Chapter Seven
Jacklyn followed the county road as it wound around one section of land after another, until she saw the sign that marked the various directions to ranches in the area.
At one time there’d been a dozen signs tacked on the wooden post. But over the years, most ranches had been bought out, all of them by Shade Waters.
Now there were only three signs on the post, pointing to Shade Waters’s W Bar Ranch, Tom Robinson’s ranch and Reda Harper’s RH Circle Cross.
Jacklyn saw Dillon glance at the signs, his gaze hardening before it veered away. Not far up the road, she turned to drive under an arched entry with W Bar Ranch carved into the graying wood.
“I’ll stay in the pickup,” he said as she pulled up in the ranch yard.
She looked at him, then at the sprawling ranch house. Shade Walters had come out onto the porch. Always a big man, he wasn’t quite as handsome as he’d been in his younger days, but he was still striking. He stood in the shadow of the porch roof, an imposing figure that demanded attention.
The front door opened again and his son Nate came out, letting the door slam behind him. She saw Shade’s irritated expression and the way he scowled in Nate’s direction.
Nate was in his early thirties, big boned and blond. Unlike his father, his western clothing was new and obviously expensive. Shade Waters looked like every working rancher she’d known, from his worn western shirt to his faded jeans and weathered boots.
She couldn’t help but think that whoever had attacked Tom Robinson had come by way of the W Bar, Shade Waters’s land.
Nate was staring toward her passenger, and it dawned on her that Dillon and he were close in age and must have gone to school together. The old Savage place had been up the road. Had they once been friends, as had Dillon and Nate’s brother, Halsey?
Nate’s frown and the intense silence coming from the man next to her made it clear that the two were no longer friends, whatever their relationship had been in the past.
“You won’t get out of the pickup no matter what happens?” she asked quietly, without looking at Dillon.
“Nope.”
As Jacklyn started to open her door, a pretty, dark-haired woman joined the two men on the porch. Jacklyn felt Dillon tense beside her. The woman looped her arm through Nate’s and gazed out at the pickup, as if daring anyone to try to stop her—including Shade Waters. Judging from his expression, he wasn’t happy to see the woman join him, any more than he had been his son.
But it was Dillon’s reaction that made Jacklyn hesitate before she climbed out of the truck.
Dillon knew the woman. Not just knew her. His left hand was clenched in a fist and his jaw was tight with anger.
She knew he blamed Shade Waters for what had happened not just to his family ranch but to his father. But was there more to the story? Was there a woman involved?
This dark-haired beauty?
“Holler if you need me,” Dillon said as she started to climb out of the truck.
She shot him a look as he drew the brim of his hat down over his eyes and leaned back as if planning to sleep until she returned.
Right. As if he wouldn’t be watching and listening to everything that was said. She noticed that he’d managed to power down his window before she turned off the pickup engine.
“Enjoy your nap,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t.
His lips tipped up in a smile. He wasn’t fooling her and he knew it.
As Jacklyn closed the truck door, she noticed that the woman had her own gaze fixed on the passenger side of the pickup. On Dillon.
Jacklyn knew there’d been women in Dillon’s life. Probably a lot of them. Had he turned to crime because of one of them? Maybe this one?
Jacklyn approached the porch slowly, afraid all hell was about to break loose. She just hoped Dillon Savage wasn’t going to be in the middle of it.
MORGAN LANDERS. Dillon couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d heard she’d gone to California. Or Florida. That she’d snagged some old guy with lots of bucks.
But as he watched her lean intimately into Nate Waters, Dillon knew he shouldn’t have been surprised that Morgan had come back—or why.
What did surprise him was his reaction to seeing her. He hadn’t expected ever to lay eyes on her again. Especially not here. It felt like another betrayal, but then he suspected it wasn’t her first. Or her last.
What bothered him was that he knew Jack had seen his reaction. She missed little. Now she would think he still felt something for Morgan.
From under his hat, he watched Jack walk to the bottom step of the porch. Clearly, Shade Waters wasn’t going to invite her inside the house. Manners had never been the man’s strong suit. No, Waters wanted to intimidate her. How better than to stand on the porch, literally looking down on her?
Dillon smiled to himself. He’d put his money on Jack anyday, though. Not even Shade Waters could intimidate a woman like Jacklyn Wilde.
The rancher glanced at the pickup, no doubt seeing that Dillon had has side window down. Another reason Waters wouldn’t invite Jack inside. He’d want Dillon to hear whatever he had to say. And Dillon was sure Waters had a lot to say, given that he’d demanded Jack stop by to see him.
Also, Dillon thought with a grin, Waters wouldn’t want to go in the house knowing that a Savage was on his property, alone. Waters would be afraid of what Dillon might do.
As Dillon shifted his gaze from Morgan Landers to the elderly man he’d spent years hating, he thought Waters was wise to worry.
JACKLYN LOOKED UP at the three standing on the porch. They made no move to step aside so she could enter the house—or even join them in the shade.
“I can handle this,” Shade said, scowling over at his son. But Nate didn’t move. Nor did the woman beside him.
Jacklyn couldn’t help being curious about the woman, given that Dillon obviously had some connection to her. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said. “I’m Jacklyn Wilde.”
The brunette had the kind of face and body that could stop traffic, but that had nothing to do with the dislike Jacklyn had felt for her instantly.
“Morgan Landers.” She flicked her gaze over Jacklyn dismissively, her brown eyes lighting again on the pickup and no doubt the passenger sitting in it.
“If we’re through with introductions…” Shade Waters snapped.
Jacklyn waited. She could see how agitated the rancher was, but wasn’t entirely certain it had anything to do with her.
“Do you people have any idea what you’re doing?” he finally demanded, tilting his head toward the pickup and Dillon.
“You want the rustlers caught?” she asked, resenting him trying to tell her how to do her job.
Waters smirked. “The rustler was already behind bars. That is, until you got him out. What the hell were you thinking?”
“Dillon Savage is my problem.”
“You’re right about that,” the big man said angrily. “You going to try to tell me he doesn’t know anything about what’s been going on?”
She wasn’t. Nor was she about to admit that she suspected the same thing he did when it came to Dillon Savage.
“It’s his boys who are stealing all the cattle,” Waters said with a curse. “That bunch he used to run around with. He’s been orchestrating the whole thing from prison, and now you go and get him out so he can lead you in circles. You don’t really think he’s going to help you catch them, do you?”
“What bunch are we talking about?” she asked, ignoring the rest of what he’d said.
“Buford Cole, Pete Barclay, Arlen Dubois—that bunch,” Waters snapped.
“What makes you think it’s them? Or are you just making unfounded accusations? Because if you have some evidence—”
Waters let out another curse. “Hell, if I had evidence I’d take it to Sheriff McCray and the rustlers would be behind bars. Everyone in the county knows that Buford Cole and Arlen Dubois were riding with Savage before he went to prison.”
“There was never any evidence—”
“Don’t give me that evidence bull,” Waters snapped. “Just because you couldn’t prove it.”
“I’m confused. Arlen Dubois just told me you offered him a job. If you really believe he’s one of the rustlers…”
Waters’s smile never reached his eyes. “Sometimes it’s better to have the fox living in the henhouse so you can keep an eye on him. That’s one reason I hired Pete Barclay. He also used to run with Savage.”
That was also never proved, but she decided not to argue the point. “What about Buford Cole?”
“He’s working at the stockyard,” Waters stated, and raised a brow as if that said everything.
She looked at Nate. “Didn’t you used to run with those same cowboys?”
Nate appeared surprised that she’d said anything to him. “What?”
“I heard you were all friends, including Dillon and your brother, Halsey.”
The older Waters’s face blanched and he looked as if he might suddenly grab his chest and keel over.
“Now just a minute,” Nate said.
“What the hell are you trying to do?” Waters interrupted, taking a step toward her. “Don’t you ever bring up Halsey’s name in the same breath as those others!”
She noticed he was fine with Nate’s name being mentioned with the others. Nate had noticed it, too, and was scowling in his father’s direction.
“I’m just saying that because this group used to be friends, there is no evidence they are now involved in rustling cattle together.” Her gaze went to Morgan Landers. She was smiling as if enjoying this.
“The damn rustlers are closing in on my ranch. Even you should be able to see that.” Waters’s face was now flushed, his voice breaking with emotion. “I can’t protect my land or my livestock, not even if I hire a hundred men. Not when half of the range is badlands and only accessible by horseback.”
She wanted to point out that the rustlers would have the same problem. But Waters was right. Huge sections of his land were inaccessible except by horseback, and given the size of the place, it would take several days to ride across the length of the W Bar. No amount of men could protect it completely.
“Your ranch hasn’t been hit by the rustlers,” she pointed out. “Do you have some reason to believe it will be?”
Waters looked flustered, something she didn’t think happened often. “They must know I’ll shoot to kill if they try to take my cattle.”
“I wouldn’t advise that,” Jacklyn said.
“Then what are you going to do to stop them?” he demanded.
“I’m going to catch them, but I’ll need your help. Tell me where your cattle are, what precautions you’ve taken and what men you have available to guard the key borders.”
Waters looked at her, then glanced toward the pickup and laughed. “You don’t really think I’m going to give you that information, do you? Why don’t I just run it in the newspaper so the rustlers know exactly when and where to steal my cattle?”
“If this is about Mr. Savage—”
“You can try to explain until you’re blue in the face why you got Dillon Savage out of prison, young woman, but I’m not giving you a damn thing. I’ll take care of my stock as best I can. Just know I’ll do whatever I have to, and that includes killing the sons of bitches.” He was looking toward the truck again. “I have the right to protect my property.”
“Mr. Waters—”
“I don’t have time for this,” he said, and thumped down the steps and past her, headed toward the barn.
“Like we’re going to hold our breaths and wait for you to catch the rustlers,” his son muttered.
“Shut up, Nate,” Waters snapped over his shoulder.
“Mr. Waters,” Jacklyn said, trailing after him. “I want your permission to put some video devices on your ranch. If you’re right, the rustlers have probably been watching your operation already.”
“No,” he said, without stopping or looking back. “I told you I was going to take care of things my own way.”
“If your own way is illegal—”
He swung around so fast she almost ran into him. “Listen, maybe you will catch the rustlers. But it won’t be on my ranch. I won’t be spied on.”
“Spied on?”
“Videos and all that paraphernalia. No. Maybe that’s the way it’s done nowadays, but I don’t want a bunch of your people on my land, and I know for a fact you can’t force them on me.”
Jacklyn glanced back at the truck. She couldn’t see Dillon’s face through the sunlight glinting off the windshield, but she knew he hadn’t missed a thing.
Then she followed Shade Waters into the barn, determined to do her job despite him.
DILLON WATCHED MORGAN give him a backward glance before she followed Nate Waters into the house. She’d stared in his direction, as if she’d been expecting to see him.
Unlike him, who hadn’t been prepared to see her again ever. As the front door closed, he sat without moving, bombarded by memories of the two of them.
Morgan. There’d been a time when she’d made him think about buying another ranch and settling down. But even Morgan couldn’t still the quiet rage inside him. Not that Morgan had wanted him to be anything but a rustler. She liked the drama. She’d never wanted him to quit rustling.
She was hooked on the danger, never knowing when he would sneak into town and into her bed, never knowing if her house would be raided by the sheriff’s men.
And since Morgan had no way of knowing about Dillon’s inheritance, she’d just assumed he would never have enough money to keep her in the way she wanted to live, so she’d never even mentioned marriage. And he’d never told her different.
He wondered idly if she was serious about Nate Waters. Or if she was only serious about his money. Morgan would like the power that came with the Waters name, as well.
As Jacklyn disappeared into the barn with the rancher, Dillon fought the turmoil he felt inside. Seeing Morgan had brought back the past in a blinding flash. All his good intentions not to let what had happened drag him back into trouble again seemed to fly out the window. He felt the full power of the old bitterness, the resentment, the injustice that burned like hot oil inside him.
Worse, while he’d always suspected that he’d been set up four years ago, that someone close to him had betrayed him, he hadn’t wanted to believe it.
In prison, he’d told himself it didn’t matter. That all of that was behind him.
But as he thought about the look Morgan had given him before going back into the house, the image now branded on his mind, he knew it did matter—would always matter. He’d been kidding himself if he thought he could forgive and forget—at least not until he found out who had betrayed him.
And Morgan was as good as any place to start.
JACKLYN SHOULD HAVE SAVED her breath. Shade Waters was impossible. She’d tried to talk to him, but he seemed distracted as he looked in on one of the horses. She saw him frown and touch the horse’s side, apparently surprised to find that it was damp, as if recently ridden.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, noting that he seemed upset.
He shook his head irritably. “I told you. I don’t have time for this. Shouldn’t you be out looking for the rustlers instead of driving me crazy?” he snapped, then sighed, looking his age for a moment. “I just got a call a few minutes before you got here. Tom Robinson’s condition is worse.”
Her heart dropped, and instantly she felt guilty, because she’d been praying he would regain consciousness. She’d been counting on Tom being able to identify at least one of the rustlers.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, a little surprised how hard Waters was taking the news, given that he would now probably get the Robinson ranch, just as Dillon had said. Was Tom’s worsened condition really what had Waters upset?
The rancher didn’t seem to hear her as he began to wipe down the horse. Jacklyn wondered where Pete Barclay was.
She let herself out of the barn, knowing she wasn’t going to get anywhere with him. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that Dillon Savage might be right. Maybe there was more going on than she’d thought.
As she started toward her pickup, what she saw stopped her dead. The truck was empty. Dillon Savage was gone.