What She Saw (12 page)

The night remained quiet.

As soon as he reached the road, however, he took off at a dead run for the Bertram place. As he ran, his body settled into comfortable rhythms from years of practice, and his mind cut loose the way it always did.

That was when it occurred to him he might have done this exactly backward.

He should have driven out here in his rental, instead of worrying about creating the impression he was still at the motel.

After all, he thought, giving himself a mental kick, he’d wound up with at least one sheriff watching the lot for him tonight. Who the hell cared where people thought he was?

The perps, he reminded himself. The perps. If they had the least suspicion why he was hanging around, he didn’t want them to know he was running a night recon.

It still made sense, but as the minutes and finally the miles ticked away, he started to think he might have gotten rusty.

The idea didn’t agree with him at all.

* * *

Buck made it to the Bertram place, but he’d damn near run a marathon tonight and his body was feeling it. He hadn’t hit the wall yet, but it was damn close. He pulled out an energy bar and crouched beside the road, looking toward the Bertram place.

As the sugar began to hit his system, his irritability began to diminish. Okay, so he might have gone at this whole illegal-shipment issue from another angle, except for Ray’s death and Haley’s peripheral involvement. But he still would have looked into it because of that damn itch of his, the one that wouldn’t let him stay uninvolved.

Without murder, it became a crime of property, and those didn’t concern him nearly as much. With a murder, though, the stakes had gone through the roof. Anyone willing to kill in cold blood once would do it again. Haley had stumbled into it, and until he was sure she was safe, he couldn’t walk it back.

Then there was the woman presumably sleeping in that house up there. Claire. He pulled out his nightscope and surveyed the area. Her involvement had raised some serious question marks in his mind. She hadn’t been the one who had just happened to see the transfer, but considering that the cops had thought it was unimportant, and Haley said she hadn’t mentioned it again, what had possessed Claire to ask the man who had driven the other truck?

The thought that wouldn’t leave him alone was that she hadn’t asked anyone at all, but was simply trying to deflect any possibility that Haley continued to think about it or mention it.

If that was the case, Claire had made a serious misjudgment. On the other hand, by doing so, she may have removed Haley from the sights of the bad guys. Maybe.

Ray, after all, had gotten himself into trouble by talking to enough people about how he was coming into some money that it seemed to be common knowledge. Haley hadn’t said squat to anyone but him after she spoke to the cops.

She had to be low on their threat radar. Had to be. Except for Claire. If Claire had asked the guy out of curiosity, she’d raised the threat level to Haley and to herself. If she’d been trying to deflect, well then, Haley might be safer. But if she’d felt it necessary to deflect Haley, then...

He stopped. The truth was he didn’t know what was going on in anyone’s mind. All he knew was that one guy was dead and somehow associated with some illegal activity. At this point he was fairly certain drugs were being smuggled. There were easier ways to smuggle other things.

And now there was this new wrinkle with Bill. Either Bill or someone higher up was involved, but either way, the bad guys probably knew Buck had been investigating. Now that he’d had his chain yanked and been told to leave it alone, it remained to be seen if the folks involved believed he was backing off. Now he had to redouble his effort to appear to be chasing Haley. He wondered how she was going to feel about
that.

He looked at his watch, more concerned now with the timer he’d set. It was getting close to first light, and he didn’t have long now. He was even willing to bet that Claire’s husband or at least the hired hand got up with the sun.

Hurry.

He reached out and stroked the grass, glad to find it dry. No dew in which to leave footprints that would appear as bright as neon for hours.

Unlike the Listons, the Bertrams had a front lawn of neatly shorn and green grass, and he was able to run up the drive beside the gravel. At least the grass muted the sound of his feet. He wasted no time, taking the risk of rousing the sheep to frightened bleats simply because he had to find out what was in that barn. With any luck, the windows weren’t clouded with years of grime.

The drive branched off, leading away from the house to the barn. Everything looked very well maintained. He might have thought these people needed no money at all, except for Claire’s complaint about the price of alpacas. You could spend a lot on alpacas, as he’d discovered from web surfing earlier, but you didn’t have to. It all depended on what you wanted from them, and they seemed to be pretty good investments in terms of wool. Breeding champions with the finest wool was where it could get expensive.

But the expense question remained. The guy had plenty of sheep. Why move to alpacas when the start-up costs had to be so high, whichever way you were going? Breeding stock and all that. Types of wool varying the price. It all sounded a lot more complicated than simply raising what you already had.

And expensive enough for the wife to complain about it.

So maybe the sheep weren’t doing as well as everyone thought? Maybe the Bertrams were looking for a better way to make money?

He slowed down as he approached the barn, pulled out his nightscope and surveyed the entire area. Sheep huddled in pens, not very close, actually. When he’d driven past the first time he hadn’t seen the bunkhouse out back of the barn. It was dark as the night itself, indicating the hired hand wasn’t up yet.

A look back at the house assured him everyone there was still sleeping.

He pulled the wool out of his backpack and rubbed it on himself the way Gage had told him. If the sheep caught a whiff of him, maybe they’d ignore it.

The breeze hardly stirred at this hour, as if the night held its breath. The hours before dawn were often the stillest of the night.

Everything was locked up tight, but he expected that. He wasn’t sure why people in this place that Haley thought was so quiet and safe would even lock their doors, let alone their barns, but maybe Conard County wasn’t as safe as she believed. Or as crime-free.

The windows were cleaner, too. He was able to use the flashlight judiciously and get a bit of a look around. Until the beam fell on an alpaca in a stall. Huge eyes opened and blinked at him. He shut off the light at once, trying to maintain a memory of everything he’d seen.

No truck, that was for sure. Not that that meant anything, really. What he’d seen were neat rows of stalls, some of them occupied by alpacas, some empty. Why would they be indoors overnight, when the sheep weren’t? Because they were worth too much to risk a predator attack?

Something to look into. There had to be a way he could find out just what Bertram was spending on that stock and what he intended to do with it. Breeding for championship wool raised it to a whole new category, he supposed. He wondered if Gage could recommend someone he could talk to about it.

These thoughts ran through his head at top speed, and he was just turning away from the barn when the alpaca let out a loud, squealing screech. That didn’t sound like a happy cry.

Buck scanned the area, judged his exit option, and vaulted a nearby fence to take off over an expanse of lawn, lifting his feet so as not to scuff the grass.

Hell and damnation, he hated livestock.

Chapter 9

“H
ow’d it go?” Gage asked as he picked Buck up at the crossroads. “You look like hell, man.”

“Who expects a roadside ditch full of grass to be that muddy?”

Gage gave a smothered laugh. “Runoff from irrigation. I’ve driven past here four times. I was starting to wonder.”

Buck had pulled off his jacket and stuffed it in his bag, but the front of his pants still had the remnants of nearly dried mud on them. “What do you know about alpacas?”

“Not much. Why?”

“I need to know why a sheep rancher would want to get into alpacas and how much it might cost. Anyone I can talk to who is discreet?”

“I know a guy. He raises sheep.”

“Won’t gossip?”

Gage shook his head. “In a previous life he was an intelligence operative.”

“You seem to have a lot of formers around here.”

“It’s the peace and quiet.”

Buck wondered about that. So far he hadn’t seen a whole lot of that.

“So did you see something at the Bertram place?” Gage asked.

Buck shook his head. “Some alpacas.”

“Then?”

“I took off like hell. No, I’m wondering because Claire Bertram complained about the expense to Haley. If the guy’s in over his head financially, that could be relevant. If he’s not, that’s relevant, too. The process of elimination.”

“I see where you’re going. What about the Listons?”

“Something in their barn is covered with a tarp, and it’s about the right size and shape for a shipping crate.”

Gage fell silent, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “Could be anything,” he said finally.

“Could be,” Buck agreed. “I need another favor.”

“That depends.”

“Of course. If possible I need you to let it get around that it appears Ray was killed in an ordinary accident. True, so far as you know at this point. If you wait for the tox screen, that might change.”

“You trying to put folks at ease?”

“That’s the idea.”

“I don’t lie to people around here, a result of
my
former life. I’ll have to think about that one.”

“Let’s just forget it.” Buck hadn’t really expected him to agree, but it was worth a shot.

“Care to share the rest of your plans now?”

“I’d like to get to know Jim Liston. If he’s involved and someone at the terminal let him know I was looking into this mess, that could be a huge mistake.”

“Let me run a check on him first. I might even arrange to pay a courtesy call myself on the family. Give me your bare-bones estimate on how many people might be involved.”

“Well, someone has to be getting contraband to the various shippers. Then someone at the shipper has to be paid off to put the stuff in one of the shipping containers. Then you need various drivers who want some extra money to pull a crate switch in the middle of nowhere. On this end...well, you need a driver. You need a place to store the crate. So somebody around here is, at the very least, getting a payoff for allowing the use of a building for temporary storage. Then you’ve got whoever is running the show. My thought is the smaller the ring, the better, but I figure you’re going to need at least a half-dozen people involved one way or another.”

“So not very big.”

“Big would make it harder. Of course that leaves out people at the ultimate destination, and people who provided the contraband to begin with. But that’s not within my scope.”

“Nor mine.”

“But if we can roll up the middle—and I think this is the middle—we should be able to get the ends.”

“I’m inclined to agree this is the middle,” Gage said. “Or at least one of the middles. I haven’t noticed anything around here to suggest this town is an endpoint for contraband of any kind. Which I’m thinking is most likely drugs of some kind.”

“That’s my guess. I don’t know what else would be worth this amount of effort.”

“We have some drugs around. Who doesn’t? But I would have noticed if there was any increase in usage. It wouldn’t pay to sell them here, anyway. Not that many people, and few have any real money.”

Buck nodded his agreement. “I presume nothing happened at the truck stop last night?”

“Beau and I spent most of the night there. Nada.”

“Well, if they haven’t been completely scared off, something should happen again soon.”

“Do you think they’d be scared off?”

“Not if there’s good money in it. If someone in Seattle is keeping them informed, Bill pulling me off this might make them feel good enough to get started again. We can only wait and see. One thing for sure, nobody involved in this knows that I can’t be turned off like a windup doll.”

Gage remained quiet for another mile, then asked, “Why would it be unreasonable to question one of the drivers who had a mixed-up shipment? What if one of them talked?”

“It’s unlikely they’ll talk because it would cost them their jobs. Then there’s the question of whether they even know who paid them to make the exchange.”

“Makes sense. So the middle it is. Unless something else happens, anyway.”

“That’s the way it’s looking.”

Gage glanced at him. “How do we do this part? I sure as hell can’t drop you off at your motel at this hour looking like that.”

“Leave me outside of town. I’ll jog back in like I’m out for a morning run. I could have fallen anywhere.”

“Your bag would give you away. Leave it in my car. I’ll get it to you later somehow.”

* * *

Haley was starting to worry. Sarah had driven off around dawn, making some joking remarks in the hallway and parking lot about how a cup of tea had turned into a pajama party. Haley surmised that had been cover if anyone overheard or had noticed that Sarah had been with her all night.

But there was no one around as the sun crept over the horizon. It was Sunday morning, too early for the town to be stirring much. Out on the ranches it was probably different, but in town people tended to wake late, have a lazy breakfast and not poke their noses out until it was time to start going to church.

She was starting to worry about Buck, though. He’d gone running off into the night with nothing but a promise that he’d see her this morning. Where had he been going? What if he’d gotten into trouble?

What if that bullet fragment lodged near his spine had moved? He said it wouldn’t cause him any trouble, but how could anyone guarantee that?

She told herself to stop inventing reasons to be anxious, but the anxiety wouldn’t leave her alone. She didn’t know enough about anything, really, and the big voids left a whole lot of room to worry.

Back in her apartment, her eyes burning from lack of sleep, she told herself to catch a nap. She had to go to work tonight, and without sleep that would be nearly impossible.

But just as she was trying to find a comfortable spot in bed and punch her pillow into some kind of shape—it had decided to feel like a rock for some reason—there was a knock at her door. Instantly she knew it was Buck.

She jumped up eagerly and went to answer, and seeing him sent the first feeling of calm through her that she had felt all night.

“You’re okay!”

“Shh.” He smiled and stepped inside, but she noted how exhausted he looked. Even more exhausted than she felt.

“What have you been doing?”

“Checking some things out. I need some sleep. See you later?”

She hesitated, then said rather boldly, “Just crash here. That’s what I was about to do. I’ve been up most of the night chatting with a deputy because I was worried about you. The bed’s big enough for both of us to get some sleep.”

When had she become so brash? She didn’t know, and as she watched him hesitate, she felt her heart start to sink.

Then he surprised her. “Thanks. You under the covers, me on top.”

At once her spirits soared. Ridiculous, she tried to tell herself as she headed toward the bedroom. Buck didn’t follow immediately, but she heard running water in the kitchen and assumed he was getting a drink. That gave her time to slip off her robe and climb under the covers. She squeezed as close to the edge of the queen-size bed as she could, to give him ample room, and closed her eyes as if sleep had already claimed her.

Her own boldness embarrassed her, and she wondered if he thought she had been suggesting something more. His insistence that he would be on top of the covers suggested he might have. Or maybe he had meant it to reassure her?

Either one was possible, and nervousness accelerated her heart. She caught and held her breath as she heard him enter the bedroom. Why? What was she expecting?

She felt his weight as he settled on the edge of the bed, heard the sounds of his boots dropping to the floor, then listened to springs creak as he stretched out. The covers tugged a little, but not much.

“Sleep well,” he said quietly.

He didn’t touch her. Not even the merest brush. Apparently he was far on his side of the bed, too.

Another time it might have been funny. Instead she fell asleep with a single tear rolling out of her eye and onto the pillow, wondering what in the world was wrong with her.

* * *

When at last she opened her eyes, she could tell by the light that the afternoon was waning. She had turned over in her sleep, and Buck lay on his side, breathing quietly, his arm thrown casually over her waist.

Wow. It felt so good, even though he was soundly asleep and unaware of doing it. Maybe she was just too hungry for human touch since she had lost her mother, but the weight of his arm felt so good. It answered some need deep inside her and filled her with warmth.

She tried not to move a muscle, and blinked the sleep from her eyes so that she could study him.

Always before she had seen him either reserved or animated, but never utterly relaxed as he was now. Sleep softened his face in an appealing way and she noticed again how attractive he was. He didn’t have the kind of appeal an actor might. His was very different. She supposed a lot of people might think he looked almost ordinary, but he never had to her. She’d always thought he was a hunk.

She wished she had the right to reach out and stroke his tousled dark hair, or trace the line of his cheek and jaw. Stubble darkened his chin and cheeks right now, and she wished she could feel how prickly it was.

Her fingers itched to learn him in a way her eyes never could.

His scent reached her, too. He smelled a little musky and maybe a little sweaty, as if he’d engaged in some heavy exercise before coming here. It was a pleasant smell, though, and appealing. As appealing as his face.

The warm weight of his arm across her waist soon had her thinking about touching more than his face and hair. It was a little embarrassing to realize that at her age she had almost no experience with the male body. Those gropings in dark corners a few times at school, while they had been exciting, had not been very good, for the most part. And her boyfriends had done most of the groping, rather awkwardly and sometimes painfully in their eagerness.

Buck was more experienced, and it occurred to her that judging by that one kiss he had given her, he was probably a lot more skilled at making a woman feel good.

What would it be like to learn his angles and planes, the taut curves of his muscles? What would it be like as he learned hers?

Her cheeks heated, but her mind refused to give in to embarrassment. The nice thing about the mind was that it was private, so as anticipatory tingles started between her legs and in her breasts, she just let them happen. He would never know, and it had been so long since she’d given in to even the merest of physical desires. Well, other than Buck’s kiss, which had been so arousing.

She wanted another of those kisses, and so much more. She ought to feel shy about it, but as the pulsing began between her legs, shyness was the least of the things she felt.

So what if she’d never been naked with a man before? Suddenly that seemed like the most delightful thing in the world. She tried to imagine what it would be like for their naked bodies to press together, whether he would feel hot and smooth, or if it would be different. What turned a man on? She had only one idea, one she wasn’t sure she could even do.

But he would have to touch her in the same ways, and she melted a little imagining it. What would it be like to have his huge, warm hands on her bare breasts? Or his mouth? And what about between her legs? No one had ever touched her there before, and she couldn’t imagine what it would be like. Or what it would be like to be filled by him.

So much she didn’t know, and so much she suddenly wanted to know.

“Hi,” he said without opening his eyes.

She almost squirmed with discomfort, then reminded herself that he could not possibly know where her thoughts had wandered.

“You smell positively delicious,” he said. “You have the most enticing, womanly scents.”

What did he mean?

“I ought to shower. I must smell like I came from the gym.”

“You smell fine,” she blurted. “I was just thinking that.”

His eyes opened drowsily. “Not as good as you. Are you aware the body sends out sexual scents?”

Oh, my God,
she thought, wanting to sink right through the bed and then through the floor. Her throat locked up and she couldn’t say anything.

“I didn’t think so.” A drowsy laugh escaped him. “You may not know it, but you smell like a woman ready for love.”

She could stand it no longer. She pulled the blanket up over her head. Moments later, his fingers tugged it gently away. She couldn’t help but meet his gaze, and found his dark, warm eyes had moved closer.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said quietly. “If you knew these things, you’d probably realize I’m giving off the same scents.”

Two things struck her. First, he knew she didn’t know all that much, which was a little awkward at her age, and second, he was essentially saying he felt the same way.

She couldn’t decide which to focus on.

He settled the question by rising a little and leaning over her until their mouths met.

“There is no greater aphrodisiac,” he murmured against her lips, “than the scent of arousal.”

His lips began to sip at hers, gently encouraging response. It didn’t take long. She tugged her arms free of the blanket and wrapped them around his neck, trying to hold him closer.