Page 7 of Steers and Stowaways
The front door banged open and shut, and Martina returned to the living room. “He’s gone.” She sounded relieved. “Can’t say I’m disappointed.” She shivered as she hugged her too-thin sweater jacket around her.
“That makes two of us,” Mallory lied, gladder than ever that she’d splurged on a new winter jacket for Martina for Christmas. She’d gotten it from Hawk Chesney and his stepdaughter, Miley, on the nearby Comanche reservation. The father-daughter duo were experts at etching designs into leather. Mallory couldn’t wait to see Martina’s face when she opened the large red box containing her gift.
In the meantime, there was no way she was admitting she actually missed having cranky Private Investigator Tucker Pratt in the room. Not to the Silvas, that’s for sure. They had every reason to dislike him. He’d made sure of it with the constant suspicion he aimed in their direction.
“What did he want?” Martina rested her hands on her hips, eyeing the now-straight angel topper with interest.
“To tell me he thinks he found Old Glory.” Mallory finally gave in to the temptation to break into a happy dance. “He’s on his way there now to confirm it.” Since dancing was something else she wasn’t good at, she was glad she didn’t have to witness her own pitiful attempt at it. She’d once been told at a high school dance that she looked like a chicken going into spasms on the gym floor.
“What?” Martina’s sharp question put a quick end to Mallory’s spinning and rocking.
Mallory was concerned to note how pale her bookkeeper had gotten. “He says he’s located Old Glory,” she repeated. “The face of Evans Ranch and the star of all my videos.”
“Oh, my goodness,” her bookkeeper muttered faintly, closing her eyes. “Just when you think you’ve heard it all.”
“Are you alright?” Mallory stepped closer, afraid Martina was going to pass out or something.
“Not really.” Martina’s eyes snapped back open, startling Mallory by the anger kindling in their depths. “All that man ever does is stir the pot. Harassing me and Dex, poking his nose everywhere it doesn’t belong, and cruelly getting your hopes up. I could just…” she gripped the air like she had someone in a lethal chokehold, “…wring his neck!”
Mallory watched her, feeling like a balloon that had been pricked and deflated. “You don’t believe him?”
“Oh, honey,” her bookkeeper sighed. “I want to. I truly do. But your prize bull has been missing how long? More than a month?” She shook her head regretfully. “It’s just not likely. After weeks and weeks of waiting for Mr. Pratt to make any progress at all on your case, it feels like…” she spread her hands, “false hope.”
“I hear you.” Mallory was unable to disagree with her bookkeeper’s conclusion. “You don’t want to know how close I came to firing him the other day.”
Martina’s color returned. “Oh, yes, I do,” she crowed, perking up like a flower unfolding its petals in the morning sun.
“I still might,” Mallory threatened in a darker voice. “If his latest lead doesn’t pan out, it’s going to be hard to justify keeping his services on our payroll.”
“You’ve got my vote.” Martina’s voice was firm, as if Mallory’s threat was already a done deal. “I can’t wait to see the last of him!” She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and started texting someone. Or answering a text. Mallory wasn’t sure which.
Since she wasn’t as anxious as Martina to carve the private investigator in question out of her life, Mallory said nothing. Yeah, she was irritated as all get out at thespeed he’d been moving on her case. But that didn’t explain her unexpected and completely unwanted attraction to him.
It had caught her completely off guard, since he hadn’t made any effort to romance her. On the contrary, he snapped, snarled, and insulted her every chance he got.
When she was ready to invest in a relationship, it was going to be with a guy who was a lot warmer and fuzzier than Tucker Pratt. Someone who responded to her texts and made her feel like she mattered. Not that there was any point in dissecting the many reasons Tucker wasn’t—and never would be—her Mr. Right.
Two hours later
Tucker droveup to the ranch that was harboring Old Glory. If his suspicions were correct, he was about to be told some sob story about how they’d purchased her prize bull for a fair-market price through a legitimate sales channel. No doubt Old Glory’s brand had been altered, surgically removed, or replaced entirely.
It was going to take his finest negotiating skills to convince them to part with the bull. One thing was for sure. He was leaving the ranch with Old Glory in his possession. He didn’t care what it cost or if the funds came out of his own pocket.
As his truck rumbled up the paved lane leading to the barns rising in front of him, it dawned on him that it was oddly quiet outside. He knew this because he often drove with the window cracked open an inch or two. It was a habit he’d fallen into after a stint in captivity, during whichhe’d been held in an airtight box for more than an hour by an angry drug lord.
Not only was it unusually quiet on the other side of his window, the scene unfolding in front of him was unexpectedly empty of ranch hands, animals, or activity of any sort. The only movement he could see was the wind stirring the naked limbs of the trees lining both sides of the road.
He tapped his brakes, not liking the uninhabited look of the place. He rolled his window down the rest of the way. Yet more silence greeted his ears.
His trained investigator gaze zeroed in on the barn doors that had been left open and a set of deep tire ruts someone had left in front of them. Whoever had been here had left in a hurry.
His heart sank at the realization that Old Glory was no longer present. Someone had figured out he was coming and bolted. No, they hadn’t figured it out. They’d been told, which made him more certain than ever that he’d correctly located the whereabouts of Mallory’s bull, only to have lost him again.
He was pretty sure he knew who had sounded the alarm about his pending arrival. In Mallory’s joy over being reunited with Old Glory soon, she must have shared the news with the bookkeeper she foolishly insisted on trusting, who’d subsequently made a phone call or sent a text message.
Just like I was expecting.
For Mallory’s sake, Tucker had been hoping to be wrong. Just this once.
