Smokescreen (Pros and Cons Mysteries #2)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

TODAY

O live glanced at a group of men she passed, and she tilted her cowboy hat. “Howdy, y’all.”

They nodded back, and she kept going.

She took her place among the crowd gathered in the sale barn. The scent of dirt, hay, and horses surrounded her. She thought the aroma would be unpleasant, but there was something strangely comforting about it.

The Sweetwater County livestock auction was about to begin, and Olive had dressed the part of an eager buyer. Her well-worn jeans and cowboy boots blended in with the rest of the Wyoming crowd. For this part of her assignment she’d donned a blonde wig, styled in a bob. She’d never thought blonde was her color. But since she’d be going undercover in a different capacity after this auction, she needed to look like a different person.

She scanned the ranchers around her as they mingled with each other, their conversations casual as they waited for the auctioneer to take the stage. Most of them wore faded jeans and cowboy hats. They gathered in groups as if this was a big reunion. There were a couple of outsiders here too—including Olive.

Someone in this room very well could be a criminal.

She’d been hired by Reid Harrison to figure out who that might be and to stop that person before they could strike again.

What she really needed was to get into Skip Carson’s office. He headed up this livestock auction. If anyone had the information she needed, it was Skip.

She needed to figure out who’d blacklisted Reid and had him banned from buying and selling at this auction—a move that could definitely affect Reid’s ranch. He counted on these events for sales. Skip wouldn’t release the name of the accuser, but he should have paperwork somewhere.

If Olive could figure out the person behind the complaint, then maybe she could figure out who was sabotaging Reid’s ranch and why. Vengeance toward Reid? Or did someone want his property? Reid needed answers.

“Everything good on your end?” a voice said into her hidden earpiece.

Patrick “Trick” Borowski was also here.

Olive was used to seeing Trick decked out in business attire or dressed to the nines, as the saying went. For this assignment, Trick would be a ranch hand, so he’d transformed into a cowboy—a very believable cowboy.

Of course, everything Trick did was believable. He was a master of disguise.

Even though his last name indicated he was of Polish descent, he claimed to have mischievous Irish roots. He had curly, dark-blond hair and an easy grin. He could charm the ladies faster than a cheetah going after its prey.

Meanwhile, Tevin McIntyre, who ran tech for them, monitored everything from his van in the parking lot. He would mostly stay quiet in her ear unless there was an emergency. Too much talking in her earpiece only led to confusion.

Olive glanced across the crowd to Trick. “I’m on track.”

He stood beyond a fenced-off partition. Under the guise of being a ranch hand, he currently helped wrangle some quarter horses up for auction.

She remained at the back of the crowd, trying to stay mostly out of sight. But she’d seen the looks several people had thrown her way. She was an outsider here. The ranching world was small, which was why she’d had a cover story. She’d come here from Montana to scout out some new horses for her boss, who preferred to remain nameless.

“These people seem folksy enough,” Trick said. “But I don’t trust any of them.”

Olive’s eyebrows rose. She understood his sentiment. Even though they were in Wyoming among people who worked the dirt and with animals for a living, many of the people around her seemed to be anything but salt of the earth.

They were cutthroat, competitive, and willing to do whatever was necessary to keep themselves ahead.

As the auctioneer started talking at a rapid, rhythmic pace, people gathered around the stage.

Olive stole a glance at the corridor where the office was located.

Just then, Skip Carson stepped out and closed the door behind him.

Of course, he wanted to be out here for the auction.

This might be Olive’s best chance to find the information she needed.

She glanced at Trick. “I’m going in. You ready?”

“Just give me the sign.”

Olive glanced around once more to make sure no one was watching. Then she casually strode toward the office.

She gave Trick a nod. The next moment, Trick “lost control” of the horse he wrangled. As the stallion rose up on two feet, the crowd gasped and backed away. Several stable hands stepped in to help.

With everyone’s eyes glued to the horse, Olive used a special lock-picking tool to unlock the door. Then she slipped into Skip’s office, locked the door behind her, and let out the breath she’d been holding.

Step one: complete.

But Olive was nowhere near finished.

She glanced around the space. The inside of the office was bright, with multiple windows—windows that allowed sunshine to illuminate Olive.

Trophies Skip had received from his many award-winning quarter horses stood on a wooden shelf against one wall. A large leather saddle sat on a wooden stand in the corner of the room. She had expected a bigger, fancier desk. Instead, an old metal one like a schoolteacher might use stretched across the center of the room.

Where could she find the information she needed?

She’d start with the desk.

She sat in the beat-up leather chair and reached for the bottom drawer, where all the files would most likely be stored.

Her eyebrows flicked up when she saw the vast amount of papers that had been stuffed in the small space. Locating anything inside would not be easy.

With no time to waste, she began to thumb through the files, looking for any correspondence that would indicate who’d gotten Reid banned from this event.

“Everything okay in there?” Trick asked in her earpiece.

“So far, so good,” Olive murmured. “This might take a while to find, however. Skip just might be a packrat.”

“Time isn’t on our side.”

“I know.”

She continued to shuffle through the files, looking for anything useful.

“Olive, head’s up. Someone is?—”

The rest of Trick’s sentence was cut off as the sound of the auctioneer’s chant cut into their feed.

“Trick? What did you say?”

He said something else, but Olive couldn’t make out what. His words sounded choppy, cut off with every other syllable.

In the meantime, she needed to keep looking. She didn’t have any time to lose.

Her gaze stopped on some letters shoved into a file folder. She quickly searched through them.

Finally, she found the one she needed . . . she hoped.

She grabbed her phone to take a picture. But as she did, the door rattled, and voices sounded outside.

Her lungs froze.

If the men behind what was going on were as dangerous as she thought, then Olive was in a very bad position right now. One ranch hand working for Reid had already disappeared, and Olive suspected foul play was involved.

Olive quickly put the folder back and closed the drawer.

Then she ducked beneath the desk . . . just as the door opened.

Two men stepped inside the office.

From the small space at the bottom of the desk, Olive saw two sets of feet.

One wore cowboy boots: brown leather and well-worn with equally well-worn jeans. The other wore muddy work boots and jeans with dried mud on the edges.

Olive drew herself into a ball and willed herself not to move.

“We need to make this quick,” a deep voice said.

“Here’s the gun,” the other man said.

The gun? More tension spread across Olive’s back.

“Put it in his drawer,” the man with the deep voice said. “He’ll never know it was missing.”

“You really think we’re going to get away with this?” The guy wearing the muddy work boots shuffled his feet as if uneasy.

“We’ve got everything under control.”

“You do know the consequences if we mess this up, right?” Work Boots was clearly the more nervous of the two.

Their dialogue brought back memories of the conversation Olive had overheard her dad having with those two men downstairs all those years ago.

Still to this day, she had no idea who her dad had been arguing with. But she thought about it all the time. If only she’d gotten a glimpse of those men’s faces . . . maybe she’d be closer to finding answers about what had happened to her family.

Because a year later, they’d all been killed.

Everyone but her.

An ache pulsed through her heart at the memory. Olive was pretty sure the hurt would never go away.

Swallowing hard, she shoved her grief aside. She had to focus on her current situation.

One of the men stepped away from the other and paced around the desk.

If he pulled the chair back . . . the light from the window would leave her exposed.

“No one is going to know anything,” Cowboy Boots said. “Stop worrying about it so much.”

Work Boots paused near the desk chair and jerked open one of the drawers.

He dropped the gun inside with a loud clank.

Olive caught a glimpse of the weapon. It was a Glock. Notably one of the most popular handguns in the world. They offered more than fifty models, and more than two million were thought to be in existence.

The pistol wasn’t usually used by cowboys, who seemed to prefer rifles.

She mentally willed the man not to sit down—a mind trick she knew wouldn’t work.

Instead, she decided to focus on what would work. She had the gift of talking herself out of situations. She might be able to do that if push came to shove. She needed to get her story straight.

“We gotta get out of here before Skip comes back.” The man passed from the back of the desk.

Olive let out a small breath. But her relief was premature.

“Let me check one more thing before we leave. Gotta make sure all our bases are covered.” Cowboy Boots pulled out the chair. The next instant, he muttered, “What the . . . ?”

He stared directly at Olive.