Page 11 of Steers and Stowaways
To his disappointment, there was no immediate buzz of an answering text message. Eh, maybe the worddisappointmentwasn’t entirely accurate. To be disappointed, he would need to have expectations in her direction, which he didn’t. He’d learned years ago that the only person in the world a man could trust was himself. There were reasons he’d cut off ties to everyone from his past, and there were reasons he wasn’t making any effort to create new ones.
Still, there was something unsettling about releasing the emergency brake and rolling away from Evans Ranch without catching one last glimpse of its owner’s short, skinny self. It didn’t feel right. He hoped she was okay.
To be on the safe side, he ought to have his Lonestar supervisor, Gage Hefner, check on her while he was out of town. Probably overkill, but he didn’t enjoy leaving anything up to guesswork while working a case. If she didn’t like his supervisor hovering over her during his absence, then she could quit playing games and acknowledge his text. He’d settle for a simple thumbs-up at this point. Anything.
It’s colderthan a polar bear’s toenails up here!
Mallory’s teeth chattered. She was hunkered in the gooseneck storage compartment of the cattle trailer with the duffle bag she’d hastily tossed a few items into. Though she was zipped into her thickest winter coat, she wished like crazy she’d thought to bring a few blankets along. The trucking company had installed block-out plugs over the air holes, but she wasn’t sharing body heat with the half-ton creatures on either side of her like her herd was. Her neck scarf and insulated gloves helped, but they weren’t doing squat to keep the lower half of her body warm against the metal flooring. Like most of her impulsive decisions, she really hadn’t thought this one through.
Her biggest mistake was picturing herself traveling in her own cattle trailer. Her trusted ranch foreman hauled enough livestock that he’d transformed the gooseneck storage compartment of her trailer into a makeshift sleeper berth complete with a camping mattress. That way, he andwhoever was riding along with him could take turns sleeping and driving, which allowed them to make better time.
Unfortunately, Dex’s last four deliveries had been short a cow by the time he’d reached his final destination, a mystery he’d been tearfully unable to explain. For this reason, along with Tucker’s constant complaining that the Silvas were up to no good, she’d bitten the bullet and hired a professional trucking company to make her latest delivery. It was costing her more to hire an outside driver and rent their newer equipment, but she was saving a little money by sending her two youngest and least experienced ranch hands along to assist him. By the end of the cattle shipment, she had every intention of crossing Martina and Dex’s names off of Tucker’s list of suspects.
Unfortunately, hopping on board the transport as a stowaway was the only surefire way of doing it.As the old saying went, if you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself.
Mallory had personally handled every element of this particular cattle sale, from its less-than-typical purpose to the invoicing. Her customer’s final payment would be due upon delivery, assuming she lived long enough to collect their money. If she didn’t come up with a way to conserve body heat soon, she would succumb to hypothermia long before they reached their destination.
Think, Mallory. Think!
She hooked an ankle over the top of her duffel bag to drag it closer. Balancing on her hands, she raised her backside off the floor. But before she could kick the duffel bag beneath her, the trailer bumped over a pothole, sending her sprawling back to the icy metal floor of the storage compartment.
“Ow!” She yelped out the word without thinking, then clapped a gloved hand over her mouth.
But it was too late. Her startled outburst started a chain reaction in the cattle trailer. More than two dozen cows mooed in alarm.
The driver let off the accelerator and reduced speed.
Mallory’s heart pounded. She hadn’t counted on being found so soon by the occupants of the truck cab. They weren’t more than a few miles down the road yet, which defeated the entire purpose of stowing away.
Please keep driving!
She silently begged the man behind the wheel to keep moving, which he eventually did after ten to fifteen seconds that felt more like ten to fifteen years. Only after the cattle settled down to their normal grunting and snuffling did the driver speed back up.
She waited another minute or so before trying again. This time, she succeeded in plopping her slender frame down on her duffel bag. It made a noticeable difference. She was still cold, but no longer shaking uncontrollably. Though she wouldn’t last the full five-or-six-hour trip in her current travel conditions, she’d bought herself a little time. She cast a longing look at the bales of hay stacked around her. It was such a short trip that the wranglers probably wouldn’t need to use them to fill the wall-mounted feeders.
I sure could use them!
She wondered if anyone would notice if she tore one open and paved the floor with it. Maybe at the first truck stop she’d do exactly that. In the meantime, she tucked her chin against her chest and wrapped her arms around her middle to hold as much heat in as possible. She passed the first hour trying to think warm thoughts.When that didn’t work, she spent the second hour of the trip trying the next best thing—thinking angry thoughts.
Inevitably, the image of Tucker Bullheaded Pratt filled her head. Like magic, her temper simmered, her face turned red, and her shivering stopped.
It was entirely his fault she was having to take such drastic measures to catch the cattle thieves plaguing Evans Ranch. The iron-jawed private investigator had taken a decidedly more laid-back approach to her case than she’d been expecting. She’d specifically requested Lonestar Security’s biggest lone ranger for his bad attitude and overall toughness, which made his lukewarm performance all the more disappointing.
She’d never asked him to make all those phone calls poking into the background of the sweet-as-molasses Silva family. She would’ve much rather seen him out there examining every square inch of the perimeter of her land. She needed him to figure out who the rustlers were, where they were holed up, and how to stop them from putting her and the other local cattle ranchers out of business.
Bottom line, I need results!
She was tired of him swatting her away like a pesky insect. From the get-go, Tucker had made it mortifyingly clear he didn’t want the assignment. And now that the two of them were stuck working together, it was impossible to tell if he even believed her side of the story. Or maybe he didn’t consider a handful of missing cattle important enough to waste his precious P.I. skills on. Was he merely going through the motions to appease his higher-ups? Was he simply checking the boxes and biding his time until she gave up and cancelled her contract with Lonestar Security?
An uncomfortable mix of fury and boredom eventually compelled her to dig her cell phone out of her coat pocket.Using her teeth, she pulled off her right glove to free up a hand to scroll through her messages.
Martina had sent her a flood of updates on everything from daily inventory counts to the ongoing pest control treatments for the attic. She smiled at the last item, knowing she might still have bats nesting in her rafters if it weren’t for Martina’s meticulous attention to detail.
Other than a quick dash up there the other day to grab her Christmas decorations, Mallory hadn’t visited the attic much since losing her father in a freak highway accident two years earlier. The attic was full of relics from his rodeo days. It was also piled with storage chests brimming with her mother’s things—things Mallory had been unable to bring herself to get rid of after losing her mother to breast cancer. Thanks to Martina, though, Mallory’s parents’ belongings would be waiting for her to putter through whenever she was healed enough on the inside to sort through them. There would be no bats nesting on top of them or trails of droppings staining them. A person couldn’t put a price tag on something like that.
Martina’s messages included some well wishes for the recently widowed college friend Mallory was supposedly spending a few days with, a necessary fib to cover her current whereabouts.
Lastly, Martina’s messages contained a few subtle digs for information about their latest cattle shipment. Martina wasn’t accustomed to Mallory leaving her and Dex in the dark about stuff like that. Mallory couldn’t wait to fill them in on the details, just as soon as she cleared their names of any involvement in the recent string of cattle rustling. Chip was probably doing his part to keep his parents informed, though he knew next to nothing about the shipment.Mallory had made sure of it. It was all part of her plan to prove Tucker Pratt wrong about the Silva family.
