“Okay,” Buck said finally. “See you in a bit.”
He joined her at the table and offered her fresh coffee. She accepted gratefully.
“Gage is going to help us out,” he said.
She almost questioned the
us
part, but then realized that was ridiculous. This might not be her investigation or her case, or anything approaching it, but she was in it up to her neck. “How?”
“He’s got Identi-Kit software we can use to put a face on White Shirt.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. Some of the local cops are going to be helping.”
She looked up from her roll. “Why? I thought you didn’t want them.”
“I didn’t. Not at first. But this thing is snowballing. Gage is going to pick just a few people he’s sure can keep their mouths shut and we’re going to give them White Shirt’s face. And...well, they have to get involved now. The tox screen came back. Ray was poisoned.”
The roll fell from Haley’s fingers as shock drove her stomach down to her toes. “So it’s true,” she whispered hoarsely. “It’s true.”
“I’m sorry, but yes. It wasn’t just a crazy accident.”
“So they really will murder.” She stared blindly, seeing nothing, only now facing how much she had refused to believe that someone she might know had committed murder.
What kind of mental game had she been playing for nearly a week? Acting like she was in a play rather than reality? Pretending to think there was a possibility that Ray had been murdered but absolutely believing he hadn’t been? Role-playing? Total denial?
“Haley, nothing’s changed.”
“Everything’s changed.” She focused on him. “Everything. We’ve been talking about it but I’ve been acting
as if,
if you get my meaning.”
“I think that’s normal.”
“No, that’s delusional. I’ve been play-acting.”
“This would be more than most people could take in if they haven’t dealt with it before. Babe, there’s a point at which the mind just balks. Some things take time to process, that’s all.”
She shook her head, looked down at the roll, then reached for her coffee instead. She was relieved to see that her hand didn’t tremble. “Reality-check time.”
“You’ve been taking a helluva big reality check since this began. Cut yourself some slack, Haley. The mind isn’t a bunch of computer circuits that operate in a logical, linear fashion. It has its own methods of dealing with things and absorbing them. I’d be shocked if you hadn’t had trouble with this.”
He glanced at his watch. “Do you know a guy named Ransom Laird?”
“Sort of. He has a sheep ranch up north of here. And his wife is a novelist.”
“Well, we’re going to meet him at the library in a little bit.”
“Why?”
“To talk to me about alpacas.”
She knew what that meant, and another stone fell into her stomach. Claire. Claire had poured Ray’s coffee. Claire had talked to White Shirt for no good reason that she could figure out. Claire had tried to find out what Buck was doing here. She didn’t know what would be worse, learning Claire was involved or that the Listons were. Either answer would transform her world forever.
As if it hadn’t already been shaken to its foundation. Ray was dead. Murdered. And they needed to find out who had done it.
That was enough of a shake-up right there.
* * *
Miss Emma, as everyone had called Emmaline Dalton since she’d become librarian nearly thirty years ago, greeted them warmly. A lovely woman in her late forties, she was blessed with a warm smile. She took them to a private reading room. “Ransom should be here soon,” she promised.
Apparently Gage had told his wife something about what was going on, at least a small part of it.
“Gage’s wife is a beautiful woman,” Buck remarked, as if he could sense Haley’s nervousness and sought to relax her.
“Yes, she is.”
Ransom arrived then, a guy in his fifties with blond hair and a beard, both silvered a bit with gray. He introduced himself to Buck, gave Haley a quick, friendly hug and sat at the table with them.
“Gage said you want to know about alpacas.”
“I want to know a little more than that,” Buck said frankly. “Like what Murdock Bertram is doing with them and could they be causing financial problems.”
Ransom sat back, frowning thoughtfully. “I take it this is some kind of investigation?”
Buck nodded.
“I’m won’t ask questions then. Just understand I don’t know Bertram well. We’ve talked a few times about his alpacas. They’re very expensive alpacas.”
“Why would he want to do that?”
“Championship stock is worth a lot of money, as much as fifteen thousand or more per animal. It really comes down to the quality and color of the wool.”
“So he could make a lot of money?”
“Eventually. If you want championship stock, the outlay is huge. Growing a herd can take years, because alpacas seldom have more than one kid at a time. For most people, it’s a loss for a long time before you see any profit.”
“So,” Buck asked, “if you had to judge, would you say Bertram might be financially strapped?”
“I don’t have access to his books.” Ransom stroked his beard. “Looking at it from the outside, though, I can’t figure how he’s paying for all those alpacas. I know how well I’m doing with my flocks and I can extrapolate. My guess is he’s gone into debt to buy those animals.”
* * *
“I saw at least four alpacas in his barn,” Buck said after Ransom left. “There may have been more, but I didn’t get much of chance to look.”
“Four alpacas at about sixty thousand dollars?” Haley’s tone was utterly disbelieving. “Possibly more? I always knew he was better off than a lot of folks around here, but not by that much.”
“So a minimum sixty-thousand-dollar investment in a handful of livestock, which strikes me as a hairy bet. I’d rather put my money in the stock market. And given that losing a single animal would put you down, I’m not sure you’d get very good terms on a loan. So what do we know now?”
“That Murdock Bertram is buying very expensive alpacas.”
“And that a fellow sheep farmer doesn’t seem to think it’s a very wise bet. Which is not to say it couldn’t turn out okay. And for all we know, Bertram had that much in savings or something.”
“It’s possible. But maybe he suddenly came into some money, too.”
Their eyes met and held, and Haley felt an irrepressible shiver of sexual excitement, even though this was exactly the wrong time.
“Ah, don’t look at me like that, babe,” he said softly, reaching out to stroke her cheek lightly. “We’ve got life-and-death stuff going on here. Much as I want to drag you to my cave right this minute, I can’t.”
She understood, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. She restrained a sigh and asked, “What’s next?”
“We wait. Gage should be here soon.”
“Why don’t we just go to his office?”
“High profile,” he answered. “He can come here to visit his wife without raising a single eyebrow.”
She should have thought of that, but her thinking seemed to be a bit scattered this morning. “What’s Gage coming for?”
“He’s bringing a laptop with Identi-Kit on it. We’re going to try to give a face to White Shirt.”
Now this was more like it, Haley thought. After days of struggling around blindly, they at last seemed to have a real plan.
She still found herself shying away from the news about Ray having been poisoned. The shock of that still rippled through her, and she felt the stirrings of denial trying to take root. No way was she going to allow that now.
Things had gotten too dangerous. For her, for Buck, it didn’t matter. She could no longer even remotely pretend that murder wasn’t in the equation.
Chapter 13
I
t took an hour with the Identi-Kit, as Gage had to make frequent adjustments, but finally when he turned the screen toward her she gasped. “That’s him!”
Gage smiled and saved it. “There we go, then. I’m only giving this to a few of my deputies, so don’t expect immediate results.” With a nod, he left.
She and Buck lingered a while in the reading room to ensure no one might even remotely think they had been here to see Gage.
Just as they decided they could leave, Buck’s phone rang. He pulled it out and frowned. “My boss.”
Haley immediately froze and waited.
“Yeah, I’m about to take my lady to lunch,” he said. A pause. “Look, your shipments aren’t my problem. You already told me they’re not my problem. Fine by me. No, I won’t come back early. I told you, I met a lady.” Another pause. “Then fire me. I can drive for someone else.”
He disconnected and blew a long breath.
“What was that about?” Haley asked. “Are you fired?”
“Not yet. They seem to be working up to it, though.”
“But why?”
“So they can discredit me if necessary. Claim I’m a disgruntled employee. And they certainly want to know if I have any information I haven’t passed to them.”
“Do you?”
“Plenty. I’m a cop, Haley, or I was. I don’t discuss investigations, especially with interested parties.”
He paused, clearly thinking about something. A minute later he said, “Let’s go get lunch on the off chance that he has someone check out what I just told him.”
Haley was struck by an idea as they headed for the City Diner. “You need to have a fight with me.”
“What?”
“A public fight. Then you can pretend to leave town and they’ll think the coast is clear. They’re probably a lot more worried about you than me, and I have to be at work tonight anyway. So if you drive off in a huff, maybe they’ll think the coast is clear again.”
He was silent for a few minutes. “First, that puts you at risk. Second...I need to be nearby.”
“I’m not saying you can’t be nearby. But there has to be some way you can hide your truck and make it look like you’ve left. And I can call you as soon as I see anything. You wanted to use my car anyway.”
He didn’t answer.
“Buck, you said it’s obvious they want you out of here. So let’s make it look like you’re on your way back. Then maybe they’ll get down to business again and we can find out who they are.”
He didn’t answer, so she left it alone. She wished she knew where she stood with him, whether he was just concerned she might get hurt or if she meant something more to him.
But even more than that, she was worried about him. Hell, he’d gone trespassing on two ranches even after her warning about how dangerous it was in a place where people had to protect their own property.
But no, he’d gone anyway, and now he was giving his boss reasons why he wouldn’t come back even if it cost him his job.
God, she’d die if anything bad happened to him, but she didn’t know how to tell him that. Letting him know how much she cared about him might only upset him, or worse, distract him. Whatever he decided to do, his mind had to be fully engaged. Now that they knew the truth of Ray’s murder, she was absolutely certain that Buck could wind up dead, as well. He was just one man, facing this mostly alone.
Just as they found a parking place, he said, “I’ll think about it, Haley, but I’m concerned about you.”
“What can they do to me at work? Nothing. And I really don’t know anything. When I talked to Jim about it, I told him I didn’t really see anything, and he seemed to believe me. So it’s
you
they’re worried about. That makes two phone calls now trying to pull you out of here. Think about that.”
“I am. I said I’m thinking. Give me some time. I’m rearranging the puzzle pieces. Let me see where it gets me.”
With that she supposed she had to be content. At least for now.
But she didn’t have to like it.
Chapter 14
M
uch as Buck hated to admit it, Haley might have a point. Two phone calls, both designed to get him out of the area. If they had ever been worried about what Haley might know, that seemed to be taking a serious backseat to what he might uncover if he hung around.
If her estimation was correct, then him appearing to leave town might get things rolling again.
But hell, even the slight chance that they might be worried about Haley worried him. There was still the possibility that White Shirt had been outside her place, but he might have been looking for Buck.
That was when he realized he was calculating ways to cover his bases. All of them, most especially Haley. Which meant he had just about accepted her idea.
Because it made sense. They seemed more eager to remove him from the area than anything. But he’d never forgive himself if anything happened to her, and if it did it would be because of him and his harebrained idea to use her as cover.
Crap, he could be such an idiot sometimes.
Before they climbed out of the car, he pulled out his phone and called Gage. “If I wanted to make it look as if I’d left town, where could I hide my truck?”
He felt Haley’s gaze snap to him. “Haley had the idea that the thing these guys most want to see is me leaving. And considering I’ve had two calls from my boss about getting back to Seattle, and the last one was practically a threat to fire me if I didn’t, she might be right.”
When he closed the phone, he had some answers, but he still wasn’t feeling entirely settled.
“Let’s get lunch,” he said. “I need to think some more and Gage has some ideas he wants to work on. Then we’ll decide.”
She turned off the ignition. “You know I’m right.”
He was delighted at the exercise of authority on her part. This was the woman who’d given him a good argument when he’d first met her, but for the past few days she’d been almost subdued, as if she were a passenger on this train.
“If you have ideas, I want to hear them,” he told her. “But after lunch. We have to consider every possibility we can think of, Haley.”
“So you don’t want to fight over lunch.”
He looked at her, drinking in her lovely face and violet eyes. “Not over lunch, no. If we do that, it’ll have to be tonight at dinner. At the truck stop. Until then we’ve got time to think this through and plan. I don’t want to do anything half-cocked.”
“Do you ever?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted. Like his decision to use her as cover. God, what had he been thinking?
Well, clearly he hadn’t been thinking. That simple thought of using her, common to his previous career, sickened him now.
Then another thought struck him: Bill had actually tried to call him off before. Not just these last two calls, but the first one when he’d wanted Buck to pick up Ray’s load and return to Seattle. Then the resistance to giving him LoJack information. Did they really not keep those records? Or had Bill been trying to put him off?
Certainly the information Bill had eventually sent had proved to be darn near useless, no matter how he looked at it. But there was still that attempt to get him to bring Ray’s load back before he’d even started his return from Denver. Probably the first salvo to get him away from here.
When he thought about that, he felt a little better about using Haley as cover. Crap, he’d revealed her to Bill, but at the same time, they might have already known because of Claire. If that was the case, then getting him to come straight back to Seattle would have left them a clear field to take care of Haley one way or another.
So maybe he hadn’t been such an ass after all, even if his thinking hadn’t been perfectly clear. While exposing her more, he might have actually saved her.
He’d like to believe that, but right now he wasn’t sure. The grimness that began to settle over him was the worst he had felt since leaving the army. All he had were strands of suspicions and weaving them together was taking him down the rabbit hole to places where any number of possibilities might play out.
He needed, he thought, one more thing. One more useful thing. He hoped he’d get it in time.
* * *
Haley noticed something at the diner. It was amazing she noticed anything at all, considering that their lunch mostly involved Buck staring at his plate. She understood he was preoccupied, but it didn’t make her feel good, not after their lovemaking just a few short hours ago. Her head jerked a little as she realized how very little time had passed since then, yet so much had happened it seemed like ages ago.
She looked around the diner while she waged an internal struggle with her deepening feelings for Buck, which he didn’t at all seem to reciprocate, and considered all the things that might be threatening them. She caught sight of three men sitting together in a booth. She saw them looking at her and Buck. And she knew at once they weren’t local.
She looked quickly away, as if her eyes had been skimming the room absently, and focused on the sandwich in front of her. She took another nibble and let her eyes wander again.
One of the men was staring their way. The instant she looked his direction, his own eyes darted elsewhere. It was too obvious.
“Buck?” she said uneasily.
“Hmm?”
“Don’t look, but there are three strangers sitting in a booth to the right. They’re not from here and I’ve caught them staring at us.”
Buck never twitched. “Okay, concentrate on eating.” He forked some broccoli into his mouth. “What do they look like?”
Keeping her attention on her plate, she described them as best she could from memory. Ordinary, really, except one had a thin scar on his cheek. They’d done a better job of fitting in than White Shirt had.
“Exactly where are they sitting? I’m going to need to take them in fast.”
She told him the exact booth.
“Are you done?”
“I can’t eat.”
At once he looked up and around. When he saw Mavis he signaled her, but Haley noticed that he scanned the entire diner as he sought Mavis.
“Got ’em,” he said as Mavis approached. “Don’t look at them again.”
“Okay.”
Her insides fluttered as they packaged their meals. Buck threw a tip on the table, scooped up the bag and helped her from her seat. Then, never glancing at the guys, he slipped an arm around her waist and guided her to the register, where he paid.
He helped her into her car, bending to kiss her cheek before he closed the door. He was just getting in on the passenger side when the three men came out. He appeared to ignore them, but Haley, who forced herself not to even glance at them, couldn’t help gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles whitened.
“Easy,” Buck said as he fastened his seat belt. “Nothing’s going to happen. Not now. Let’s go to your place.”
She couldn’t help it. She glanced at the three men again and saw them climbing into an almost-new blue pickup two parking spaces down.
Buck spoke. “Let’s see if they follow.”
As she backed out and headed toward Main Street, it seemed that they wouldn’t. But before she’d gotten three blocks along Main, the truck appeared behind them at a distance. Buck was watching in the side mirror.
“We’ve got a tail,” he said.
“I see that.” Her voice was tight.
“Just drive as you normally would. They’ll probably drop us once they see we’re going to your place.”
“Why would they?”
“Because I told my damn boss I was staying here to woo you. We stick to the story.”
The story
. Yes, it was just a story, but hearing him say it out loud hit her stomach like a punch. She argued with herself yet again, telling herself there was no time or room for this right now, that more important things were happening, that it was never meant to be anyway. Buck would move on as soon as he figured out what was going on here. He’d never made her a single promise except to keep her safe. He’d never murmured those sweet nothings that might have meant he had feelings for her.
No, he’d made love to her, and she’d heard often enough that that was meaningless to men, even though it seldom was for a woman.
She tried to loosen her grip on the wheel, paying attention to following her usual pattern and speed. She glanced Buck’s way, as if she was talking to him. He did the same.
From the outside it probably looked as if nothing unusual at all was going on. Inside, though, the tension was thick and almost stifling. She could hear her own breathing, and that wasn’t normal.
God, she just wished they could tumble into bed and forget all of this! A childish wish.
She parked in her usual slot. The blue truck seemed to have disappeared. She was just beginning to relax as Buck helped her out of the car. Maybe it had been nothing at all, sheer coincidence.
Buck took her hand, carrying the bag of food as they walked toward the building door. Just as they were about to step inside, she heard the rumble of an engine and glanced toward the street.
The blue pickup eased by. None of the three men inside it looked at them.
“No coincidence,” Buck muttered as they walked inside and began to climb the stairs.
“No,” she agreed, her insides twisting nervously. “No, it wasn’t. But what does it mean?”
“That they’ve either called in reinforcements or I underestimated the size of the gang.”
“Why would they call for reinforcements?”
“Because I haven’t left.”
That didn’t ease her mind any to think that she wasn’t the one they were after. For the first time she faced the fact that she cared more about what happened to Buck than to herself. She looked at him after they entered her apartment and felt her heart squeeze with a longing and a fear for him unlike anything she had felt since her mother died. This was different somehow, though, and she didn’t quite know why. Perhaps because she’d anticipated her mother’s passing for so long?
All she knew was that looking at Buck made her ache so painfully she could hardly stand it.
He quickly dealt with the mess they had left from breakfast, then put the lunch bag in her fridge. He grabbed the garbage sack from her waste can and tied it off.
“I’m taking this out to the bin. I’ll be right back.”
She doubted his purpose was that innocent. He wanted a look around. Fingernails driving painfully into her palms, she merely nodded and watched him go.
What could she do? Not a thing. Not until they decided how they were going to handle this. Not until they had some kind of plan.
She sank slowly onto her desk chair, drew a steadying breath and dug the heels of her hands into her eyes. When had this become so freaking real? When had she gotten her heart all tangled up with a drifter to the extent that fear for him had her stretched as tightly as if she were on a rack?
She could no longer fool herself. Death waited, just as it had waited for Ray. She only hoped it wouldn’t be for Buck.
* * *
Taking out the trash was such an ordinary task it wouldn’t draw a second look, but it gave Buck a chance to scope things out. He already pretty much knew the layout of the immediate area—he always made sure he had a good mental map—but it also gave him a chance to find out if the guys in the blue truck might be watching from somewhere.
His question was answered as he tossed the bag over the edge of the large commercial bin. Three blocks up, the pickup had parked along the curb. No one was visible inside it, but that meant nothing. If he was the one on the stakeout, he’d have abandoned the truck for now, too.
It would be odd for three men to just sit in a truck like that for too long. Plus, they’d have a better view of whether Haley’s car pulled out from other vantage points. All they had to do was keep someone near enough the truck to move it fast.
Yup, he thought as he closed the bin and headed back inside. They had a tail. There was no other alternative to Haley’s plan: a big fight and him storming out and pretending to leave town. The two of them were trapped in dangerous treacle, and any attempt to escape it would let the bad guys know how much they knew.
Back inside Haley’s apartment, he took one look at her sitting in her desk chair, and some shell inside him really began to crack. She appeared pale, frightened and pinched, and her violet eyes seemed to have almost doubled in size.
He crossed to her immediately and knelt before her, drawing her into his arms. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m so sorry I dragged you into this. As God is my witness, I’ll keep you safe.”
“I’m not worried about
me,
” she said, her voice as tight as wire. “Buck, they’re after
you.
That’s obvious now. You’ve got to at least pretend to leave.
Please!
”
“I will,” he said, lifting a hand to stroke her silky hair. “Tonight. I’ll work out the details, you can give me a hard slap at the diner and everybody on the planet can watch me rumble out of this town. But I’m not leaving. You’ve got to understand that. I can’t do that.”
“Why not? It’s not your job to solve this. Gage and his deputies can take over now. You’ve got to protect yourself.”
He caught her face between his hands and kissed her, at first hard, then sipping gently from her lips. “I can’t leave now. Not until I’m sure it’s rolled up and you’re safe.”
“They don’t care about me anymore.” But her arms crept up, twining around his neck. “Buck, I’m scared to death for you.”
“I can take care of myself. But I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if anything happened to you.”
“I’ll be fine,” she insisted. Then she buried her face in the side of his neck, and the gesture touched him deeply. Her warm breath on his neck made him shudder with longing. At what point had he moved past doing a job to having a personal stake in this?
He didn’t know. Such moments could rarely be defined, he supposed. He just knew that nothing had ever felt as good as holding this woman, feeling her face pressed to his neck, feeling her concern and caring for him in every muscle of her body.
One kind of tension eased out of his body, to be replaced by another. He needed her. Not just wanting, but needing. Once this was over, she probably would want to get on with her life, but that was a wound he’d have to live with. Too late to prevent it now.