Chasing McCree (25 page)

She grinned. “We can do that
later.”

Sam was graying and balding. His nose
bright red from a cold, and his face weary from working a bad
traffic accident. He looked like hell, but he was ready to give
hell to whoever killed my cattle and snuck into the house last
night.

“
What can we
do?”

Sam grimaced, taking the iced tea Briar
and I made while waiting for him. We were sitting around the dining
room table. Grant stayed out with the hands to keep an eye on them.
I’d relay the conversation later. “That’s the problem. We don’t
know if it was the same person.”

“
So we just sit tight and
wait?” I asked.

“
The only people here I can
look at as suspects are your workers.” Sam said. “In fact, I’m
willing to guarantee it’s one of them. Too hard to find your way
here otherwise, and they know how you operate. Best thing you could
do is send them packing, or at the very least the ones you
suspect.”

I drummed my fingers on the table,
knowing he was right. “If we tell them to leave that means we’ve
got to take care of fifty thousand acres and a large herd of cattle
with only two capable men. Me and Grant. Jerry can’t work like us
anymore. Briar can do a little bit, but she’s not familiar
enough.”

“
We’re sunk,” Briar
slouched in her chair.

“
At least until we can hire
new workers, and that takes time. We just don’t let anyone come
onto our land.”

Sam nodded. “Then we’ll have to wait
for him to strike again and try to catch him.”

I hated the sound of that, but I didn’t
see any other way. “Just tell us what to do.”

“
I’m going to leave. You’ll
tell your men that I told you a group of local teens were out
making trouble and shooting cattle and that you are sorry for
suspecting them.” Sam said. “No one else knows about the man that
got into the house?”

“
No,” I said.

“
Good. I’ll ditch my marked
car and ride in on horseback once it gets dark. No one will see me.
From there on we’ll have an old fashioned stakeout and hopefully
the bastard shows himself.”

Feeling this was the best we could do
with the circumstances, I showed Sam to the door and locked it
behind him. The click seemed to echo in my ears and I took a
steadying breath. All I cared about at this moment was my family
and Briar. As long as nothing happened to her or them, I’d be fine.
I’d be fine if the house burnt to the ground. I’d be fine if I lost
the ranch.

I was not going to lose anyone
else.

“
Hey, I was thinking we
could make something to eat.” Briar came up behind me, and she was
smiling.

I started to smile to. “What are you so
happy about?”

She grabbed my hand and pulled me into
the kitchen. “Well, I found this chocolate chip cookie recipe under
a magnate on the fridge, and then, I realized that we were all
alone in this big house with nothing to do.”

I laughed. “So we’re going to bake
cookies?”

She grabbed one of Millie’s ruffled
aprons off a hook in the pantry and stuck it over my head, quickly
tying it off before I could protest. “Yep…you look good in
yellow.”

“
Ah, hell.” I stared down
at myself. “I guess I do.”

“
Great, you do the dry
ingredients, I’ll do the wet.”

I headed across the kitchen, thinking
it would be a good distraction. We were in the house, alone, with
nothing to do. There was someone on our property killing cattle,
starting fires and breaking into the house. The obvious thing to do
was bake cookies.

My eyebrows went up. “We’re in the
house alone.”

She paused in front of the open fridge,
“Uh, yeah. That’s what I said.”

I pulled off the apron.

“
Chase, what are you
doing?” she frowned. “Why are you looking at me like
that?”

And then I pulled Briar into the pantry
with me.

Chapter 24

Briar

“
How will we explain this
to Millie?” I dusted flour off my clothes and eyed the chaos around
us. Things had gotten a little more than heated between Chase and
I, and we accidently knocked into a shelf, and tipped half of the
contents on the floor.

Chase righted his shirt, grinning.
“Blame it on the dog.”

I frowned, peering out the kitchen door
at our audience. There were four happy herders sitting patiently
for treats. “Which one?”

“
We’ll tell her we don’t
know which one.” He grabbed a broom. “Open the backdoor, I’ll sweep
the flour outside into the yard.

While Chase started clean up, I put a
batch of cookies in the oven. I helped him finish cleaning the
pantry, blushing every time I looked at him. It was probably a good
thing we almost busted the shelf, or our make out session might
have escalated into something more.

Once the first batch of cookies was
done, I put in a second. A sweet, buttery smell filled the kitchen.
My mouth watered. I needed some chocolate. Stat.

“
How do they look?” Chase
asked.

I glanced back at him. He was still a
little white from the flour, but didn’t care I guess. He’d settled
himself at the island counter, not reading a book or a magazine, or
playing on a computer like most people I knew would do.

He was cleaning his shotgun.

“
Almost done.” I blushed
again and glanced back at the cookies.

“
You can’t stop smiling.”
He teased.

“
I wonder why?”

“
I think the pantry is my
new favorite place.”

When the cookies were done, I took them
out of the oven and put the last batch in. “Want one?”

Chase shrugged.

“
You just said you wanted a
cookie.”

“
I want one later,” he
smirked. “How long is the timer set for?”

I rolled my eyes. “Fifteen
minutes…why?”

“
Sam will be here in about
an hour.”

I did not see what his point was.
“And?”

He set the gun down with a sheepish
grin, walked to a door across from the pantry, and opened it. “Have
you seen the storage room yet?”

I threw the oven mitts on the counter
and followed him inside. “If it’s as exciting as the pantry, I’m
sure I’ll love it.”

Chapter 25

“
Someone burnt the
cookies.” Sam frowned, picking through them. “Might need to get the
oven checked.”

Chase grinned, popping a crispy piece
in his mouth. “The oven works just fine.”

“
Yep,” I smiled and picked
up a pair of binoculars and surveyed the yard from the back of the
house. It was dark out now, mostly because of the storm.

“
So when was the last time
you had a real stakeout Sam?” Chase asked, thankfully changing the
subject.

“
Uh, I can’t remember.” He
found a cookie he liked and bit into it.

I wasn’t sure if that was a good
thing…but at least we had someone who would know what to do should
an intruder show up.

I also didn’t want my boyfriend to
shoot anyone.

The house phone rang and Chase excused
himself to answer it. I continued to survey the backyard, thinking
no one would do well in that weather. Not even Frances. He wasn’t
at his usual spot on the barn roof.

Chase’s boots hit the hardwood floors.
They sounded right behind me. His hand appeared at my side and he
held out the phone with a grimace. “It’s for you.”

This was it. I drew a steadying breath
and took the phone from him. “Hello?”

“
A cattle ranch in
Montana?” my father roared in my ear. “How in the hell did you end
up on a cattle ranch in Montana?”

“
Dad, hi.” It had taken a
month, but the call had finally come. I headed for the hallway
bathroom and shut the door, not wanting Sam to overhear the
conversation.

“
Don’t hi me, Briar.” God,
this was bad. I sat on the side of the tub, shocked at how angry he
was. I’d never heard him so mad before. “When you get home you are
never seeing the light of day again. Hear me? You’re going to
school and that’s it. No cheerleading. No friends. Not even a
fucking haircut.”

I heard my mom shouting in the
background and held the phone away from my ear. There was a soft
knock on the door. Chase let himself in and shut it, sitting beside
me on the tub.

Jerry was right.

We stepped in the shit.

“
Dad,” I said, keeping my
voice calm and even. “How did you find out?”

“
Alex came by looking for
you. He told me some hick from the middle of nowhere was taking
advantage of you and dragged you across the country.” He said. “So
I went to the school and used my connections to have the principle
himself get me Chase McCree’s file.”

Hell no. He did not just say that.
“Let’s get one thing straight. Chase is not a hick. He did not drag
me anywhere, and he has never taken advantage of me.”

Except maybe that time in the
pantry…and then in the storeroom.

Of course, I’d taken advantage of him
too.

We were even.

“
Honey, people like that
see important people like us, our money, and they want an easy
ticket. You’re just confused. He’s using you to get to
me.”

I laughed, loud. “Don’t flatter
yourself. Chase has plenty of his own money. He doesn’t need
yours.”

“
Briar, I want you on a
plane for Florida tonight.” He was shouting again. “If you are not
home in twenty four hours you are cut off. You can hitch hike to
Grandma’s for all I care, or enjoy your life in the
sticks.”

“
How long did it take for
you to realize I wasn’t really with Grandma?” I asked. “You never
seemed to care before, so why should I assume you care
now?”

“
Briar, this is not the
time.”

“
When is?” I shouted. “Why
didn’t you call me sooner?”

“
Your mother and I are
having problems.”

Well this wasn’t new. “What
now?”

“
She’s been having an
affair.”

No surprise there. The sanctity of
marriage didn’t mean anything to my parents. I never told Grandma
half the stuff that went down at my house. “This wouldn’t be her
first.”

“
Shut your mouth and get
your ass on a plane.”

Chase started to crowd me, looking like
he wanted to jerk the phone out of my hand. I patted his chest.
“Dad, I think the best thing for you to do is to come
here.”

“
What?” he sounded
appalled. “You think I’m going to fly to Montana to a cattle
ranch?”

“
If you want to see me
again, you will.”

He started shouting again and I hung
up.

Chase pulled me into his arms and
rested his head on top of mine. “It’s okay.”

“
I’m an inconvenience.” I
felt numb. “That’s all. He wasn’t even worried about me. He was
worried about his marriage to my mother, and that you were using me
to get to his money.”

Chase sighed and hugged me tighter.
“I’ve got more money than he does. Of that I’m
positive.”

“
He said he was going to
cut me off. Hitch hike home or enjoy living in the sticks.” I took
the tissues Chase offered me and blew my nose. The great thing
about crying around him was that he didn’t care. Alex had said once
that when I cried I looked ugly. But Chase thought I was pretty,
even first thing in the morning with bed head.

“
He’ll come.” He sounded so
sure.

“
Yeah, to prove he is
right.” I wiped my eyes and smiled up at him. “But the great thing
about that is we know he’s wrong.”

Once I felt I didn’t look like I’d been
balling my eyes out, Chase and I went back to Sam. It was nearing
midnight and the storm was going full blast when the phone rang
again. Only this time it was Chase’s cell phone.

“
Someone tried to break
into Grant’s house.” Chase said when he hung up. “He shot him in
the leg.”

“
Who was it?” I
asked.

“
Tom.”

Sam stood. “Well, this is my
queue.”

Chase nodded, confused and resigned.
“Part of me thought it was Rick.”

I was thinking the same thing, but
maybe he was just a surly guy, and not a criminal.

Chase wanted to go with him. I could
tell by the way he hovered on the threshold, watching Sam get into
one of the ranch trucks. He wasn’t going to ride his horse into the
storm. “Go with him. I’ll be fine, I promise.”

“
No, I’m not leaving you
here alone.”

I gave him a kiss and a push onto the
porch. “Go.”

With a nod, Chase ran through the rain
to the waiting truck and hopped in with Sam. I watched the red
taillights disappear down the dirt drive before I shut the door and
locked it. The sooner he got back, the better I’d feel.