Safety in Numbers. Carla Cassidy
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time built up so we’re kind of openended at the moment.”
Kathy glanced at the clock on the wall. “I’d better get back to work if I’m going to have breakfast ready at a reasonable time. Why don’t you two shoo and let me do my thing.”
Meredith drained her coffee cup, placed it in the dishwasher, then started out of the kitchen. “Where are you headed?” Chase asked.
“To the stables,” she replied. “I usually go out there every morning and most evenings to say hello to the horses.”
“Mind if I tag along?”
Yes, I do. You make me nervous and I don’t know why. She didn’t say that, but instead shook her head. She grabbed a jacket from a hook next to the back door, and once she stepped off the porch, Chase fell in beside her.
“Dalton told me you’re quite a horseback rider,” he said as they crossed the thick, browning lawn toward the stables.
At five-ten there were few men who dwarfed Meredith, but Chase did. He made her feel small and oddly vulnerable. “Do you ride?” she asked.
“Motorcycles, not horses.”
“Then you don’t know what you’re missing,” she replied, her steps long and brisk. They walked for a few minutes in silence.
“Quite a spread you have here,” he said. “Did this MoTwin Corporation contact you all about selling out? You said the deaths that occurred were made to look like accidents. Anything odd happen to your father?”
She stopped in her tracks and turned to face him with narrowed eyes. “For somebody just visiting the area you have a lot of questions.”
“I’m a cop. Curiosity comes natural to me.”
She gazed at him for a long moment, taking in the handsome chiseled features, the spark of the early-morning sun on his hair and the guileless blue of his eyes. “Then to answer your question, no. Nobody has contacted my father about selling because they probably know that won’t ever happen. And no, nothing strange or suspicious has happened to my father.
“One thing all those dead ranchers had in common was either no children or family to take over their ranches, or kin that weren’t interested in ranching. My father has five sons and me. Killing him wouldn’t get anyone any closer to owning this place.”
He frowned thoughtfully. “But, I would think if this corporation planned a community of condos and town houses, they’d want this land.” He cast a gaze around. “It looks pretty prime to me.”
“I don’t know what the intentions of MoTwin were where our land was concerned. I can’t begin to guess what was in those men’s heads.”
They reached the stables and walked inside, where the horses in the various stalls greeted their presence with snickers and soft whinnies.
As she walked toward where her horse, Spooky, was stalled, she paused at each of the other stalls to pet a nose or scratch an ear. She tried to ignore Chase’s nearness, but it was darned near impossible.
The man seemed to fill the stable interior with an unsettling presence that even the horses felt. They sidestepped and pawed the ground with an unusual restlessness, as if catching the scent of a predator in the air.
“Tell me about your other brothers,” he said as she greeted her black mare with a soft whisper. “Your father mentioned they’d all be here for dinner tonight. I’d like to know a little about them before then. Dalton has mentioned them in the past, but never went into specific details.”
“Tanner’s the oldest. He’s thirty-five and as you know married to Anna. Zack is thirty-one and married to Kate. He’s running for Sheriff. Clay is thirty and just married Libby, who also has a little girl named Gracie. Then there’s Joshua. He’s the baby at twenty-five and he’s dating my best friend, Savannah. You met her yesterday at the café;.”
He nodded, his eyes dark and enigmatic. “Do you all still work for the family business?”
“We did, but things are changing. Tanner was actively running things before he met and married Anna. They’re now building a house and he’s involved in that and not working so much right now. As I mentioned, Zack wants to be sheriff and it looks like he’s going to get his wish. The man who’s working as sheriff right now has plans to retire.”
She scratched Spooky behind the ears, finding it much easier to focus on the horse’s loving, brown eyes than Chase’s cold blue ones.
“Joshua still works for the business and so do I, but for the last couple of months things have been rather slow.” She gave the horse a final pat on the neck. “We should probably head back to the house for breakfast.”
“So, what do you do in your spare time?” he asked as they made their way to the house.
“I occasionally do some volunteer work, but most of the time I keep busy around here. Running a ranch the size of ours requires lots of work.”
“Dalton mentioned to me last night that you don’t date. Why not?”
She stopped walking and held his gaze. “First of all, my brothers don’t know everything that goes on in my life. Just because they don’t know what I’m doing doesn’t mean I’m not doing it. And secondly, it’s really none of your business.”
She didn’t wait for his reply, but instead hurried toward the house, needing some space from the man, his endless questions and the hot lick of desire just looking at him stirred inside her.
It was just after ten when Chase sat in the passenger seat of Meredith’s car. She’d mentioned at breakfast that she was heading into town to run some errands and he’d asked if he could hitch a ride with her. He could tell the idea didn’t thrill her, but she was too polite to tell him no.
He’d told her that while she ran her errands or whatever, he’d hang out at the Wild West Protective Services office with Dalton.
He’d known most of the information she’d told him in the stables before he’d even asked the questions, but he’d hoped she’d give him something that would either exonerate or condemn somebody guilty.
The Wests might never have made the FBI radar if it hadn’t been for a couple of anonymous tips that had come in pointing a finger at the family. He had no idea if the tips were valid or not. It was his and Kathy’s assignment to find out.
“You asked me about my family earlier,” she said, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had existed between them since they’d gotten into the car. “Tell me about yours.”
As always, when Chase thought of what little family he’d had, a knot of tension twisted in his chest. He reached up and touched the slightly raised scar that slashed through his eyebrow, then dropped his hand.
“There’s not much to tell. It’s just my mother and me. My father died a couple of years ago. He was a miserable man who gambled away his money, then drank and got mean.”
It was a partial truth. His mother had died when he was five and his violent, drunken father had raised him until Chase turned sixteen and left home. Whenever Chase thought of his family he got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. God save him from people who professed to love him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But your mother seems very nice.”
He grinned. “Kat…Mom is a jewel. She left my father when I was ten and we have a great relationship.” This was the cover story they’d concocted, a blend of half lies and half truths. Kathy was a jewel, not as a mother but as a partner.
“She stepped into dangerous territory this morning.”
Chase looked at her curiously. “What do you mean?”
“She took over Smokey’s kitchen.”
“That’s bad?”
She