Page 137 of Perfect Cowboy

Without a clear understanding of the situation, the best thing for her to do is hide out in the house until help arrives.

“Not a chance,” she replies. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Ashley–”

“You’re in no position to make me. So save your energy, cowboy.”

Fuck.

I managed to get the gun back in my good hand, so hopefully, I can take down any remaining threats. Plus, Cameron is here to help.

Like always.

Even though he doesn’t know I suspected his involvement, I’m still going to apologize because the guilt is already eating away at me.

But it’s still incomprehensible to me that the danger was coming from another man I trusted so much.

My family has done so much for Brad. We paid for his children to go to college. We gave them a house on the property. We pay him well and make sure to give the younger guys the harder jobs. We thought he loved it here and considered us family.

Oh, how wrong we were.

If he blew all of his retirement savings on a chance investment with Ashley’s dad, well, that’s partly his fault, too. You should only gamble with money you’re okay to lose.

Ashley’s knee on my shoulder has it throbbing, but hopefully, the bleeding has stopped. She’s using her free hand to make phone calls.

First to my parents, letting them know the threat has been neutralized. She doesn’t go into any details about who was behind it or what happened to me.

Brad is one of Dad’s best friends, and the betrayal is going to hurt him the worst. He might come out to confront Brad, and his heart doesn’t need that stress. It also wouldn’t do any good for Mom to run out here to check on me until Brad’s in cuffs.

And then Ashley calls Cade, begging him to come over as quickly as possible to try and help the animals.

Yeah.

Plural.

They killed and mutilated a pregnant cow, and they were in the process of torturing one of the other babies.

The senseless cruelty makes me fucking sick. They clearly don’t know me very well because hurting my animals was only going to make me double down even harder on wanting to kill them, not run scared.

If anyone can save them, it’s Cade. I just hope it’s not too late.

In this case, I don’t give a shit about the lost money. All I care about is making the suffering stop because no creature should ever make agonizing sounds like the ones we heard.

The paramedics will need to sort out whether Mark and his friends are dead or can be stabilized because I could care less. Part of me wants to shoot Brad in the head, but the other part wants to demand a better explanation and make him be the man I believed him to be again.

“If that baby cow lives, I’m keeping her,” Ashley declares.

“Keeping her… where, exactly?” I ask, smiling through the pain. “She’s going to get a little bigger, babe. She’s not going to fit comfortably inside the house.”

“She can live behind our house,” Ashley insists. “She deserves to stay with us after everything she’s been through tonight. Cade is going to save her, I know it. And we’re going to keep her.”

I don’t make a habit of turning companion animals into pets, let alone livestock. Scout was an exception, and I’m definitely not ready for another dog. But if my girl wants a pet cow and to name her new friend Daisy, then I’m not going to argue with her.

Hopefully, it doesn’t rub off on our future kids or we’re going to have a goddamn zoo. If I can’t say no to her, there’s no way I can say no to a little girl who looks exactly like her.

“Does it hurt a lot?” Ashley asks softly.

“Yeah,” I admit, “And I’m hoping it went right through so they don’t have to dig around in there. At least it wasn’t my head.”

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