Chapter 1 Gone Missing #2
Instead of saying anything, he and Luke exchanged rigid nods.
Unlike Luke, Tucker wasn’t wearing jeans.
His muscular frame was encased in cold-weather security gear—an all-black insulated jacket, pants, hat, neck gaiter, and waterproof boots.
He looked prepared to brave anything from a sharknado to a zombie apocalypse.
If only some of his hypercritical preparedness would translate into the return of her missing cattle!
A girl can dream.
A girl could also wallow in the depths of despair like she was so skilled at doing lately. It didn’t seem to matter how many hunky lawmen showed up after the fact on her property; the criminals infesting the canyons and foothills always seemed to be one step ahead of them. More like a country mile.
It was a battle every cattle rancher in Heart Lake was in the process of losing.
Mallory blinked rapidly to hold back the tears threatening to break free.
She felt like a doomed prisoner facing an execution squad.
Her only comfort was that neither of her parents were alive to watch her single-handedly lose Evans Ranch.
I’m sorry, Mom and Dad. The rambling one-story farmhouse she lived in had been in their family for five generations.
The central four rooms dated back to the Civil War.
Beneath the layers of much newer sheetrock were log cabin walls that she’d planned on uncovering and restoring someday.
The doorway leading to her mudroom had pencil marks depicting her height every year from age two to age fifteen, when she’d finally stopped getting taller.
Bummer! Her disappointingly petite frame had been cemented in Evans’ family history beneath a layer of clear shellac.
It was her home. Every room, closet, and strip of flooring held lasting memories of her dearly departed loved ones. Memories she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving behind. She’d rather die.
“Mallory?” The sheriff’s worried voice broke through her tortured thoughts, bringing her back to the frosty field they were standing in.
“What?” The unforgiving wind buffeted the collar of her fleece-lined denim jacket, slicing past the missing button at her throat. She shivered and cupped a gloved hand against her neck since she didn’t have a fancy gaiter to do the honors.
“Do you have any questions for me before I take off?” The long-suffering note in his voice told her that he was repeating something he’d already asked while her mind had been wandering.
A sense of defeat sank deep into her bones.
“Not any that you can answer.” She desperately wanted to know if Old Glory and Tank were still alive and where the rustlers had taken them.
She wanted to know what had happened to the rest of her missing cattle.
She wanted names, she wanted arrests, and she wanted to still be in business when it was all over.
He gave her a wry nod. “I’ll be in touch with any new information we uncover.”
Though he was being sincere, she wasn’t expecting a call from him anytime soon. Whatever dark poison was spreading across their small town felt bigger than him. Bigger than his country police department. Bigger than all of them put together .
What little sputter of hope remained in her died during his short walk back to his police cruiser.
“Here.” Tucker’s brusque voice made her jolt.
She yanked her gaze to him and discovered he was holding out a wadded-up piece of black cloth. It took her an extra second or two to realize it was his neck gaiter.
“No thanks.” As cold as she was, it was as natural as breathing to refuse his offer. Any favor from him was sure to come with strings attached. She hunched her shoulders forward to ward off the relentless blast of wind coming from behind her.
“Suit yourself.” He stuffed the gaiter in one of his coat pockets instead of putting it back on.
“I always do,” she muttered, not sure why he was being nice to her all of a sudden. It was unsettling. “I do have a few questions for you before you take off.”
He raised a single eyebrow at her. “Questions you couldn’t ask the sheriff?” His voice dripped with sarcasm.
“If he had the answers I wanted, I wouldn’t have had to hire you,” she reminded sharply.
His jaw tightened, but all he did was incline his head to her.
“What progress have you made on my case?” It was a blunt question that came just shy of challenging his expertise as a private investigator. The implication was clearly there, though.
“I just this morning found out Martina and Dexter Silva were seasonal workers at a commercial farm near Ft. Bliss.” He paused to let that sink in. “Right up to the point when you hired them.”
His caustic tone of voice set her teeth on edge.
“How many times have I told you I’m not paying you to give my bookkeepe r and ranch foreman the stink eye?
” She stressed the Silvas’ job titles to make it clear she wasn’t buying what Tucker was insinuating.
She already knew about Martina’s past—about how she and Dexter (who preferred to be called Dex) had worked every odd job they could to pay for her online degree in accounting.
Their resumes more than qualified them to serve in their current roles.
Martina and Dex Silva were pure gold. In the few months they’d worked for her, she’d come to think of them as family.
Martina was fifteen years older than Mallory’s own twenty-six years, an age gap that made her feel motherly.
The presence of Martina and Dex’s quiet and nerdy eighteen-year-old son added to the fun.
Despite the beautiful relationship they shared, the Silva family never took advantage of it to cut corners.
They put in long hours at Evans Ranch, completing every task Mallory assigned to them and then some.
It honestly felt like they were never off duty.
She was going to have to force them to take a vacation soon. Hopefully not a permanent one.
Tucker’s face settled into stony lines. “I go where the evidence takes me.”
What evidence? As with Luke, she was worried Tucker was simply trying to make it look like he was doing something.
It had been obvious from the start that he had no actual interest in her or her case.
“No doubt your bull in a china shop approach worked great in whatever big-city police department you came from?—”
“El Paso,” he supplied smoothly. “Narcotics division.”
Whatever. She gave him a frosty look of reproach. “Heart Lake is a lot smaller than El Paso.”
“By about 600,000 people.” His voice held little inflection, not that any inflection was needed for robotically spouting off numbers.
“Small enough,” her voice grew harder, “for people to know each other and care about each other, which we make a habit of doing.” She wasn’t about to apologize for the warm hospitality she extended to her employees.
Tucker propped his gloved hands loosely on his hips. “The Silva family isn’t from here,” he pointed out in a reasonable voice. “It only made sense to start off my investigation by looking into the background of those closest to you.”
“I’m not the only one losing cattle in this town,” she reminded, slapping her hands down on her hips to imitate his stance.
“No, but everyone else losing cattle has only been losing them since the Silvas showed up.”
Though Mallory didn’t doubt for a second that Tucker had done his homework with his timeline, she couldn’t believe what he was implying.
“You do know the meaning of the word coincidence ?” She imagined there were plenty of other people who’d visited or moved to town around the same time.
Was he viewing everyone who met that criteria with the same amount of suspicion?
“I don’t believe in coincidences.”
A muffled whimper of alarm alerted her that Martina Silva must have noticed the activity outside the living room window her desk was pushed against.
She glanced up and found her bookkeeper flying their way in a beige sweater jacket with the hood pulled up. “What’s up, Martina?”
“I saw the police lights and my heart hit the floor.” Several strands of Martina’s long, salt-and-pepper hair were fluttering in the breeze. “What’s going on?”
“The sheriff left a few minutes ago,” Tucker pointed out in a mildly accusing voice. “The flashing lights from his cruiser have been gone for the same amount of time.”
Mallory gasped in outrage, but before she could say anything, Martina rushed to explain.
“I was on the phone with a prospective client. Goodness knows you can’t have too many of those.
” She ducked her head respectfully at Tucker.
“But I respect your reasons for asking, sir.” As Mallory’s bookkeeper, she was well aware of what Tucker did for a living and why Mallory had contracted his services.
“If you’d like to look at my call history…
” She faced him, fumbling in her coat pocket for her cell phone.
“That won’t be necessary.” Mallory rolled her eyes and changed the subject. “The sheriff paid us a visit because Tank is missing.”
“Oh, no!” Martina, who’d just finished digging out her cell phone, swung back in Mallory’s direction. Her cell phone flew from her grasp and landed in a pile of frosty grass, narrowly missing one of Tank’s smelly deposits. “Say it isn’t so,” she panted as she bent over to retrieve her phone.
“I wish I could.” Mallory tasted the tang of despair in her mouth. “If we keep losing cattle at this rate, especially bulls, it’ll put us out of business.”