Chapter 6 #2
some cattle seemed a quick way to score.
She sighed. Maybe it was. Maybe she was overly suspicious about things.
It had happened before. She checked her gun to make sure it was loaded.
She put it back into its cross-draw holster and sat down, tapping her foot with uncharacteristic impatience.
She’d learned over the years that most of her job was waiting for people, for things, for events.
It wasn’t the glamorous lifestyle outsiders imagined.
She was patient, to a degree. But sometimes it was agony to sit and hope for results.
She’d rather have been outside, in the thick of things, regardless of the danger.
Her mind went back to the boy, JJ, and she wondered how he was faring with his new family. She was proud that she’d had even
a small hand in finding him a place in the world. He was a sweet boy, with a lot of promise. She felt sad for him. Having
lost her mother, she knew how it felt to be mostly alone in the world. Of course, she still had her father. Not that he was
much of a parent. He’d spent his whole life in search of exciting women, and her mother wasn’t one. He’d said often enough
that they never should have married.
The poor woman had died alone, and a maid had found her after her death. It had been hard for Josie to forgive her father
for that. He’d been away for several days, romancing a rich woman over in Cheyenne. He wasn’t even particularly upset to learn
of his wife’s death. In fact, he’d told Josie that she needed to pick out the casket and see to the arrangements because,
after all, he wasn’t really a relative.
She’d been devastated by her loss and his disinterest. It had come during one of her increasingly short breaks. She did good
work, which resulted in more of it. Her bureau chief lauded her to every visiting official, which had landed her with this
assignment.
But remembering the dead woman and her small children, she hadn’t hesitated when asked to help shut down the pipeline that
had led to their deaths, and the incarceration of the regretful father.
She wanted very much to do that. But her contact, Raines, seemed unusually secretive about how and where they obtained drugs, and even more so about their own contacts.
Josie was never allowed to meet any of them.
She was told to find a way to go and see the boy, JJ.
And while she was there, she was to find a way to see where silos and empty buildings were, and where most of the cattle were kept and where the cowboys worked most and where the young cattle grazed.
Which, to her mind, had nothing much to do with dealing drugs.
She was willing to go see JJ, and Cole and Heather had said she’d be welcome.
But she didn’t want to raise any suspicions in John Everett, who was already wary of her.
She’d have to bide her time for a little longer and come up with a reason to visit the Big Spur that sounded reasonable.
The drug dealers were a different matter. Now it was a matter of gaining trust, so that she could get past Raines to the brains
of this outfit. That was proving to be more difficult than she’d imagined. And not for the first time, she wondered what had
become of Raines’s former partner, Pete. Raines hadn’t said a word about him.
A short knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.
It was Raines and again, Pete wasn’t with him. He came in, cast a curious look out the door and then closed it.
“My El Paso boss wants to meet you,” he said after a minute.
“Okay,” she said, trying not to sound excited. She was moving up the chain of command.
“He said tomorrow night at seven, at the bar. Listen, this is going to be worth a lot of money for you and me, so don’t mess
it up. Have you got those schedules down pat if he asks you about them? The ones at the Big Spur?”
She faked a stammer. “W-well, I know pretty much when they get deliveries. But they’re not always on a schedule,” she said.
“The cattle are in different pastures. The calves don’t come until spring, although the upcoming yearlings are in a pasture
by themselves. They feed them out on the ranch instead of sending them to a feedlot.”
“Good, good. And what about security?”
“Cameras everywhere,” she said, “at least, where the expensive cattle are, at the stable, the barns, the line cabins—there are several of them, scattered around the ranch, used for roundup or nighthawks mostly when the weather is really bad.”
He made a face. “What about those silos and the trucks and the buildings? What sort of security is there?”
“Well, I don’t know,” she said hesitatingly. “I mean, I was just at the ranch house with the kid. I didn’t go touring.”
“So, how about you go visit that kid you convinced Everett to take home?” Raines asked. “You called Mrs. Everett to check
on him a couple of days ago.”
Her heart skipped. She’d have to be very careful from now on. She hadn’t realized they had her under such close surveillance.
“I guess I could do that. But not real soon. I mean, I just got back from there. It would raise their suspicions.” She eyed
him. “Maybe I could discuss that with the big boss tomorrow night.”
He glared at her.
“Or not,” she said with nonchalance. “Whatever you say.”
“Don’t run your mouth when you see him. Just listen. He’ll tell you what he wants you to know,” he added.
She sighed. “Okay. It’s your show.”
“You bet it is. There’s big money in this and I’m not going to lose out because you got ambitious.”
“I get it,” she said easily. “Where’s Pete?” she asked.
“Working on the deal,” he said enigmatically. “I’ll come get you tomorrow for the meeting.”
“I’ll be here,” she said. “It isn’t as if there’s anything to do in this hick town,” she added.
He just looked at her before he opened the door and went out.
She wasn’t a nervous person, but she was wired by the time her meeting with the big boss rolled around.
She actually jumped when the knock on the door came the next evening. Spending a whole day in the motel room had made her stir-crazy.
She opened the door.
He glared at her jeans and denim jacket and boots, her long red-gold hair in a ponytail held together with a blue cloth scrunchie.
She’d left her handgun in its cross-draw holster on her hip. “You going like that?” he exclaimed.
She glared back. “I didn’t pack an evening gown,” she said sarcastically.
He sighed. “All right, all right. I meant, you taking a pistol to the meeting?”
“The gun and I are a team. We both go, or we stay here,” she replied.
“I guess maybe he won’t mind,” he muttered as they went out.
He drove them to a seedy bar on the other side of town. He led the way inside, where a couple of men were playing pool. There
was only one other occupant, very elegant, very Spanish and very wary.
“This is the girl,” Raines introduced her.
He raised a bored eyebrow over black eyes. “Not much to look at, is she?” he asked in faintly accented Spanish.
Her second language was Spanish, and she was literate in it. But she only smiled and pretended not to understand.
“I said, you are not much to look at, young lady,” he said lazily, with a sarcastic smile.
“I don’t need to be pretty to do a job, do I?” she replied curtly.
He chuckled. “A firecracker, huh?” he said. “Okay. I get the idea. You work, you don’t primp. Sit down. What will you drink?”
“Ginger ale,” she said, perching on a stool.
“And what in it?”
She shook her head. “I can’t drink. Bad stomach. Too many highballs as a teenager,” she lied. “I ruined my insides.”
“Ah. Well.”
She sipped her drink. He nursed his—she glanced at his glass—scotch on the rocks, or she missed her guess.
“Has Raines told you what I need from you?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, and out of the corner of her eye she watched Raines relax. “You want schedules of deliveries and
information on buildings and trucks and cattle locations. I know some, but they get pallets of salt and medical supplies at
odd times. I think those are kept in the barn near the ranch house, but I couldn’t find out those very easily without raising
suspicion.” She frowned. “What does that have to do with rustling those young purebred bulls Raines told me about?” she added.
“They guard them all the time . . .”
“It isn’t bulls we’re interested in,” he said, with a vicious glare at Raines.
“It wasn’t me,” Raines said, both hands up, palms out. He was pale. “The big boss wants them! You can call him!”
“All right, all right, don’t have a heart attack over it,” the swarthy man said in a heavily accented voice. “What we’re most
interested in is open-culled cows at the next big ranch auction, in the spring,” he said.
She blinked. “Cows?”
She shifted on the stool and her jacket fell open, putting her pistol on display. “You’re armed?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said at once. “I’ve had more than one attempt on my life after my last job, up in Kansas,” she added. “I always
go armed.”
He smiled. “I hope you will accept my protection while you are in my company?” he added, as he took the pistol out of its
holder. He handed it to one of the pool players, obviously his man. “I will, of course, return it after we speak.”
“Okay,” she said, smiling. He wasn’t likely to shoot her. Not until he no longer needed her. “No problem.”
“Now. To business. I hope you have no qualms about drugs in the place of cattle?” he added.
“None at all,” she said. “As long as there’s a profit to be had.”
“I assure you, the profit here is quite large. And it may lead to even larger profits if our association continues.”
“I’ll drink to that,” she said and lifted her glass, smiling, to her lips.
He did return her pistol after they spoke and left her with a big smile and promises of a great deal of money.
Raines drove her back to the motel. “That was a good trick, befriending that kid so that you had a way into the Everetts’