dressed in a western-cut suit and bolo tie hovered next to Max, his manner that of a closely trusted underling.
Boone whirled around, surprise dissolving into a black fury at the sight of Quint. “What the hell are you doing barging in here?”
Unaffected by the angry challenge, Quint continued forward, gripped by the cool dispassion of battle. “I might have known you would race straight here to warn Max that you’d lost your informant.”
The frantic look Boone darted at his father and the surprise that flickered so briefly in Max’s expression told Quint that Boone hadn’t gotten around to relating that piece of news. Something snapped in Boone. Teeth bared, he lunged for Quint.
Sidestepping to avoid the onrush, Quint grabbed Boone’s arm, twisted it behind him, and gave him a shove into a nearby chair, all without breaking a sweat. Boone crashed into it and lay there for a dazed second, not at all sure what happened to him or how.
In his side vision, Quint saw the third man pick up the telephone. He pointed a finger at him while keeping a wary watch on Quint.