Chapter 3 No Goodbyes #3
The cattle trailer abruptly slowed, making her shove her phone back in her coat pocket. Since the cows were quiet, she could only presume they were stopping to top off the gas tank. Or for one of the guys to take a bathroom break.
Ugh! Just thinking about it made her wish she could do the same.
Though she’d been careful not to drink too many fluids before the trip, she’d always been one to “empty out” every chance she got.
Though she wasn’t exactly dying for a bathroom break—not even close—the thought of not being able to go if she needed to was unsettling.
She blew out a breath and braced her hands on either side of her as the truck made a sharp turn. Venturing a peek out of one of the narrow windows closest to her, she verified that they were indeed pulling into a truck stop.
While the rumble of the motor was still masking her movements, she flattened out on her belly. Her best bet of staying hidden during any cattle trailer checks was to hunker below the level of the storage berth’s containment ledge.
The truck rolled to a stop, and the motor turned off. Only then did Mallory inwardly congratulate herself for surviving the first leg of the trip.
Two hours down. Three or four more to go.
Excitement shimmered through her at the realization that her cattle remained safely ensconced inside the trailer.
Though she was moderately cold and uncomfortable, taking things into her own hands might end up being her best decision yet.
She wished she’d thought of doing it sooner.
If she had, she might’ve been able to prevent her cattle from disappearing.
Most of them had likely already been turned into steak.
The bulls were the only ones she had any real hope of recovering alive.
Anyone with half a brain would know they were too valuable to send to the slaughterhouse.
She listened to truck doors opening and closing, along with the sound of male voices.
Chip made an off-color comparison between the late autumn wind and an intimate part of a witch’s anatomy.
It surprised her since his parents were such faithful churchgoers.
Not that kids didn’t kick up their heels a little when they were away from home, but it still felt off somehow—not like the sweet eighteen-year-old who called his momma ma’am and held open doors for her back home.
The expletive the normally bashful and soft-spoken Cruz let slip next sounded equally out of character.
What in the world?
This was a version of them she’d never heard before.
It was as if aliens had beamed down from a spaceship and assumed mind control over the young cowboys.
Both were so shy that they usually had trouble making proper eye contact.
Not that she interacted much with either of them since they reported directly to Dex, but what her ears were picking up was still highly unexpected.
She inched her way closer to the window so she could peek outside again, wondering if she’d gotten their voices mixed up with someone else’s.
But, no. It was Chip and Cruz alright, swaggering like roosters toward the entrance of the service station.
Chip’s long dark hair was stringing across his eyes in the breeze.
At one point, he paused in the middle of the parking lot to engage in an impromptu wrestling match with Cruz. It looked like Cruz had started it.
Though there was nothing surprising about them acting like overgrown boys, she didn’t like that they were blocking a red pickup from backing out of its parking spot against the building.
She also didn’t like how they refused to move when the driver rolled down his window and motioned for them to get out of his way.
She especially didn’t like the rude gesture Cruz made at the man after he rolled his window back up.
Regret shuddered through her, making her knees weak.
Right then and there, she knew she’d made a mistake in allowing Dex to talk her into hiring Cruz.
According to Dex, the young cowboy had passed his interview with flying colors.
However, she’d just seen a side of him that she doubted he’d displayed during the interview.
He was a bad influence on Chip, encouraging him to do all the stupid stuff Chip’s parents had been trying to coach out of him.
She was about to slump back to the floor in pure mortified-laced disappointment when she caught sight of the man who’d been driving the cattle trailer. He was striding into the service station that Chip and Cruz had disappeared into.
That’s impossible!
She blinked a few times, wondering if she’d already slipped into hypothermia and was hallucinating. Because if she was seeing clearly, there was only one conclusion to draw: Private Investigator Tucker Pratt’s out-of-town trip involved driving her cattle to their intended destination.
Despite the partial disguise he had on, she’d recognize his long-limbed, determined stride anywhere—even with the faint limp he’d adopted. Nobody else in the world walked the same way Tucker Pratt walked. Absolutely nobody!
Why hadn’t he bothered telling her something so important? What he was doing was one thousand percent relevant to her case, so much so that she had every right to be briefed about it ahead of time.
The other thing making her sick to her stomach was just how wrong she’d been about him.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, with an extra helping of wrong!
Somewhere along the way, he must have stopped writing off her troubles at Evans Ranch as a silly waste of his precious time.
Somewhere along the way, he must have decided she had a legitimate problem on her hands .
How did I miss this?
Her thoughts raced back to their most recent conversation yesterday. The pictures he’d sent her. The mildly out-of-breath tenor of his voice when he’d called her from the road. His uncharacteristic, albeit short, attempt at actually communicating with her for once.
Had he been injured during the explosion the other day? Was the limp he was exhibiting today a real limp, or was it simply part of his disguise?
Though continuing to peep through the window at him risked her being discovered, she was too engrossed to pull out of sight.
Instead, she watched in fascination as he returned to the truck to top off the tank with gasoline.
The long neck of a glass bottle of water was poking out of his right pocket.
While the machine was running, he stepped a good ten feet away to pull out his phone.
She winced, knowing he was about to read her message signaling how close she was to firing him. She was able to pinpoint the exact moment he read it by how his jaw tightened and the way his head whipped in the direction of her ranch.
Since he was half turned in her direction, she was unable to miss the flare of emotion in his dark gaze. His anger didn’t surprise her. The flash of worry in his eyes did.
A delicious feeling of weakness coursed through her. She absorbed it by slumping back onto the floor of the storage compartment.
Tucker Pratt is worried about me!
It was a wow moment with a big fat cherry and sprinkles on top to discover proof that, amidst his elephant-sized crassness, he possessed an ounce of human compassion for her. Or at least for her disappearing cattle…
The more she thought about it, the more sense his response to her text message made.
He might not give two hoots about her personally, but he was a cowboy at heart.
It was entirely possible she’d underestimated his interest in hunting down the cattle rustlers.
In hindsight, maybe she’d misinterpreted his lack of warmth and fuzziness.
Her cell phone gave a noisy jingle in her pocket to alert her to an incoming text. She stiffened in horror, realizing she must have forgotten to turn the sound off.
Of all the birdbrained oversights to make on an important venture like the one she was currently on!
She wanted to kick herself. Or, better yet, bang her forehead against the floor. However, she wasn’t at liberty to physically chastise herself, not while Tucker Owl-Eyed Pratt was standing only a few feet away from where she was hiding.
She jammed her hand in her pocket, frantically trying to locate the sound button. Before she found it, another jingle ricocheted through her pocket, louder this time since she was fishing through it.
Oh, just shoot me now! Everybody and their cousin couldn’t have picked a worse time to send her an avalanche of text messages.
Fearful of being found, she gave up trying to turn off her phone.
Instead, she wrapped her gloved hand around it and rolled on top of it to muffle the sound as much as possible.
To her chagrin, the two incoming text messages had the unfortunate effect of alarming the cattle in the trailer. Like they’d done when she’d yelped a few hours ago, they raised their heads and bellowed in protest.
She wanted so badly to shush them, but it wouldn’t do a lick of good. The sight of her would probably only make them bellow louder.
A third incoming text may have bleated through the noise, but she couldn’t be sure. There was too much noise rising around her.
There was a scrape of metal as someone jimmied with the lock on the trailer, then the creak of a door being cracked open. A wide sliver of sunlight followed.
“So help me, Mallory,” Tucker Pratt snarled. “If you’re in there, you’d better say something pronto!”
Her heart sank all the way through the trailer to the pavement below it.
There was zero point in dragging out the inevitable.
The game was up. Thanks to the wretched three-inch by six-inch electronic device in her coat pocket, she’d been found by a former police-detective-turned-private-investigator.
At least that’s what she thought she remembered him saying about his background. He wasn’t much of a talker.