Shotgun Surrender. B.J. Daniels
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seemed disoriented and confused, shying away from anything that moved.
Usually, by the time a bull got to the exit chute, he recognized that it was over and became more docile. Not Devil’s Tornado. He still seemed worked up, maybe a little high-strung, stopping when he saw the waiting semitrailer, looking scared and unsure. Still, not that unusual for a bull that had just scored that high a ride.
Ty wouldn’t have thought anything more about the bull if he hadn’t seen Boone Rasmussen rush up to the exit chute and reach through the fence to touch the still aggravated Devil’s Tornado. What the hell? Ty couldn’t see what Boone had done, but whatever it was made the bull stumble back, almost falling again. Rasmussen reached again for the bull, then quickly withdrew his hand, thrusting it deep into his jacket pocket.
How strange, Ty thought. Devil’s Tornado was frothing at the mouth, his head lolling. Ty saw the bull’s eyes. Wide and filled with…panic? Devil’s Tornado looked around crazily as if unable to focus.
Ty tried to remember where he’d seen that look on a bull before and it finally came to him. It had been years ago in a Mexican bull ring. He was just a kid at the time, but he would never forget that crazed look in the bull’s eyes.
Is this what Clayton had witnessed? Is this what had him so upset? Had Clayton suspected something was wrong with Devil’s Tornado, just as Ty did? But what would Clayton have done about it?
Ty wasn’t even sure what he’d just witnessed. All he knew was: something was wrong with that bull. And Boone Rasmussen was at the heart of it.
“DID YOU SEE THAT?” Letty asked, sitting next to her friend.
Dusty stared through the arena fence toward the chutes and Boone Rasmussen, not sure what she’d seen or what she was feeling right now. “See what?”
Letty let out an impatient sigh. “Don’t tell me you missed the entire bull ride because you were gawking at Boone Rasmussen.”
Dusty looked over at her friend, surprised how off balance she felt. She let out a little chuckle and pretended she wasn’t shaking inside. “Some ride, huh.”
But it wasn’t the ride that had her hugging herself to ward off a chill on such a warm spring night. She wasn’t sure what she’d seen. Letty, like everyone else, had been watching Huck Kramer once the bull had gone into the chutes.
Dusty had been watching Boone. That’s why she’d seen the expression on his face when he reached through the fence and hit Devil’s Tornado with something. Not a cattle prod but something else. The bull had been in her line of sight, so she couldn’t be sure what it had been.
Boone Rasmussen’s expression had been so…cold. It all happened so fast—the movement, Boone’s expression. But there was that moment when she wondered if she’d made a mistake when it came to him. Maybe he wasn’t what she was looking for at all.
TY MOVED ALONG the corrals to the exit chute where Devil’s Tornado now stood, head down, unmoving. Rasmussen stood next to the fence as if watching the bull, waiting. Waiting for what?
A chill ran the length of his spine as Ty stared at Devil’s Tornado. This had to be what Clayton had seen. The look in that bull’s eyes and Rasmussen acting just as strangely as the bull.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Lamar Nichols stepped in front of him, blocking his view of the bull and Rasmussen.
Ty looked past the big burly cowboy to where Rasmussen prodded the bull and Devil’s Tornado stumbled up into the trailer. Rasmussen closed the door behind it with a loud clank.
A shudder went through Ty at the sound. “That’s some bull you got there.”
“He don’t like people.” Lamar stepped in front of him, blocking his view again. “Unless you’re authorized to be back here, I suggest you go back into the stands with the rest of the audience.”
Ty looked past Lamar and saw Rasmussen over by the semitrailer. “Sure,” Ty said to the barrel-chested cowboy blocking his way. No chance of getting a closer look now.
He knew if he tried, Lamar would call security or take a swing at him. Ty didn’t want to create that much attention.
As Ty headed back toward the grandstand, he searched the crowd for Clayton T. Brooks with growing concern. Now more than ever, he wanted to talk to the old bull rider about Devil’s Tornado and what had happened at the Billings rodeo that had riled Clayton.
But Ty didn’t see him in the crowd or along the fence with the other cowboys. Where was Clayton anyway? He never missed a rodeo this close to home.
“THANKS FOR HANGING AROUND with me,” Dusty McCall said as she and her best friend, Leticia Arnold, walked past the empty dark grandstands after the rodeo.
The crowd had gone home. But Dusty had waited around, coming up with lame excuses to keep her friend there because she hadn’t wanted to stay alone—and yet she’d been determined not to leave until she saw Boone.
But she never got the chance. Either he’d left or she just hadn’t seen him among the other cowboys loading stock.
“I’m pathetic,” Dusty said with another groan.
Letty laughed. “No, you’re not.”
“It’s just…” She waved her hand through the air unable to explain all the feelings that had bombarded her from the first time she’d laid eyes on Boone a few weeks before. He was the first man who’d ever made her feel like this, and it confused and frustrated her to no end.
“Are you limping?” Letty asked, frowning at her.
“It’s nothing. Just a little accident I had earlier today,” Dusty said, not wanting to admit she’d ridden a saddle bronc just to impress Boone and he hadn’t even seen her ride. She hated to admit even to herself how stupidly she’d been behaving.
“Are you sure Boone’s worth it?” Letty asked.
Right at that moment, no.
“He just doesn’t seem like your type,” her friend said.
Dusty had heard all of this before. She didn’t want to hear it tonight. Especially since Letty was right. She didn’t understand this attraction to Boone any more than Letty did. “He’s just so different from any man I’ve ever met,” she tried to explain.
“That could be a clue right there.”
Dusty gave her friend a pointed look. “You have to admit he is good-looking.”
“In a dark and dangerous kind of way, I suppose,” Letty agreed.
Dark and dangerous. Wasn’t that the great attraction, Dusty thought, glancing back over her shoulder toward the rodeo arena. She felt a small shiver as she remembered the look on his face when he’d reached through the fence toward the bull. She frowned, realizing that she’d seen something drop to the ground as Boone pulled back his hand. Something that had caught the light. Something shiny. Like metal. Right after that Monte had picked whatever it was up from the ground and pocketed it.
“You’re sure he told you to meet him after the rodeo?” Letty asked, not for the first time.
Dusty had told a small fib in her zeal to see Boone tonight. On her way back from getting a soda, she’d seen Boone, heard him say, “Meet me after the rodeo.” No way was he talking to her. He didn’t know she existed. But when she’d related the story to Letty, she’d let on that she thought Boone had been talking to her.
“Maybe I got it wrong,” Dusty said now.
Maybe she’d gotten everything wrong. But that didn’t explain these feelings she’d been having lately. If she hadn’t been raised in a male-dominated family out in the boonies and hadn’t spent most of her twenty-one years up before the sun mending fence, riding range and slopping out horse stalls, she might know what to do with these alien yearnings. More to the point,