Chapter Two

Nash Weaver

T his would be so much easier if he could hold his badge up to the peephole and demand, “FBI. Open up.” Instead, Nash Weaver knocked on the motel door again. “Victor Lance. I know you’re in there. I just want to talk to you.”

The curtain shifted and he had a brief glimpse of the UPRC’s former veterinarian who had been arrested for doping up a bull that had killed a man last year.

“I’ve said all I’m going to say until the trial,” Dr. Lance said through the door. “Tell Jackson Blevins to stop bothering me.”

Jackpot.

Nash wasn’t there on behalf of Jackson Blevins, but he had a feeling the co-CEO of the UPRC was the main reason that Dr. Lance claimed he had been working alone when he shot up Sverre, an undefeated bull, last year with a steroid-like substance. Lance claimed that he had done it so the large bet he had placed on Sverre keeping his winning streak would pay out.

That had been true, but Nash didn’t think that was the entire story. Nash had a theory that Lance had been acting on Blevins’s orders and that Blevins was actively involved in trying to fix the rodeo events so he could bet on them and win more frequently. If Nash could prove that, Shelby could use that evidence to out Blevins from the co-CEO spot and maybe, just maybe, she could turn the rodeo around so that it was profitable.

“I just need a few moments of your time. I think we have a way to make things work out better for each of us.”

Another peer through the mustard-yellow curtain. “I know who you are.”

Nash doubted that. Lance may know him as a bull rider, but he didn’t know he was investigating the rodeo.

“Blevins sent you to work me over. I told him and I’m telling you, I’m sticking to our agreement.”

Nash had to take a chance. “I’m not Blevins’s goon. Shelby Miller sent me. And I’m not here to beat you up. I’m here to see if you can help my boss with information that will put Blevins behind bars.”

“And how will that help me?”

“Depends on what information you’ve got.”

The ugly curtain swished closed. “Pound sand.”

Yeah, that was pretty much what he expected. “I’m going to leave my card here.” Nash jammed a plain white card with his burner phone’s number on it into the doorjamb. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

After climbing into his truck, Nash waited a moment to see if Lance would open the door. When he didn’t, he pulled out of the motel parking lot and headed to the Killeen rodeo.

As he drove, he called his sister who answered on the first ring. “What did he say?” Shelby asked.

“It’s what he didn’t say. But he did confirm that Blevins has something on him to make him willing to be the fall guy.”

“He admitted that?”

“Not in so many words, but he thought Blevins had sent me to beat the snot out of him to make sure he keeps to the agreement.”

“What agreement?”

“Good question.”

“Damn it. I thought he’d talk once things settled down in the media, especially with his trial date approaching.”

“He still might. This was just our first salvo. I’ve given him something to think about.”

“Fuck,” Shelby snarled.

Nash could relate. Helplessness had him wringing the steering wheel like it was Blevins’s neck.

“This is our last season if I can’t get out of this partnership with Blevins. He’s running the business into the ground and the way the contracts were written, I either have to buy him out at double his investment—which I don’t have—or sell him my shares—which he’s not interested in buying. We’re going to go bankrupt and I’m going to lose everything. I’m sorry I got you into this,” she said miserably.

“No. Don’t be sorry. You did the right thing. I’m going to nail this guy. I’m almost there.” Nash had leads and bits of information that were starting to link together. “Trust me. By the time I’m done with him, he’ll be behind bars and out of your life.”

“Yeah?”

It was the hope in her voice that almost killed him. “I just need more time.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m heading to Killeen now.”

Shelby swore. “You’re cutting it close, aren’t you?”

“I’ll be there in time for the bull-riding event.”

“Nash, I’ve got bad news,” she said.

Oh no, what now?

“Blevins wants to cut the dead weight, so to speak. He’s going to remove the five lowest-scoring bull riders from Laredo’s roster.”

Shit. He had been dead last all through the previous season.

“Can’t you override him?”

“Not without raising suspicion.”

“I need to be on the roster so I can be at the rodeo and look around.”

“I know that. And you know that. Just try to stay on the bull.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he bitched. Like it was that easy. “I’ll do my best.”

“I’ll call you tonight. Good luck.”

He was going to need it. While a part of him would be relieved not to get on a bull again, the part of him that needed to be behind the scenes at the rodeo chafed at the ultimatum. Nash owed Shelby for everything she had sacrificed for him so that he could escape their nightmare of a home and live his dream as an FBI agent…until the shit hit the fan and his career tanked. He needed to catch Blevins because it was Nash’s turn to be there for his sister.

Three years ago, Nash had been a rising star in the bureau, making a name for himself with a string of high-profile arrests and convictions. But it only took one asshole who thought he was above the law—and who was connected enough to get away with it—and suddenly, Nash found himself benched while they investigated his claims.

His partner, Special Agent Miles Garrett, had been regularly accessing classified databases for personal reasons. Instead of using this information for official investigations, he had been discreetly checking up on friends, family, and acquaintances.

“It’s not a big deal,” Miles had said. “Everyone does it.”

Nash first noticed it during a routine cybersecurity training session. The bureau emphasized the importance of maintaining the integrity of classified databases, and agents were trained to use these resources judiciously for official investigations.

At first, he assumed Miles was working on a sanctioned project without him, and that was okay. But then it kept happening and Miles’s actions went beyond what would be considered routine background checks for professional reasons.

Nash might have let it go, even though it killed him to look away. But then Miles acted on the information in two very different situations. The first was to help out Miles’s sister-in-law who had been accused of being involved in a cybercrime ring. She was innocent. But that wasn’t the point. Miles found a flaw in the evidence and tipped off her lawyer about the potential legal loophole and basically orchestrated a behind-the-scenes maneuver that led to the charges being dropped.

Nash reported that up the chain.

Miles got a slap on the wrist and Nash was told to let it drop. Justice had been served.

“No one was hurt by Miles’s actions,” his boss had said.

Things got very chilly between him and his partner after that. The whispers also started around that time. He would find packages of gummy rats in his desk and catnip mice in his car. Very funny. Very mature. You would think that government agents were beyond that sort of thing.

You’d be wrong.

And naturally, Miles didn’t stop using bureau resources for personal use. The next time, Miles claimed he was helping out a childhood friend who was going through a nasty divorce. He gathered intelligence on the husband’s financial dealings and potential misconduct. It was nothing the bureau was involved in, but from a quick look at the evidence, Nash could tell that the husband was using business funds for escorts. Needless to say, Miles’s friend’s lawyer had a field day with that one.

Nash reported that up the chain too.

This time Miles was suspended without pay while the bureau looked into his activities. Nash had taken no pleasure in doing it. He just wanted to do the right thing. Nothing official happened, but Nash’s assignments soon started to revolve around sitting at his desk and doing busy work. Miles requested a transfer and received it.

The higher-ups didn’t seem too eager to get Nash back on the field or assign him a new partner. And then a friend had pulled him aside and advised him to take an early retirement. Otherwise, he was destined for every crap assignment coming down the pike. The term “whistle-blower” was apparently synonymous with “traitor” in certain areas.

Enraged that he was the one being punished when all he did was report what he saw, Nash had been disillusioned enough to cash out and get his private investigator license. Business had been slow, so when Shelby had told him her concerns, he had the opportunity to help his sister out by posing as a bull rider and infiltrating the UPRC to see what dirt he could dig up on her partner.

There was only one problem—Nash absolutely sucked at bull riding. His hands were calloused from gripping bull ropes and his body was battered from countless spills in the dirt. And he didn’t even want to go into the damage his pride had taken in the past year. The last time he had ridden a bull had been in college. His body had changed a lot since then. He also didn’t remember the ground being as hard in those days.

“Nash,” Shelby had begged him. “I need you. I’ve sunk every last dime I have into this merger and Jackson Blevins is just pissing it away.”

“There’s nothing illegal about that,” Nash had said.

“Yeah, but I’ve been hearing rumors about deals he’s made, and I’m afraid of him.”

That was all it took. No one was allowed to scare his sister. Not after Shelby had been a mother to him when their own was in jail, and then stood toe-to-toe with her after she found religion and wanted back into their lives. Shelby had negotiated with her to sign off on Nash’s early entrance to college—out of state and out of that toxic environment.

After a year of being on the rodeo circuit, Nash had finally found out enough to validate Shelby’s fears. Blevins was doing deals without consulting her, taking risks that the board had not only never approved of, but had never discussed, and he was doing it like a man who didn’t care if he was burning bridges. But there wasn’t anything solid they could pin on Blevins yet that pointed to him doing anything illegal.

The key word was yet .

Nash studied all the employee records until he could call up details about their lives without a second thought. He’d been over and over the financial records and, using Shelby’s passwords and passcodes, had gone over every inch of the Dallas headquarters.

Nada.

The latest scheme Blevins had come up with was to narrow down the farms and breeders who supplied the UPRC with stock animals down to three. Blevins had told the board it was to reduce their insurance liability and the extra cost of veterinarian services for all the drug testing the rodeo had been forced to do because of the accidents that had caused one death and one career-ending injury. But Nash wondered if there was another reason why the three stock contractors had been picked over all the other applicants.

The Viking Ranch of Charlo, Montana.

Jaripeo Ranch of Guanajuato, Mexico.

Rocky Ridge Ranch in Czar, Alberta.

That’s where Nash was concentrating his investigation. But he needed to stay in the rodeo’s good graces to do so.

Nash’s gut said Blevins was corrupt and knee-deep in some serious shit. Unfortunately, Blevins wasn’t an idiot. It was so much easier when the bad guys were dumb.

His phone rang and Nash flicked his eyes toward the mini-screen on his instrument panel.

PITA is what flashed up to identify the caller. This wasn’t a bread vendor. In this case, it stood for pain in the…

“What do you want, Dolly?” he drawled.

“Where the hell are you?” a cute but irate voice snarled over the truck’s speakers.

Dolly was the drop-dead gorgeous PR person for the rodeo. Shelby liked her and trusted her enough to let her know his true identity. Nash thought that had been a mistake. Dolly had a sketchy background, and her sister was engaged to Shane Calland, the owner of the Viking Ranch, which was one of the exclusive stock contractors to the UPRC.

At first, Nash thought Dolly might be working with Blevins. But she hated the son of a bitch almost as much as Shelby did. Her soon-to-be brother-in-law, though, was still on Nash’s short list of Blevins’s accomplices. It had been Shane’s bull who Lance had doped up and there had to be a reason why Blevins had picked the Viking Ranch out of all the other stock suppliers. Shane’s ranch wasn’t the biggest or the best, so it could be because Shane was willing to look the other way. It wasn’t a strong theory, but he was keeping it in the back of his mind until something better came alone.

“I’m on the highway,” he said.

“You’re supposed to be doing promo shots with me right now. It’s opening day. We want to start this season out strong.”

He allowed himself to picture her standing in the rodeo grounds. She’d be wearing tight jeans and a clingy T-shirt that would make him forget that he was supposed to be concentrating on his investigation and not on her curves and sweet smile.

“Must have slipped my mind,” he said, adjusting himself. They had been bantering back and forth for over a year now and one of these days he was going to have to kiss her, just so he could stop thinking about it. But until he lost all semblance of control, he had to be satisfied with just bickering with her. It was almost as good as what he imagined kissing her would be like.

“The hell it did,” she said.

Ever since last year, Dolly had been on his case to build up a following on social media because his abysmal scores in bull riding would have disqualified any other athlete from competing at as many UPRC events as he’d been attending. Turns out she might be able to tell him “I told you so,” if he didn’t turn it around today.

Nash had argued with her all last season, “I didn’t join this rodeo to take selfies. I’ve got a job to do. And it’s not staying on a bull for eight seconds or taking stupid pictures—hashtag rodeo dreams.”

Nash’s daily routine was a carefully choreographed dance of deception. Mornings were spent at the rodeo grounds or practicing his bull-riding skills and putting on a display of bravado with the other cowboys. He’d talk shop, share stories of broken bones and close calls, careful never to let the mask slip even for a moment. Lunch was usually spent huddled in the corner of some greasy spoon diner, chewing on a stale sandwich while listening for whispers about anything that might point him in a new direction.

“You’d better up your game,” Dolly had said. “Because if you don’t start bringing something to the table, you’ll be out on your denim-clad ass. You don’t want to tip Blevins off that you’re anything but a bull rider.”

One of the really annoying things about Dolly was she tended to be right on the money with these things. At first, he had been “the new guy,” and no one said much, but after last season, Nash was starting to be accepted as one of “them.” And cowboys forgot to be cautious when talking about shadier things. Nash already knew where a guy could go to spend some money to spend some time with a few working women in each rodeo city. That hadn’t pointed back to Blevins, though.

Nash had seen contraband come over from some of the cowboys from other countries, too, but that didn’t seem to tie back to the rodeo as much as it did to the individual cowboy who wanted to start an extracurricular business in the States. Nash wouldn’t put it past Blevins to seek out a kickback or a finder’s fee, but based on what Nash had seen, that wasn’t happening either.

“Your last post was a picture of a cactus.” Dolly sighed in exasperation, bringing Nash back to their present conversation. “And that was two weeks ago.”

“I’ve been concentrating on my bull riding.” That was a flat-out exaggeration, but he didn’t want her to know too much about his investigation, just in case she slipped up and said something to her brother-in-law. Her sister Reba, who was Shane’s fiancée, knew his real identity too. So maybe that was why his investigation had stalled.

“Pictures or it didn’t happen.”

“I forgot.”

“You forgot,” she said flatly. “This is why I have to stick to you like glue.”

He pushed a sexy image of her pressed up against him out of his mind.

“Fine.” Nash knew there was no use arguing with her. Although, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was already too late to salvage things in the online popularity contest Dolly wanted to sign him up for. “I can free up some time after my ride today.”

“You better,” she warned and hung up.