Читать книгу The Cowgirl in Question - B.J. Daniels - Страница 12

Cecil Danvers woke that afternoon with the worst hangover of his life. He rolled off the soiled cot he called a bed and stumbled to the rusted refrigerator for his first beer of the day.

He’d downed most of the can when he remembered what day it was. He stood in front of the fridge, listening to it running, waiting for the sweet feel of justified anger.

For the past eleven years, he’d plotted and planned for this day, but now that it was here, he had trouble working up the murderous rage he’d spent years nurturing.

Rourke McCall was to blame for every bad thing that had happened to him since the night his brother Forrest was murdered.

A lot of people in the county didn’t understand; they just thought Cecil was lazy, that he’d lived off Forrest’s death all these years. They just didn’t understand what it had been like to lose his only little brother, especially one who’d always taken care of him.

Cecil finished his beer, burped loudly and smashed the can in his fist before hurling it toward the trash can.

No matter what anyone said, he knew his life would have been better if Forrest had lived. He certainly wouldn’t be living in this rat hole on the tiny patch of land his mother had left him, living in the old homestead cabin that was falling down around his ears.

Nope. Forrest would have seen that he was taken care of. After all, Forrest was the smart one, the strong one. Hadn’t their old man always said so?

“Forrest is going to make something of his life,” the old man would say. “And if you’re lucky, Cecil, he’ll take care of your sorry ass as well.”

Now he had no one, Cecil thought as he opened the fridge and downed another beer, his eyes narrowing, stomach churning. His father had died right after Forrest’s murder. A farming accident. Happened all the time. Cecil’s mother hadn’t been far behind him. She was always moping around, crying over Forrest as if Forrest had been her only son.

Cecil shoved the memories away and concentrated on Rourke McCall. Yep, if it hadn’t been for Rourke, Cecil wouldn’t be forced to work when he ran out of money, mucking out other people’s horse barns or swabbing the local bars after hours.

He downed the rest of the beer, crushing the can in his fist and throwing it in the general direction of the trash can. Everyone in town was going to say that Rourke McCall had paid his debt to society for killing Forrest.

They’d tell Cecil to forget it, just as they had for the past eleven years. But people had always underestimated him, he thought grimly. He was the last of his family. It was up to him now. Rourke McCall had ruined his life and Cecil wasn’t about to let him get away with it.

ROURKE HAD JUST PUT his duffel on the seat of his pickup and was about to climb in when he saw his brother J.T. lead a large bay mare into the barn.

“Might as well get it over with,” he said under his breath, and walked toward the barn.

J.T. looked up as Rourke entered the cool darkness of the horse barn. The smell of horseflesh and leather, hay and manure filled his senses, sending him back to those cold mornings when he was barely old enough to walk. He and his father would come out here.

Asa would saddle up a horse, then lift Rourke in one strong arm and swing up into the saddle. Together they would ride fence until long after the dew on the grasses dried, the sun rising high and warm over the ranch and the sound of the breakfast bell pealing in the air.

Rourke breathed in the memory as he watched his brother unsaddle the bay, more recent memories of the prison barn trying to crowd in.

“Rourke,” J.T. said, looking up as he swung the saddle off. “Welcome home. So you’re back.”

He’d heard more heartwarming welcomes. “Thanks.”

His brother studied him. “You staying?”

He shook his head.

J.T. made a face and started to walk past him.

“The old man doesn’t want me here. Remember? He disinherited me. I’m not his son anymore.”

J.T. sighed, stopped and turned. “He was upset. He didn’t even do the paperwork. You aren’t disinherited. You never were.”

Rourke tried to hide his surprise.

“You know how he is,” J.T. continued. “Says things when he’s mad that he doesn’t mean.”

“Yeah, well, I just saw him and I didn’t get the impression he’d changed his mind.”

“He also can’t say he’s sorry any better than you can,” J.T. said.

Rourke had been compared to his father all his life. He hated to think he might really be like Asa McCall. As if he didn’t have enough problems.

“I assume you heard he had a heart attack,” J.T. said. “He can’t work the ranch like he used to. I’m doing the best I can with Buck’s help, hiring hands for branding, calving and moving cattle to and from summer range. But Dad’s going to kill himself if his sons don’t start helping him.”

Buck Brannigan was a fixture of the ranch. Once the ranch foreman, he was getting up in age and probably didn’t do any more than give orders.

Rourke looked out the barn door, squinting into the sunlight. “Dad would rather die working than rocking on the porch. Anyway, he’s got other sons.”

J.T. swore. “I’d hoped you might settle down, move back here and help out.”

Rourke shook his head. “Even if the old man would let me, I’m not ready right now.”

“You’re determined to stir it all back up, aren’t you?”

“Someone owes me eleven years,” Rourke said.

“Well, even if you do prove that you were framed, those years are gone,” J.T. said. “So how many more years are you going to waste?”

“I didn’t kill Forrest.”

“Don’t you think Cash tried to find evidence that would have freed you?” J.T. demanded. “Hell, Rourke, a team of experts from the state marshal’s office were down here for weeks investigating this case, but you think that, after eleven years, you’re going to come home and find the killer on your own?” J.T. shook his head in disgust, turned and walked off.

Not on his own. He was going to have help, he thought as he rubbed the mare’s muzzle and thought of Cassidy Miller. He’d kissed her right here in this barn when she was thirteen.

Another memory quickly replaced it. Cassidy on the witness stand testifying at his trial.

“SO THE DEFENDANT READ the note that had been left on his pickup windshield and then what did he do?” the prosecutor, Reece Corwin, had asked her.

Cassidy hesitated.

“Remember you are under oath. Just tell the truth.”

Rourke could see that she was nervous, close to tears. Her gaze came to his, then skittered away.

“He dropped the note, opened his pickup door, got in and drove away,” she said.

“Oh, come on, Miss Miller, didn’t the defendant ball up the note, throw it down, jerk open his pickup door so hard it wouldn’t close properly the next day and didn’t he drive out of the bar parking lot spitting gravel? Didn’t he almost hit several people coming out of the bar?”

“Objection!” Rourke’s lawyer, Hal Rafferty, had cried, getting to his feet. “He’s telling her what to say.”

“Overruled. We’ve heard this from other witnesses. Answer the question,” the judge instructed Cassidy. “And Mr. Corwin, please move on.”

“Yes,” Cassidy said, voice barely audible.

“And what did you hear him say before he left?” the prosecutor asked. This part was new. This part would put the nail in Rourke’s coffin.

Cassidy licked her lips, her eyes welling with tears as she looked at Rourke. “He said, ‘I’ll kill you, Forrest.’”

“Speak up, Miss Miller.”

“He said, ‘I’ll kill you, Forrest.’ But he didn’t mean it. He was just—”

“Thank you. No more questions.”

Cassidy had left out one important point his lawyer had been forced to remind her of on cross-examination.

“Who wrote the note that was left on my client’s pickup windshield, Miss Miller?” Hal Rafferty had asked.

Again tears. “I did.”

“And what did that note say?”

Cassidy twisted her hands in her lap, eyes down. “Blaze is meeting Forrest up Wild Horse Gulch.”

“You sent my client to the murder scene?” Rafferty demanded.

“Objection. There was no murder scene until your client got there.”

“Sustained.”

“Why did you write that note, Miss Miller?” the attorney demanded.

She stared down at her hands, crying now, shaking her head.

“What did you hope to gain by doing that?” Rafferty asked.

Again a head shake.

“Answer the question, Miss Miller,” the judge instructed.

“I don’t know why I did it.”

“Did someone instruct you to do it?” the attorney asked.

Her head came up. Rourke saw her startled expression. “No. I…just did it on impulse. I thought he should know what Blaze was…doing.”

“You a friend of Rourke McCall’s?”

She looked at Rourke, then the attorney, and shook her head.

“You were just trying to do him a favor?” the attorney asked. “Or were you trying to set him up for a murder?”

“No.” Cassidy had burst into tears. She’d been just a girl, sixteen going on seventeen, shy and gangly. The jury hadn’t believed that anyone like Cassidy Miller could have set him up.

“Who put you up to it?” the attorney demanded. “Who?”

“No one did.”

But Rourke knew better. Cassidy had left the note. He would never have gone up to Wild Horse Gulch if she hadn’t. He wouldn’t have been framed for murder.

What he didn’t know was why. Or who’d put her up to it.

But he was finally out of prison, finally back, and he was finally going to get the truth out of Cassidy Miller.

AS THE AFTERNOON DRAGGED ON, Blaze Logan found herself pacing in front of the Antelope Development Corporation window or ADC as it was known around the county.

“Sit down, Blaze,” Easton Wells finally snapped. “You’re making me nervous as hell.”

She turned from the window to look at her boss. Easton Wells was thirty-nine, a little old for her in more ways than the nine years between them. He had dark hair and eyes, not bad-looking but nothing like Rourke McCall. Nothing at all. And that was part of Easton’s charm. He had a good future, was divorced—no alimony or children, his ex-wife on another continent and not coming back, and Easton thought Blaze was the hottest thing going.

What could she say? She loved it.

But he didn’t want to marry her. Not yet, anyway.

“What if Rourke doesn’t come back to town?” she lamented out loud.

“I wouldn’t blame him,” Easton said, not looking up from the papers on his desk. ADC was small, a reception area and the larger office that she and Easton shared.

Blaze shifted her focus from across the street to her own reflection in the large front window. She turned to get a side view, liking what she saw, but she wasn’t getting any younger. She was thirty. Almost thirty-one! She needed to think about marriage. And soon. And Rourke’s getting out of prison had given her the answer.

“Rourke will bring a little life to this town,” she said, trying to get a rise out of Easton. “I, for one, think the diversion will be good. I know I’m getting tired of the status quo.”

Easton looked up and shook his head. “I know what you’re trying to do and it isn’t going to work.”

“What?” she asked innocently. She’d been dating Easton for years now off and on. Believing a woman should always keep her options open, she’d also seen Sheriff Cash McCall a few times. She’d had to initiate the impromptu dates with Cash. Like all the McCalls, he was stubborn and dense as a post. She’d had to practically throw herself at him to even get him to notice her.

Easton wasn’t dense. He just didn’t want to get married again. But she intended to change that. And Rourke was going to help her. He just didn’t know it yet.

“You’re trying to make me jealous,” Easton said.

She smiled and stepped over to his desk, placed both palms down on the solid oak surface and leaned toward him, making sure her silk blouse opened at the top so he got a tempting view of the cleavage bursting from her push-up bra.

“East, we both know there isn’t a jealous bone in your body,” she said in her most seductive voice.

He looked up, halting on the view in the V of her blouse appreciatively before looking up into her face.

“It would be a mistake to fool with Rourke,” he said, looking way too serious. That was another problem with Easton. He took everything too seriously, like work. He often got mad at her because she was late in the mornings or took too long at lunch or didn’t finish some job he’d given her or spent too much time on the phone.

“If I were you, I’d steer clear of Rourke,” Easton said.

“Would you?” she asked, lifting a brow as she studied him. “Why, East, you and Rourke used to be best friends.”

He nodded. “A long time ago. I’m sure Rourke has changed. I know I have.”

Not for the better necessarily, Blaze thought.

“I think you’re just mad at Asa. You wouldn’t even be in business if he’d gotten his way.” Asa had campaigned with all his power and money against coal-bed methane drilling in his part of Montana. “But you beat him.”

Easton shook his head. “Asa McCall is never beaten. All I did was make an enemy of him, which is a very dangerous thing to do.”

“And just think how much money you’ve made because of it,” she purred.

“Like I said, I wouldn’t mess with any of the McCalls if I were you. You don’t want that kind of wrath brought down on you.”

She studied him, a little surprised. Easton didn’t scare easily. “You make it sound as if the McCalls have done something to you.”

“I just wouldn’t want any of them to have a reason to come gunning for me,” Easton said.

Blaze straightened, a frown furrowing her brows. “Is there any reason Rourke would come after you?”

He looked up at her. “Don’t you have work to do?”

“If anyone should fear Rourke it’s my cousin Cassidy,” she said, going over to the window to look out at the Longhorn Café again.

“You aren’t on that kick again.” He groaned. “You can’t believe that Cassidy set him up for murder.”

“Does it matter if she did or didn’t as long as Rourke thinks she did?”

“It might to Rourke,” Easton said behind her. “You’re counting on him being that hothead who left here. But it’s been eleven years, Blaze. He isn’t going to come back the same man who left. He just might surprise you. Instead of going off half-cocked, he might have had time to figure out some things about the night Forrest was murdered.”

“You think Rourke is going to blame me?” She let out a laugh and turned to look at him. “Rourke was crazy in love with me.”

“Was being the key word here,” Easton said without looking up at her.

She glared daggers at him. “I take it back. I think you are jealous. Or afraid that Rourke might find out something about you. Let’s not forget that you’re sleeping with me now. Are you worried that Rourke won’t like that?”

Easton laughed without bothering to look up. “I think Rourke probably learned his lesson with Forrest.”

“What does that mean?” she demanded.

“It means Rourke won’t be killing any more men who you’ve slept with. Anyway, where would he start?” Easton laughed.

She continued to glare at him, but he didn’t look up. “Let’s not forget that you were at the Mello Dee too the night Forrest was murdered.”

Easton finally looked up at her, his eyes dark. “Yes, I witnessed the way you work men, Blaze. I saw how you got Forrest to dance with you to make Rourke jealous. I know how you operate.”

He was making her angry, but she hated to show it, hated to let him know that he was getting to her. She also didn’t like the fact that he thought he knew her. In fact, was wise to some of her methods when it came to men.

“You’re afraid of Rourke,” she challenged, wondering if she’d hit a nerve or if it was just simple jealousy. “Is there something you wanted to tell me about that night?”

Easton shot her a pitying look. “I had no reason to kill Forrest Danvers. Can you say the same thing?”

“I couldn’t kill anyone,” she cried, but right now the thought of shooting Easton did have its appeal.

“Take my advice,” he said, going back to the work at his desk. “Stay away from Rourke. It isn’t going to make me jealous, but it might make you regret it.”

“That almost sounds like a threat.”

“I’m trying to save you from yourself, Blaze,” he said with a bored sigh. “But I’m not sure anyone can do that.”

Blaze turned her back on him again, wondering what she saw in the man. Little, other than what he could afford her, she told herself. And he’d always wanted her. No matter what he said, he’d been jealous of her and Rourke.

She turned her attention back to the Longhorn Café and her cousin Cassidy.

Easton was right about one thing. Blaze had danced with Forrest to make Rourke jealous—and to see what he would do. She hadn’t expected Forrest to fight him. Nor had she expected Rourke to kill Forrest up at Wild Horse Gulch. At least that was her story and she was sticking to it.

But what if Rourke wasn’t that hotheaded bad boy McCall anymore? She hated to imagine. No, Rourke would come back hell-bent over the past eleven years he’d spent in prison, and he’d make a show of looking for the “real” killer, then he’d go berserk one night and end up back in prison. He wouldn’t be here long enough to find out much of anything about the night Forrest was murdered.

She realized she could make sure of that—once she and Rourke took up where they’d left off. She would keep him so busy he would have little time to be digging into the past. And that way she’d know exactly what Rourke was finding out about the night Forrest was murdered. She’d make sure he didn’t find out anything she didn’t want him to. He wasn’t messing up her future. She’d see to that.

She caught a glimpse of a pickup she remembered only too well from years ago. Her pulse jumped. Rourke McCall. That pickup brought a rush of memories as Rourke drove slowly up Main Street.

As the pickup passed her window, all she saw of him was his silhouette, cowboy hat, broad shoulders, big hands on the wheel, but there was no doubt about it. Rourke was back in town.

She waved excitedly, but unfortunately he was looking in the direction of the Longhorn Café—and Cassidy. Blaze let out an unladylike curse.

Wasn’t this what she wanted? Rourke back? Rourke set on getting even with Cassidy? But just the thought of Rourke interested in Cassidy for any reason set her teeth on edge.

“What?” Easton said impatiently behind her.

She turned to smile at him. “Rourke. He’s back.”

Easton couldn’t have looked more upset and she realized she had him right where she wanted him. Soon she’d have Rourke where she wanted him, too.

If Easton didn’t ask her to marry him by the end of the week then her name wasn’t Blaze Logan.

But as she looked at her future fiancé, she had a bad feeling he was hiding something from her.

HOLT VANHORN PICKED UP one of his father’s prized bronzes from the den end table and hefted it in his hand. The bronze was of a cowboy in chaps and duster, a bridle in his hand as if headed out to saddle his horse, his hat low on his head, bent a little as if against a stiff, cold breeze. Holt had little appreciation for art. What interested him was the fact that the bronze was heavy enough to kill someone.

“Holt?”

He turned, surprised he hadn’t heard his father come into the den. Mason VanHorn was frowning and Holt realized his father’s gaze wasn’t on him but on the bronze Holt had clutched in his fist.

He put down the work of art carefully, avoiding his father’s eye. For his thirty years of life he’d been afraid Mason could read his thoughts. It would definitely explain the animosity between them if that were the case.

“So what brings you out to the ranch, Junior?” Mason asked as he walked around his massive oak desk to sit down.

Holt heard the bitterness behind the question. Mason had never gotten over the fact that his only son hated ranching and if he could get his hands on the land, would subdivide it in a heartbeat and move to someplace tropical.

Holt had moved off the ranch as soon as he could, living on the too-small trust fund his grandfather had left him and what few crumbs Mason had thrown him over the years.

His father didn’t offer him a chair. Or a drink. Holt could have used the drink at least.

Mason VanHorn was a big man, broad-shouldered with black hair streaked with gray, heavy gray brows over ebony eyes that could pierce through you faster and more painfully than a steel drill bit.

Holt looked nothing like his father, something that he knew Mason regretted deeply. Instead, Holt had taken after his mother, a small, frail blond woman with diluted green eyes and a predilection for alcohol. His mother had been lucky, though. The alcohol had killed her by fifty. At only thirty, Holt didn’t see an end in sight. At least not as long as his father kept the purse strings gripped in his iron fist.

“I need to go away for a while.” Holt’s voice broke and he saw his father’s startled expression.

“Away where?” Mason asked.

Holt shook his head. The massive desk was between them. He had the stronger urge to shove it aside and go for his father’s throat but, he thought wryly, with his luck, the desk wouldn’t budge and he’d crash into it and break something. He was good at breaking things. Clumsy as an oaf, he’d once heard his father tell his mother after he had managed to break another bone. If he hadn’t been aware of his father’s disappointment in his only son, he certainly was then.

“I…” The words seemed to catch in his throat as if barbed, and he hated his father even more for making him feel like a boy again in his presence. “I just need to get out of town for a while.”

“Where?”

Anywhere. As far away as he could get from Antelope Flats, Montana. “I’d like to go down to Texas. Maybe go back to school.” He was grabbing at anything he could think of.

“What is this really about?” Mason VanHorn demanded.

His father always saw through him. Mason VanHorn held the purse strings, so he also had a stranglehold on Holt’s life.

“Please just give me enough money to—”

“Is this about Rourke getting out of prison today?” Mason demanded.

Holt heard the disgust in his father’s voice, saw the worry in his face. No, not worry, the affirmation of what his father had suspected for years.

“All I need is enough money to tide me over—”

“VanHorns don’t run like cowards,” his father said through clenched teeth.

“Right.” Holt saw then that his father would freeze in hell before he’d help him get away from here. “Never mind. I should have known you wouldn’t help me.”

He turned too quickly, bumping into the end table. The table overturned. The bronze cowboy hit the tile floor with a crash and a curse from his father.

Holt didn’t stop to pick up the bronze or the table. He headed for the door, wondering how far he could go on thirty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents.

“If you run, everyone will know you have something to hide,” Mason VanHorn yelled after him.