The Last Wilder Page 4

  “Damn, I’m sorry,” Dane said with feeling.

  “So are we,” Ace said. “But I hope you aren’t apologizing for not preventing this.”

  That was exactly what Dane was doing, but he refrained from admitting it and simply shrugged.

  “Hell, Dane, it’s a big county,” Jack said. “You can’t be everywhere at once.”

  “No,” Dane admitted. “But I was here. Last night, around two.”

  “Here?” Trey asked.

  Dane nodded toward the east. “Picked up a woman trespassing on your ranch.” Picked her up, carried her, kissed her.

  “The sports car?” Ace asked.

  “Yeah.” He sighed heavily. “I think I’ve got some new questions for that lady.”

  “You think she’s involved in this?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence,” Dane said. “Not the kind where two separate crimes occur at the same time, in the same place.”

  “What was her story when you picked her up?”

  Dane smirked. “Said she was looking for night-blooming cactus.”

  The response from the Wilders and John Taylor was a round of laughing snorts and remarks of disbelief.

  “Yeah,” Dane said. “That’s pretty much what I thought, too.” He led the men to the place where he’d first spotted her. “John, why don’t you see if you can backtrack along her trail. I’d be real curious to know where she went, and if she met with the rustlers.”

  “Will do, Sheriff. Jack, you’re a better tracker. Wanna give me a hand? Or an eye?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Jack said, settling his hat more firmly on his head, “I do.”

  “Here.” Dane reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a piece of ribbon. “She’s got a pocketful of these. I figure she used them like the proverbial bread crumbs. She obviously picked up after herself on her way back, but she might have missed one or two.”

  John eyed the ribbon and its reflective tape. “Pretty clever of somebody just out looking for cactus.”

  “Yeah,” Dane said heavily. “That’s what I thought.”

  By now Dane had already been gone from the office nearly three hours. He knew it would be another hour or two before John and Jack had answers for him, and he was getting antsy about the woman in his office. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Donnie to keep her there, but Donnie had gone off duty more than an hour ago, and sometimes instructions got skewed when passed along. And besides that, stuff just happened.

  No, it wasn’t Donnie or anyone on his staff he didn’t trust. It was the woman. No matter how much he enjoyed kissing her.

  “I’m going to head back to the office,” he told his detective. “Call me on my cell phone instead of the radio the minute you know anything.” He didn’t want to chance having Ms. Smith—Carla? Stacey? Whoever she was—overhear whatever John might have to say if he called in on the radio.

  John nodded. “Will do.”

  When Stacey woke, she had trouble opening her eyes. God, she felt like she’d been drugged.

  Slowly the memories returned, and with them, she groaned.

  The long, long walk over rough, unfamiliar ground, most of it in the dark. The duty her grandmother had sent her to see to. The longer walk back. The blinding light. The fall. The sheriff.

  Dane Powell. Oh, yes, she remembered him, all right. He was the reason she was injured, the reason she was on crutches. The reason she wasn’t home at this very minute in her own bed instead of scrunched up on a leather sofa, no matter how pretty it was.

  She tried opening her eyes again, but they didn’t seem to want to cooperate. That was the pain pill she remembered taking. She always woke up groggy after taking medication, which was why she rarely took any. But she remembered the vicious pain; the pill had been justified.

  She might have given up and slipped back into sleep but for the sudden memory of a kiss that had warmed her from the inside out. That had her eyes popping open wide. She jackknifed to a sitting position, then grabbed her head and moaned at the stabbing pain caused by the abrupt movement.

  One little-bitty pain pill, and she had the worst hangover of her life. In fact, it was the first and only hangover of her life, and it just didn’t seem fair that she hadn’t gotten to party first.

  Or had she? The memory of kissing Dane Powell seemed startlingly real. She swore she could still taste him on her lips. But it couldn’t be real. It must have been a dream. Maybe, if she wanted to be honest, it was merely wishful thinking.

  She didn’t think she wanted to be that honest.

  But unless she’d misread the man entirely, and she didn’t think she had, he would not have taken advantage of her in such a manner. She’d been asleep. Essentially helpless, and in his custody. Not only did he seem to her to have too much integrity for such a stunt, but also he was too smart to leave himself open to a charge of sexual harassment.

  Therefore, she must have dreamed the kiss. It simply could not have happened. The very idea made her break out in a sweat. That, plus she still wore her coat, and the office was plenty warm.

  After struggling out of her coat, she retrieved her crutches from the floor, groaned her way upright and made her way to the door. The first face she saw when she opened the door was Deputy Donnie. She was proud of herself for remembering his name when so much of what happened after meeting him was nothing more than a haze.

  “You’re awake.” The deputy beamed at her as though her being awake was something particularly clever. “Good morning.”

  She returned the greeting in a scratchy voice.

  It was midmorning and the office gave evidence that other people had come on duty since she’d fallen asleep on the sheriff’s couch. A half-empty coffee mug sat on one desk, a half-eaten bagel on another. A uniformed officer sat talking on the phone at the dispatcher’s desk at the front of the office.

  “That’s Sergeant Bates,” Donnie told her. “He does double duty as a jailer and dispatcher. I’ll introduce you when he gets off the phone.”

  Stacey made a humming sound of agreement, but her mind wasn’t on introductions. “The sheriff is gone?” she asked.

  Donnie nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Was he going to get my car?” She had some vague memory of a discussion about her car keys, but it was too fuzzy in her head to make sense. She reached to check for her keys, but realized she’d left her coat on the sofa in the sherriff’s office.

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” Donnie said. “I know he had to go out to the Flying Ace.”

  She nodded. “That’s where my car was.”

  “Then I expect he’ll get one of the Wilders to drive it back to town for you.”

  Stacey started to say she’d be grateful to whoever drove her car to town, even if it was a Wilder, but about the time she opened her mouth, her stomach let out an audaciously loud rumble. She place a hand over her abdomen and smiled ruefully.

  Donnie blushed and did a shuffle thing with his feet. “I guess you’re probably hungry.” He frowned and looked over at the small table that held the coffeemaker. “The bagels and donuts are all gone.” Then his face brightened. “I could go get you something from the café.”

  “Oh, could you?” She reached out and placed a hand on his arm. “That would be wonderful. But…until the sheriff gets back with my purse—”

  “The sheriff has your purse?”

  “It was in the trunk of my car. It’s a long story,” she said. “Anyway, I don’t have any money on me, so I guess I’ll make do with coffee for now, if you have some to spare.”

  “Sure,” he said eagerly. “Sure. We’ve got plenty of coffee. But I can’t let you go hungry. You can pay me back when the sheriff gets here. Or better yet, I’ll take it out of petty cash. I know the sheriff won’t mind.”

  Stacey figured she knew otherwise, but she didn’t say so. She was hungry, and she was tired of letting the sheriff call all the shots, especially when he wasn’t around. “Are you sure you wouldn’t mind?” she asked Do
nnie.

  “Of course not,” he said. “Just tell me what you want and I’ll call it in over at the café. That’ll save a little time, since you’re so hungry and all.”

  “Donnie, you’re a prince.”

  Grinning, he blushed to the roots of his hair.

  Dane pulled out onto the highway headed back to town and glanced in his rearview mirror. Behind him roared the snazzy little sports car, with Ace Wilder at the wheel, grinning like an idiot.

  Dane thought of it as a little car, because it was so much smaller than his Blazer. But once Ace moved the driver’s seat back there’d been plenty of room for his long legs. The man was having the time of his life driving that car. Dane was more than a little envious.

  He’d left John and Jack to follow Stacey/Carla Smith’s trail and see where it led. He would have gone with them, but he didn’t want to leave her to Donnie any longer than necessary.

  He reached for his radio mic. “Unit one to dispatch.”

  When more than a few seconds went by and no one answered, Dane frowned. Donnie might have gone home, since he was off duty now, or he might have stayed around to wait for Dane. In either case, Stan would be in by now, and the day shift of deputies would have come in. They wouldn’t have gone off and left the office unattended.

  “Unit one to dispatch,” he said again.

  “Go ahead, unit one.”

  Dane took his eyes off the road and stared at the radio speaker. There must be something wrong with it, because for a minute there, it had sounded as if Ms. Stacey/Carla Smith herself had been speaking.

  Damn, she must be weighing more heavily on his mind than he’d realized, if Stan’s voice could sound like hers to his ears.

  “I’m ten-eight and on my way in,” he said.

  “Copy that, Mr. Sheriff.”

  Dammit all to hell and back, that was her. “Ms. Smith, this is an official police radio, not a toy.”

  “Ten-four,” came her reply. “I should have said, copy that, unit one. Is that better?”

  “Where,” Dane said carefully, “is Stan?”

  “Who—oh, you meant Sergeant Bates?”

  “Yes.” Dane found it difficult to speak while grinding his teeth, and he couldn’t really bang his head on anything while driving sixty miles an hour down the highway. “I mean Sergeant Bates. My dispatcher.”

  “He’s also your jailer, and he’s tending to a prisoner downstairs in the jail.”

  Dane glared at the speaker. “Stan left you—a civilian—alone to man the radio?” He still couldn’t believe it.

  “I volunteered. Donnie would have done it, but he’s down at the café picking up my breakfast.”

  “He’s what?” Dane could practically see her. If they were having this conversation face-to-face she would be batting those baby blues at him. He could feel the vein in his temple start to throb. “He’s what?” Dane repeated a little more calmly.

  “He’s gone to get my breakfast. According to the duty roster here, he’s off the clock, so you can’t get mad at him for leaving his post. He wasn’t here, and one of your deputies brought in a prisoner who was so rowdy it took both the deputy and Sergeant Bates to get him down the stairs. So I volunteered to man the radio.”

  Dane unclenched his jaw just enough to speak. “Then volunteer to write this down. Unit One is ten-seventeen—that’s en route—to the office.”

  “Copy that.” She said it easily, as if she’d been manning the radio for years. “Unit One is ten-seventeen to the office.”

  “That means I’m on my way.”

  “I know what it means, Sheriff. You have this convenient list of ten codes right here next to the radio.”

  “Good. Then look up ten-three and do it.”

  “That would be…ten-three, stop transmitting. Ten-four to that. Dispatch out.”

  “And don’t touch anything else,” he added. “Unit One out.”

  Son of a… Dane was going to wring someone’s neck for this. Hearing two different sets of clicks on the radio, indicating that two people, probably his deputies, were laughing at the exchange that just took place, did not help Dane’s mood. But considering who he’d had the exchange with, one of those sets of clicks could have been from her. Damn her lying little self.

  And to think that he’d been attracted to her.

  He flipped on his lights and siren and stepped on the gas. That fancy little sports car of hers shouldn’t have any trouble keeping up.

  Stacey’s grin was huge as she sat back in the chair at the dispatcher’s desk. Oh, County Sheriff Dane Powell hadn’t liked that, no, sir, he hadn’t. And anything he didn’t like just tickled her pink. It was time she took control of things from his hands. She didn’t like men who were controlling, never had, never would. Give her a sweetheart like Deputy Call-me-Donnie Fowler anyday. Now there was a nice man. If a woman had to have a man around, and if that man simply had to be a cop.

  She had no doubt that when the sheriff walked through the door he was going to have steam coming out his ears. She hoped Sergeant Bates didn’t get into too much trouble for leaving her in charge of the radio. But really, what else could he have done? The prisoner the other deputy had brought in had been drunk and belligerent and working his way up to out-and-out violent. No telling what would have happened if he’d had to handle the man on his own so the deputy could man the radio.

  A few minutes later Donnie returned with her breakfast. When she explained about Sergeant Bates, Donnie thanked her for filling in and took over from her.

  “You might not want to be sitting there when the sheriff gets back,” she warned. “He wasn’t exactly thrilled when he called in and I answered.”

  Donnie pursed his lips, but soon gave up and grinned. “He can’t yell at me. I’m not even on duty. But I’ll warn the sergeant.”

  “Thanks. I thought you should know. And thanks for getting me the breakfast.”

  His cheeks turned beet-red. “Aw, heck, Ms. Smith, you’re welcome.”

  She nearly told him to call her Stacey. Heavens, that wouldn’t do. Not when he thought her name was Carla.

  This business of lying was getting complicated.

  She took her breakfast to the sheriff’s office, made herself at home again on his burgundy leather sofa and dug in. Using crutches evidently stimulated her appetite; she felt as if she could eat an entire steer.

  From where she sat she couldn’t see into the outer office, but she heard Sergeant Bates and the other deputy come back upstairs. She caught bits and pieces of their conversation with Donnie and knew Donnie had warned the sergeant that the sheriff was not pleased. The sergeant didn’t seem too worried, from what little Stacey could hear.

  She wondered about that. Was Bates not worried because he didn’t care what the sheriff thought, because he had no respect for the man, if not the office he held? Or was his lack of concern based on friendship with and trust in the man he worked for, trust that Dane would be fair and listen to him before doing anything drastic?

  She would be interested to see how this turned out.

  Not long after she finished eating, the sheriff returned. He didn’t exactly storm through the door—at least the frosted glass didn’t break—but he came in with an attitude. Stacey had been leaning on her crutches in his office doorway just so she wouldn’t miss his entrance.

  And he made an entrance, all right. What an entrance. For a moment Stacey thought she was seeing double. The man who came in with him had that same coal-black hair, those same vivid blue eyes, the same strong, square, don’t-mess-with-me jaw. The two men could have been brothers.

  Heck, for all Stacey knew, they were. The other man was a few years older, judging by the extra lines fanning out from his eyes. Lines that did nothing to detract from the strong, handsome face.

  But it was the sheriff who drew her attention. When he looked across the room and their gazes met, and she felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle with physical awareness—of the male-female variety—she almos
t wished she had missed his entrance. Almost, but not quite. The sharp, sexual zing that zipped through her startled her, amazed her, even thrilled her. She didn’t think she’d ever felt something so powerful from merely looking a man in the eye.

  But she also felt frightened, threatened. Not physically. She didn’t think the man was going to cross the room and hit her. But the look in his eyes, for the shortest of seconds, said he might like to cross the room and kiss her.

  His gaze lowered to her mouth as though he knew that she had dreamed of kissing him.

  Oh, yes, she thought as a shiver that had nothing to do with cold and everything to do with heat raced down her spine. Terrifying.

  Dane stared at her lips and nearly reeled. What the hell was it with him, that he could want to kiss her and strangle her, maybe even arrest her, all at the same time? He could swear her taste still lingered on his lips.

  Sleep deprivation, that’s what this craziness was. He hadn’t had more than a thirty-minute nap in two days. All he needed was a good night’s sleep and he’d be his old self again. He would be able to look at the woman across the room with the cool detachment she deserved.

  But he couldn’t wait for that good night’s sleep. He had to dredge up a little cool reserve right here and now.

  He tore his gaze from her, aware that Ace, behind him, and Donnie and Stan before him, were giving him funny looks. He ignored their looks and turned to Stan.

  “I hear you had trouble with a prisoner?”

  “Jim had to help me get Harley downstairs so he could sleep it off. You know how mean he gets when he ties one on.”

  Dane grunted. Harley Schmidt was a frequent guest in their humble establishment. He was a big man, and a mean drunk. No wonder Stan had needed help and had to leave Carla, or Stacey or whoever she was, out here to catch the radio. If she hadn’t volunteered to help, Dane’s call would have gone unanswered for quite a while, and he would have been worried as hell.

  “I was lucky Ms. Smith offered to man the desk while Jim and I were downstairs. Yours was the only call she got. She did real fine, don’t you think?”