And as Bree smiled shakily for yet another set of pictures, she noticed two cowboys standing to the side. One tall and somber, the other short and confused-looking. They looked ridiculously out of place, like Abbott and Costello gone bad in one of those old gangster films her Grams so loved.
Then the tall, somber cowboy sidled next to Bree, congratulating her in an east-coast accent, mumbling something about needing to get some stats on the bull. As he took the leather strap from Bree’s hands, she noticed a large diamond ring on his pinkie finger. Had to be one of the owners of Bovine Best, a business worth millions. With that kind of money, maybe even his shirt buttons were diamonds.
But before she could check his buttons, the cowboy was leading Valentine away. Val jerked against the leather harness to look over his shoulder at her. As she stared into those big dark eyes for maybe the last time, waves of pain and loss washed over her. After two and a half years of grooming Val for this moment, it had all happened so fast—the trip, the competition, the win—and now her beloved bull was leaving her life forever.
She dropped her head so no one would see the blobs of tears. Honest to God, she felt her heart breaking.
Then, through her blurry vision, she caught sight of something wrong. She swiped at her eyes.
Mr. Pinkie Ring wore brand new turquoise boots.
Come on, she thought. Okay, so maybe he had money to burn and wore diamonds, but fresh-out-of-the-box boots at a stock show? Turquoise ones? And why was he leading Val toward the west exit, when Carlton had pointed to the south?
She scanned the west, a mass of people, pens, cattle…but no sight of Carlton or any of the Bovine Best crew she’d met earlier.
Panic tore through her. Are they stealing Val?
She’d heard of such scams…criminals who’d kidnap, then sell, a prize bull on the black market to some dealer who’d claim he’d leased the bull and procured its sperm before the theft—and have forged records to prove it. These black-marketers made millions selling prize semen to ranchers eager to mix grand-champion genes with their herds. Unethical as hell, but it would take a small fortune in legal fees for the original owner—in this case, Bree—to prove her stolen bull’s semen wasn’t procured before the theft.
A small fortune. Every single penny of her prize money lost in legal fees.
And then there was the heart-killing image of Val, penned in some desolate location, unloved. No lady bovines around…nothing but a fake hind end to induce him…
No! Not to Val! Just as on the volleyball court when she felt an opponent was ready to strike, Bree had to make a decision, fast.
She darted, clawing her way through the mass of people. To her right, a Navajo blanket lay across a beam. Probably for someone’s horse. Bree snatched a corner of the coarse fabric and pulled it with her.
Crazy ideas slammed through her mind as she picked up her pace. Maybe she’d toss the blanket over Pinkie Ring’s face to distract him? It’d buy her a few moments to wrestle Val’s strap from the man’s grip. And then what? A guy with a pinkie ring, turquoise boots and a bad attitude might do something really crazy.
And sure enough, as soon as she spotted him, his jacket flapped open, exposing a gun holster.
Now she knew what that something crazy and workable might be. He probably won’t pull a gun with all these witnesses.
She paused. Wait a minute—is he talking to that cop?
She shuffled in place. Weird. What did Pinkie and a cop have in common? There’d been a rash of internal police investigation stories in the Denver papers recently. Cops on the take. Black-market deals. Maybe some of those bad cops were in on this, too?
Can’t go to the police. I’m on my own. Through a whirlwind of fear and fury, she fought to think what to do. I could flash Val the signal to act tough, to charge, but that’d be dangerous with all these people and livestock around.
Pinkie began walking again, away from the officer, Valentine firmly in tow.
It took Bree three giant steps to catch up. She slowed to a walk alongside Val, knowing instinctively he knew she was there. Eyeing the neatly creased, spotless Stetson on Pinkie Ring’s head, she held up the blanket, ready to…
“Hey, girlie! Whatta ya doin’ with my blanket?”
A man’s angry voice behind her. Had to move. Fast.
She swung the blanket in an arc over her head.
Pinkie Ring jerked around. “What the—?” As he raised his hands to thwart the blanket attack, the lead shank to Val’s halter fell free.
Behind her, more yelling. Feet pounded the dirt floor.
She swung the blanket in a wide, whooshing arc and flung it at Pinkie. As he stumbled and fell, she crouched and jumped—just as she would for a volleyball spike—using her body’s momentum to hurl herself over the back of Val. They’d done this before, but always in open fields, not in a building!
“Go!” she yelled hoarsely, hoisting her leg over the animal’s back as she grabbed a horn for balance.
Val snorted and lurched forward.
A woman screamed.
Bree held on for dear life as the massive beast broke into a trot.
THE MAMMOTH-SIZE VAN lurched and sputtered. Kirk Dunmore cursed under his breath and stared at the dashboard with its myriad buttons, switches and knobs. It reminded him of the spaceship panel in the sci-fi book he’d been reading lately. It starred a mighty warrior, Tarl Cabot, in the strange counter-Earth planet of Gor.
Only this wasn’t Gor, it was Nederland, the funky counter-Earth mountain community an hour outside Denver, Colorado. And Kirk wasn’t a mighty, solitary warrior trying to save the galaxy. He was a frustrated, soon-to-be-married paleobotanist trying to analyze the problem with this damn van. If he was in his old trustworthy Jeep, he’d know exactly what to do.
But no, his future mother-in-law—with too much time and money on her hands—had had this state-of-the-art van delivered to Kirk on his excavation site yesterday outside Allenspark, Colorado. She called it a wedding gift, but Kirk knew it was really an expensive reminder that he was saying “I do” to her daughter Alicia in forty-eight hours, preceded by a rehearsal dinner in twenty-four hours, and he needed to get his dirt-caked, fossil-loving self home.
He stared at the dashboard and its myriad gadgets and buttons. So many, not even a scientist knew what to poke, prod or punch.
Honk. Honk.
Kirk glanced in the sideview mirror and caught the reflection of a blue pickup. It was early evening, the world glazed gray with winter, but he could discern that the hood ornament was a tarnished peace sign.
Honk. Honk.
“Give peace a chance,” muttered Kirk.
Honk. Honk.
He scanned the dashboard one last time. So what if he had a doctorate and was on the verge of a major scientific breakthrough—right now, he was having one hell of a time figuring out this space-age dashboard. “Best option is to treat this contraption like I do my Jeep when it stalls. Pop it into second and let the good times roll!”
Kirk opened the door and jumped out, the impact of his six-one, two-hundred-pound body spraying January slush on his shoes and pants. Screw it. After countless hikes and digs, his boots and clothes had been caked with everything from Patagonian granite flakes to Arctic ice slivers. A little Colorado snow was nothing.
The chill bit his face. This part of the road was on a decline, so he ran a few steps, one hand against the open door, the other on the steering wheel. His footsteps sloshed. His breath came fast. The white van, covered with dirt and slush, rolled forward. Kirk jumped back into the driver’s seat, popped the clutch and punched the gas. The van lurched, sputtered and stalled.
Rolling