Chapter 4 Roadtrip #3
He wasn’t sure what size of team they were sending on the chopper, only that it would likely arrive within the hour. To give them as much time as possible to get airborne and zero in on his cell phone tracker, he dawdled behind the roadblock instead of moving the sawhorses out of the way himself.
Before dialing Evans Ranch, he sent Chip, Cruz, and Mallory into the cattle trailer to fill the hay feeders. Normally, he wouldn’t have bothered feeding the steers during a three-hundred-mile trip, but the delays they’d experienced were starting to add up.
The soft-spoken Martina Silva picked up on the second ring. “Evans Ranch. How may I help you?”
He quickly filled her in on the unfortunate details and received the expected gasps and exclamations of alarm, after which he assured her that her son was unharmed.
“He played it safe and dove for the floorboard. Smart kid!” Tucker worked his way up to the main purpose of his call. “I’m assuming Miss Evans wants us to continue on with the shipment?” He hoped she said yes. Now that he had backup on the way, he was eager to continue his investigation.
“Absolutely!” Martina Silva sounded taken aback by the question. “Losing one steer is bad enough, sir. Cancelling the rest of the shipment would only put us deeper in the hole. We’ll offer them a discount or something for the missing steer. ”
We , not she . Tucker found Martina’s choice of words odd, since she was paid hourly and didn’t have a personal stake in Evans Ranch.
Then again, she might not be referring to the profit from the sale of the cattle at all.
She might be referring to an entirely different income stream she and her husband were earning from a business they were running on the side.
“Understood, ma’am.” He also found it odd that she’d taken the call for her boss instead of making any attempt to reroute the call to Mallory.
“I’ll fill Mallory in on what’s going on the next time she calls,” Martina offered. Her statement was uncanny in its timing. It was almost as if she’d read his thoughts. “She’s out of town, which is why you’re stuck talking to me.”
“All sounds good,” he drawled. “Sorry again for being the bearer of bad news.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said quickly. Too quickly, in his opinion.
“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll let y’all know when we reach El Paso.”
“I’d appreciate that.” Martina seemed to be in a hurry to end their call, which she did with no additional small talk.
Once Tucker started driving again, Mallory kept tossing worried glances at him.
“What?” He barked out the word.
“You’re gonna find a way to blame this on me so you can fire me again, huh?” She wrinkled her nose in disgust.
Good one. He was impressed with how well she was staying in her role. “Someone’s got a guilty conscience.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Says the guy who once accused me of bringing him bad luck!”
“You can’t do that to her!” Chip flew to her defense, nearly coming out of his seat. “None of this is her fault, and you know it. She had a gun jammed in her face when she?—”
“Got it,” Tucker interrupted in exasperation. The amount of puppy love pouring out of the kid was starting to get under his skin.
“You shoulda seen her crawling around in the trailer like a monkey,” Cruz announced in an unexpected burst of humor. “She filled the hay feeders in nothing flat!”
Mallory gave her best imitation of some monkey sounds, making both cowboys in the backseat dissolve into laughter.
Tucker snuck a glance at the woman who’d proven to be an unexpectedly worthy partner. She wasn’t half bad at acting. Her smart mouth, ratty outfit, and lioness-level of feistiness more than compensated for her tiny size.
She caught him looking at her and rolled her eyes at him. “I know what you’re thinking.”
I bet you don’t. “This oughta be good.” He experienced a sudden urge to reach across the console to take her hand.
Never had he been as terrified as he was when she’d climbed out of the truck at gunpoint.
He’d been terrified she was about to get hurt on his watch, terrified there’d be nothing he could do about it, and terrified he was feeling too much for someone he had no business having any feelings for.
Unfortunately, his job didn’t leave room for that kind of relationship.
It was difficult to romance a woman when he couldn’t talk about his day or what he did for a living.
Most of the time, he couldn’t even discuss his current whereabouts.
Not to mention, any woman who got close to him was usually in danger.
He’d long since stopped trying to meet the one . Whoever she was, she had a better chance of enjoying life if she stayed as far from him as possible. The few ground rules he lived by kept him single but alive:
Be brutally honest.
Don’t try to impress anyone.
Stay focused on bringing criminals to justice.
Mallory Evans was the first woman who’d ever stuck around after running headfirst into his ground rules.
Either there was something wrong with her, or she was the most incredible human being he’d ever met.
He wasn’t sure which, only that the more she invaded his personal space, the more trouble his heart was in.
She stared a hole through him before blurting, “You think I’m in cahoots with them, don’t you?”
“What?” He yanked his thoughts back to her, trying to remember what he’d said to make her mad this time.
“You’re over there working yourself into a lather trying to figure out how I handed over one of Miss Evans’ prize steers without swallowing a bullet.
” She folded her arms defiantly. “You wanted so badly to tell the sheriff that the screw-up you fired came back for the sole purpose of aiding and abetting in a highway robbery. You wanted them to haul me away so you wouldn’t have to be bothered with me anymore. ”
The brief look she flicked across the seat from beneath her lashes clued Tucker in to what she was really up to. She was attempting to draw Chip and Cruz into the conversation. Either that, or get a reaction from them.
A sense of foreboding made the hair on his arms prickle beneath his shirt, because she was dancing all around his current theory about the case.
“You’re right.” He shrugged like it was no big deal. “If I had any proof you were part of what happened back there, I wouldn’t have thought twice about throwing you under the bus.”
“That’s it!” Chip’s voice filled the cab in a jovial challenge. “Hand over your duffel bag, Brat. If there’s any proof of your guilt, that’s where you’re hiding it.”
She gave him a withering look. “Really, Chip? You think I’d make it that easy for y’all?”
He spread his hands, sounding like he was trying not to laugh. “How about you just hand it over, and prove me wrong?”
Without warning, she flung the duffel bag at him, catching him full in the face.
“Ow!” He glared at her as it fell on his lap, but he quickly recovered. He eagerly unzipped it and rummaged through it.
“Aw, she’s got a trashy romance novel.”
“It’s not trashy!” She yanked her slender frame around to throw a punch across the console. It connected solidly with his upper arm. “ Gone With the Wind is a classic! They made it into a movie and everything.”
She sounded so offended that Tucker suspected some of her ire was genuine. Apparently, his partner in crime liked to read. Check. She was also fond of the classics. Check.
“There’s shampoo and soap, too,” Chip drawled in a wicked voice. His words were accompanied by a loud sniffing sound. “Gotta smell good while you’re committing crimes.”
“Give me that!” Sounding thoroughly incensed, Mallory made a swipe at her bag, but he held it out of reach.
Tucker watched their wrestling match through the rear-view mirror, noting how little attention Cruz was paying to either of them.
He remained hunkered against his side of the cab, keeping his eyes glued to his cell phone.
Not only was he completely tuning out the drama taking place nearby, there was something inexplicably gleeful in his overall demeanor.
“So help me,” Mallory snarled in a voice Tucker had never heard before, “I’m gonna make you regret coming on this road trip.”
Chip laughed in her face. “I’ve never seen anyone get so worked up over a bar of soap.”
“It’s because guys stink!” She lunged farther over the seat and finally succeeded in snatching back her duffel bag, but only because Chip wasn’t playing tough with her. “The last thing I need is for y’all to get your nasty guy stench on my clean girl soap.”
“Whoa!” Chip held up his hands in surrender. “I take showers.” His voice grew cunning. “Every. Single. Week.”
While he laughed at his own joke, she made the appropriate gagging noises.
Tucker sent a silent high five to Mallory as she settled huffily down in the passenger seat.
What she’d just finished pulling off was some rather fine interrogating.
Her humorous altercation with Chip had emphasized his harmlessness, while underscoring the fact that Cruz was the one they should be watching.
She’d done it on purpose, too. On top of being annoyingly beautiful, she was undeniably clever.
While she and Chip continued to trade insults, Tucker kept a closer eye on Cruz. As the miles flew by, he withdrew further and further into himself on his side of the seat.
Another thirty minutes clicked past before a crack of thunder alerted Tucker to the fact that they were heading into a storm.
“Oh, for the love of Mike,” he muttered.
He wasn’t catching any breaks on this trip.
Pushing his Stetson back, he peered through the windshield, not liking the look of the dark clouds rolling across the highway up ahead.
He’d been careful to check the weather forecast along their route before he’d started driving.
Whatever was festering up there hadn’t been in the forecast. He was sure of it.
The next crack of thunder was much louder than the first one—loud enough to make the herd of steers behind them bellow out a collective protest.
A wind shear caught the trailer he was pulling broadside, making it fishtail pretty hard.
He slowed his speed and righted the steering wheel.
Despite his efforts, the cattle bellowed louder from inside the trailer.
Fortunately, there was almost no traffic on the road, probably because they were passing through the middle of nowhere.
The other reason was that folks were likely taking shelter.
As he steered his way through another fishtail, his ears picked up on the distant rumble of a helicopter. Finally! He didn’t crane his neck for a glimpse, not wanting to alert the occupants of the truck that they were no longer alone on the highway.
“Check this out,” Chip announced excitedly.
“Check what out?” Tucker darted a quick glance in the rear-view mirror and found him waving his cell phone in the air.
“My stepdad just sent me a screenshot of what we’re driving into, and it’s not good!”
Tucker mentally catalogued the fact that Dexter Silva wasn’t Chip’s biological father.
He wondered how he’d missed that during his research into the Silvas’ background.
He’d take another look at his file on them as soon as they stopped for the night.
The discovery felt significant. It made him wonder what else he might have missed.
“We should keep going.” Cruz’s voice was brusque. It was the first time since they’d gotten back on the road that he’d made any attempt to join the conversation. “Dodging raindrops is for sissies.”
He’d barely gotten the words out of his mouth before a storm siren started blaring.
“I’m gonna have to disagree with you, bro.” Chip nervously pressed his nose against the window to peer outside. “Looks like sharknado weather out there.”
“Shut up.” Cruz unearthed a granola bar, peeled back the wrapper, and filled his mouth with it. He chewed and swallowed. “You talk too much.”
He didn’t seem concerned about the safety of those he was traveling with, nor about the safety of the cattle wailing at the tops of their bovine lungs about the festering storm.
A voice over the loudspeaker replaced the siren. Tucker had to crack his window to make out what the man was saying.
“Severe storm warning. Please seek shelter. This is not a test. Severe storm warning. Please seek shelter .”
The robotic voice repeated the same message a few times. Then the sirens blared some more. Tucker couldn’t hear the helicopter above the noise.
Rain mixed with snow pelted down on the windshield.
Tucker turned on his wipers and squinted at the next road sign, trying to figure out where they could take shelter.
He didn’t have to wonder long. Across the next knoll, the flashing lights of a patrol car forced him off the highway onto the exit ramp.
“Let’s pretend to get off the road,” Cruz growled from the backseat. “On the other side of the overpass, we can get right back on.”