Every Move You Make

“You’re from out here?” Zach asked, pulling her attention back to his face.

She nodded and pointed to the west again. “Daddy’s cattle ranch is about five miles that way.”

His gaze on her face was softly probing. “How did you end up a P.I.?”

Mariah stared determinedly ahead. Now there was a question you didn’t want to have to answer when you least expected it. “Long story.”

“I’m not exactly going anywhere,” he said with a grin.

She cleared her throat, thankful it couldn’t be heard over the roar of the engine as she sped up again. “Let’s just say it was serendipity along with a healthy dose of nepotism.”

While that was true, she didn’t want to delve into the fact that there had come a point a couple years back when she felt her presence at the ranch wasn’t welcome anymore. “A distraction,” that’s what her father had called her. A woman doing a man’s job is how she interpreted his explanation. It seemed that overnight she had moved from a valued member of the ranch to unwanted company. The ranch hands went silent when she joined them for dinner. Her father scowled whenever she came back from a run. And she’d been relegated to menial tasks a two-hundred-year-old woman could have done.

She blessed the day when her uncle Bubba had offered her a one-time only assignment that included tracking down the very man she was tracking now: Claude Ray. He’d stolen some of her father’s cattle back then, re-branded them, and was selling them at auction in the next county. The idiot.

Conniving, Ray definitely was. Smart, he was not.

But the one-time assignment had quickly turned into a full-time job. And it had basically become her mission in life since she couldn’t work at the ranch.

“How about you?” she asked him.

Zach stared at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. And she supposed in some way maybe she was. It usually took Yanks a bit of an adjustment period before they got used to the easy cadence of Texas speak. And she had the impression that he’d definitely just gotten off the boat. Or plane.

He shrugged and squinted against the sun as he stared out the window. “You could say I came about it much the same way.”

Mariah smiled. So he didn’t want to share his reasons any more than she did. Good. That was just fine with her. More than fine. Because it meant he wouldn’t hound her.

She turned her attention back to the road. They were maybe a half a mile up from the shack where Claude Ray sometimes hung his hat. And there it was. She could see the smear of weathered gray boards against the horizon. And behind the shack she made out horses. Two of them. Exactly the number she suspected Claude had stolen from the Carter ranch.

She stepped on the gas, then noticed a spot of red dart from the shack and make a run for a white pickup nearby.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Mariah muttered under her breath.

Finally she elicited a physical reaction to her driving from Zach as he gripped the dusty dashboard. “I, um, take it this is the part where I should hold on?”

“If you value your life.” Mariah smiled at him, feeling a rush of adrenaline that warmed her entire body.

She told herself the rush had nothing to do with the man next to her. She got a rush from tracking someone down, especially someone like Claude Ray, who was a regular. And who gave good chase.

She spared Zach another glance as she bore down on Claude. There was no way Claude was going anywhere anyway. Not with this being the only road out. “You okay?” she asked.

Zach grinned at her in a way that made her stomach leap higher than it should have. “Great.”

“Good. Hold on.”

Ten yards away from Claude’s white truck she stood on the brakes and pulled the steering wheel to the left, sending her own truck careening to a stop and blocking the road.

“Here.” Mariah slid her revolver from her holster and tossed the firearm to the seat next to Zach. “If he comes running back this way without me, shoot him.”

The expression on his face was priceless. “Shoot him?”

“By shoot him, I don’t mean execute him. A simple nick to the arm should do the trick.”

His expression didn’t change.

Mariah opened her mouth to ask if he knew how to use a gun, but caught sight of Claude making a run for it.

The question could wait for later. She had a horse thief to catch.

HOLY SHIT.

Zach stared at the firearm in his hand then at Mariah Clayborn’s retreating back. He’d never held a gun before, much less fired one. Okay, sure, he’d had a cap gun and a BB gun when he was a teenager. But this was no peashooter. This was a full octane Colt that weighed at least two pounds if not more.

The longer he held it, the warmer the metal grew against his skin. He swallowed, excitement ricocheting through his bloodstream. Before he knew it he was grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. He had to shoulder the door to get it to open and he stood on the hard-packed dirt outside, squinting against the dust that remained from Mariah’s daredevil maneuvers. He lifted a hand to shield his eyes. There she was behind the shack. His brows rose. She was grabbing the mane of a sleek dark stallion and hauling herself up onto the horse’s bare back. He shifted a little to the right to find Claude Ray doing the same with less success some couple yards away, his caramel-colored stallion in a full run while Ray tried to pull himself up on top, completely graceless.

Mariah, on the other hand, was as fluid as the animal she commandeered. The horse seemed immediately to sense she was the boss and held still while she hauled herself up, waiting until her toned thighs straddled him and her boot heels gently nudged his sides before shooting out after Ray. Mariah’s dark hair blew out behind her, her back straight, her fingers tangled in the horse’s dark mane as she bent over the back of his neck, using the power of her thighs to stay astride.

Holy shit. Things did work differently down here.

Sure, like most Americans, he was well-versed on the stories of Texas and the Southwest, cowboys and Indians and Clint Eastwood movies. But he’d never thought that that kind of stuff still went on down here.

The two riders galloped out of sight. Zach stared at the truck with the tricky gearshift and scanned the landscape. The road ran out beside the shed. There was no way he could follow in the ancient vehicle.

Instead, he undid the top couple of buttons on his shirt and leaned against the door to get just a bit out of the unrelenting sun. He grinned. He’d never met anyone quite like Mariah Clayborn before. He’d bet dollars to donuts that she ran Clayborn Investigations. And if what he’d seen so far was any indication, he suspected she was very good at what she did.

He tried to tuck the gun into the waist of his dark slacks. The shear weight of the firearm bent the material back, nearly sending the weapon to the dirt at his feet. He fumbled for the gun then laid it on the hood of the truck instead, his gaze watchful, as if he was afraid the revolver would take on a life of its own.

He rubbed the back of his neck. Okay, so he hadn’t given the gun part of the job that much thought before. He hadn’t thought there would be a reason to, what with the focus of Finders Keepers being the recovery of lost loved ones, rather than dangerous horse thieves. But while Finders Keepers knew Jennifer Madison because they subcontracted work from her, it didn’t mean Jennifer Madison’s agency was strictly a low-risk venture. And, so it appeared, neither was Mariah’s.

He did have to admit to feeling a thrill as the truck hurled over the dirt road toward their quarry, though. And the gun…

He heard the clump-clump of hooves hitting the earth before he spotted the horse. Given his thoughts on Mariah, he expected the rider to be her. Instead the caramel-colored horse shot out of the brush and straight by him.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Zach fumbled for the gun, although he wasn’t entirely certain what he was going to do with it. He eyed the back of the horse, the gun, then aimed the muzzle skyward and pulled the trigger. Nothing.

“The safety!” Mariah called, shooting past him moments after Claude. “Release the safety!”

The safety. Zach hurriedly eyed the metal in his hands and pushed a button. The clip slid out and dropped onto the ground.

Not the safety.

Damn.

Not that it mattered. He shielded his eyes and watched as Mariah caught up with Claude and yanked on the back of his shirt, pulling him from his horse and plopping him into the middle of a particularly prickly looking bush. Within minutes, Mariah shoved Claude in the direction of the truck, his hands bound behind his back with some sort of plastic tie, while the horses followed behind her.

Zach smoothed down the front of his shirt. He’d never before witnessed such a sight. But given the high color in Mariah’s cheeks, the bounce to her gait, she was not only used to such events, she thrived on them. And Zach couldn’t take his eyes off her.