“But if he didn’t . . . ?” Alvarez posed, then said, “I’ll check.”
For the first time since seeing her boss cut down, Pescoli felt a ray of hope. Maybe, just maybe, they’d get this bastard. Verdago had sliced up his brother-in-law, but he was a marksman. And he hated Grayson. But what would have caused him to go after the sheriff now? He’d been out of prison for six months. Had something triggered his attack or was he just patient, this being his first real opportunity?
“Let’s find him.”
“Brewster’s already got two detectives on it.”
“Good.” Pescoli visualized the man, who, now around thirty-six, was short and muscular. The last time she’d seen Verdago, his head was shaved, a skull tattooed where once there’d been hair, and he sported a thick horseshoe mustache along his upper lip and cheeks. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Maybe.” Alvarez was thoughtful, brows pulled together.
“In the meantime, onto Grayson’s second wife, Akina.” Pescoli threw her partner a look. “Might as well see what’s behind door number two, wife-wise.”
Chapter 12
“I just don’t like it, none of it,” Cade said as he turned off the faucet to the main trough in the stable. “Dan’s condition is still critical and the doctors aren’t really telling us what’s what.”
“Maybe they don’t know. It is his goddamned brain.” Zed tossed some oats into the manger as the horses, on the other side of a half wall, crowded around, burying their noses into the food.
The stable was usually a calming place for Cade. With its dimmed lights, smells of dust, dung, and leather, and sounds of hooves rustling in straw, this area of the ranch was where he felt most at home. Bridles hung from the rafters, saddles sat on sawhorses, hay filled the loft overhead, and all manner of tools and gear was displayed upon the wood walls. He couldn’t remember a time in his life where being near the horses didn’t have a calming effect on him.
r /> Until yesterday. Then, while feeding the stock and even whistling some old western tune under his breath, his cell phone had jangled. Not paying any attention to caller ID, he’d answered the call from a seemingly disembodied voice from the sheriff’s department who told him that there had been an assassination attempt on his brother.
Now, the place wasn’t quite as comforting.
“I’m going to the hospital.” He climbed up the ladder to the hayloft, his boots ringing on the metal rungs.
“Not that way, yer not.”
“Funny.” Hoisting himself onto the hundred-year-old floorboards, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light, then grabbed a nearby bale and yelled, “Incoming!” then kicked it to the floor below. Lifting another bale from the stacks, he pushed it through the opening and it slammed to the floor below with a satisfying thump.
“That’s enough!” Zed hollered.
Cade started for the ladder again, but hesitated as he caught sight of the round window mounted high beneath the eaves. Glazed in ice, it was a shadowy portal to the dark day beyond. Dusk was riding low over the mountains, shadows chasing across the hills.
A memory cut behind his eyes in a brilliant flash, a quicksilver picture of a naked woman, lying facedown on a blanket, the slope of her back and rounded buttocks pale in the moonlight streaming through the window. The hayloft was warm, with a summer heat that, inside, wasn’t cooled by the wafting breeze.
The back of his throat caught as he remembered the smell of fresh hay and the buzz of insects, the sound of a coyote crying in the night, and her lying on the old blanket he kept in the back of his pickup. His senses were alive that night, sharpened by the sexual need running through his veins, the anticipation of passionate lovemaking, that special kind that had an edge to it because to some, it was forbidden.
That night, his brain had been disconnected from his soul, and any sense of integrity that could have stopped him had been left behind with the taste of her first, frightened kiss. Trembling lips, still red from a little too much wine, had transformed, turning warm, pliant, and oh so tempting.
She hadn’t resisted when he’d reached beneath her shirt, his fingers scaling her rib cage; then the two of them had ended up here, naked, stripped of their clothes by eager fingers and mutual assent.
Somewhere off in the distance, a rattling train rolled noisily on century-old tracks. The hay mow was hot, August heat sweltering, sweat breaking out on his skin. He leaned closer, smelling a whiff of perfume as he reached around her, touching her breasts, feeling her nipples harden under his fingertips.
His groin tightened and his cock, already hard, strained. Thunder rolled through his brain.
“We shouldn’t,” she whispered, the sound disturbing the horses below. One sent up a soft whinny.
“Too late.” He slid his naked body atop hers and she moaned and writhed slowly on the blanket, her hands curling into fists.
“Cade—”
“Shhh . . . no regrets.” Running his hardness along her spine, he felt her need, saw the raise of her hips. She wanted him, as desperately as he wanted her, with the same pounding need. “It’s all right.”
When she didn’t say anything, he squeezed his eyes shut and tried like hell to cool off, but his blood was running hot, his cock straining, the feel of her soft skin so damned intoxicating.
“You want me to stop?” he forced out. Hell, was that possible? His heart sounded as if it were pounding in his ears, his flesh on fire.