Rancher's Deadly Risk (6 page)

She rested her chin on her hand. “You might be right.”

“I hope I’m not,” he admitted. “Unfortunately, I’ve been watching that steady fracturing I mentioned yesterday ever since the semiconductor plant arrived. Little by little a line has been drawn. And when you start drawing lines, how long is it before the people on the other side of the line from you become objects of your scorn?”

“You may be right.”

“Basic social dynamics. We’ve always gone to war over our differences. A school is just a microcosm.” He shook his head. “Don’t let me start thinking about humanity as a whole. Right now we need to deal with a front-and-center neighborhood problem with as little scarring and fallout as possible.”

She gave a laugh. “Yeah, we can’t reform humanity in a day, or a school in even a week. How do you want to approach this?”

He took the task of finding the students for his core peer group, and she agreed to set about finding materials that they could use in a more public venue.

Then he rose, stretched and said, “I’ve got a team meeting in a little while. I’ll drive you home.”

“I prefer to walk, but thanks.”

“Then I’ll walk with you.”

His words stilled her. “You really
are
worried about that call.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m worried, but a little caution might be wise until we see if you get harassed again.”

She felt an instant of rebellion. She was an independent woman who felt perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and she didn’t need a white knight to protect her. On the other hand, it would mean a little extra time with him, which she wouldn’t mind. Maybe she could get past the force field a little.

Pulling on her jacket, she remarked, “I thought this was a friendly, nice county.”

“It is, mostly. But like any other place on the planet, not everyone is nice.”

Outside, the air still had that wonderful crisp feel of fall, and she almost thought she could smell snow in the air even though the sun was bright. After he locked the door, they began to stroll toward her house, carrying the travel mugs. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry.

“How do you like living here so far?” he asked.

“I’m loving it, actually.”

“Not dying for lack of nightclubs, theaters and huge shopping malls?”

She laughed. “Not at all. I’ve never enjoyed mall-crawling, for one thing. I’m always looking for little out-of-the way places full of different things.”

“We have plenty of those.”

“I’ve noticed. It’s one of the things that charmed me. I haven’t been in a department store like Freitag’s since I was a little kid. I get a kick out of having the wood floors creak under my feet. Besides, if you’ve seen one mall, you’ve pretty much seen them all. The homogenization of America. You can’t tell what city you’re in.”

“That’s my impression. But what about things to do?”

“There’s plenty to do.” She glanced at him, wondering about the line of questioning. “I get together with some teachers to play cards a couple of times a month. We go out for lunch and sometimes dinner. I never liked the club scene. I guess most people would find me dull.”

“Not around here.”

“And if I ever get an overwhelming urge for a museum or the theater, I can take a weekend and go to Denver. Come on, Linc. You teach. You know how little free time you have.”

He chuckled. “You’re right. And there’s even less with my ranch.”

“And football,” she reminded him. “Anyway, I really like it here so far. It’s different from the places I lived before, but I’m finding it comfortable.”

“I’ll ask for your opinion again come early March.”

She was laughing when he left her at her door, but his smile was faint, and she could almost hear the shield cranking back into place.

What was it with that man?

Sighing, she went inside, taking his advice to lock up behind herself, and decided she would probably never know.

Whatever his problem, Linc had clearly decided not to let her into his circle.

To hell with him, she thought, returning to work on her week’s plans. She needed an idea to excite her students more than she needed him.

Chapter 3

S
unday night turned wildly windy and Cassie awoke to a Monday morning with steel-gray skies and air that felt surprisingly warm. The wind had taken the last of the leaves from the trees, and was still blowing them around as she walked to the school.

With no more phone calls, she felt the incident was closed. Over the weekend, though, she’d been texted by Les, the principal, asking that she and Linc speak to the faculty at the weekly meeting at the close of school that day.

Being the new kid on the block, as it were, she didn’t feel entirely comfortable with that idea, and as she walked she realized she had a minor case of nerves going, the way she often did on the very first day of the school year. Great. She hoped she’d forget about it during the teaching day.

When she reached the school, she found Linc was still on bus duty. At least he smiled faintly when he opened the door for her.

“About this afternoon...” she began.

He nodded. “I can do most of the talking. I understand you don’t want to come off like the new broom.”

“Exactly. Thank you.”

Another brief nod. “You just fill in when you think I’ve left something out. I managed to get some of the first few members of our student squad, though. Some of my star players and a handful of the cheerleaders. I didn’t make a general approach, just handpicked a few, but no turndowns.”

She turned as she stepped inside. “That’s fabulous!”

He grinned, surprising her. “Despite what happened on Friday, most of our students are good people.”

She smiled as she walked to her classroom, thinking it was a good start and they’d probably get a handle on the bullying before there was too much more of it. Maybe James Carney and others like him wouldn’t have to endure as much.

She unlocked the door of her classroom and stepped inside. Immediately she smelled something awful, something sickeningly sweet. Going to her desk, what she saw made her gasp in horror and back up to the door, where she hit the intercom button.

“School office.”

“Marian, I need Les right now. Someone left a dead rat on my desk and I’m not going to be able to let the students in.”

She heard Marian talk to someone. “He’ll be right there with the janitor.”

She stepped outside and locked her door again, standing guard, trying to keep her breakfast down. Ugly. Ugly. The thing had had its throat cut, there was blood all over her desk pad, and from the odor it had been left to rot all weekend.

The message was unmistakable, and almost enough to make her double over and heave. She could feel a cold sweat breaking out all over her body, and the nausea was overwhelming. She wanted to leave and never come back.

She kept drawing deep breaths to steady herself, leaning against the wall for support, and telling herself not to be hysterical. It was a nasty, messy, ugly message, but that’s all it was.

If they wanted to frighten her off, it wasn’t going to work. She promised herself that even as she felt the urge to leave and not come back. How would she ever sit at that desk again without remembering that rat?

She hated to think what kind of a person would have done that. One of those bullies? God, if it had been one of them, then James Carney could be in serious trouble.

For that matter, so could she.

Several students arrived before Les. “Sorry,” she told them, “you’ll have to wait in the library or lunch room. There’s a bit of a mess that needs cleaning.”

Did she imagine it, or did one of the boys actually smirk? Anything was possible, but she told herself not to see everyone as a potential enemy in this. She was likely being hypersensitive.

The nausea had mostly passed by the time Les arrived with the janitor on his heels. Amazingly, Linc wasn’t far behind.

Les eyed her critically. “How bad is it?”

“Bad enough that I’m sending my homeroom to the library or cafeteria. Someone is going to have to take attendance. It’s a mess.”

“Well, let’s see it.”

She turned to unlock the door. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t go in there again.”

Linc went in, though, and she noticed he took out his cell phone and snapped a few photos. Les gagged. The janitor even paled, and he must have cleaned up some real messes during his tenure.

“This goes way beyond a prank,” Linc said flatly. “I think we need to call the sheriff.”

Les nodded, putting his hand over his mouth and hurrying toward the door. “Don’t touch it. I’ll get Gage out here.”

“I need to hold class,” Cassie said, trying to cling to some semblance of normalcy or routine. Focusing on the one thing she
could
do.

“I’ll arrange for a blackboard in the cafeteria,” Les said as he hurried up the hall. “And I’ll call the sheriff.”

The janitor, a guy who preferred to be called Gus even though his name was Madson Carson, just stood there shaking his head. “What’s the world coming to?” he asked. “Who the hell got in here?”

“It’s been here at least since Friday,” Linc remarked. “Let’s get out and wait for the sheriff. I doubt he’ll find anything useful, but we don’t want to contaminate it.”

Once the door was locked again, he drew Cassie to one side, holding her elbow gently. “Are you okay?”

“I will be. How could somebody get in to do that?”

“Remember, you can always get out of the building. All someone had to do was lay in wait until the place was empty.”

It was true, she realized. All the doors were fire doors, and would open from the inside even when locked. As for her classroom...master keys could be had from several places. Or the lock could be picked easily enough. It wasn’t exactly a vault.

She bent and looked at the keyhole. “Someone picked it,” she said as she saw some deformation around the lock.

“Maybe.” Linc sighed. “Damn, what’s happening around here?”

She had no answers. Straightening, she looked at him. “Reality. Like you said, every place has its bad apples.”

The hall was becoming crowded with students, and the PA system burst into life, announcing that Ms. Greaves’s classes would be held in the cafeteria today.

“It bothers me how fast this had to have happened,” Linc said. “The incident was Friday at noon. It’s possible that when I opened the school to let the team in someone snuck in with them, but that’s still the same day as the bullying, and probably a short time after Les called parents.”

“How many people were in here Friday night?”

“The boosters, the team, some other parents, a few teachers. The cheerleaders. There’s always a crowd before we leave for an away game.”

“In short, too many suspects.”

He nodded, but frowned at the same time. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right? You could take a sick day.”

“And spend all day at home thinking about this?” She shook her head. “No, thanks. What’s that they say about after you fall from a horse?”

His frown turned to a faint smile. “You’ve got some backbone. Okay. But depending on how much of a threat the sheriff thinks this is, maybe you should take care not to be alone.”

As if she would have a choice.

* * *

The sheriff arrived with his crime scene unit, and Cassie was grateful that the students had all vanished into classrooms. Not that they wouldn’t hear about this, not that word wouldn’t get out, but they didn’t need to be clustered around and hearing gory details, or getting in the way.

The sheriff, Gage Dalton, whom she’d met a couple of times before casually, was gentle and kind with his questioning of her. He started with that morning, but inevitably he worked back to the possible motivation for this treatment.

She looked at Les, who sighed and nodded. “We may as well talk about it all, even though we’re going to do our part, perhaps the most important part. You do have plans?”

“We’re working on them. Linc and I have both started.”

“With what?” Gage asked.

So she explained the bullying incident. Linc refused to let her skip over the phone call she had received. When they fell silent, having explained their plans for dealing with bullying, Gage’s face was dark.

“So,” he said, looking at Les, “you thought it was a good idea to hang your teacher out on this?” He turned to Linc. “What about you?”

Cassie spoke first. “Our main concern was not to get James Carney into more trouble. We were trying to protect him.”

“So you get blamed for the detentions? You become the focus of this gang?”

“I don’t like it,” Linc said bluntly. “In fact, it concerns me a whole lot, and more now than it did on Friday. The fact remains, the Carney boy wasn’t the only one bullied. Cassie was bullied, too. So it seemed we needed to deal with that immediately, without getting Carney into more trouble. We can’t have students making implied threats by pushing teachers and ignoring them or we’ll have anarchy, and we won’t be able to control anything.”

Gage hitched his gun belt, grimaced a bit and leaned against the wall. “You know I could make arrests for what happened Friday. I get the part about not wanting to ruin a young person’s life. I completely get it and don’t want to do that. But given that you had warning of violence, however mild, this is one bull you should have taken by the horns immediately.”

“James Carney...” Cassie began.

“I get it about the Carney kid. Believe me, I get it. But despite these moves against Cassie, are you really sure you’ve deflected the attention from him? I doubt it. They’re going to know what’s behind this. All you’ve done is give them a second object.” He shook his head. “Too many suspects now, too. The bullies, their parents, their friends... Unless we find some specific evidence in that mess on Cassie’s desk, we’re going to be stymied. So keep that in mind. This has escalated. Keep that in mind, too.”

Linc walked Cassie to the cafeteria and she got the feeling she wasn’t the only unhappy one.

“We were stupid,” he announced.

“I don’t think so. Les was right about dealing with the infraction against me and leaving James out of it for now.”