Every Breath She Takes (19 page)

Lauren liked Bruce Dysan at first sight. The federal veterinarian was a tall man in his midforties. His face was partially obscured by a full blond beard and his hair was a little ragged, but his brown eyes were alight with intelligence.

“Got it covered already, I see. That’s good,” said Dr. Dysan. “Not many people know to do that. You’re lucky you had a
veterinarian on hand.” He cast an appreciative glance toward Lauren as he donned disposable coveralls.

Cal agreed.

“I don’t normally get here this early. Often the local vet would have been in already and tested for other possibilities. Anthrax isn’t usually the first suspicion.”

Cal frowned. “You think we jumped the gun on this?”

“Not at all. From the report your man gave me, you’ve got at least some of the cardinal symptoms. It was a good call. Sometimes the animal dies so fast, they don’t present with any symptoms, in which case it doesn’t get reported until cattle start dropping like flies.”

“What now?” Cal asked.

“I’ve got to take some blood samples, which means we have to unwrap the carcass. Can you give me a hand?”

“If you can provide the gloves,” Cal said. “We ditched ours after handling the animal.”

“I can do better than that.”

A minute later, outfitted in full biohazard gear, the three of them unwrapped the steer for Dr. Dysan’s examination.

“What do you think?” Lauren asked him.

“I’d know better if I could examine its spleen, but that’s out of the question for obvious reasons. Can’t risk spores getting out of the carcass.” His voice was muffled through his mask. “On physical exam, there’s a wee bit more rigor mortis than I’d expect to see. Most cases have little or no rigor. Still, the rapid death and the watery discharge…it’s possible.”

Lauren’s mind buzzed as she watched him aspirate peripheral blood from the dead animal’s jugular vein.
It looked like anthrax, yet it didn’t. There’d been no previous outbreaks among cattle this season and no wild herbivores were turning up dead.

What had Cal said about his run of bad luck? Brush fires and lightning strikes. And now anthrax? Could anyone’s luck go so bad so fast without a little help?

Just then a large truck pulled up with a hiss of air brakes. It carried an excavator behind it on a trailer.

Dr. Dysan looked up from swabbing discharge. “Excellent. That’s the backhoe I commissioned to dig our pit.” He glanced at Cal. “Would you mind getting the gate for him?”

“That was quick,” Cal said.

“Quick is our only defense. We can’t do much to prevent these outbreaks, but we’ve got a very good record of containing them, and one of the ways we do that is to act expeditiously.”

As soon as Cal left, Lauren turned to Dr. Dysan. “Do you think you could take some extra blood?”

He glanced up, surprised. “Oh, I’ve got plenty here for the tests we’ll need.”

“What if it turns out not to be anthrax?”

“I don’t know…celebrate?”

Lauren didn’t crack a smile as he aspirated more fluid, this time from the animal’s spleen. “You’re going to destroy the carcass immediately, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. Unless you can afford to post a twenty-four-hour guard to keep the scavengers away. I assure you it’s quite safe. We’ll dig a seven-foot pit and build a pyre at the bottom, soak it with diesel fuel, topple the animal in and incinerate it, along with contaminated soil and grass and anything we’ve used to handle it. The high temperatures will kill any spores. Even the heavy equipment gets disinfected afterward with formaldehyde. We don’t leave any loose ends.”

“I don’t doubt that. But if it turns out not to be anthrax, will you have enough blood to run other tox screens?”

He gave her a sharp look. “What are you getting at?”

“I don’t know.” Lauren chewed her lip. “Foul play, maybe?”

His eyes widened. “You think someone destroyed this steer?”

She felt foolish under his scrutiny. “I don’t know what to think. All I know is Cal’s had a lot of natural disasters this summer. It would just make me feel better if you had a few extra
blood samples to fall back on if this comes out negative. Once you destroy the carcass, the option will no longer be there.”

He gave her an assessing look. “Okay,” he said. “I guess I could take a few more vials.”

Cal, having opened the gate and left the operator to get his machine unloaded, trudged back across the pasture in time to hear Lauren ask the fed about a quarantine order.

“Will you impose it now or wait for the blood work?”

The big man stowed his samples carefully in a special transport container. “I haven’t decided yet. If there’d been any cases reported this year, I’d slap an order on right away. Maybe I should anyway. Several cardinal signs are present. There’s only one lab in the whole country does this particular analysis, and that’s the Animal Diseases Research Institute in Lethbridge. It’ll take at least three days to get the results back, and three days is a long time to wait.”

Shit
. Cal’s stomach clenched. An official quarantine order. That’d look good for business, and there’d be no hope of keeping it out of the press.

“Do a gram stain with some of that peripheral blood,” Lauren urged him. “You could do that at the local vet’s office before you leave town, couldn’t you? What’s that take? A microscope and a couple of simple reagents?”

“Could do.” He gave her a thoughtful look. “Actually, by the time I arrive on a scene, the local vet has usually already done that.”

“If you get a positive gram stain, then you can impose the quarantine.”

“With a positive gram stain, you bet your ass I would,” he said sternly, “and that means closing the ranch to all traffic, human, animal, or vehicle. But if the gram stain is negative, we
still can’t rely on it to eliminate anthrax. We’d still need a blood culture and hemagglutination test.”

“Okay, if it’s negative, Cal will voluntarily quarantine his operations until the results come back from the lab. How’s that?”

Cal’s mouth fell open at Lauren’s offer. “What the hell? Quarantine my ranch without knowing if it’s anthrax or not?”

Lauren silenced him with a none-too-subtle jab to the abdomen. “What Cal means is he runs a guest ranch here. It could spook a lot of people unnecessarily if this gets out to the media. He’ll be more than happy to cooperate with you to make sure an official order isn’t necessary. Isn’t that right, Cal?”

Holy shit, she was negotiating him right out of a humongous PR mess. He’d fumbled the ball, but it wasn’t too late to pick it up again. “Er, that’s right. That’s where I was going.”

“A guest ranch, eh?” Dr. Dysan looked skeptical. “How do you plan to keep paying customers from riding out on the range?”

Good question. How could he keep a dozen guests down on the farm? Then inspiration struck. “I’ll put on a rodeo.”

“A rodeo?” Lauren said.

“Yeah, we’ll make a big event of it.”

“Taggart…” Dr. Dysan turned curious eyes on him. “Oh, hell, now I know where I’ve heard that name. Bullriding, right?”

Cal wished he had his hat to tug down on his forehead. He felt naked without it. “Once upon a time.”

“I saw you cover all five bulls at the Worlds.” Admiration shone from his eyes. “You must have a bunch of gold buckles at home.”

“A few,” Cal said, trying to keep his voice relaxed.

“I gotta ask—what’s it like climbing on the back of a Whitewater or a Yellow Jacket?”

“Just like they say.” Cal gave him his best cowboy-to-cowboy grin. “Like stepping into an eight-second hurricane.”

Dr. Dysan laughed. “Well, I guess you have the credentials to entertain folks for a few days. But don’t be using any cattle from this particular pasture.”

Cal was buoyed by the other man’s implied acceptance. “We’ll just use calves, which are pastured with their mamas on the other side of that ridge.” He hooked a thumb eastward. “Don’t have a corral big enough to rope steers anyway.”

Dr. Dysan mulled it over a moment. “Okay,” he said at last. Then, turning to Lauren: “I’ll agree to no official order on a negative gram stain—as long as I have your assurance that you’ll live up to the spirit of a quarantine until the final results come back. It’ll be my ass in a sling if this goes sideways.”

Lauren gave her commitment without hesitation, and Cal could have kissed her. One land mine sidestepped, at least for now.

The fed must have heard his sigh of relief, even over the roar of the approaching backhoe. “Don’t call in the bullfighters just yet, Mr. Taggart. If this comes up positive, I’ll slap that quarantine order on tonight.”

Cal made no reply; the roar of the approaching machine would have drowned it anyway. He took Lauren’s arm and drew her back from the din while the inspector conferred with the operator.

“Thanks for what you did back there,” he shouted.

“Don’t thank me, thank Dr. Dysan.”

“Oh, I will, but you’re the reason he cut me some slack.”

She looked away. “I think you overestimate my influence.”

“If you hadn’t stepped in, he’d have shut me down.”

“Not if you’d flashed one of your gold buckles.”

He snorted. “Like I said, it’s a good thing you were here.”

She looked up at him. “You wouldn’t have mentioned it, would you, if he hadn’t recognized your name?”

Damn, why did it feel like she could look right into him with those pale blue eyes? He shrugged. “No, I wouldn’t have
mentioned it. Talking about my glory days makes me feel about as old as dirt. So it looks like I owe you one.”

It was her turn to shrug. “It was no big deal.”

“It’s a big deal to me.” He held her gaze intently. “You asked him for a professional favor, and he granted it. You put yourself on the line for me when you had nothing to gain by it.” His voice grew gruff. “No one’s ever done anything like that for me. I’ll see that you won’t regret it.”

He turned and strode back toward the others before his voice could crack like a twelve-year-old’s.

Lauren stared after Cal, her eyes stinging. Could it be that no one had ever stood up for him? Even though her own family had their hang-ups about her visions and would rather not acknowledge them, she’d always known they’d be there for her in a crisis. Okay, they might throw in an “I told you so!” or “See what happens when you pay attention to that stuff?”, but they’d be there.

Of course, she’d once thought Garrett would be there for her too, but in hindsight, she should have known he could never be that man. He was too upwardly mobile, too concerned about everyone else’s perceptions, to accept her. Of course, he’d been just a boyfriend, not a parent, and she’d been an adult, not a child.

Poor Cal had never had that security of knowing that someone had his back. What kind of a parent had Cal’s father been to deny his own son that basic birthright?

Her anger melted as something more insidious curled around her heart. Merciful heaven, did he have any idea how she ached to put her arms around him when his vulnerability peeked out from under those layers of tough cowboy? Did he do it on purpose?

No. There was no guile there. He wouldn’t angle for sympathy. Basic honesty had forced the admission from his lips.

She watched him cross the pasture, noting the fine shape of his head without his Stetson, the cowlick on the right side of his nape. Oh, but she loved him.

Lauren sucked in a sharp breath.

No, that was just careless thinking. It was lust, pure and simple. She loved his tough, wiry body. She loved his mobile mouth and the hard planes of his face. She loved the way he stood sometimes, one hand on his hip, the other thumbing his eyebrow in that way that was uniquely his.

And she loved the way he made love to her.

Yes, that was it. Just a greed to possess—and be possessed—by his driving masculinity.