“Trask?” Neva called anxiously from her room. She tossed on her robe and hurried into the hallway. Trask was standing in the living room, looking as if he’d like to break someone’s neck. “What are you doing here at this time of night?”
“I need to use your phone. There isn’t one at the cabin.”
“Go ahead.” She pushed the blond hair away from her face and stared at the disheveled state of Trask’s clothes and the stern set of his jaw. “You nearly scared me to death, you know.”
“Sorry,” he said without regret and paced between the living room and hallway. “I should have called.”
“It’s okay.” She sighed and looked upward to the loft where her son was sleeping. “At least you didn’t wake Nicholas…yet.” She folded her arms over her chest and studied Trask’s worried expression. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong or do I have to guess?”
“I’m really not sure.”
“Don’t tell me, Tory didn’t go along with your plan.”
“That wasn’t it, no thanks to you.” He frowned. In the past he’d been able to confide everything to Neva, but now things had changed; he sensed it. “Look, let me use the phone in the den and then we can talk.”
“Okay. How about a cup of coffee?”
“How about a beer?”
Neva’s brows shot upward. “That bad?”
“I don’t know, Neva.” He shook his head and the lines of worry near the corners of his eyes were more evident than they had been. “I just don’t know.” He walked through the kitchen to the small office where his brother had once planned to expose the biggest horse swindle in the Pacific Northwest.
Trask closed the door to the den and stared at the memorabilia that Neva had never managed to put away. A picture of Jason holding a newborn Nicholas was propped up on the desk. Jason’s favorite softball glove and a ball autographed by Pete Rose sat on a bookcase next to all of the paperback thrillers Jason had intended, but never had time, to read. A plaque on the wall complemented the trophies in the bookcase; mementos of a life cut off much too early.
The desk chair groaned as Trask sat down, picked up the phone and punched out the number of the sheriff’s department. After two rings the call was answered and Trask was told that Paul Barnett wasn’t in the office, but would return in the morning.
“Great,” Trask muttered. Rather than leave his name with the dispatcher, Trask hung up and drummed his fingers on the desk as he considered his alternatives. You’ve been a fool, he thought as he leaned back in the chair and put his fingers together tent style. How could you have been so stupid?
It was one thing to come back to Sinclair and start a quiet investigation; quite another to come back and flaunt the reasons for his return. Although he hadn’t told anyone other than Neva and Tory about the anonymous letter, he hadn’t hidden the fact that he was back in Sinclair for the express purpose of seeing Tory again. By now, half the town knew his intentions. The guilty persons could certainly put two and two together.
And so Tory was in danger, because of him. Trask took off his hat and threw it onto the worn leather couch. His mouth felt dry for the need of a drink.
The trouble was, Trask wasn’t cut out for this cloak-and-dagger business. Never had been. Even the back-scratching and closed-door deals in Washington rubbed him the wrong way. As a junior senator, he’d already ruffled more than his share of congressional feathers.
With a grimace he pulled a copy of the anonymous letter out of his wallet and laid it on the desk while he dialed Paul Barnett’s home number and waited. It took several rings, but a groggy-voiced Barnett finally answered.
The conversation was short and one-sided as Trask explained why he was in Sinclair and what had happened.
“I’ll need to see the original note,” Barnett said, once Trask had finished his story. All the sleep was out of the sheriff’s voice. “I already sent one of my men out to check out the dead calf. As far as we can tell, it was an isolated incident.”
“A warning,” Trask corrected.
“Possibly.”
“The same as the rifle shot this evening.”
“I’ll check into it, do what I can.”
“Good. Tory’s not going to like the fact that I called you. She wanted to keep things under wraps until we’d found what we were looking for.”
“That’s foolish of course, but I can’t say as I blame her, considering what happened to her pa and the reputation of that ranch.”
“What happened to Calvin and the ranch aren’t important. Right now she needs protection. Whether she knows it or not,” he added grimly.
“I don’t have the manpower to have someone cover the Lazy W day and night, you know.”
“I’ll take care of that end. John Davis, a pr