Page 5 of The Undercover Cowboy

Nash studied all the employee records until he could call up details about their lives without a second thought. He’d been over and over the financial records and, using Shelby’s passwords and passcodes, had gone over every inch of the Dallas headquarters.

Nada.

The latest scheme Blevins had come up with was to narrow down the farms and breeders who supplied the UPRC with stock animals down to three. Blevins had told the board it was to reduce their insurance liability and the extra cost of veterinarian services for all the drug testing the rodeo had been forced to do because of the accidents that had caused one death and one career-ending injury. But Nash wondered if there was another reason why the three stock contractors had been picked over all the other applicants.

The Viking Ranch of Charlo, Montana.

Jaripeo Ranch of Guanajuato, Mexico.

Rocky Ridge Ranch in Czar, Alberta.

That’s where Nash was concentrating his investigation. But he needed to stay in the rodeo’s good graces to do so.

Nash’s gut said Blevins was corrupt and knee-deep in some serious shit. Unfortunately, Blevins wasn’t an idiot. It was so much easier when the bad guys were dumb.

His phone rang and Nash flicked his eyes toward the mini-screen on his instrument panel.

PITA is what flashed up to identify the caller. This wasn’t a bread vendor. In this case, it stood for pain in the…

“What do you want, Dolly?” he drawled.

“Where the hell are you?” a cute but irate voice snarled over the truck’s speakers.

Dolly was the drop-dead gorgeous PR person for the rodeo. Shelby liked her and trusted her enough to let her know his true identity. Nash thought that had been a mistake. Dolly had a sketchy background, and her sister was engaged to Shane Calland, the owner of the Viking Ranch, which was one of the exclusive stock contractors to the UPRC.

At first, Nash thought Dolly might be working with Blevins. But she hated the son of a bitch almost as much as Shelby did. Her soon-to-be brother-in-law, though, was still on Nash’s short list of Blevins’s accomplices. It had been Shane’s bull who Lance had doped up and there had to be a reason why Blevins had picked the Viking Ranch out of all the other stock suppliers. Shane’s ranch wasn’t the biggest or the best, so it could be because Shane was willing to look the other way. It wasn’t a strong theory, but he was keeping it in the back of his mind until something better came alone.

“I’m on the highway,” he said.

“You’re supposed to be doing promo shots with me right now. It’s opening day. We want to start this season out strong.”

He allowed himself to picture her standing in the rodeo grounds. She’d be wearing tight jeans and a clingy T-shirt that would make him forget that he was supposed to be concentrating on his investigation and not on her curves and sweet smile.

“Must have slipped my mind,” he said, adjusting himself. They had been bantering back and forth for over a year now and one of these days he was going to have to kiss her, just so he could stop thinking about it. But until he lost all semblance ofcontrol, he had to be satisfied with just bickering with her. It was almost as good as what he imagined kissing her would be like.

“The hell it did,” she said.

Ever since last year, Dolly had been on his case to build up a following on social media because his abysmal scores in bull riding would have disqualified any other athlete from competing at as many UPRC events as he’d been attending. Turns out she might be able to tell him “I told you so,” if he didn’t turn it around today.

Nash had argued with her all last season,“I didn’t join this rodeo to take selfies. I’ve got a job to do. And it’s not staying on a bull for eight seconds or taking stupid pictures—hashtag rodeo dreams.”

Nash’s daily routine was a carefully choreographed dance of deception. Mornings were spent at the rodeo grounds or practicing his bull-riding skills and putting on a display of bravado with the other cowboys. He’d talk shop, share stories of broken bones and close calls, careful never to let the mask slip even for a moment. Lunch was usually spent huddled in the corner of some greasy spoon diner, chewing on a stale sandwich while listening for whispers about anything that might point him in a new direction.

“You’d better up your game,”Dolly had said.“Because if you don’t start bringing something to the table, you’ll be out on your denim-clad ass. You don’t want to tip Blevins off that you’re anything but a bull rider.”

One of the really annoying things about Dolly was she tended to be right on the money with these things. At first, he had been “the new guy,” and no one said much, but after last season, Nash was starting to be accepted as one of “them.” And cowboys forgot to be cautious when talking about shadier things. Nash already knew where a guy could go to spend some money to spend sometime with a few working women in each rodeo city. That hadn’t pointed back to Blevins, though.

Nash had seen contraband come over from some of the cowboys from other countries, too, but that didn’t seem to tie back to the rodeo as much as it did to the individual cowboy who wanted to start an extracurricular business in the States. Nash wouldn’t put it past Blevins to seek out a kickback or a finder’s fee, but based on what Nash had seen, that wasn’t happening either.

“Your last post was a picture of a cactus.” Dolly sighed in exasperation, bringing Nash back to their present conversation. “And that was two weeks ago.”

“I’ve been concentrating on my bull riding.” That was a flat-out exaggeration, but he didn’t want her to know too much about his investigation, just in case she slipped up and said something to her brother-in-law. Her sister Reba, who was Shane’s fiancée, knew his real identity too. So maybe that was why his investigation had stalled.

“Pictures or it didn’t happen.”

“I forgot.”

“You forgot,” she said flatly. “This is why I have to stick to you like glue.”

---