“When?” she asked, fully interested.
“About a half hour ago,” he told her. “Looked furious. Reeked of booze. If I’m being honest here, I’d bet my left nut that Delilah’s up and jumped town just to avoid the guy.”
“You need your nuts, Ronnie, don’t go betting them away.”
Ronnie furrowed his brow at her, all insulted, and asked, “You sayin’ I ain’t got balls, Whitney?”
“If you did, you would’ve asked her out by now, wouldn’t you have?” she challenged.
He didn’t much appreciate her tone but left it at that, stomping out of the stable so that she couldn’t insult him further.
Whitney was in no mood either. Once she’d gotten Buttons all saddled up, she decided that Shane could try his hand with Thunder, Yellowstone’s most rebellious stallion.
It brought a dark grin to her face as she wrangled Thunder out of his stall. He bucked his head and protested as she wrestled the harness into his chomping mouth.
As she walked Thunder out into the bright sunshine where Shane had been waiting and scanning the hikers, she handed him the reins and said, “Good luck with this one. Thunder’s just about as stubborn as you are.”
“I have to ride a horse?”
“You have to be with me all day,” she reminded him. “And you’ll never keep up on foot.”
“The only stubborn thing I feel like riding is you, my dear,” he told her point-blank.
It turned her on and made her furious all at once.
“You had your chance last night.”
“And this is payback?”
***
Though PO Rachel Clancy had stalked around the silver Lexus registered to Dante Alighieri last night, the mysterious man had been nowhere to be found. She’d waited near the flashy vehicle, but he never showed. She’d peered into the darkened souvenir shop, but had seen no movement within. After she’d gone off duty, having returned to the station to clock out, she’d changed quickly out of her dress blues and into something far more casual at her apartment and stopped in at Libations just to see if Dante was there. He hadn’t been.
Where in the hell was he?
He was wanted for questioning in regards to the Gladstone case. He had to know that, which was why he’d skipped down, returning to whatever city his latest investment deals were likely going down in. What city? Rachel had no way of knowing, but that was neither here nor there since the wanted man had had the gall and audacity to return to Devil’s Fist and park his Lexus right out in the open for all eyes to see.
Ballsy.
She’d give him that. He’d come back to town despite the crime he’d committed. She had every intention of tracking him down, and if logic prevailed, it was safe to assume that sooner or later, he’d return to his luxury vehicle, which was why Rachel was circling it now as the stark Wyoming sun blazed down on her in the sky.
The windows of the Lexus were tinted so black that she had half a mind to wonder if he was holed up in the backseat taking a nap. The man exuded wealth so she didn’t see why he’d take to sleeping in his car. He’d sooner check in to one of the motels out in the plains. Of course, if he had, he wouldn’t have parked here on Bison Road just shy of Main Street.
Her dress blues were causing her to sweat something fierce out here. She yanked at the tight collar of her police uniform then wiped her dewy brow.
The souvenir shop sat right on the corner, its large picture windows facing both streets.
Rachel reasoned she could wait inside the little shop where the AC would surely be blasting. That way she could cool off and watch through the window that faced Bison Road and the parked Lexus. Maybe she’d get lucky and Dante would breeze on through like he owned the place.
It was as good an idea as any so she started around the corner, coming onto Main Street before ducking into the little souvenir store.
It was cool, alright. Cool as a crisp cucumber. God bless air conditioning, she thought as she edged deeper into the store that was chock-full of paperweights and postcards.
Rachel certainly expected to find a tourist or two in Devil’s Advocate, maybe a cluster of residents who were also interested in enjoying the winter-crisp AC, but when she came face to face with Dante Alighieri himself, her heart skipped a thrilled beat and she forgot the beads of sweat that were uncomfortably dripping down her back.
He chilled her.
Their eyes locked. His were dark. So dark that she couldn’t determine the color from where he stood at the very back of the store where an Employees Only sign spanned across a closed door. He was dressed in a tailored suit, a shiny grey tie that had to be designer, and wing-tipped loafers. His dark hair was slicked back in a professional style and as a creepy grin spread across his devilishly handsome face, she got the distinct sense that he’d hoped to run into her.
“Alighieri,” she stated as she walked, shoulders back and head held high, through the store towards him.
“Officer Clancy, I presume,” he said as though he’d never been more pleasured in all his life to encounter a woman.
She wondered how he knew her name until she remembered it was sewn into her uniform.
“Lovely weather we’re having,” he commented as though they were old friends.
“What brings you to the Fist?” she asked, feeling her eyebrows knit together.
She didn’t like how he towered over her, nor how relaxed he seemed. She would rattle him. As God was her witness, she’d have him trembling in those boastful loafers of his by the end of the hour.
“I’ve some business to attend to,” he said as though it was grand news. “It seems the old Halsey land won’t remain a thick, unrealized forest for much longer.”
“Is that right?” she questioned skeptically.
“If I have anything to do with it,” he allowed.
“This would be the Halsey land that you unlawfully imprisoned Reece Gladstone on?” she said, enjoying how his smug grin faltered in response.
He let out a silky chuckle as though she was as cute as a kitten and balked, “Unlawfully imprisoned? That’s rich, Officer. Why on earth would you say something like that?”
“Because that’s what you did,” she informed him with a hard edge in her tone. “We saw the cage, the chains. We found your firearms. We have Reece’s statement.”
“Ah, but if you really did have a statement from Reece to that effect, I’d have been arrested by now,” he countered.
She narrowed her eyes at him. Reece had been waffling worse than Aunt Jemima, and unfortunately Dante wasn’t wrong. Even if Reece’s statement had been valid, neither Rachel nor the sheriff trusted it would hold up in court, because neither trusted that Reece would show up to testify if and when a trial ensued.
But Dante didn’t know that.
“Why don’t we chat in detail about that next door?” she proposed.
He jangled the snow globe in his large hand and a flutter of snow twirled around the Tetons inside the glass dome, as he said, “I might find the time once I finish up a little shopping. I love these things, don’t you?”
“I wasn’t asking, Dante,” she informed him. “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.”
“Why don’t we do this over a bottle of Shiraz and chilled oysters?” he countered with all the confidence in the world.
Just as Rachel was about to tell him where he could shove his Shiraz, she felt a numb wash of darkness crash over her. Her vision went soft and she lost all sense of her arms, her legs, her self. And yet the incredible sense of calm that was coming over her made her feel as though she might like to go anywhere with this man. He was attractive. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? She felt drawn to him, and she had his attention. Maybe he’d whisk her away to some other, glamorous life? She was starting to think she might like that, very much, but at the same time she felt painfully aware that her thoughts didn’t seem to be her own. If she tried to jerk away from her attraction to him, she felt stung.
Was he controlling her?
Dante stepped in close and tucked a loose lock of brown hair behind her ear, but it didn’t satisfy him. He stepped in closer and gently pulled her hair elastic, releasing her wavy, brown hair from the ponytail she’d tied it in.
His scent was intoxicating, his stature arousing, and she felt a strong, dark pull that drew her closer and closer to him. She didn’t want to kiss him. She wanted to jerk free of this madness, but she was helpless.
“Hey!”
Conor Quinn started through the store, glaring at Dante as he charged through.
Rachel recognized his voice, but it wasn’t until Conor took her by the arm and protectively pulled her against his chest, holding her face against his shoulder as if shielding him from the dark man that the spell Dante had placed over her was broken.
A torrent of emotion tore through Rachel, and the next thing she knew she was sobbing into Conor’s embrace, only vaguely aware that Dante was walking briskly out of the souvenir shop.
She managed to steady her emotions, unsure of why she’d collapsed into a fit of tears, but it was too late. Through the storefront windows, she saw the silver Lexus race up Main Street.
She looked up at Conor and searched his eyes. “What the hell just happened?” she asked him.
He stared down at her then pulled her in close, holding her with the intensity of a man who had almost lost something precious.
“I have no idea,” Conor told her. “But he won’t get away with it.”
***
It had been a little evil of Whitney to expect Shane would have a prayer of riding Thunder. As she’d led the horseback tour along Eagle’s Pass, she’d chuckled to herself at how Shane, a military-trained bodyguard, a man who could annihilate even the most violent adversary, had virtually no control over the massive stallion. Thunder had taken off at times, bolting at a gallop. Shane had just been along for the ride, but to give him credit, he hadn’t allowed the horse to throw him. It felt like vindication, a little dark all be told, but vindication nonetheless.
If Shane wanted to be cold and cruel, well, two could play at that game and Whitney had asserted that she’d be damned if she didn’t win.
“You made your point,” he allowed, having finally climbed off Thunder when they’d reached the corral stables. “I’m not sure exactly what point, but you won.”
“Yes, I did,” she smiled. “And the point was: don’t be an ass.”
“Noted,” he surrendered as he handed her the reins.
As Whitney turned to walk Thunder and Buttons into the stable, Shane caught her wrist and twirled her around to face him.
He pulled her in and captured her, his large hands holding her hips as he kept her firmly pressed against the hard length of his body.
“I thought we said we wouldn’t control each other,” he reminded her, his deep voice turning smooth and seductive. “Wasn’t that the real point, Whitney?”
He had her there and she knew it.
“That you wouldn’t try to tame me,” he went on. “And that I wouldn’t try to stifle your spirit either?”
“I’m not trying to tame you, Shane—”
“Aren’t you, though?”
“You totally shut down last night. I couldn’t talk to you and—”
“I have a dark side,” he told her, aggressively asserting what she knew in her heart had always been true about him. “You won’t always be able to reach me. You have to accept it or else this will never work.”
“But—”
“You have to accept it,” he told her more strongly. “I’m not your father. You can’t stomp your foot and sulk and expect me to bend to your will. You’ll never change or control me.”
“You were being—”
“Flawed,” he supplied. “That’s what I was being and that’s what I am. Accept it.”
She stared at him for a long moment as Thunder tried to nudge his long nose into the conversation. She pushed the horse aside and he whinnied, but she kept her attention on the man who she now understood would challenge her like no one else ever had.
“Can you?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly.
“Why don’t you try trusting me?” he suggested but it sounded like a harsh criticism. “Don’t be insecure.”
“I’m not insecure,” she protested, yet she felt the sting of how right he was.
“You were,” he maintained. “You thought I’d pulled away because of you or something you did. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, not everything is about you.”
She thought he might kiss her. She wanted him to, but instead he urged her away, releasing her so that she could tend to the horses.
“I guess we’re still getting to know each other,” she offered, hoping it would soften him.
It didn’t and she had no choice but to drop it and accept that she wouldn’t get away with pouting her way into his arms. She walked the horses into the stable.
As they drove in Shane’s pickup truck all the way back to his cabin, she felt urge after urge to reach out and take his hand. He was being cold again. She reminded herself of what he’d just told her. She wished he’d bridge the gap between them, but he wasn’t going to. He was a stone-cold rock, and strangely, this dark side of his seemed to magnetize her to him. It was sexy. Intimidating, but sexy. She didn’t like it, but it was turning her on. She wanted that anger of his to compel him to take her, roughly, and it was with that in mind that she climbed out of his truck when they reached his house.
But the second they did, an old growling Buick flew to a dirt-spitting stop in the driveway and Larry Hardcastle jumped out, furious as all hell, with what appeared to be a woman’s dress in his balled fist.
“You messin’ with me, Quinn? You dirty son of a bitch!” he yelled as he whipped the dress at Shane’s feet.
The garment fluttered to the dirt as Shane stiffened for a fight.
“You stay the hell off my property, you hear! I know what you’re doin’, you crazy bastard! You stay the hell away!”
Before Shane could question him, Larry jumped back into his Buick and tore out of the driveway, dirt and gravel flying up from his spinning tires. He reversed down the length of the driveway, then swung around and threw the bulky vehicle into Drive and there was nothing but a cloud of dust in his wake by the time he reached Berry Road.
“What the hell was that about?” Whitney asked as Shane picked up the dress and turned it over in his hands.
He didn’t answer her, but his eyes widened with what appeared to be recognition as he studied the woman’s garment in his hands.
It was covered in blood.
Chapter Eleven
SHANE
“That’s Delilah’s?” Whitney asked with a shrill edge of fear in her quivering tone, as Shane stared at the bloody dress in his hand. “That has to be Delilah’s.”
“Get in the cabin,” he ordered.
“Why would Larry Hardcastle have her dress?” she demanded. “Why would it be bloody?”
“Get in the cabin!” he barked as he took rough hold of her upper arms and escorted her there himself. He cut his dark eyes over his shoulder, scanning the dirt driveway, the trees that lined it, his brothers’ cabins through the foliage. When he unlocked the front door and pushed it open for her to step inside, he ordered, “Go.”
Not only was it Delilah’s dress, Shane recognized it as the one she’d been wearing when she’d ambushed him the night of the parade. It was undoubtedly the dress she’d worn and even if he hadn’t been certain, there were two photos hidden in a gun case beneath his bed to prove it. She’d been wearing the same dress when she was propped, unconscious, on his living room couch.
But in that second Polaroid of Delilah—unconscious or dead in his cabin—there’d been no blood on her. No blood on the dress that was now stained in his hand. It told him that whoever had taken her, whoever had harmed or killed her, had inflicted the blood-drawn wound after they’d snappe
d the second photo.
Now Shane had three pieces of incriminating evidence in his possession, two highly suspect photo images that told a dark story of Shane having attacked Delilah, as well as the evidence of her bloody dress. It all pointed to Shane having committed a heinous crime, one he most certainly hadn’t.
Was Hardcastle behind it all? Was his sloppy, drunken behavior a clever front? Had this method of delivery—showing up at Shane’s cabin to essentially hand-plant evidence at Shane’s feet in what had appeared to be an accusatory fit of anger—been a calculated ploy to supply yet another piece of evidence with Shane to threaten, intimidate, or warn him?
Or was the guy truly a scatter-brained mess? If Hardcastle was behind this and if he wanted Shane to go down for a crime he hadn’t committed, wouldn’t Larry have gone straight to the sheriff with the dress?
“Shane,” Whitney demanded, staring at him with big, questioning eyes that now looked too dark to be green. “What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know,” he said darkly.
“But you know something,” she insisted.
He did. A lot. But he wasn’t about to tell her that.
When he didn’t respond, she pushed, “Why would Larry bring you Delilah’s bloody dress?”
“Because I showed up unannounced the other day?” he suggested.
“Because he thinks you did it,” she countered. “He thinks you left that dress over at his place to mess with him.”
“Why would I do that?” he challenged.
She didn’t know. If she did, if there was even the slightest shred of a logical explanation that would motivate Larry Hardcastle to leap to such a conclusion, she would be voicing it now. She wasn’t.
“Larry didn’t say where he found the dress,” she recapped with extreme frustration. “You were inside his shack the other day—”
“The dress wasn’t there at that time,” he informed her. “I looked everywhere for signs of Delilah. I would’ve seen it. I would’ve smelled the blood.”
Whitney was standing right in front of him. She felt the soft material of the dress and commented, “It’s damp.”
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