Chapter 2
Lacy really enjoyed working with Mrs. Fitz and Ava. Both were helpful and eager to show her how they prepared their treats, while she showed them some of her own techniques.
When it was time to go to Mrs. Fitz’s home, Florence said she had the ingredients for stir fry, so Lacy would have to have a Reuben another time. Stir fry sounded good.
They said goodnight to Ava, and Lacy rode home with Mrs. Fitz.
“The sheriff will share pictures of Timothy with everyone in Yuma Town. We have a private server for doing that sort of thing,” Mrs. Fitz said.
“Oh, that’s great. I was afraid Dan would put up some posters of him, and Timothy would realize I’m here.”
“No. Dan is very discreet. But the more of us who know to be on the lookout for him, the better off you’ll be. Did they find any more trackers on your property at the motel?”
“Yes. I couldn’t believe it. He had placed a tracker on my suitcase and an audio listening device on a bag.”
“Oh, my.”
“Dan destroyed the listening device, but the tracking devices are on their way to Denver, courtesy of Yvonne and Rick Mueller,” Lacy said.
“They’re good folk. They’ll be sure to leave them somewhere that will throw your ex-boyfriend off your trail.”
“I sure hope so.”
It was getting dark out, and Christmas lights twinkled on all the homes they passed. It made it look like a Christmas town. Not one house was unadorned.
“I love all the Christmas lights.”
“Oh, yes. We have contests, and anyone who can’t manage to put up their own lights has fellow cougars hang them up. We just buy our own lights.”
When they reached Mrs. Fitz’s home, Lacy loved the icicle lights hanging off the roof and first-story windows, and the white lights covering the trees.
“Beautiful,” Lacy said.
“Thanks. I love the holiday festivities.”
Lacy had pretty much kept to herself and hadn’t participated in holiday fun for the last couple of years, mainly because of dating Timothy, who hated the holidays because of his dysfunctional family—so he said. He had never told her anything about them, even when she asked.
She liked the holiday atmosphere—the decorations, caroling, parties—but he had avoided all that nonsense, his words, and hadn’t liked it when she decorated for the holidays.
Even when the café she had worked at held a Christmas party for employees and their families, he didn’t want her to attend, and he wouldn’t go either.
But she did. She wasn’t about to forgo the one party she got to go to a year, which made him furious.
She’d tried to break up with him after that, without success.
“We have a big Christmas dance coming up next weekend and a Christmas bazaar where cougars sell their crafts and treats for Christmas,” Mrs. Fitz said.
“Oh, how fun.”
“We have Santa visit with the ladies in town at a special event, the proceeds going to our library.”
Lacy smiled. “I feel like I’m in Santa’s Village.”
“We love the holidays, but we also love the camaraderie. We have several community events throughout the year.”
Inside the house, Mrs. Fitz turned on her Christmas tree lights and strings of lights on the mantle and on the banister, covered in garland, and red and green plaid bows.
Then they went into the kitchen and worked together to make stir-fry sugar snap peas, miniature corn on the cob, bell pepper slices, and onions. Mrs. Fitz cut up strips of steak to add to the pan.
“You can’t know how much I enjoy your company and that you’re a cook who can help out in the kitchen.” Mrs. Fitz added seasoning to the pan.
“Yeah, this is fun. My ex-boyfriend didn’t cook so it’s fun to share tips in cooking with a fellow chef.”
Then they sat down to eat, and Mrs. Fitz asked, “You really don’t want to let your grandfather know where you are?”
“I blame him for my grandmother’s death.” Lacy didn’t want to talk about it. But since she was Mrs. Fitz’s guest, she figured she might as well get it out in the open.
“Oh?” Mrs. Fitz took another bite of her stir-fry.
Lacy sighed. “They went on a cougar run. Three hunters shot my grandmother, and my grandfather hid.”
“As a cougar, he couldn’t have fought three armed hunters,” Mrs. Fitz said. “They would have killed him too.”
Deep down, Lacy knew that. But she had wanted her grandfather to kill the hunters so badly for what they had done that she couldn’t see past her upset. Her grandmother and grandfather had raised her from a toddler, and she couldn’t see not having her grandmother around any longer.
“Just like if the roles had been reversed, if the hunters had shot your grandfather, your grandmother couldn’t have fought them without getting herself killed. Neither would have wanted that to happen to their mate.”
Lacy moved her food around on her plate.
“Your grandmother must have turned into her human form at death.”
“She did. The hunters had finally reached her body and were in shock that the cougar they thought they had shot had turned into a naked woman. They buried her with leaves, and my grandfather pursued them then. He followed them to their camp, where they hurriedly broke it down, loaded it into a pickup, and took off. He should have killed them then.”
“Did he report it to the police?”
“Yes. He returned to his clothes, shifted, dressed, and called 911. He also set her clothes nearby. He couldn’t dress her, or he wouldn’t be able to explain that the bullets hadn’t gone through her clothes or that she didn’t have blood on them.”
“He was smart to do that.” Mrs. Fitz drank some of her water.
“He’s a retired FBI agent. But yeah, I guess anyone could have figured that he couldn’t dress her.”
“Then the police arrived and…?”
“They thought my grandfather had shot her. You know how it goes. Family members closest to the victim are always suspected of committing the crime. He found the body. He was the one at the scene of the crime.”
“Sure.”
“He told them about the hunters, but they were long gone.”
“But they left behind shell casings? And a sign of a camp—firewood, the place where the tents had been set up, footprints, tire tracks?”
“Yes. They did check Granddad’s car to see if he had rifles in it, but he didn’t.
His shoes and tire tracks didn’t match the ones at the camp.
And they saw there had been three men’s boot imprints at the camp.
They checked Granddad’s hands for gunpowder residue, and he didn’t have any.
Then they had police officers track down the license plate of the truck the hunters drove off in. ”
“And they had rifles.”
“And gun powder residue on their hands. When the police investigators tested the weapons to determine if they were the same ones that had been used to kill my grandmother, they found they were. The hunters swore up and down that they had killed a cougar that had been stalking them.”
“As a shifter, she wouldn’t have been stalking them,” Mrs. Fitzgerald.
“Right. She wasn’t. They hunted her down just because she was a cougar.”
“So your grandfather had done the right thing in letting the police handle it.”
Lacy let out her breath. “They went to prison for forty years. But those men should have been dead.”
“I agree. But if he had killed them as a cougar, they would have hunted any cougar down in the area.”
“Yeah. You’re right.”
“So do you want to tell your grandfather where you are?” Mrs. Fitz ate the rest of her dinner.
Lacy began working on hers again.
She wasn’t sure if she wanted to, but she could imagine he was worried sick about her.
“Did he know you were having trouble with the cougar in an abusive relationship?”
“He told me when I was first dating Timothy that he was bad news. I…I didn’t listen to my grandfather.”
“So he could be worried about you when you went missing without a word.”
Lacy sighed. “Yeah. You’re right. Knowing my grandfather, he has half his FBI agent friends who are still working at the agency looking for me. I didn’t think of that.”
She pulled out her phone and called her grandfather, afraid a text message wouldn’t cut it. He could think her ex-boyfriend was sending it or coercing her to send it.
Her grandfather answered right away. “Lacy, are you all right?”
“Yes, Granddad. I’m living in a cougar-run town, have a job at a coffee shop, and am staying with the shop’s owner for now until I get a place of my own.”
“Who is the man you’re staying with?”
She was amused that he thought it was a man and was probably worried about her hooking up with someone older.
“Florence Fitzgerald, Granddad. Not a man. She’s a retired—”
“FBI agent,” her granddad said, sounding surprised.
She frowned and looked at Mrs. Fitz. “You know her?”
“Yeah, we worked on several assignments together.”
“Oh. So I guess you know that I’m safe then.”
“Where?”
“Yuma Town, Colorado. The whole town has offered to protect me, so you don’t have to worry about me.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“See you soon. Love you.” Then he hung up.
“Great.” Lacy finished her dinner.
“I’m glad you called him.”
“Yeah, but now he’s coming here to protect me. So you know him?”
“Frank Everest? Yeah. We often didn’t agree on cases.”
“So you didn’t date him?”
Florence laughed. “No, dear. We were both married at the time. I wouldn’t have dated him for anything even if we hadn’t been married.”
Lacy laughed. She felt more lighthearted than she had in months. She was glad she was here. She never expected to hear anyone say that about her grandfather. Almost everyone really liked him, and she wondered what the beef had been between the two FBI agents on the cases.
“Ready for some dessert?” Mrs. Fitz was going to take their empty dishes into the kitchen, but Lacy quickly did the honors.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Sugar cookie cheesecake bars?” Mrs. Fitz brought out the Christmas tree dessert plates and then added the cheesecake bars, covered in red and green sprinkles shaped like Christmas trees.
“Hmm, that looks good. I love cheesecake. That’s something I need to make for the holidays. I never thought of having little cheesecake squares decorated for Christmas.”
“I love cheesecake and had to figure out a way to include it for the holidays.”
“This has been so much fun. Thanks so much for allowing me to stay with you and work for you.”
“I’m glad to do it.”
After eating dessert and cleaning up, they headed to bed.
Despite feeling relatively safe at Mrs. Fitz’s house, after Lacy took her shower, she shifted into her cougar and slept on top of the comforter in her furry form—just in case they had a break-in.
“Hey, Rory, we didn’t expect you to return to the ranch that soon after you went in to have a meal and pick up supplies,” Wyatt said as Rory retired to the bunkhouse with the other ranch hands for the night.
“Yeah, we figured you might even take Lacy to a movie,” Blaze said. “Did she turn you down?”
Rory knew he should have stayed in Yuma Town longer, to make it look like he’d had a date with her so the other guys wouldn’t immediately go after her. “She was having dinner with Mrs. Fitz since she’d been so gracious to hire her and let her stay with her at her home.”
“Yeah, sure,” Blaze said, laughing.
“I’m telling Ted I’m picking up supplies for the ranch next time,” Wyatt said.
Rory had to make sure he got to see her first! But he didn’t want to make her feel they were obsessing over her, even though they all wanted to see more of her. He realized he didn’t even have her telephone number, so he could message her.
It was getting really late when he got a call from Mrs. Fitz, and since he never got calls from her, he figured something was wrong. “Hi, Mrs. Fitz. What’s up?”
“Lacy has gone to bed, but I just wanted to tell you, and you can share with the other fellas that she has had a stalker ex-boyfriend following her. I know you all want to date her, but just keep in mind that she might be a little shy about it until she feels more comfortable with her surroundings.”
“Oh, yeah, of course.” So that changed everything for him, and for the other guys too as far as pursuing her.
“You might not have checked the cougar site, but Dan posted the picture of her ex. If you see him, be sure to report it to the sheriff’s office.”
“Hell, yeah. Thanks for letting me know.” He rarely looked at the site.
“Okay, I’m going to let you go, but I just wanted you and the others to know that she might need a little time to get in the mood for dating.”
“For sure. Thanks.” When they ended the call, Wyatt was coming out of one of the bathrooms after having a shower. Rory mentioned the situation with Lacy’s ex-boyfriend to him. Then he pulled up the site and saw the man who had been harassing Lacy. “Here he is.”
Blaze came out of his bedroom and looked at the site. “Well, hell. I wonder how long it will take before she feels comfortable dating.”
But Rory wasn’t giving up on getting to know her. He would offer to be a sounding board for her and not push her into dating until she was ready, if ever. He just hoped Blaze and Wyatt wouldn’t try to meet up with her while he was trying to make some headway.
He looked at the photo of her ex, blond-haired and bearded, with icy blue eyes, a square jaw, and an unsmiling expression.
He appeared hard and unyielding. Rory wondered why Lacy would have dated the guy.
But maybe he’d been charming and sweet with her in the beginning.
He really wanted to know what had gone wrong with their relationship.
And what had happened after they ended it.
Bright and early the next morning, Rory said to Ted, their foreman, “Hey, boss, it’s Friday.”
“Do you want me to get our special treats from Mrs. Fitz’s shop?”
“Yeah. If that works for you.”
Usually, the guys switched off on who made the Friday rounds, but since Rory had gone into town again yesterday, he was afraid Ted would send one of the other ranch hands to do the job.
Ted smiled. “You’re the first one who asked, so sure. It wouldn’t happen to be because you want to see the little filly now working at the shop, would it?”
Rory chuckled. “Yeah. I’m off to see what everyone wants, and I’m out of here.” Usually, he would call it in and then just pick it up, but he wanted the time to stay there and really see if he could make some headway with Lacy.
“All right. See you when we see you.”
That’s what Rory loved about working at Hal’s ranch. Everyone in the family treated the ranch hands as family. And Ted was the same way as their foreman.
Once Rory had the list of treats on his phone, he drove off to Yuma Town, hoping he wouldn’t screw this up with Lacy. Maybe she would like to run as a cougar with him, even if she didn’t want to date.