The High Country Rancher

“I accounted for everyone Endicott prosecuted. They’re either walking a straight line, out-of-state, dead or back in custody. McCullough is the only one who still lives around here.”

“You’re lucky he doesn’t file a harassment suit against you. Make sure you play him straight. If he is involved, we need a clean case, no loopholes he could slip through.”

“Okay.” She stood up to leave, her nerves as tense as a race car driver’s waiting at the start line.

There was only one way to capitalize on her suspicion. She’d have to stake out the Bellwether Ranch. If she could find probable cause, she could get a search warrant. Maybe she could find what he was hiding. She just hoped it wasn’t Endicott.

BAYLOR MOVED PAST THE kitchen window for the third time in ten minutes, making sure he saw what he saw. He raised the binoculars to his eyes and adjusted the focus, dialing in the nose of the vehicle parked west of the ranch in a patch of trees a quarter of a mile away.

Detective Ellis’s white car. She’d been there since dawn. Watching, waiting for him to make a move. Amusement rippled through him. He put the field glasses down.

If determination was all it took to be a cop, she would take the prize. Too bad she was so far off target. Granted, he hated what Endicott had done to him and the effect it had on his life, but he had nothing to do with his disappearance.

Baylor headed outside to the barn. Somehow convincing Detective Ellis of that fact seemed important. If she wanted evidence, he’d show her there wasn’t any, not on the Bellwether Ranch anyway.

MARIAH CLOSED HER EYES for an instant, trying to stop them from burning. She’d been on the stakeout since five this morning, and her coffee thermos was empty.

This had to be one of the worst ideas she’d ever managed to employ, at least on a twenty-five-hundred-acre ranch. Baylor could have hidden Endicott anywhere. Maybe she should give it up and go back to square one. Good, old-fashioned, pound-the-pavement, last-person-to-see-him-alive kind of stuff. Someone had to have seen something. She just had to pose the right question to the right person.

She opened her eyes and was startled. The object of her crack-of-dawn investigation stood next to her car holding the reins to a couple of horses.

“Good morning,” he said. “You’ll never get any nosing around done sitting in your car.”

Damn, she’d been caught. “You have a better plan?”

“How about I give you a tour of the ranch on horseback. You can search for Endicott anywhere you’d like.”

“And if I find him?” The air inside the vehicle went hot.

“You can cuff me and take me to jail.”

“Deal.” She rolled up the driver’s-side window, climbed out of the car and locked it. “I haven’t ridden in a while. Is he gentle?”

“Jericho? Yeah. The last person he dumped lived to tell about it.”

She grinned, feeling like a 4-H student at her first horse show.

Baylor handed her the reins, watched her mount up and settle into the saddle. He could only hope that his method worked. That the beautiful detective would drive away happy and convinced there wasn’t a body hidden somewhere on the Bellwether.

“We’ll head east. That’s the most remote area of the ranch. Lots of game trails. Abandoned mine shafts. I don’t run cattle out there for that reason.”

“Too dangerous?”

“One wrong step and you don’t come home.” He turned his horse and headed for the main road. They’d follow it for a couple of miles and take the Bear Creek trailhead just before Harley Neville’s place.

Mariah nudged her horse up next to Baylor’s and tried to relax. The feel of her sidearm on her belt offered some comfort. Searching without a search warrant, riding next to a suspect, all seemed a little strange to her, but if it helped her pull together a case, it’d be worth the risk.

“Shoot. I forgot my lunch in the car.” She attempted to turn the horse back toward her vehicle.

“Don’t worry.” Baylor patted his saddlebag. “I brought enough for two.” He grinned and her heartbeat went haywire.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Her certainty about his involvement in Endicott’s disappearance seemed to flail whenever she was with him. Something about his easygoing style sucked her in and changed her mind.

Baylor spurred his horse and she followed suit as they settled into a slow canter that ate up the distance.

The sweet scent of honey locust and pine sap hung in the air. The rhythm of the horses’ hooves against the dirt lulled her into a contented state that she’d rarely achieved since she’d started working at the sheriff’s department.

Baylor reined his horse in and waited for her to do the same. “Here’s our trail. It’s a steep climb, but the view on top is worth it.”

There was that sensation again. That zing of pleasure across her nerves, that flutter in her chest. “Looks like it would be too much work to get a body up there.” She stared up the sloping trail as it disappeared into the trees.

Her comment put an edge of tension in the air between them, which was precisely what she needed to pull her back down to earth. Until the Endicott case was solved, and Baylor was cleared, she had to sock the odd feelings away somewhere so they didn’t interfere with her job.

“A good strong horse and some determination. It could be done,” he said without hesitation.

She stared at him, trying to gauge his emotions, but his face gave nothing away. Was he joking or dead serious, she couldn’t be sure.

“Let’s head up. Make sure it’s clear.” He tipped his hat, the one shielding his features from her scrutiny.

She fell in behind him, leaning forward in the saddle as her horse trudged up the first steep incline, then took a right as the trail switched back across the face of the mountain.

Half an hour later they reined in their horses under a massive ponderosa pine and dismounted.

Mariah’s legs were shaking as she got them underneath her and took a look around. Breathtaking vistas spread out in front of her everywhere she turned.

“What do you think?” Baylor asked, tying the horses to a low-hanging limb.

“It’s beautiful.” Already her artist’s eye was honing in on all the possible angles she could use in her work. “I could stay up here for days and have something new to capture on every one of them.”

“I knew you’d like it.” He untied the double-pouched saddlebag, pulled it off the back of the saddle and tossed it over his shoulder. “Come on, there’s a place to relax just up the trail.”

Mariah tagged along behind him, staring at his broad shoulders as they moved beneath his denim shirt. Every ounce of control she possessed seemed to drain away, and desire, intense and volatile, throbbed in her veins.

She swallowed, focusing on the trail ahead of them as it opened into a small meadow flanked by dense timber. A gushing creek roared from out of the mountainside, then slowed and meandered across the meadow before dumping into a pond.

A well-traveled path wound through the heart of the clearing, flanked by knee-deep bear grass, ending next to a sandy beach on the banks of the pond.

“This is perfect.” She attempted to move past him, determined to sort out all the unfamiliar emotions tangled up inside of her, but he reached out and caught her hand, pulling her toward him.

A jolt of electricity coursed through her as they made contact. Gazing up into his face, she knew he’d felt it, too.

“Mariah…I…” What the hell was he thinking? Baylor wondered as he stared at her lips, then back into her eyes. He was a man on fire. He’d wanted to kiss her all morning and hadn’t been able to shake the desire. He’d even tried to remind himself she was a cop, out for blood, and still it hadn’t done the trick.

He pulled off his cowboy hat, gave it a toss and dropped the saddlebags as he lowered his mouth to hers. She didn’t resist. Instead, her arms came up around his neck.

Mariah’s head swam. Every nerve in her body attuned itself to the feel of Baylor’s body pressed against hers.

She opened her mouth for him, tasting him as he deepened the kiss, exploring her with his tongue in a slow, sensual rhythm. An ache manifested itself deep and low in her belly. A primal need that begged for satisfaction as he lowered her to the soft meadow grass.

Fire ignited in her veins, consuming all reasonable thought in its flame. She wasn’t a cop, he wasn’t her suspect. They were a man and a woman, locked in the heat of desire. Lost in their own private heaven. Oblivious to the world around them.

The first bullet whizzed past Baylor’s right ear and bored into the ground next to his head, sending up a spray of dirt.

Somewhere in the timberline on the other side of the meadow, the gunshot echoed back.

Drunk on desire, Baylor rocked back, staring down at her. Reality jolted him into action. Someone was shooting at them.

He rolled them both hard to the left, took her hand and dragged her to her feet.

“Run!” he yelled.

Ping.

Another bullet zinged past, hitting the ground inches behind them.

Baylor aimed for the trees two hundred feet in front of them, caution driving him as he tried to pick the safest place to go off trail. The meadow was riddled with boarded-over vertical mine shafts; one wrong step and…

Before the thought had time to solidify, the earth gave under his feet.

In a last desperate attempt to save Mariah, he yanked hard, sending her flying past him, but the cavernous hole was too big.

It swallowed them whole and they fell through the rotting boards into darkness.

Mariah hit the bottom of the pit with a thud. The air pushed from her lungs as she slammed into the ground. Pain shot through her body from the jarring drop.

Baylor hit next to her.

She heard him grunt.

Dust clogged her mouth and nose, grit showering her tongue and grating on her teeth.

She lay still and opened her eyes.

It was dark at the bottom of the hole, and it took a moment for them to adjust. She scanned the earthen walls of the mine shaft. They were trapped.

She choked back a sob, drawing on her training instead. A cool head was the best tool in a situation like this.

“Baylor, can you hear me?” she asked, encouraged by a scraping noise and a grunt.

“Yeah.”

The sound of his voice sent a charge of excitement through her. He was alive.

“How deep do you suppose this shaft is?”

“Thirty feet maybe.”

May as well be a hundred, she thought as she pulled herself up into a sitting position, looking for anything that could help them escape.

“Are you hurt?”

“Does my pride count?”

She smiled in the darkness. “No.”

“Good.”

Mariah pulled herself to her feet, dusting off the layer of dirt that coated her body. She watched Baylor stand up, testing his feet under him before he put his head back and gazed up at the beams of light pouring through the jagged slats of wood above their heads.

The shaft was tight, maybe six by six.

A chill rocked her body and she fought a wave of hopelessness. They had to find a way out or this hole would become their grave.

Baylor wiped a trickle of blood off his forehead with the back of his hand and stared up at the opening.

The walls of the vertical shaft were laced with tree roots, the only thing that had slowed their fall. Worry hammered through him, pounding his nerves to a pulp. In frustration he grabbed a root and tested it for stability, but after a hard jerk it pulled out of the wall, coating him in more dirt.

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