Page 39 of High Density

I’m not sure why, but something about the anxious way he’s trying to look inside the trailer has my antenna ping. It only adds to my suspicion something fishy is going on here after that cow’s carcass was set on fire earlier. So, I decide to keep Trent in the dark for now.

“Yup, you’ve got some of the animals overheating though. Do you think you could find some water? There’s gotta be a hose around somewhere? They need to be cooled down.”

“Yeah, sure.”

As he heads off in search of water, I jog to Doc’s truck and grab the portable ultrasound before heading back to the trailer, without anyone paying me any attention. Good.

Inside, Janey makes quick work of getting the machine up and running. She slides the wand along the cow’s flank as she stares at the small screen I’m holding up in front of her.

“That’s weird. See that?” She points at an area that looks white on the screen. “That’s her vaginal canal. It’s supposed to show up dark, but it shows white, which would indicate high density.”

She puts the portable unit down and grabs a fresh glove, squirting lubricant on it before positioning herself behind the cow again.

“It’s like she’s got something stuck in her vaginal tract. What on earth?”

She retrieves her hand, pulling what appears to be a silver sausage of some kind from the cow.

“What is this?”

She holds it up in the palm of her hand and when I take a closer look, alarm bells immediately go off.

“Shhh,” I shush her, grabbing the package from her outstretched hand and shoving it in my pocket. “Drugs,” I whisper my suspicion.

I don’t want to draw any attention to the discovery. Not until we know what this is and who is involved. I’ve read about this, it was an article on the smuggling of narcotics in cattle, they call it narco-ranching. If that’s what this is, it’s apparently not only growing in popularity in South America as the article claimed.

“Drugs?” she hisses back at me.

“Yeah. There’s probably more in there.”

“That could explain what killed the other one, if it somehow burst inside her,” Janey contemplates in a hushed tone. “I need to get these out of her.”

My instincts are to leave them right where they are, so their discovery can remain undetected.

“We need to call in law enforcement before we do anything,” I whisper urgently.

But Janey has other ideas. “Look, this cow may die if I don’t get these out of her now, which will definitely alert whoever is responsible for putting them there and focus attention on us. If we can save her, we can walk out of here safely andthenalert law enforcement.”

I reluctantly have to agree with her. The sooner I can get her out of here the better.

Chapter Twelve

Janey

“You should’ve left them.”

I swing around and glare at the young deputy standing by Sheriff Ewing’s side. Ginger softly growls beside me. I quickly scratch her head to let her know everything is fine.

Frankie has my key and dropped her off at the house after she closed the clinic for the day. The poor girl had been happy to see us, until the sheriff and his deputy showed up a few minutes ago.

“And let the cow die?” I return, trying to keep my voice calm for the dog. “Because that’s what would’ve happened. Those packages were shoved up inside her none too carefully and were causing her to be in serious distress.”

The packages I’m referring to are lined up on my kitchen table. Nine duct-taped, plastic-wrapped, sausage-shaped packages.

I’ve never been so scared in my life, working side by side with JD to clear the rest of the herd as if nothing was wrong,while all the time those packages were hidden in our clothes. JD had me scan as many cows in that trailer as we could get away with without it being noticed, and he recorded everything on his phone. The same high density showed up on the ultrasound of four more cows we were able to examine, and we made note of their tag numbers.

When we finally walked down the ramp of that trailer, I was almost surprised no one was paying much attention to us. Except the driver, who’d finally managed to find a hose and was dragging it to his truck. Despite my shaking hands, I managed to sound fairly stern as I left him with instructions to spray some water on the animals to cool them down.

I don’t think even the driver noticed the portable ultrasound JD was carrying, and even if he did see it, I doubt he’d have known what it was. The unit was back in the truck before we joined Logan in the pen and finished up checking those animals.

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