Chapter 7

"There!"

Westin's finger tapped almost violently against the screen, shaking the whole monitor where it sat precariously already on the old desk. Clint shot him a look, but he didn't say anything, more interested in what he'd pointed out. He leaned forward, squinting slightly as he moved the video footage forward a frame at a time.

"We can't see his face," he finally said. He turned to Lea, who'd been trying to disappear in the corner of the small office. "Do you have any idea?"

"Is it that guy from the diner?" Westin demanded. "Is it your ex?"

His words dripped with sarcasm, making it quite clear he was very much aware of the lies she'd been telling since her arrival, lies that appeared to be coming back to bite her in the ass.

Lea shook her head. Not that she could tell if it was or not.

Clint turned his attention back to the security footage, moving from one camera to the next until he finally sat back and ran his hands over the top of his head, knocking his baseball cap to the floor.

"Westin, take Remington and go to the guest bunkhouse, cover the broken window with a piece of plywood."

"Shouldn't we be looking for this guy?" Westin asked, clearly thinking Clint had lost his mind. "He could break into the main house, go after Miss Dulcie! Are we really going to—"

"He's gone, Westin. It's pretty clear from the security footage that he left the property." Clint gestured toward the computer monitor they'd been studying for the past twenty minutes. "He doesn't show up anywhere else. My guess is he had a car waiting for him on the east side of the property. He's gone."

"And if he isn't?"

"There's an alarm on the main house. It's armed. If anything happens, we'll be the first to know."

Westin clenched his hands into fists and rubbed them against his thighs, but he didn't seem to have anything else to say. He jumped to his feet and stormed out of the barn, not even giving Lea a glance.

Clint rubbed the top of his head again, then reached down to get his hat and set it back into place. He studied the computer screen for a few more minutes before he finally sighed.

"That number you called…"

He let it hang in the air between them. Lea shivered despite the warmth of the heated barn and the heavy jacket she still wore. The memory of Westin unzipping it was like a fantasy that had never really happened, a dream that she'd been rudely awoken from.

"You said you looked it up on the Internet."

"It's a private cell phone."

She grunted. He'd called her bluff, and she'd fallen for it.

Clint turned in his office chair and studied her. "Please, tell me what the hell is going on here. This has come to my house now. I need to be able to protect my people."

"I know."

"I can't do that if I don't know what I'm protecting them from."

Lea went to the door, looking down the long corridor that separated the horse stalls from one another. Westin was gone, but caution was deeply ingrained in her. She'd learned it the hard way when she'd first started her job. It was something she wasn't soon to forget. She closed the door and flipped the little lock that would keep anyone from surprising them.

Clint watched her as she came to sit in the chair Westin had just vacated. She reached across him and grabbed the computer mouse to reverse the video footage on the screen so that she could get a better look at the intruder as he leapt from the window of her room.

"His name is Isai Gomez. His street name is Fang."

Clint turned to face her, a student ready to learn everything she had to set down in front of him, silent in his interest.

"He's a member of the Southern Bloods. This particular group specializes in drugs and weapons, mostly crystal meth, but some cocaine and heroin. Fang is one of the lieutenants under a guy they call Razor. We've been trying to identify this guy for…" She stopped, finding herself unable to recall when they first started work on this case. It seemed kind of insane that she couldn't remember, but the answer didn't come right away. She must have been tired. She ran a hand over her forehead, shaking her head slightly. "A couple of years, I guess."

"We?" Clint asked patiently.

She cleared her throat, her eyes jumping back to the computer screen. Who could she trust? Could she tell this man, who was basically a stranger to her, what her true identity was? It'd been so long since she'd last told someone the truth, she couldn't even remember the truth herself sometimes. It was a pitfall of being undercover for such long stretches at a time. But it was also about safety. If he knew too much, not only could he put her at risk; it could put him at risk, too.

"I don't know how he found me. He must have realized what he was looking for wasn't in my things."

"What was he looking for?"

Again, she hesitated. How much could she really tell him? Clint, to his credit, was patient, just waited until she finally reached under the sweater she wore—his wife's sweater—and pulled out a slender pendant that was shaped like a sunflower. Carefully, she pulled the edges of the flower apart and it revealed a memory card stuck inside.

"What is it?"

"Evidence. Names, locations, money. It's business records that never should have been kept, evidence that can be used to find this Razor." She put it back inside the pendant and dropped the necklace down her shirt again. "I was working in a nightclub they owned, a front for some of their other business interests—illegal gambling, prostitution—and I got close to Fang's girl. She let it slip that he kept some of this information on his private laptop. I found an excuse to get into his office, and he caught me downloading the information. I managed to get out of there, but he must have followed me."

Clint sat back and rested his hands across his belly, clearly digesting everything she'd just told him. She ran her hands over her face, her exhausted mind trying to figure things out. She knew there was something wrong here, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was. How had Fang found her? Again? She wasn't sure, but it didn't feel right.

"I caught the first plane that left Phoenix International," she said more to herself than to him. "I used a credit card to rent the car out of New Orleans, so maybe that's how he found me. But I drove for hours. I stopped in a motel in Dallas, but that was it. I was on the road nearly a full fourteen hours before he caught up with me. I don't know how he found me, or how he knew I was here. How could he have found me here? No one knew I was here."

"Did you tell the man you called?"

"Will?" Lea shook her head, frowning as she did. "No. I told him I was somewhere safe, but that's all."

"You didn't say you were on a ranch?"

"You can ask Westin. He heard the call."

"What about the second call? The one you made today?"

Her eyebrows rose. "Are you sure you guys aren't a real security firm?" She scratched her cheek as she recalled the phone call. "No. I told him about the box Westin and I found in the paddock, but nothing else."

"Why did you tell him about the box?"

"It was part of a case we worked once. Some really bad people." She was babbling a little now, the day catching up to her. "We were working a case out of California where they used the boxes to make dead drops. Half-buried them on a stranger's property so that if they were discovered, someone else would be blamed. They'd put drugs in them, and their dealers would come and take them, leaving money in their place." She rubbed a spot on her shoulder, recalling an altercation she'd gotten into during that case that had left her pretty bruised afterward. "We took out the guy running it, though. That's why I told him—because we thought that was done. That box shouldn't have been there."

"How do you know it's the same sort of thing?"

Her eyebrows rose slightly. "The writing on the top. It's a code that took us like a week to figure out. It denotes the dealer who's supposed to use the dead drop."

"It's someone's name?"

She nodded. "Petey J."

Clint grunted. "You should have told us that part."

She shook her head. "Didn't think it was relevant."

"Who do you work for, Lea? Is Fang going to bring more people to the ranch to find that little memory card?"

"No." She wiped her hands on her jeans, surprised to find them covered in slimy sweat. She was freezing, but the room was warm, and her body was reacting to it. "He's not going to tell anyone what happened. It'll get him in trouble with his bosses. He's not supposed to keep that information just lying around where someone can find it. That's how this Razor has managed to stay off our radar for so long: he's too smart to make mistakes."

Clint's eyes moved compassionately over her. "You're exhausted," he commented.

She laughed a little. "I guess all this horseback riding is more of a workout than it looks."

"Come on." He held out a hand to her. "We'll talk more tomorrow."

Gratefully, she took his hand and let him lead her out of the barn. The burst of cold air that greeted them as they slipped through the door took her breath away. Clint took her arm, guiding her like the gentleman she could see he was. But instead of taking her back across the ranch to the guest bunkhouse, he led her to another building that was some three or four hundred yards from the barn, a building that looked more like a log cabin than something that belonged on a modern ranch. A welcoming burst of heat enveloped them as they stepped through the door.

It was a simple building, essentially one long room that was divided more by the furniture placement than walls. There was a couch and a couple of chairs scattered around a television immediately in front of the door. Beyond that was a dining-room table and a horseshoe-shaped kitchen with a full-sized refrigerator, an oven, and all the normal accessories. Along the back wall were twin-sized bunk beds, all positioned head to foot in a solid line down the wall. At the back of the building, beyond the dining table, sat an open area where another row of beds was pushed up against the front wall, just behind the kitchen. In the center of the back wall was a bathroom visible through an open door.

"You'll stay here tonight," Clint told her. "We'll find you an empty room in the other guest bunkhouse tomorrow."

Lea nodded, almost tearful in her appreciation. She barely had the energy to remove her jacket and tennis shoes before climbing onto the bed he pointed her toward. She was aware there were other people in the room, aware that eyes were on her as she lay there. But whatever it was that had made exhaustion fall so completely over her was not letting up. She closed her eyes, and the world went dark almost immediately.

***

Westin lay awake most of the night, unable to tear his eyes from her. She slept soundly in a bunk across the room, separated from the others across the wide space. He understood why Clint had brought her back here, but he didn't like it—didn't like that all these other guys were so close to her while she was vulnerable. Worse, he hated that he desperately wanted to go over there and lie with her, feel her body against his again. How reassuring would it be to feel her warmth, to feel her breaths? As angry as he was with her, he was more concerned with her helplessness, and that was pissing him off, too.

He finally got up a little before five and took a mug from the hook in the kitchen, pouring in it a good amount of coffee from the freshly brewed pot. Clint found him there, leaning against the counter, the mug between his hands.

"I want you to come with me to the barn to check that camera we put out on the box yesterday."

"She tell you something about it?"

Clint poured himself a mug of coffee too, using the action to avoid Westin's question.

"We should wake her up, make her come with us."

Clint shook his head. "No. She needs her rest."

Westin's eyebrows rose. "Since when are you her father?"

"Someone has to watch out for her. I get the impression she doesn't let people in very often."

"You know her pretty well now? She confess all her secrets to you last night after I left?"

"Enough."

Rage burned through Westin. He told himself it didn't matter. Who cared if she told the fucking world about her secrets? But it bothered him. It bothered him more than it should have.

He dropped his mug in the sink, heard it shatter, and walked away. Clint caught up to him halfway across the yard, still pulling on his jacket. "Wait a second!" He caught up just as Westin yanked open the door to the barn, startling one of the horses who kicked at its stall door in response.

Clint pulled up the footage from the camera they'd set up the day before on the box Lea found. The box was obviously not there on the real-time footage, but Clint didn't seem surprised. Had she told him it would be gone? Of course she had.

Clint rewound the footage, and when it hit the three-in-the-morning mark, they found themselves watching two men bend over the box and remove something. It looked to Westin like they also left something—an envelope that looked like it was stuffed pretty full.

"Is that a Rocking D jacket?" Westin flicked his fingernail against the screen, touching the man on the forefront of the video. "It is, isn't it?"

"You can't really see it," Clint said.

"It looks like a Rocking D emblem on his chest there." He snatched the mouse from Clint and clicked on the image, zooming in a little. The bright-red mark on the jacket only grew blurry with the magnification, but he had no doubt in his mind what it was. All Rocking D employees had a jacket that was emblazoned with a logo of a D on its belly, tilted just slightly like it were rocking. It was the stupidest emblem Westin had ever seen, and he'd seen a lot of them. But there was no mistaking it. "I'm sure that's what it is."

Clint shook his head. "We can't go making accusations without proof, and you can't prove it with that video."

Westin cursed, but he handed the mouse back to Clint. He used it to move the video forward. About an hour later, another figure appeared in the dark. This one was dressed all in black just like the man who'd broken into Lea's room, but Westin couldn't be sure it was the same man. In fact, he was pretty sure it wasn't. This man had wider shoulders, a heavier torso. As they watched, whoever the man was dug the box out of the ground and slipped through the break in the fence, taking the box with him.

"What was the point?"

Clint shrugged. "To put it somewhere that wouldn't be associated with whoever put it there in the first place."

"But the break in the fence makes it pretty obvious that we weren't the ones to put it there."

"Does it? Or would we be smart enough to cut our own fence to make it appear that way?"

"You really think Sheriff Reeves would fall for that?"

Clint took off his baseball cap and ran a hand over the top of his head. "It's gone now. That's one less thing to worry about."

"Now you can tell me what Lea said to you last night. Who the hell was that guy who broke into her room? What was he looking for?"

Clint took his time shutting down the computer before he finally turned and focused on Westin. He rested his hands on his belly the way he did when he was thinking. Westin knew by the pensive look on his face and the way he was studying him that he wasn't going to tell him a single thing Lea had said. And it pissed him off.

Westin jumped out of his chair and headed for the door. "I'll just go ask her myself."

Clint was fast, more adroit than he sometimes appeared. He got between Westin and the door in a flash, blocking his exit. "You won't ask her."

"Why the hell not? She's keeping secrets, Clint! She could have gotten Miss Dulcie hurt! Have you thought of that? What if that guy had broken into the main house before he went to the guest bunkhouse?"

"I think the question we should be focusing on right now is how the hell the guy knew to look in the guest bunkhouse. Do you have any idea?"

Westin threw up his hands. "Hell if I know! She called that guy the other day. Maybe she said something to him."

"She said you heard the whole call. Did she say anything about the ranch?"

Westin started to insist that she had because how else would the guy have known where to find her? But as the memory of that phone call played through his mind—along with the memory of Lea wearing nothing but a towel—he struggled to remember one thing she'd said that might have led anyone to Golden Sphinx Ranch.

"She never mentioned the ranch by name."

"Did she mention Milsap? The diner? Anything that might have given the guy an idea of where we are?"

Westin had only heard her side of the conversation—he should have made her put the damn thing on speaker!—but he was almost certain she hadn't mentioned any of those things.

Colorado. Fang found me… I don't know. I must have left a trail somewhere… Not usually. I'm safe where I am, for the time being. I think I'll lie low for a couple of days, let things play out.

"She told whoever it was that she was in Colorado, but that was the only thing she said. No town names, no mention of any landmarks. Nothing I can recall."

"You're sure?"

Westin nodded. "What did she tell you? Was it the same guy, that Fang guy who broke into her room last night?"

Clint nodded, his expression a little wary. "She has something on him, something that could cause him some real trouble. She thinks that's what he's after."

"Where is it?"

Clint touched his throat and Westin immediately remembered the necklace she'd been wearing. A sunflower he'd desperately wanted to be for a brief moment, nestled there between her breasts. He couldn't imagine what that pendant might hide, but the understanding that what that man wanted was so close to her only notched up the fear he was trying to pretend he wasn't feeling for her another space or two.

"What could a chemist get on a guy like that?"

"Chemist?"

"That's what she told me she was." A cold finger began to dance in Westin's stomach. "She's not a chemist, is she?" He cursed, not really needing Clint to verify what he already knew even as the foreman shook his head. All these lies…

"What are we going to do?" He rubbed his cheeks, feeling like they'd gone numb, like everything about him had gone numb. "We're in over our heads, man. Maybe it's time to call Sheriff Reeves."

"I was going to have her spend the day with Miss Dulcie at the main house. But I'm not sure that's a good idea now." Clint was quiet for a second, then he cleared his throat. "You should take her to the foreman's cabin. Melanie's taking Katie to Denver for a few days. It'll be empty." He sighed, his own baggage rearing up with that statement. "I'll make sure someone will be outside her room at all times."

"We tried that already, remember?"

"Yeah. And it worked. You were with her when that guy broke in last night. She wasn't alone, and she wasn't harmed. That's all we can offer her."

"And tomorrow?"

Clint hesitated a moment. "She wants to go into town and contact her people. I don't think that's a good idea."

"At least we agree on something ."

"I think it would be better if she stayed here and lay low. We need to figure out how that Fang found out she was here, and what room was hers. No one knew that but the five of us."

"Someone could have seen her coming or going at some point."

Clint rubbed his chin. "Yeah, that was what I was thinking, too. Maybe someone saw Bowie walk her back there after the afternoon cattle ride. Or they saw him go pick her up for the chuck wagon."

"Someone on the property."

"When we have tourists, security is a little lax. Anyone could have gotten on the property at any point during the day. We'd have to watch every minute of all the security-camera footage to figure out exactly when the guy entered the property, and chances are good that he came over the fence somewhere where there isn't a camera. So, you know, there's no way to point fingers, at this point. We've just got to be more careful. Keep her out of sight."

"And if he comes after her again?"

"One of us will be with her." Clint patted Westin's arm. "If we're really going to open our own security firm here, this couldn't be better practice for our skills." He forced a smile. "She actually suggested we'd be pretty good at it."

"Did she?"

Clint chuckled. "I kind of like her. And I'm beginning to like this idea. We might do better at it than the whole tourist thing."

"Maybe."

***

Lea lay awake, listening to the men around her stumbling to dress before beginning their chores. There was little conversation, but lots of coffee mugs clanking, bread toasting, eggs frying. She stayed still, her eyes closed, her mind drifting back to the night before. She wondered how much Clint had told Westin about Fang, about her. Did he know now just how much she'd lied to him since coming here?

The lies had never bothered her before. It was just part of the job. There'd been times when she'd cultivated relationships that she cared about, and would wonder how that person was doing after her disappearance from their lives. But she never felt bad about lying. The lies were as much to keep those people safe as they were to keep her safe.

But this time was different. These cowboys had an honor code they lived by, and it was kind of infectious. Made Lea feel like she was corrupting them all with her lies.

What if she told them the truth? What if she sat Westin down and told him her real story? How she resented her mother for tearing her away from everything she knew, so she rebelled in quiet, unimpressive ways. How she chose this path in life because she knew it was the one thing that her mother would never be able to accept. How she jumped at all the most difficult assignments because she wanted to frighten her mother, show her what it was like to be on the other end of that scenario.

It was childish, all of it, and Lea had known it not even a year into her career. But by then she was addicted to the adrenaline that came with being undercover, with the excitement of it all. She liked making up fake details about her past, liked killing off her mother in some scenarios, turning her into a drug-addicted shrew in others. The truth, of course, was that her mother did the best she could under difficult circumstances. Lea knew that, and as an adult, she understood. Maybe she should tell her mother that.

It felt a little old now, though. Maybe it was time she thought about some other kind of work.

A weight settled on the edge of the bunk. A hand brushed against her cheek, fingers tracing the curve of her jaw. She knew it was Westin before she opened her eyes. He smelled of the outdoors, of cows and wood and hay. The others probably did, too, but there was something unique to Westin under it all that she already knew like it was a part of her.

"Time to get going."

She rolled toward him, peeking at him from under her eyelashes. "Where'd everyone else go?"

"Chores and then church with Miss Dulcie. It's Sunday."

"She takes everyone to church?"

"As many as she can. A few have to stay behind and feed the tourists, run the fences—that sort of thing. But she takes most of them."

"You don't go?"

He shrugged. "I go occasionally. I was just never real big on the whole religion thing."

"'Mother Nature is my religion," she said softly.

"What?"

She shook her head, sitting up on the narrow bunk. "Something my grandfather used to say when my grandmother would try to drag him off to church."

"Sounds like your grandfather and I would have gotten along."

She smiled softly, nodding. "Yeah, I think you would have."

She slipped past him and into the bathroom, using the facilities quickly—it was predominantly a men's space, and they made that pretty clear with the smells that emanated from nearly all the surfaces—before joining Westin again in the small kitchen. He was sipping from a coffee mug, leaning against the counter, his heavy jacket still on, but his hat was resting on the counter across from him. She grabbed her borrowed jacket from the bunk she'd slept in and joined him, snatching up his hat and setting it on top of her own head only to have it fall over her eyes.

"You have a big head."

"Most cowboys do."

She laughed, a little surprised he was making jokes after everything that had happened last night. She pushed the hat back and studied him as he pretended to be paying more attention to his coffee than to her. "What happens now?"

"Clint wants me to take you to his cabin."

"He has a cabin?"

He gestured with a thumb over his shoulder. "It's a little house about a quarter-mile from here. The foreman's cabin."

"Oh." She took off his hat and ran her hands over the top of her head, realizing her braid had come mostly undone during the night. She quickly unwound it and braided it back again, twisting a couple of pieces of hair around the end of the braid to keep it in place. It was a trick a stripper had taught her once that had come in handy more often than she could recall.

"You ready? We should head out."

She nodded, not sure if she was disappointed or relieved that he didn't want to talk about what had happened last night. She'd expected him to be angry, or at least frustrated with her. He'd been pretty upset last night when Clint had sent him out of the barn after she'd refused to identify Fang in front of him. But he seemed to be lacking curiosity now, and that made her wonder. What had Clint told him?

He had a truck waiting for them, the same truck he'd been driving the morning she'd met the boys of Golden Sphinx Ranch. He helped her into the passenger side before going around to climb behind the wheel. He turned the heat on full blast the moment he started the engine, allowing cold air to blow over them before it slowly heated, filling the cab of the truck with a comforting warmth.

"You're to stay at the cabin for the next couple of days, until Clint can figure out what's going on."

Lea's eyebrows rose. "What do you mean, figure out what's going on ?"

"He's bothered by the fact that this guy who broke into your room knew where you were and where you were staying. No one but the five of us guys and you knew where you were." Westin glanced at her. "And you didn't tell anyone—right?"

"No."

He nodded, focusing on the road that was more of a trail ahead of them. "Someone must have told this guy something. How else would he have known to look inside a building that was otherwise unoccupied? We have over thirty buildings on this property. Why was it the only one he focused on?"

Lea shook her head. She was still struggling with why Fang had come back in the first place, let alone how he'd known to look for her on Golden Sphinx Ranch. She'd never mentioned the town or the ranch when she'd spoken to Will. Not once.

"Someone will be outside the door the whole time you're at the cabin."

"What about you? Where will you be?"

He glanced at her again, his dark, stormy eyes unreadable. "I have work to do, sweetheart. I probably won't have time to stop by today."

She nodded, not sure what to think of that.

The trail took a sharp turn and crossed a cattle guard that led into a small oasis tucked into a rise in the land. A blanket of snow covered an expanse of yard that led up to a building that was very definitely a cabin, one of those made of real logs that looked as though it belonged in the 1860s rather than the modern world. It had a lovely porch across the front, big windows to get the most of the view, and a low roof that probably provided refreshing shade in the warm summer months. Westin stopped the truck just a few feet from the front door, coming around to gently help Lea down from the truck before leading her up the porch.

Inside, the cabin looked much like the bunkhouse, with a large, open floor plan. The furniture was mostly rustic, mixed with a few modern pieces like the overstuffed couch. The kitchen was a galley style with a bar dividing it from the living room, complete with three tall stools for guests to sit. There were relatively new stainless-steel appliances, all the conveniences of a home in the city. Through an open door on the far side of the kitchen Lea could see the bedrooms—the master all the way back, and another off to one side through the door of which she could see a small shelf covered in stuffed animals. Clint's little girl's room.

"Remington will be here in a few minutes with your things. You should be okay until then."

"Westin?"

He stood with his hand on the knob. It seemed like he was always just about to escape when she wanted him to stay. But when his eyes came up and moved over her, for just an instant she thought she saw some of the heat they'd shared last night before everything went all to hell.

"I'm sorry that I've put you and your friends in a bad situation."

He rolled his shoulders. "Things happen."

"I never would have asked you to bring me back here if I'd had any idea he would follow me."

Westin bit his bottom lip, stifling a grunt. "Then it was him? Fang?"

Lea crossed her arms over her chest. "I don't know how he knew to look for me here. No one should have known I was here."

"But he did. And that's a problem."

"I know."

"You put everyone on this ranch at risk." His eyes suddenly darkened, clouds swarming. "If that man had gotten into the main house and gone after Miss Dulcie—"

"But he didn't."

"He could have." He shook his head. "I'm done playing games with you, Lea. It was all a big joke until you put people I care about at risk. Now it's no longer a joke."

He stormed out, his boots stomping across the porch. She went after him, jerking the door open even as it still vibrated from him slamming it. But he was in the truck and tearing out of the drive before she could even reach the porch rail.

Hell!

The last thing she had wanted was to put these people at risk. And the more she'd gotten to know them, especially Westin, the less she wanted to introduce them to the darkness that was her world. That first day, she'd thought she was just going to take it easy, hide out for a few days. He was right; she'd thought she was playing a game, getting a few laughs out of these beautifully na?ve people. She regretted it now. She regretted every second of it.

"I'm sorry," she whispered under her breath as she watched the truck disappear over the swell in the land.

***

It felt like she was stuck in that cabin for days on end. She couldn't sit still long enough to watch television, couldn't concentrate on the magazines Clint's wife had left on the coffee table. She'd invited Remington inside to at least share a few tidbits of conversation, but he refused, insisting Clint wanted him outside and her inside. She was cut off from everything, and she hated it. She was used to being in the thick of things, not alone, not out of the loop.

This was her problem. They should allow her to deal with it.

When Clint suddenly came through the door a little before the dinner hour, she could have cried.

"I'm going insane in here!"

He lowered his head slightly, his eyes cutting to the door that should have hidden his child's bedroom but didn't. She could see the pain cut across his face and regretted that she hadn't made an effort to at least close the door. But would it have made a difference?

"Let's get out of here, then."

Lea jumped at the opportunity, snagging her jacket and shoving her arms inside as she stormed through the door. Much to her amusement, there were two horses tied to the rail of the porch—one the gray beauty she'd ridden all day before, and the other a black gelding with an almost stately profile. She sighed. Back in the saddle with her sore thighs. Well, it was better than being left another minute with her raging thoughts.

Up on the horse's back, she patted her neck as Clint released the reins and handed them up to her. Then he mounted his gelding and led the way out of the yard. Lea offered a little wave to Remington, who watched them closely but never uttered a single word.

"He doesn't talk much, does he?"

Clint glanced back at the house and his man sitting with his feet propped up on the rail. "He's had a hard life."

"Haven't we all?"

"Some endure a lot more than others."

Clint spurred his horse, and the beautiful animal moved easily into a canter as he rushed across the open field. Gray Lady followed easily, keeping tempo with the gelding like they'd ridden together often. Lea leaned forward slightly, putting most of her weight into her legs instead of the saddle, trying to remember everything her grandfather had taught her about riding. It was almost exhilarating, the feel of the wind blowing across her face, her braid bouncing against her back. It reminded her of those years on the farm, the long summers she'd never wanted to end. It was a peace that she desperately needed.

Lea didn't think they had a specific destination in mind. She let herself fall into the rhythm of the horses, the ice-cold air on her face, the beauty of the terrain they were moving over. But as she was losing herself in it all, Clint slowed his horse and directed him toward a low-hanging tree where he dismounted and tied the reins.

"Come on," he said to her without waiting to help her tie up her own horse. She dismounted gracelessly, nearly twisting her ankle in the process, but managed to secure the reins to a low branch without breaking anything.

Clint had wandered over to a low fence that wasn't much different from the one she'd spent all morning helping Westin check for breaks. Like several they'd found on that other fence, there was a break in this one. Clint dropped to his knees in the snow to examine the damage, eventually holding up a length of wood that had clearly been removed intentionally, the damage at the nail holes undeniably done by human hands.

"I think this is likely how he got onto the property. Probably had a car parked over there," Clint said, gesturing to a narrow trail that ran alongside the fence. "One of my guys reported the damage this morning, but it wasn't here yesterday."

He stood, brushing the snow from his jeans. Lea didn't know what to say, so she just dumbly handed the wood section back to him.

"The guest bunkhouses are back that way," he said, gesturing toward a stand of trees just three or four hundred yards from where they stood. "It wouldn't have taken much for him to get there."

"Assuming he knew how to get there."

Clint lowered his head slightly. "Assuming that."

Lea ran a hand over the top of her head. "I don't know what to tell you. I've run it through my mind over and over again, but I can't remember saying anything to anyone that might have given my location away."

Clint nodded slowly. "My concern is that what happened is you told your friend on the phone about that box, and that somehow got back to the people who put the box on Miss Dulcie's property. I'm afraid this is bigger than just some guy coming after you."

"I know. That occurred to me, too."

She'd been thinking about it all day. Since Westin had practically accused her of putting Miss Dulcie in the line of danger, she couldn't stop working it over in her head, trying to figure out how Fang knew where she was. Just like Clint, the only thing she kept coming back to was someone had somehow overheard her conversation with Will. Someone who knew about those boxes. Or maybe he made a call after she'd talked to him, and that call was overheard. It was the only thing that made sense.

She moved away from Clint, her thoughts raging once more. She kept going back and forth, trying to figure it all out. Will wouldn't have betrayed her. It had to be something else, some other explanation. It had to be.

"Look, I trust Will. He's been my partner since I joined the DEA. There's no way he could have caused this to happen. Not knowingly."

"Then tell me about the case. Tell me about the box. Maybe there's something we can figure out, some way we can make sure we haven't just put Golden Sphinx in the middle of something we can't control."

Lea nodded, still pacing, kicking at the snow with her now thoroughly wet tennis shoes. "We were working a faction of the Southern Bloods. The Phoenix Police Department has been battling them for years, and we've been after this guy, Razor. I told you that last night."

Clint nodded, standing patiently, just waiting for her to go on.

"We got a lead that Razor was involved with the Bloods. They have this club in downtown Phoenix where they run drugs and guns and women. It's a pretty slick setup. Everything seems on the up and up, but when you look close enough, it starts to crack—you know?" She ran her hands over the top of her head again, shivering a little as she pressed the cold against her scalp. "I got a job at the club. I was a bartender, but I was also passing drugs to customers. They had this whole system, this way of slipping the packets to people who ordered these specific, made-up drinks."

"You told Westin you were a chemist."

Lea laughed, though there was absolutely nothing funny about the whole thing. "Yeah, well, I've been one of those, too. I've been a lot of things in the past five years. It'd make your head spin if I told you everything." She shook her head, kicking at the snow a little more as she paced. "So, I was working the bar, and Will would come in sometimes, established himself as a regular customer, and we'd exchange information any way we could. We'd been at it for weeks, but we weren't making any headway. I was beginning to think we'd never get the information we needed to find Razor. And then one of the girls told me about Fang's computer."

"And what role was Fang playing in all this?"

"He managed the club. The whole thing—the illegal shit and the legal stuff. It was all his."

"You got into his office and stole information off it."

"Yeah. He was keeping track of all kinds of stuff. Emails he probably should have deleted, texts he'd downloaded from his phone, audio files of conversations he'd had. The boy was keeping things that I'd never seen one of these gang members write down, let alone save to a computer. Ridiculous, really. I'm not even sure of everything that's on there, because he walked in on me."

"How did that happen?"

Lea sighed, turning to face him. He was leaning against the fence, just staring down at the ground like he wasn't even listening to a thing she had to say, but she knew he was. She knew the words coming out of her mouth were the most important thing to him right now simply because of how hard he was concentrating on the ground. She was beginning to figure Clint out, and he was a lot more complicated than he first appeared.

"It was after closing. I was alone in the bar, putting away clean glasses before I left. He came out of his office, said good night and told me Danny—the bouncer—would lock up when I was gone. I watched him leave, went to the back where the security cameras were and watched him drive away. He never came back after he left. There was a joke around the bar that he had some pretty thing handcuffed to his bed and he was always anxious to get back to her."

Lea groaned. The memory of it made every muscle in her back tighten up. He wasn't supposed to come back. He shouldn't have come back. But he did. In minutes.

"I slipped into the office, shoved the memory card into the port and began grabbing files randomly, dropping them onto the memory card. I'd had a look at it a couple of days before when that girl told me about it, so I kind of knew what to put on the card. I was working as quickly as I could and had about three-quarters of what I wanted when he walked in."

"Why did he come back?"

Lea shook her head and lifted her hands. "I have no idea. I didn't stop to ask." She pressed a hand to her chest, felt for the heavy pendant that still hung there. "I pretended I was trying to email my mother. But he didn't buy it. He seemed to know exactly what I was up to."

He'd grabbed her by her hair, jerking her up out of his office chair. He'd dragged her across the room, tossing her onto the low couch against the far wall. She knew about that couch. All the girls talked about it. It was where he tried out the new girls, made sure they'd be able to satisfy his customers to his satisfaction. He made a mistake putting her on that couch, though. She could still feel the semi-hard mass in his pants that she'd slammed her knee into, still felt the satisfaction of watching him fall to the ground in silent agony.

"I got out of there and took off; called Will. I told him what had happened, that I was burned. He told me that as far as Fang knew, I was just some stupid girl who thought she could steal information from her boss. Told me to stay undercover."

"You let him follow you."

"No, not exactly." She sighed. She was tired of pacing, but the ground was so covered in snow that there was nowhere dry to sit. She finally just went and leaned against the fence beside Clint. "The plan was for me to meander for a few days, then make a beeline for Seattle. I flew to New Orleans, stayed a night in Dallas, and drove straight from there to Denver. I was going to stay there for a night or two, but Will called me, said they couldn't locate Fang. They thought he might have followed me out of Phoenix."

"You kept driving."

"And I was starving, exhausted. I needed coffee if I was going to keep going. Some carbs." She sighed. "I saw the sign for that diner, and it was like a gift. I hadn't seen anything else for miles on miles, and figured I wouldn't again if I kept going. I had no idea he was anywhere close. I hadn't seen another car for nearly an hour. I have no idea where he came from."

"Not from another car."

She tilted her head. "What do you mean?"

"If he'd driven up behind you, we would have seen another car. But there wasn't one."

"There must have been."

Clint shook his head. "Milsap is a small town, Lea. Everyone either owns a farm or ranch, or works on a farm or ranch around here. And everyone knows everyone else. We know each other so well, we know each other's vehicles. I don't remember there being a strange car in that parking lot that day. And none of the boys do, either."

"If he didn't drive there, how did he get there?"

"That's a good question."

A silence fell between them for a long moment, a tense silence that was filled with too many unanswered questions. Lea knew what Clint must be thinking, knew he was making connections she didn't want to make. And he confirmed it with the next thing he had to say.

"Will told you to lure him out of town. Then Will told you to keep going when you reached Denver even though there's an office of the DEA in Denver, which seems like the best place to go if this guy is following you."

"Will thought we should get Fang to Seattle because that's the office we're based out of; that's where our bosses know about Fang and Razor and the whole case."

"Whose idea was it for you to drive up through Colorado?"

Lea pushed away from the fence. "How else am I supposed to get to Seattle from New Orleans?"

"Oh, I don't know—a plane? Or a straight path that would just barely touch the corner of Colorado and take you through Utah. Why go through Denver and then up here? I mean, hell, you took a bit of a wild turn coming northwest. Even if you were to go through Denver, you should have continued on the 287 to Wyoming, not cut this way."

"I was trying to stay off the major interstates."

"Why?"

"What do you want me to say, Clint?" She threw up her hands in a gesture of surrender. "I trust my partner, and my partner was sending me information he was getting from someone he trusted. That's what this job is all about—relying on people we trust to take out the bad guys."

"But what if you can't trust your partner?"

"Will would not burn me!" Her whole body vibrated even as she clamped her fists at her sides, her jaw clenching so hard that it hurt to speak. "He's my friend!"

"I can see you believe that." Clint crossed to her, snow dusting the tops of his boots with every step. He rested his hands on her shoulders, bending a little so he could look her in the eye. "But why would he send you here? Why would he plant you in the middle of ranch country when you have this psychotic criminal chasing after you? Why not go to the Denver DEA office and give them the memory card? Why not arrange for you to fly from New Orleans to Seattle and be met by an agent? Why not do half a million things that would have been a hell of a lot safer for you?"

"Because I'm not supposed to be a DEA agent. I'm supposed to be a frightened bartender who stumbled onto something she thought she could handle, but got in too deep. I'm supposed to be playing a role for Fang, to draw him out and force him to hang himself."

"Then why lure him to Seattle? Why not just set up a sting in Phoenix or Denver or any of the other major cities you passed through on your way here?"

"Stop!"

She jerked away from him and rushed to the horses, dragging Gray Lady's reins down from the tree branch. She couldn't do this anymore. She couldn't go down that road—because if she did, she'd have to admit that it didn't add up, and this wasn't the first time she'd questioned Will's decisions in the past few days. Hell, it wasn't the first time she'd questioned his actions in the past few months . But they were both under a lot of pressure to identify Razor, and the undercover stuff was taking a toll on Will's marriage. He had two kids at home, two small kids, one of whom was a daughter with special needs. His wife needed him at home, and he kept promising that, after the next assignment, he'd talk to the bosses about a desk job. But there was always something that came up, always another case, always something that he couldn't just turn his back on.

But that didn't mean he would turn to the dark side, burn Lea so that he could…what? What was he getting out of it? Was he working for the Southern Bloods? Was he protecting Fang and his gang? How could that be possible? Will had been by her side dozens of times when they took down people like that. Hell, worse than Fang and his band of idiots! Who put that kind of information on a damn computer, anyway?

She climbed on the horse and took off, pushing her into a gallop the second they were in the open field. She leaned forward, holding tight to the horse's reins, welcoming the freezing cold of the wind burning across her unprotected skin. She didn't know where she was going; she just needed to go. She needed to get back to that feeling that had settled her thoughts before, the memory of being that little ten-year-old girl on the back of a pony on her grandfather's farm. She needed to be that free and that innocent again.

She needed to forget that sometimes bad people could fool you into thinking they're good, to serve their purpose. And sometimes good people were too stupid to see what was right in front of their face.