“Some of them are still down there. I’d like to keep my job for longer than a day, if you don’t mind.”
The sound of a small engine revving carried across the hill.
“Come on!” Mona leaped to her feet and scrambled back down the slope to the truck.
Right behind her, Reed climbed into the truck and switched it to four-wheel drive. They topped the hill doing thirty and plunged downward to the field below.
Taillights glowed red on the road over a mile away. The rustlers had a head start on them. If they had any kind of horsepower in their vehicle, they’d be gone before Reed and Mona made the highway.
“Damn.” Mona held on to the handle above the door as the truck bounced over uneven terrain, small bushes and rocks on its descent to the bottom of the hill.
Meanwhile, the taillights disappeared into the night.
Reed eased across the cut barbed-wire fence, careful not to get wire wrapped around the axles. When he pulled up onto the pavement, he turned to Mona. “Want me to follow?”
“Hell, yeah.” Mona slammed her palm against the armrest. “They can’t get away with this. Those are my cattle.”
With the lead the rustlers had, Reed didn’t think they had a chance, but he gunned the truck and flew down the road, gaining speed until the pickup traveled at over one hundred miles per hour. For the next thirty minutes, they raced over deserted highways and back roads, but the truck and tractor-trailer rig had disappeared.
When he came to a crossroad where the county road T-junctioned onto a state highway, Reed pulled to a stop and turned to his new boss. “Which way?”
Instead of looking at the highway stretching to the left or right, she stared straight ahead across an open field in front of them. The lights from the dash glinted off the moisture in her eyes. Once again, her hair had escaped the confines of the elastic band she’d worn earlier and laid across her shoulders in shiny waves of ebony.
Tempted to reach out and touch the strands, Reed gripped the steering wheel tighter. He wanted to comfort her, give her reason to hang on. Something told him she wouldn’t appreciate any sympathy from him or any other man.
She sat there, her jaw firmed, her lips thinning into a straight line. “In case you haven’t gotten the hint, this is the reason why I hired you. Tomorrow we come up with a plan to stop these thieves. Do you still want the job?”
More than ever. The challenge excited him, almost as much as his new boss. “Yes.”
“Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She opened the door, climbed down from the truck and threw up in the ditch.
Chapter Three
“Just like you said, the fences were cut and there were tire tracks in the dirt by the road. Other than that, we didn’t find any other evidence.” Sheriff Parker Lee stood with his hat still firmly planted on his head, despite being indoors. A smug look barely hid beneath the surface of his painted-on concern.
Mona’s stomach burbled, the acid churning nonstop since Parker Lee stepped through her door. She swore she’d never let him set foot on her property in her lifetime. But then tough times called for compromises. “You can’t tell me you’re still clueless. That’s three hits in the past month.” Mona stopped midway across the living room to face the one man she hated more than any other. “What’s it gonna take to get you to do something about this problem?”
The sheriff stepped forward and laid his hands on her shoulders. “Now, Mona, if you’d just let me take care of you like I promised, none of this would be happening.”
Her anger turned to deep dark rage. If her eyes could shoot venom, she’d have poisoned Parker Lee with one look. “Get your hands off me.”
“Mona…” His fingers tightened on her arms until they hurt.
Mona cocked her knee, ready to plant it square in his groin.
“The lady told you to get your hands off her.” Reed pushed through the screen door and entered the room. He stood with his feet braced apart, his cowboy hat in one hand.
“Bryson.” Sheriff Lee’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t expect you to be out here. I thought you headed back to Chicago.”
“Hardly.”
Mona shot a look at Reed. She’d hired him on the spot without so much as an interview. She knew nothing else about this man. “He’s with me.”
“You do know Bryson here was a deputy for all of five months before I fired him. Can’t have a deputy who refuses to follow orders.” Lee’s brows rose. “Ain’t that right?”
Reed’s lips thinned, but he refused to answer, although his gaze remained on Sheriff Lee.
Mona liked him all the more for not rising to Parker Lee’s bait. She couldn’t claim the same amount of restraint. Too often she’d come close to scratching the man’s eyes out. A purely female reaction to a lying, deceiving man. Thank God she was over him.
“Mona? What’s goin’ on here?” A booming voice sounded outside on the porch before her uncle Arty pushed through the doorway. “What’s the sheriff doin’ here?”
Her two ranch hands, Dusty Gaither and Jesse Lopez, followed him in.
“Pardon, Miss Mona,” Jesse said. “He insisted on coming in.”
Oh great. Now they could have one happy hoedown. The dry cereal she’d forced herself to eat that morning threatened to come up. “Someone made off with thirty head of Rancho Linda cattle.”
“Told your daddy to leave this place to me. Ain’t right to saddle a girl with this much responsibility.”
Mona’s head hurt and she didn’t want to take anything for the pain, but the pain was making her stomach act up.
Rosa Garcia, her housekeeper and surrogate mother, appeared by her side with a tray of lemonade and crackers. “Eat this,” she whispered.
The thought of putting anything past her lips made her even more nauseous, but if she didn’t, she’d be sick in front of all three men. Mona lifted a cracker and a glass of lemonade. “Thank you.”
“I’ve tried to tell her the same. She needs a man around here.” The sheriff’s chest puffed out as if to say he was the one who should fill that role.
Mona swallowed her cracker in two bites, choking on what Parker Lee implied. “I can manage the ranch on my own.”
Uncle Arty snorted. “Do you call losing thirty cattle managing? How many did you lose last week? Twenty more? You can’t manage a six-thousand-acre ranch with just a few Mexicans. For all you know, they’re the ones stealing from you.”
Mona set her glass on the table with a thump. “Watch it, Uncle. You’re forgetting I’m half Mexican.” She marched across the room and stood toe-to-toe with the man. “You may not have liked it that my father married a Mexican, but he loved my mother and she loved him. You should be so lucky to have that kind of relationship.”
Her uncle didn’t back down a bit. “What do you know? She died when you were little. I still think my brother only married her to spite our father.”
“Get out.” Mona stood with one hand fisted on her hip, the other pointing to the doorway.
“Now, you listen to me, girl,” her uncle blustered. “I don’t like that tone of voice.”
“Get. Out.” If she had to use a gun, she would. Uncle or no, he had no right to bad-mouth her father, God rest his soul.
“So be it.” Her uncle stalked across the room and turned when he reached the door. He jabbed a finger at her. “You’re going to run this