Lone Calder Star (31 page)

"True, but opportunity and motive aren't enough." Quint remained in the chair, his expression never losing its look of deep thought.

Dallas frowned. "But how could he infect your cattle without running the risk of infecting his own?"

"It wouldn't have been all that difficult," Quint told her. "All he needed to do was pour some grain in a feed pan, contaminate it with the bacteria, give it to the cattle, then torch the pan and anything that might have fallen on the ground. He's already shown how adept he can be with a torch," he added dryly. "If he played it safe, he probably slipped the cattle onto the Cee Bar right away."

"Someone at the Slash R is bound to know about it," she said, wondering which ones might be persuaded to talk.

But Quint shook his head in disagreement. "Rutledge would have kept a tight lid on it. I'd be surprised if there were more than one or two people involved. He certainly wouldn't have needed more than that."

"But where could he have gotten the anthrax?" Dallas sighed at the blank wall in her mind.

"It probably wasn't as difficult as we'd like to believe, especially for someone with his money and influence." Stirring at last, Quint sat forward and reached for the phone. "It might be interesting to find out if there is a research laboratory associated with any of the companies he owns."

"Who are you calling?" Dallas asked, her curiosity high.

"An agency the family's used before in investigations." He paused with his hand on the phone.

"After that I might try to track down a guy I worked with who was heavily into forensics. an expert can differentiate between manufactured anthrax strains and ones found in nature, but I don't know if the natural strains have any markers that narrow them to a region."

When he picked up the phone and dialed information, Dallas walked over to the kitchen table and sat down to listen.

The phone call to the agency led to a second, informing Jessy of his action. Tracking down his former associate took the most time and the most calls before Quint succeeded in locating him at his new post on the West Coast.

It was nearly midnight when he hung up from the last call. There had been no definitive answers to his questions, but everything was in motion to obtain them, and Quint hadn't expected any more than that.

He stood, flexing shoulder and back muscles that had grown stiff from sitting in one position too long. Turning, he saw Dallas curled up on one of the kitchen chairs, her head cradled on
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arms resting on the table, sound asleep.

At the sight of her, everything smoothed out inside him, all the knots and twists straightened.

There was a moment when he was content to look at her, unaware of the powerfully tender light in his eyes.

Taking pity on her, Quint moved quietly to the chair. She stirred drowsily the instant he slipped an arm under her knees and another behind her back.

"I think you'll be more comfortable in bed," he told her.

Her lashes lifted as she gazed at him through sleep-blurred eyes. "You're going to carry me," she murmured and hooked a limp arm around his neck. "I like that."

Quint discovered that he liked the feeling, too, especially the way she nestled her face near the crook of his neck, her feathery breath all warm and moist against his skin.

"What did you find out?" she asked in an afterthought.

"Nothing yet. But if there's anything to Iearn, we should in a few days." Quint paused at the doorway to flip off the kitchen light.

Darkness closed around them, save for a sliver of light peeking from beneath the door to her bedroom. Using it as his beacon, Quint crossed the living room to the short hall, disregarding the creaking floorboards beneath him.

She sighed, a slender hand fitting itself to the ridge of his shoulder. "We probably won't be lucky enough to prove Rutledge is behind it."

"We'll just have to wait and see."

Truthfully Quint thought their chances were slim. He certainly hadn't heard anything tonight that encouraged him to think that they would uncover the equivalent of a smoking gun. But small mistakes could occur in even the most careful plans.

He gave her bedroom door a push with his foot. It swung open soundlessly to reveal a pool of light spreading from a lamp on the nightstand, exposing bedcovers turned back in readiness. He carried her to the bed and lowered her onto it. Her arms immediately tightened their hold on him to keep him there.

"Wait, Quint."

But it was the loose softness of her lips that pulled him down, that and the need to tunnel into them. They were quick to answer the exploring pressure of his kiss. The contact was long and languid, slow to build to an earthy hunger.

Before it did, Quint drew back scant inches. "It's late. You'd better get some sleep."

Regret flickered briefly in her eyes. Then a tiny frown puckered her forehead. "I thought of something. Now I can't remember what it was."

"That's because you're tired. It'll come to you in the morning," he said and braced a hand on the bed to push himself away from it.

" You don't have to go Quint." It was a statement, issued softly,not an appeal .

More than tempted, Quint studied the heavy lidding of her eyes and smiled. "If I stayed, neither one of us would get much sleep and you're halfway there right now."

' I know." Her smile was lazy with sleepiness even as she snuggled a little deeper into her bed, settling herself in for the

"see you in the morning." He dropped a light kiss on her nose add turned off the lamp as he straightened up from the bed.

"Good night." Her voice floated after him when he crossed to the door.

Only a handful of reporters showed up at the ranch the next morning. They looked with regret at the healthy cattle standing in the pen and halfheartedly recorded the scene when Quint distributed hay to the animals. They lingered for a while until it became apparent no new story would be coming from the ranch. The last one pulled out a little before noon.

During lunch, Jessy called, alerting them to expect a delivery of hay that afternoon. There would
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be only six of the smaller-sized round bales. Considering that only ten square bales remained in the barn, the news was welcome.

Armed with a grocery list, Dallas headed to the store after lunch. She waved to Quint when she pulled out of the ranch yard. I its own trip to the city to switch pickups had been delayed by the arrival of a state inspector.

In less than an hour, Dallas paid for her purchases at the checkout counter and wheeled the cart out of the store into the bright sunlight. The air had a hint of sharpness to it, but the sun blazed a hot counterpoint, the heat of its rays warm on her face.

Dallas rolled the cart to the rear of the white pickup and lowered the tailgate. Turning back to the sacks in the cart, she paid no attention to the tan and white truck that pulled into an empty slot next to hers. She lifted a sack from the cart and pivoted to put it in the pickup just as the driver's door of the other vehicle swung open and Boone Rutledge's muscular frame emerged from it. The bright glitter in his dark eyes and the cocky smile on his face told Dallas that he had known where to find her.

A cold loathing welled up inside her. "Did your spies tell you I was here?" Dallas challenged and reached for another sack, tightly controlled anger stiffening her movements.

"What do you think?" Boone mocked and strolled over to the tailgate. "I've been waiting to hear from you."

"Why?" She flashed him a chilling look and shoved another sack into the truck.

"Echohawk's bound to be sweating-three cows dead from anthrax, his cattle quarantined, and his hay running low."

Dallas longed to slap that smug look from his face. She settled for taunting. "You seem to know everything already. Obviously there isn't anything I need to tell you."

But it was the phrase "know everything" that clicked in her mind, and Dallas remembered the thought she had wanted to tell Quint last night. With a rare sense of anticipation, she turned to face Boone, tilting her head at a provocative and faintly challenging angle, a small smile curving her mouth. The essentially male side of Boone looked at her with quickening interest.

"You aren't really going to try to convince me that the Rutledges didn't have anything to do with those cows dying of anthrax, are you?" Dallas murmured.

Shock brought a flicker of panic to his eyes, and a telling pause that was heavy with guilt. "What makes you think we did?" He smiled, as if amused by such a ridiculous suggestion, but his gaze was a bit too sharp and searching in its intent study of her.

Dallas had no doubt that Quint's suspicions were true. But she needed more than that. "Because it was so ingenious, of course. And the very last thing anyone would expect."

"You did," Boonc stated, unaware that his words were an admission of sorts.

"Experience gives me the advantage of knowing just how dirty and devious the Rutledges can be. There is very little you wouldn't dare, is there?" Venom coated her words, and Dallas made no attempt to disguise it, aware that Boone would instantly be wary if she tried to act friendly or cooperative.

"I knew you were smart. Make sure you stay that way." His eyes had the smug gleam of a man convinced he had the upper hand.

"I intend to." But not in the way he meant it.

"Is Echohawk wondering if we had something to do with the anthrax?"

It was a question Dallas had expected him to ask much earlier. Her nonanswer was all prepared.

"Why should he? They were Cee Bar cattle on Cee Bar land. I'm still trying to figure out how you managed that." She looked at him with unfeigned curiosity. "After all, they're range animals, hardly tame enough to be handfed. And if you set out contaminated feed, there was no guarantee it would be eaten right away-and a definite risk that it could be discovered." She paused, not at all sure the ploy would work. "I'm curious. How did you do it?"

Mentally Dallas crossed her fingers, hoping against hope that Boone wouldn't be able to resist the opportunity to boast of his cleverness.

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The wideness of his smile signaled her success. "It was a simple matter of throwing up a portable holding pen to confine them and setting out some contaminated feed for them to eat."

"But-you would have had to do that on the Slash R land," Dallas said, feigning surprise.

Boone shrugged. "How can it be our fault if the boundary fence is in such bad shape that a few cows stray onto Slash R range? Naturally we had to push them back on their own side."

"Something that would have looked completely innocent to any chance passerby. But you ran the risk of infecting your own cattle," Dallas said, subtly pressing for more information.

"Hardly," Boone scoffed in amusement. "Not when you have someone with all the training to know the safe way to do it."

"That would be you, I suppose." But she saw at once that her acid flattery wouldn't succeed in getting an answer from him this time.

"That's something you don't need to know," he replied in easy unconcern.

"It never hurts to ask." She turned away and proceeded to calmly transfer the grocery sacks from the cart to the pickup bed.

"So what's Echohawk doing about hay?" Boone prompted.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Dallas took great satisfaction in throwing the question at his face with cool contempt.

He went from smugness to barely contained fury in a lightning instant, grabbing her arm and viciously digging his fingers into her flesh, finding bone. "Don't get smart with me, you little bitch."

Making no effort to struggle, Dallas gave him an icy stare. "Let go of me or I'll scream loud enough for the whole town to hear."

"Go ahead," he jeered. "Nobody's going to come to your rescue. Now tell me what I want to know."

His grip tightened, the pain intensifying as he twisted her arm higher, but Dallas refused to give him the satisfaction of crying out.

"I guess I forgot to tell you." She fought to keep the pain out of her voice. The effort gave it a constricted sound. "You won't be getting any more information from me."

Dallas tilted her face to him in stubborn defiance, her attention focused on the fiery black glitter of his eyes. There was no awareness of the hand he swung at her until it slammed against her cheek, snapping her head to the side.

There was an explosion of color behind her eyes and a roaring in her ears. She never heard the squeal of skidding tires.

Blinded with his own rage, Boone took no notice of it either as he seized her chin in a viselike grip. "You'd better wise up-"

Quint jerkcd Boone away from her and shoved him into the tailgate"You're the one who'd better wise up, Rutledge." Something glittered in his gray eyes. "You touch her again and you're liable io find yourself in a wheelchair like your father."

"You think you could do it?" Boone challenged, smiling with eagerness that matched the avid and ready gleam in his eyes.

Dallas's voice came between them before a fist could be swung. " The Rutledges infected the cattle with anthrax, Quint. He admitled it."

Stunned, Boone threw her a shocked look, then yanked his gaze back to Quint. "That's a damned lie. I never said anything of the kind."

"Worried, are you?" Quint smiled with a cold kind of pleasure.

"No cattleman would mess around with anthrax." Boone's denial had all the readiness of something rehearsed.

"How true," Dallas said in a voice brittle with control. "But the Rutledges stopped being cattlemen a long time ago." She turned to Quint, her chin lifting fractionally. "Would you like to know why he hit me?"

A puzzled wariness leaped into his expression as if Quint sensed something amiss. "Why?"

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"Because I refused to act as his spy and keep him informed about your plans the way I've done in the past." She watched as his gray eyes narrowed on her with an intermixing of disbelief, anger, and pain. The sight was like a fist closing around her heart.

"She's making the whole thing up," Boone rushed in denial. "Everybody knows she's been trying to make trouble for us ever since her grandfather lost his ranch."