High-Caliber Cowboy

He’d only taken a step into the room when he was hit from behind. Pain radiated through his head. She must have been hiding in the room across the hall.

It was his last thought as the white tile floor came up at him just before the darkness.

ANNA HATED that she’d had to hit him and hoped it hadn’t been too hard. But he’d given her no choice. She couldn’t let him turn her in. Especially before she got what she’d come for.

Hurriedly, she moved back down the hall. She’d found the combination taped under the center drawer of the desk, having discovered a long time ago that men like Mason VanHorn changed their combinations all the time out of paranoia.

But because of that, they had trouble remembering the new combination, had to hide it someplace so it would be handy.

Back down the hall, she stepped around the broken lamp and glass and went to the safe again. She spotted the two-way radio and kicked it behind the curtain.

Starting over after the earlier surprise interruption, she turned the dial, hoping she’d bought herself enough time to finish what she’d started. She began to dial in the numbers she’d memorized.

She’d known she might get caught in the house tonight. There was always that chance. But she’d never dreamed the man holding the gun on her would be Brandon McCall.

She tried not to think about him lying on the floor in the bathroom. She was angry enough to hit him again. And to think that at one time she’d had fantasies about the kind of cowboy Brandon McCall would grow up to be. Definitely not a cowboy doing Mason VanHorn’s dirty work.

The tumblers thunked into place and after a moment, the safe door swung open. She heard a groan from down the hall in the bathroom and was glad he was alive, but sorry he was coming around already. She hadn’t wanted to kill him, just keep him out of her hair; if she could just finish here and get away without having to hit him again—or him shoot her.

Standing on her tiptoes, she peered into the safe debating whether to take everything or try to go through it here and chance getting caught again.

The question turned out to be moot. She stared into the cold dark cavity. The safe was empty. Not just empty, but dusty inside except for the spot where there’d been something. Unfortunately, that something was gone.

Another groan from down the hallway.

Tears burned her eyes. Mason VanHorn had moved the papers. She was too late.

She turned, blinded by hot tears of anger and frustration, and started out the door. A thought stopped her. She hurried back to his desk. Earlier she’d searched it, the desk drawers and the file cabinets, but hadn’t found what she was looking for.

Now she picked up the phone and hit redial on a hunch. If he’d taken the precaution to clean out the safe, he might have taken other precautions, as well.

After four rings, a voice mail message picked up. “You’ve reached Dr. Niles French. Leave a number and I’ll get back to you.”

Dr. French. She clutched the phone, sick to her stomach. She heard stirring down the hall. Another groan. Move. Get out. Now! Fear paralyzed her. Dr. French.

A groan down the hall.

Hurriedly, she scribbled down the phone number on the display, her hands shaking. If the last call Mason VanHorn had made was to Dr. French, then she knew she was in trouble.

Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. She thought she might pass out if she didn’t get out of this room. Out of this house. She could hear more stirring down the hall in the bathroom. He was coming around.

She couldn’t go out that way. She moved to the window at the far side of the desk, fumbled the lock open and lifted the frame. Kicking out the screen, she shoved a leg out and climbed up, teetering on the windowsill for a moment, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness before she dropped to the ground.

Footsteps in the hall. Hurry! She practically threw herself out the open window, hit the wet slick ground and fell, her leggings instantly muddy and soaked.

Scrambling to her feet, she ran through the pouring rain to the lofty pine trees and the cover they afforded. She streaked across the grassy hillside to the creek bed and the cottonwoods. Following the creek, she ran to where she’d hidden her vehicle earlier. She didn’t look back, afraid she’d see Brandon McCall’s handsome face—and his shotgun pointed at her heart.

She was soaked to the skin and chilled as she climbed behind the wheel, started the engine and peeled out. All she wanted right now was to get back to the motel and climb into a tub of hot water. She didn’t want to think about the empty safe. About the call to Dr. French. She didn’t want to think about what she’d learned tonight about Mason VanHorn. Or Brandon McCall.

Her hands were shaking as she drove as fast as she could toward the highway, needing to put distance between her and the VanHorn Ranch.

She shouldn’t have been surprised. Not about Mason VanHorn. Or about Brandon McCall. But she was. She’d thought she’d seen something promising in Brandon McCall years ago, but it seemed she had been as wrong about him as she was Mason VanHorn.

Slamming her hand down on the steering wheel, she warned herself not to let this get personal. She laughed at the thought. After years of specializing in digging up dirt, she was good at what she did. She’d written the book on detachment when it came to her job—to her life.

But this wasn’t just any investigation. And she could no longer pretend it was. It had suddenly gotten damn personal.

At the two-lane highway, she turned south on the road from Antelope Flats, Montana, to Sheridan, Wyoming. Since her arrival, she’d seen little traffic on this stretch, even in the daytime, except for an occasional coal mine or gas worker, a rancher heading for Sheridan or a fisherman coming up from Wyoming headed for the Tongue River Reservoir. But nobody at this hour of the night.

She watched her rearview mirror expecting to see at least one set of headlights behind her on the rain-slick highway. Instead there was only darkness. At least for the moment. The storm snuffed out all light from the moon or stars, turning the Tongue River to pewter as it followed her over the border into Wyoming.

Her plan had worked, for all the good it had done her. Vandalizing the coalbed methane wells had gotten everyone away from the ranch house. Well, almost everyone.

At least it had gotten her what she wanted—inside the ranch house—inside the safe.

Tears burned her eyes. If Mason VanHorn had cleaned out the safe, did that mean he’d destroyed the evidence? Did that mean she’d never be able to get to the truth?

She rubbed a hand over her wet face and stared past the clacking windshield wipers at the rainy highway. Exhaustion pulled at her. She was wet and tired and cold and discouraged. She’d almost gotten caught tonight, but the fact it had been Brandon McCall made it all the worse.

He hadn’t recognized her, she knew she should be thankful for that. But even that hurt. He hadn’t remembered her. But she’d remembered him. That should have told her everything she needed to know. Obviously he hadn’t been as taken with her as she had been with him all those years ago.

She’d thought about what it would be like to run into him. Just not on the VanHorn Ranch. Not working for the enemy. The long-running feud between the McCalls and the VanHorns aside, she’d expected better of him.

She crossed the river as the highway meandered to Sheridan, Wyoming, fighting her disappointment. Angry with herself for ever thinking he might be different from other men she’d known. Even more angry that, over the years, she’d held him up as the kind of man she would want in her life.

How ridiculous was that? He’d been little more than a boy. She couldn’t know what kind of man he would grow into. But she thought she’d known. Obviously she’d seen something in Brandon McCall that hadn’t existed.

She felt sick. Men just kept letting her down. What did that say about them? Or her?

How she would have loved to drive straight to the airport and fly home. But she couldn’t leave. Hers wasn’t the only life at stake here and this wasn’t the first investigation where she’d run into trouble. She was known for hanging in until she got what she was after.

Even if she could have let Mason VanHorn get away with what she knew he’d done, she had Lenore Johnson to think about. When she’d hired the private investigator, she’d warned Lenore how dangerous this was going to be.

Now Lenore was missing. Presumed dead, if Mason VanHorn or Dr. French found out that she’d been asking questions about them.

If Lenore Johnson had failed, Anna knew she had even less chance of finding out the truth. But she had to try to find Lenore, try to help her if she was still alive. How, though, could she find out the truth with everything—and everyone—against her?

Along with Brandon McCall, every ranch hand at the VanHorn Ranch would be looking for her now, including Mason VanHorn himself once he returned from Gillette.

She glanced in the rearview mirror again. Nothing but rain and darkness behind her. The same in front of her. She hadn’t been followed. But she wasn’t safe. She wouldn’t be safe and she couldn’t help Lenore until she could get the goods on Mason VanHorn. She desperately needed leverage. She’d thought she would find it in his office safe, that he would keep it where he could get to it, that he needed it as desperately as she did.

If she was right, then the evidence was at the house—just not in the safe. She would have to go back. Tomorrow night, once it got dark.

She’d have to get back into that house, even knowing that they’d all be waiting for her. All the ranch hands and hired thugs. Mason VanHorn, if he heard about tonight—and Brandon McCall.

And if she was really unlucky, the man she feared the most, Dr. French.

Chapter Three