Chapter Four
Dillon stared into Jack’s gray eyes. For a moment there he’d been enjoying himself, so much that he’d forgotten who she was: the woman who’d sent him to prison. His mood turned sour in an instant.
He dragged his gaze away, but not before she’d seen the change in him. Seen his true feelings.
She shoved her plate aside, her appetite apparently gone, and spread the map out on the table like a barrier between them. “We need to get to work, so as soon as you’ve finished eating…”
He ate quickly, but his enjoyment of foods he’d missed so much was gone. He told himself it was better this way. Jack had to be aware of how he felt about her. She would have been a fool not to, and this woman was no fool.
But he doubted she knew the extent of his feelings. Or how he’d amused himself those many hours alone in his bunk. He’d plotted his revenge. Not that he planned to act on it, he’d told himself. It had just been something to do. Because he would need to do something about the person who’d betrayed him. And while he was at it, why not do something about Jack?
Only he would have to be careful around her. More careful than he’d been so far.
Food forgotten, he shoved the containers aside and stood to lean over the map. But his attention was on Jack. He could tell she was still a little shaken, and wanted to reassure her that he was no longer a man driven by vengeance. No easy task, given that he didn’t believe it himself.
But that wasn’t what bothered him as he pretended to study the map. As a student of human nature, he couldn’t help but wonder why, when he’d been so careful to mask his feelings for years, he had let that mask slip—even for an instant—around the one woman who controlled his freedom.
Jacklyn watched his eyes. They were a pale blue, with tiny specks of gold. Eyes that gave away too much, including the fact that behind all that blue was a brain as sharp as any she’d run across. And that made him dangerous, even beyond whatever grudges he still carried.
On the map, she’d marked with a small red x each ranch that had lost cattle. Next to it, she’d put down the number of livestock stolen and the estimated value.
Some of the cattle had been taken in broad daylight, others under the cover of night. The randomness of the hits had made it impossible to catch the rustlers—that and the fact that they worked a two-hundred-mile area, moved fast and left no evidence behind.
Dillon had been leaning over the table, but now sat back and raked a hand through his still-wet hair.
“Something wrong?” she asked. Clearly, there was. She could see that he was upset. If he was the leader of the rustlers, as she suspected, none of this would come as a surprise to him. Unless, of course, his partners in crime had hit more ranches than he was aware of. Had they been cheating him? What if they’d been double-crossing him? She could only hope.
She reminded herself that there was the remote chance Dillon Savage wasn’t involved, which meant whoever was leading this band of rustlers was as clever as he had been. Another reason Dillon might have looked upset?
“Just an interesting pattern,” he said.
She nodded. She’d been afraid he was going to start lying to her right off the bat. “Interesting how?”
He gave her a look that said she knew as well as he did. “By omission.”
“Yes,” she agreed, relieved he hadn’t tried to con her. “It appears they are saving the biggest ranch for last.”
He smiled at that. “You really think they’re ever going to stop, when things are going so well for them?”
No. That was her fear. Some of the smaller ranchers were close to going broke. The rustlers had taken a lot of unbranded calves this spring. Based on market value, the animals had been worth about a thousand dollars a head, a loss that was crippling the smaller ranches, some of which had been hit more than once.
Worse, the rustlers were showing no sign of letting up. She’d hoped they would get cocky, mess up, but they were apparently too good for that.
“What do you think?” she asked, motioning to the map.
He leaned back in his chair. “I’m more interested in what you think.”
She scowled at him.
“I’m not trying to be difficult,” he contended. “I’m just curious as to your take on this. After all, if we’re going to be working together…”
She fought the urge to dig in her heels. But he was right. She’d gotten him out of prison to help her catch the rustlers. It was going to require some give and take. But at the same time, if he was the leader…
“I think they’re going to make a big hit on Shade Waters’s W Bar Ranch. It’s the largest spread in the area and the rustlers have already hit ranches around him for miles, but not touched his.”
Dillon lifted a brow.
“What?”
“I suspect that’s exactly what they want you to think,” he said.
She had to bite her tongue. Damn him and his arrogance. “You have a better suggestion as to where they’ll go next?”
He leaned forward to study the map again. After a long moment, he said, “Not a clue.”
She swore under her breath and glared at him.
“If you’re asking me what the rustlers will do next, I have no idea,” he said, raising both hands in surrender.
“What would you do?” she snapped.
Dillon shrugged, pretty sure now he knew why Jack had gotten him out of prison. “Like I told you back at the prison weeks ago, I’m not sure how I can help you find these guys.”
He saw that she didn’t believe that. “Look, it’s clear that they are very organized. No fly-by-night bunch. They move fast and efficiently. They know what they’re doing, where they’re going to go next.”
“So?” she asked.
“If you think I can predict their movements, then you wasted your time and your money getting me an early release. You might as well drive me back to prison right now.”
“Don’t tempt me. You said you think they want me to assume they’re going to hit Waters’s ranch. What does that mean?”
“They wouldn’t be that obvious. Sorry, but isn’t the reason this bunch has been so hard to catch the fact that they don’t do what you expect them to? That gives them the upper hand.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Mr. Savage.”
He sighed and looked at the map again. “Are these the number of cattle stolen per ranch?” he asked, pointing to the notations she’d made beside the red x’s.
She gave him an exasperated look, her jaw still tight.
He could see why she thought the ring would be looking for a big score. The rustlers were being cautious, taking only about fifty head at a time, mostly not-yet-branded calves that would be hard to trace. Smart, but not where the big money was.
Jacklyn got up from the table as if too nervous to sit still, and started clearing up their dinner.
“It’s not about the money,” he said to her back.
She turned as she tossed an empty Chinese food box into the trash. “Stop trying to con me.”
“I’m not. You’re looking at this rationally. Rustling isn’t always rational—at least the motive behind it isn’t. Hell, there are a lot of better ways to make a living.”
“I thought you said it was simple math, quick bucks, little risk,” she said, an edge to her voice.
So she had been listening. “Yeah, but it’s too hit-or-miss. With a real job you get to wear a better wardrobe, have nicer living conditions. Not to mention a 401 K salary, vacation and sick pay, plus hardly anyone ever shoots at you.”
“Your point?” she said, obviously not appreciating his sense of humor.
She started to scoop up the map, but he grabbed her hand, more to get her attention than to stop her. He could feel her pulse hammering against the pad of his thumb, which he moved slowly in a circle across the warm flesh. His heart kicked up a beat as her eyes met his.
What the hell was he doing? He let go and she pulled back, her gaze locked with his, a clear warning in all that gunmetal-gray.
“All I’m saying is that you have to think like they think,” he said.
She shook her head. “That’s your job.”
“The only way I can do that is if I know what they really want,” he said.
“They want cattle.”
He laughed. “No. Trust me, it’s not about cattle. It’s always about the end result. The cattle are just a means to an end. What we need to know is what they’re getting out of this. It isn’t the money. They aren’t making enough for it to be about money. So what do they really want?”
“The money will come from a big score. Waters’s W Bar Ranch.”
“After they’ve telegraphed what they are going to do so clearly that it’s what you’re expecting?” He snorted. “No, they have something else in mind.”
She shook her head as if he was talking in riddles. “I won’t know what they want until I catch them.”
He grinned. “Catching them is one thing. Finding out who they are is another.”
She was glaring at him again.
“You’ve been trying to catch an unnamed ring of cattle rustlers,” he said patiently. “What do these men do when they aren’t rustling cattle? You can bet they work on these ranches,” he said, pointing at the map.
She sat back down very slowly. He could tell she was trying to control her temper. She thought he was messing with her.
“Look,” he said softly. “You already know a lot about these guys.” He ticked items off on his fingers. “One, someone smart is running this operation. That’s why these characters seem to know what they’re doing and why they haven’t made any mistakes. Two, they know the country.” He nodded. “We’re talking some inside jobs here. They know not only where to find the cattle, but which ones to take and when. They either work on the ranches or have a connection of some kind.”
She crossed her arms, scowling but listening.
“Three, they’re cowboys. They’re too good at working with cattle not to be, and they’ve used horses for most of their raids. I’ll bet you these guys can ride better at midnight on a moonless night in rough terrain than most men can ride in a corral in broad daylight.”
She actually smiled at that.
He smiled back, then asked, “What’s so humorous?”
“You. You just described yourself,” she said, her gaze locking with his. “We’re looking for someone just like you. How about that.”
WHEN THE CALL CAME hours later, Jacklyn was in the middle of a nightmare. She jerked awake, dragging the bad dream into the room with her as she fumbled for her cell phone beside the bed.
“Tom Robinson’s in the hospital,” Stratton said without preamble. “He’s unconscious. The doctors aren’t sure he’s going to make it.”
Jacklyn fought to wake up, to make sense of what he was saying and what this had to do with her. Although she couldn’t remember any specifics of the nightmare, she knew it had been about the leader of the rustling ring. He’d been trying to kill her, stalking her among some trees. She could still feel him out there, feel the danger, the fear, sense him so close that if she looked over her shoulder… It had been Dillon, hadn’t it?
“It seems like he might have stumbled across the rustlers,” Stratton said. “His hired hand found him near a spot where someone had cut the fence.”
She glanced at the clock next to the bed. It was just after midnight.
“Are you there?” Stratton asked irritably. Like her, he’d obviously been awakened by the call about Tom. “When Tom didn’t return home for dinner, his hired hand tracked him down, and got him to the hospital. You know what this means, don’t you?”
Jacklyn threw off the covers and sat up, trying to throw off the remnants of the dream and the chilling terror that still had her in its grip, too. Snapping on the light beside the bed, she asked, “Did they get any cattle?”
“No. He must have scared the rustlers away.”
More awake, she said, “You told everyone to stay out of the area, right? To wait until I got there before they fix the fence?”
“Sheriff McCray already went out to the scene tonight.”
She swore under her breath.
“I told Robinson’s hired man that you’d be there first thing in the morning. The rustlers have moved up a level on the criminal ladder. If Tom dies, they’ve gone from rustling to murder.” With that he hung up.
She closed her cell phone and, bleary-eyed, glanced again at the clock, then at the monitor. She’d turned it down so there was no steady beep indicating where Dillon Savage was at the moment.
But she could see that he was in the room next door. Probably sleeping like a baby, without a care in the world.
With both a real nightmare and a bad dream hanging over her, she fought the urge to wake him up and ruin his sleep, just as hers had been. She wondered what Dillon Savage’s reaction would be to the news.
She turned out the light and crawled back under the covers, even though she doubted she’d get back to sleep. Silently, she prayed that Tom Robinson would regain consciousness and be able to identify his assailants.
The rustlers had messed up this time. They’d been seen. It was their first mistake.